What is Prog 7 - Out there
Any definition that can walk is gonna have to stand by where it gets to. In which case, we’ve got some involving results. Type 1 Prog will include all those Beatles tracks that re‐purpose old styles. I guess people may accept that as called above, Proto‐Prog? After that, there are oddities like Kaleidoscope. The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and Frank Zappa. Progressive bands, which I guess may contend with conception. but maybe it’s time that was said.
Something to mull is how after perhaps Genesis the Folk references vanished from Prog‐Rock. However, arguably the Folk references transformed, became non‐rock and recast as World Music. This development can be followed through musicians like Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel. It can be heard blurt into some careers, Kate Bush and Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’.
Drop the Rock and you’ll get anything from Phil Spector, to Stevie Wonder’s Seventies work, to Clannad. Some have made claims for ‘progressive’.
As for Type 2 Prog, it’s going to include some work by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (not the heavy, the experimental), The Who (when at length), and late Sixties oddities like Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ and Moondog’s work. Proto‐Prog Type 2? And, regardless of sound but dependant on development, heavy/metal material like Black Sabbath is in—writers always seem unsure about that but the label sticks, and so is River with some structure Soft Machine and Samla Mammas Manna.
In the eighties, there was a non‐rock slide in guitar bands, leading to bands like At the Drive‐In, The Mars Volta and My Bloody Valentine, while Porcupine Tree rock. Rock or not, these bands may spew dense sound but they are mostly straightforward in structure, perhaps to support the noise and/or complexity of beat. As Type 2 Prog, marginal (and a lack of outside evocation rules it from Type 1).
Drop the rock and in are the extended electronic sounds of too many synth/sample works to list, Tangerine Dream onwards, and bare‐forms like Godspeed You Black Emperor and Scott Walker. You may or may not want to admit to this. It may be possible to differentiate between composition, net‐zero and overlapping samples but me, I shout for Hawkwind.
…in the End
Cultural definitions will be rebased, debased, burred and reasserted. One reason the definitions in this article are severed is because the item Prog‐Rock has become blurred‐to‐useless—like the word Jazz, except in one‐third the time—and this needs to be raised. But the audience know what it is, or was, and we can still get somewhere.
Allright, those bands from the Sixties like King Crimson, and experiments like Mass in F Minor, are Type 1 Prog with Western‐Art reference. If you’ll admit other musics like Folk or Jazz, then senders like Fairport Convention, Family and the Mahavishnu Orchestra are Prog. Prog Type 1 also makes sense of other sometimes‐labelled Prog—despite concept albums, I’ve never understood the metallic work of Queensrÿche, nor the guitar Pop of Marillion as Prog. Where Type 1 may defy audience expectation is in overlapping other deep‐held genres—Led Zeppelin are surely in, as are a handful of humourous bands. But Prog Type 1 matches expectation by ruling out such as Bo Diddley, Moby Grape and The Who as mostly too solidly of themself. And noting that, perhaps due to sampling, this kind of music doesn’t much exist anymore.
Meanwhile, despite the Jazz, Magma are mostly Type 2 Prog, as are, in a different ways, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and Rush—who rarely used extra instruments save some synth FX and whose twelve minute multi‐part compositions are the definition. Type 2 also ropes in some phases of the group Wire, and other dense and extended Rock bands—including some Metal and improvising and/or electronic bands. It makes sense of musics labelled as ‘influenced’ that were likely not‐ever. Where Type 2 defies audience expectation is in form‐simple or form‐other music like Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, The Orb, Godspeed You Black Emperor or Scott Walker, and failing to include Prog‐Popped musics like Marillion. But it will match expectation by including later work such as James Blood Ulmer, Massacre and Sonic Youth. Noting that, with the erosion of Type 1, Type 2 offers a way forward.
Without Rock, we have Prog‐Pop, which may include Phil Spector productions, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Willie Nelson concept albums, Radiohead (propose themselves as this) and others of many kinds. And that’s fair enough, I’d say—though there is no known fanbase to ’fess or dis. Try the ‘Remember You’re a Womble’ album.
Seems everyone knows what Prog is, if only to claim an excess that Punk wiped out. Not true as popularity—Prog to this day draws a large audience across the world. But though audiences know it when they hear it, Prog is or has become a very poor definition. Many writers bail or generate lists of small genres with superficial similarities of instrumentation or lyric. Soon as you ask wider, talk falls apart into a list of attributes that fail to define anything. Which includes musics of such diverse type it’s meaningless. Are you gonna call Minor Threat as Prog‐Hardcore? Closer you get, ‘prog’ blurs or breaks like a Pointillist painting. I’d lever the above—get into the music.
Refs
Discovered after the fact, handled in a different way, this blog post reaches towards two of the main factors here,
http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=127835&FID=58
Allmusic article about Prog Rock,
Wikipedia article about Prog Rock. Avoids concluding,
Rate Your Music distillation of the attribute list,
Gentle Giant tell their story,
https://gentlegiantmusic.com/GG/ZigZag_magazine_interview_1975
Robert Fripp of King Crimson tells some of his story,
Wire’s bass player, Graham Lewis, about the tensions of creative work,
https://www.stereoembersmagazine.com/traveling-speed-154-interview-graham-lewis/