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Originally Posted by Frownland
How does that contradict my point?
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Nowhere in that definition does it mention new age, nor tepidity. So your attempt to reduce neo-prog to that, simply because you don't like it, fails. That definition tells you what neo-prog is recognised to be, your definition tells you what you want it to be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vambo
First off - thankyou for not nailing me without knowing what music I espouse.
True, I do not rate neo high -compared to the other cornerstones of wide-Prog - but I do not ignore it either. It has value.
And I think it was yourself (?) who listed the good ones. I would rate:
the first two Marillions,
Pallas-Sentinel and the 2 early EPs
IQ "Tales from the Lush Attic" & "the Wake"
Pendragon - the jewel
The four Twelfth Night lps
I have these in the collection and more - including a few terrible ones like Haze: Niadim's Ghost being the worst. And Austria's Deyss (but incredible foc art - so its a keeper.)
During the prog doldrums of 80s there was not much to explore except neo and all neo came out of UK.
But then something horrid happeded: The Netherlands started taking up the neo banner.
They had called their prog "Symphonic Prog" from the start, but when their neo came in the late 80s it was truely horrorshow.
I would buy Euro progs in the mail without any knowledge of the actual music and my biggest disappointments were 5 lps I got off of what I call the worse prog label ever: the Dutch Sym-Info label.
(No, Im not gonna mention the bands names.)
Back then there was not much to pick from. But there were lotta "neo" fanzines.Most of them quarterly and all very thin. I still have some of these:
the dutch Freia (which actually put out one thicker quarterly-maybe 25 pages), Dutch Background (the big one then), two or three from France: Acid Dragon,Mr Peach... and the best of the lot, Sophisticated Rock from Germany.
Fanzines like Background occasionally pushed quality, straight progs like Eloy and Enid, but there pages would be littered with dross neos like It Bites.
Aye, It Bites was a particular sorry favorite.
Oh yeah: Enid were a band out of their time.
I never could see them as neo -but there you have it.
Two hallmarks of neo are verbosity and emotionality of lyric . Enid exemplify neither.
They (and the Craft lp) were mainly instrumental. (And can you think of any neo lps that are instrumental; besides the one 12th Night?)
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Some good stuff there. I'm also into the earlier prog, but not all of it. Don't like early Yes too much, love Rush, love Genesis (all time favourite), try to get into VDGG but the jazzy influences keep putting me off, have heard little Camel, though I think I might like it. Didn't like the two Soft Machine albums I tried, Focus were meh, ELP I never liked at all. Tull I couldn't stand, and anyway I see him mostly as more folk than prog really. I tried Gentle Giant and was not impressed. Much of the 70s prog bores me, though I've heard some good RPI bands.
When you say Dutch neo-prog, are you talking about the likes of Epica and Within Temptation? I'd class them more as prog metal really.
As for a neoprog instrumental album, have you heard this?