Prog Rock
Without Prog Rock the world would certainly be a
duller place. Men in robes; songs about astronomy, mythology and
numerology; banks of Moogs and Mellotrons and church organs - You
could certainly never call Prog "drab", though it has always been (and
still is) routinely derided as the moment when rock traded its heart
for its head, its soul for the solo, and its working class rebels for
pretentious posh blokes with investment portfolios
Arriving at the end of the 60s, Prog Rock was, in
fact, psychedelia's love child, carrying a counter-cultural flag for
ambition and adventure when all around was a retreat into bedsit
blandness. As such, Prog's contempt for concision was mostly
selflessly indulgent. Even its most elongated epics are full of
variety and dramatic contrasts. King
Crimson's Lizard (1970)
shifts from ballad to bolero to balls-out rock over its side-long
length, while Genesis' sidelong Supper's Ready on Foxtrot
(1972) is a seven-course blow-out that shifts from soul to folk to
vaudeville to classical and back again.
What's more, Prog twisted and warped sound in ways
that psychedelia could only imagine. Whether it's the demonically
distorted and distended organ on Van Der Graaf
Generator's 1970
Killer, Robert Fripp's echoing slabs of granite guitar on King
Crimson's 1971 The Sailor's Tale, or the deep sea caves of
keyboards on Pink Floyd's epic Echoes of the same year, Prog
played the studio for all it was worth.
The high-minded ambition is what many find elitist and
alienating about Prog - "a tragic waste of talent and electricity" as
John Peel said of ELP. Those who held on to the idea of rock as
something visceral, urgent and immediate would not have applauded
Robert Fripp's description of King Crimson's debut album as auguring
"a music more self-conscious than before, where different forms are
sought, ones which expect a reaction from the head rather more than
from the foot."
At its best, Prog Rock has always been music than can
transport the listener transcendentally (Barclay James Harvest made an
entire career out of pursuing Prog's pastoral domains with quiet,
wide-eyed wonder). Unfortunately, Progs "songwords" have always been
its Achilles' heel - too often mythological mumbo-jumbo showing off
it's author's public school education .
Prog was supposed to have been killed off by Punk But
its supposed nemesis, John Lydon (Sex Pistols) and Mark E Smith of
The
Fall were both Van Der Graaf fans. And Howard Devoto (Buzzcocks)
admitted to liking Pink Floyd . . . and even some stuff by
Yes! |
