Does anyone think prog rock is good any more?

I got the album “Fragile” by Yes when I was a teen and still think it’s great. But I was never sold on any other Yes material from their prog era (I think “90125” is great too). I just heard the song “Close to the Edge” on Sirius XM a few days ago, and it seemed like totally uncompelling nonsense to me.

If you look at Yes’s discography on Allmusic, you see a lot of high ratings:

But does anyone still listen to “Tales From Topographic Oceans” any more? I don’t mean, “Does anyone still hold the opinion in their mind that this stuff is good?” I mean, “Does anyone put this music on still and enjoy it?”

I could ask the same thing about “Brain Salad Surgery” by ELP or “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” by Genesis. I could get into Pink Floyd, but that’s a hot button (I think they suck, but… There is also the question of what by them is prog and what is not…).

I do get why prog was a “thing” in its time. Trying to take rock to the next level, making it as “important” and “worthwhile” as classical music. There was certainly a lot of talent and effort put into prog, and sometimes it totally worked. I think the song “Roundabout” by Yes (from the aforementioned “Fragile”) is totally worth its running time of 8+ minutes.

I think where prog fails is that most of the time it ends up as talented but nevertheless diffuse noodling that may impress but not really entertain. It is also typically involves a pretentious and self-important attitude. Thus, the vast majority of it doesn’t hold up in my opinion.

But the interesting thing is that critical opinion on such matters tends to ossify. Thus, the opinions formed in the 70s (and the reviews written, as on Allmusic, which are at least not recent when it comes to material thus old) tend to be maintained. No one may be listening to “Brain Salad Surgery”–but it’s still a masterpiece!

Your thoughts?!

Your favorite music sucks.™

Now available on 8-track and cassette from K-Tel!

By the way, I am a big classical music fan. So I do see what prog rockers tried to do with development of themes and so on. I just don’t think it works very often. I think they forgot that most classical movements are actually not all that long, and even in that medium pieces (i.e., continuous pieces or movements) that run for the length of an album (20+ minutes) are pretty rare.

Rick Wakeman once defined ‘prog rock’ as an opportunity for those rock guys who had had some classical training to show off a bit, which just about nails it.

It was an interesting time in rock music, and you can understand that it was a natural ‘progression’ of ideas to say, 'Hey, we’re not limited to just cranking out hit 3 minute singles; we’ve got 20 minutes per side of vinyl to play with so let’s try something longer, more involved, more ambitious. Fair enough, but not many bands really delivered anything particularly great or lasting (and I write as someone who was there, and a huge fan at the time).

Most prog hasn’t stood the test of time, but then again not all music has to. Sometimes you just enjoy music for its ability to transport you back to a given time and period of musical fashion. I don’t care that most prog rock doesn’t sound very good NOW. I just care that it sounded good THEN, and that it can take me back on a musical nostaligia fest anytime I want.

But some of it does still sound good. Fashions change, quality endures.

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is a fine album. Harumph.

Makes sense. A lot of club music today is like that: just trying to “live for today.”

Yes. I think an interesting question is what makes the small amount of prog that still sounds good sound good. I think in most cases it’s distinctive melodies in not-too-noodly structures. That’s why “Roundabout” is still good, in my opinion.

My brother and one of his friends are huge Prog fans. They still put on albums like TFTO and rock out, and waaaaay more obscure stuff. They could even tell you some modern bands and albums.

Neither of them was part of the original wave of prog, by the way. They were born in 1970 and 1977, so they came to it “after the fact.”

Before they had kids they would go to Nearfest in Philadelphia. A prog music fest. But looks like it had its last run in 2012.

Prog is still great, although a lot of prog bands I feel don’t create new music or try to push the envelope so much as try to sound like Dream Theater, or Yes, or Rush. But there are some groups still doing good work. And Rush of course is still awesome.

I want to listen to stuff I like, REALLY FUCKING LOUD again, like it used to be, when it all was fun and real, music had feeling and substance…but something changed. Its all crap now, just a money making commodity…to be used and tossed aside.

I need to get away from neighbors, they don’t like it…they hate good music, it’s only 3 AM…what the fuck? Don’t you LOVE MUSIC you freaks, Don’t you understand?

I have some money stashed, so I can get some property away from everyone…yea AWAY FROM IT ALL, so I can PAY IT LOUD again, DAMMIT!!!

A farm…Yea, A FARM, thats what I want, with animals and plants and stuff…

Im gonna take all my money and go, BUY THE FARM!!! MUHAHAAAAA!!!

MUHAHAhhahaaaa…

muhahaa…aamuha…
Oh wait…:smack:

feeels ur pain OP

Let’s oversimplify a bit, and say that “prog rock” began in 1967, with the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper and (shortly afterward) the Moody Blues’ ***Days of Future Passed ***. I KNOW there are Zappa or Beach Boys fans who’ll say it started earlier, but humor me a bit! Sgt. Pepper made it possible for bands to achieve commercial success and radio airplay with lengthier, more ambitious songs featuring orchestration and unusual (for rock and roll) instrumentation.

Not coincidentally, heavy metal more or less arose at the same time. I’ll oversimplify once again and say that metal began in 1967 with Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced. At any rate, all the features that came to define heavy metal (feedback, fuzztone, etc.) were present on that album. ) Yeah, I KNOW the Kinks, the Yardbirds and other bands were using similar sounds earlier. But Hendrix, Cream, Beck and Led Zeppelin created the metal vocabulary in the late Sixties.

Between 1967 and the late Seventies, a lot of prog rock bands (the Moodies, Procol Harum, King Crimson, genesis, Yes, ELP, Gentle Giant, et al) had a fair amount of success. But by 1978 or so, the leading prog rock bands had run out of creative gas.

Similarly, Hendrix and the former Yardbirds had a lot of commercial success and inspired successful imitators like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. By the late Seventies, however, the leading metal artists were either literally dead (like Hendrix) or running out of gas.

So, why did prog rock die out almost completely in the late Seventies while metal thrived for decades longer? Because kids who liked metal found it very EASY to start their own metal bands. A kid who loved Sabbath or Purple in 1974 could learn to play a few hard, fast metal chords and start his own metal band. It was pretty easy to learn to play “Smoke on the Water” and “Iron Man.”

However, it was HARD to learn to play the organ like Keith Emerson. It was HARD to learn to play guitar like Steve Hackett. It was HARD for young drummers to learn the tricky time signatures of King Crimson’s Bill Bruford.

So, when the original prog rock bands petered out,m the movement largely died with them. But the original metal acts spawned loads of imitators who kept the genre thriving.
I was, as you can guess, a huge fan of BOTH the leading 70s metal acts AND the leading 70s prog rock acts. How do I feel about them now?

Well, as I’ve observed before, NOTHING gets old and stale faster than the stuff we THINK is profound when we’re precocious, intellectual teens. Books, movies and records that were never meant to be anything but FUN tend to hold up better than works that are intended to be deep and arty. KC and the Sunshine Band were never TRYING to be artists- they were trying to make catchy dance songs. So, when a deejay whips out “Shake Your Booty” on Trash Disco Night at a dance club, a 50-something woman (like my wife) will squeal with delight and start doing the hustle.

But if her husband digs up an old prog rock 8-track from the Seventies and plays one… well, the good stuff will still hold up marvelously. But some lyrics that once seemed deep will often sound silly (“Jon Anderson was smoking a lot of weed and reading a lot of Tolkien, I see”). Some solos that seemed exciting will now seem to drag (“Geez, Fripp, this jam was getting boring 5 minutes ago, and you’re just getting started!”).

I still have loads of old prog rock CDs. SOME of it is still great. Some of it makes me wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Again, it’s not just music. When you’re 15, Kurt Vonnegut may seem like a genius- when you’re 35, you may start to suspect he was a wise ass rather than a Wise Man. When you’re 15, you may think Holden Caulfield was YOU; when you’re 35, you may find Holden a whiny, self-absorbed asshole.

I was born in ‘78, so I obviously didn’t see the original wave of prog as it happened. However, I regularly listen to all of Yes’ albums from The Yes Album through to Drama. I used to be big on Genesis and King Crimson, but my interest in both bands has largely fallen by the wayside. Selling England by the Pound still sounds great, however, IMHO.

Anyway, I only just listened to Close to the Edge on the weekend again and I still find it magical. And “Awaken” from Going for the One is really hard to beat when it comes to longer prog pieces.

Not everyone may agree with me, but I think of the first two (and maybe even three) ELO albums as pretty much prog rock. And I still listen to them all the time.

I love ELO myself, but even Jeff Lynne denied that his band fit into the “classical rock” mold of ELP. Lynne always said “This isn’t classical music at all- it’s rock and roll music played with instruments normally associated with classical music.”

I still listen to Renaissance regularly.

He must have forgotten about In The Hall Of The Mountain King.

Nice observs, astorian. I don’t see Sgt. Pepper as prog, but I dig your overall drift!

By the way, I agree about music made for fun lasting longer in general. Actually I would put that inside a larger circle in the Venn diagram circle labeled “Not Trying Too Hard.” There are plenty of songs made with passion and something to say (verbally and/or musically) that nevertheless were not trying to make the Artistic Statement of the Century and have aged well. For example, your example of Jimi Hendrix. He was serious but not self-serious. His stuff still sounds great. Yes’s stuff from the 70s is mostly ridiculous.

Prog will stand as: a) an interesting sub-category of rock, off the mainstream for folks who want to look for it; and b) one of the main musical things that punk was reacting against.

One of my favorites, along with “And You and I” and “Your Move” and “Turn of the Century” and “South Side of the Sky”

Yes :smiley: