Quote:
Originally Posted by Neapolitan
Nah, Disco had a different demographic; there was already a divide between underground Rock and mainstream Top 40 Pop. If anything Disco claimed those who listen to cheesy Top 40 at the time. Prog wasn't meant to be Top 40, and it appealed to AOR crowd, some people call them Classic Rock elistist - whatever. :/
Think about it - Why would the Popularity of Prog die when there was always niche for it? Prog's popularity segued into Pomp Rock as far as listeners and the new bands that followed the old guard at that time. I wouldn't say "died" I would say "Prog didn't died it's got ignored and slipped into obscurity" imo Marillion and Saga (maybe I will get accused of using popular Prog names for mentioning them but I couldn't think of any other) anyway they were not treated as royalty like Pink Floyd and was it's not because of their popularity for that type of music died. (When I said that about PF I'm talking about how radio airplay and they presented in rock-docs) If I had to point to a cause I would say it was corporate "been there done that" what's new mentality. Generally speaking once a genre piques the public curiosity it peaks corporately and then music business is looking for the next big thing, and for genre all that's left are hardcore fans and cult followings keeping that alive.
|
I`d say most of what you`ve written in regards to prog as popular genre finally merging into either pomp or just plain AOR was mostly correct, because by the mid to late 70s there were a lot of bands which had they been around half a decade earlier, would`ve been playing prog as opposed to pomp or AOR, but also genres such as punk, new-wave and NWOBHM etc by the late 70s had become so popular, that the trend for longer and more technical songs had died out. Quite correctly though, Marillion proved there was still a market for traditional prog at least here in the UK where they were very popular. In fact Marillion didn`t really bring anything new to the table and were just content to put out a prog sound that was almost identical to Peter Gabriel era Genesis, but this time they weren`t called prog but Neo-prog rock!