Dotoar

I like all of these bands, especially KC and Gentle Giant are among my favourite progsters, but I can't help but thinking that Yes and Genesis were the cream of it all, and they were certainly 'not middle of the road'. (And I don't hold the endless stream of rip-offs in the neo-prog movement against them).

Anyway, calling prog pretentious (it is, but done right it's thoroughly justified pretentiousness) is not equivalent with writing it off on that basis. Although I find it somewhat amusing that BoY condemned prog for being pretentious while simultaneously praising grunge.

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Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

You said prog was 'laughable' which somehow denoted inferiority. In fact, Prog is a very mature concept. It's basically nothing more than trying to take music in a more intelligent direction. Where, you know, music is about more than the heroin-binge dick contest. Most prog musicians seem much more playfully mature. The fact they don't take themselves as seriously as rockstars makes them far less laughable than those who obsess over image.

You have to be ****ting me.

A) Prog is a MASSIVE genre. There are thousand, and thousands of prog bands, and there still is. Mainstream music even is influenced by Prog. ****ing Kayne West samples King Crimson, and Can. Maybe these bands aren't known among youth, but the influence is obvious. There are still prog bands outside the mainstream, and IN the mainstream.

B) Prog's ONLY true pretension is the pursuit of more difficult music, and if your freaking job is to be a musician, is it not pretension to be above average. However, you spin around, and complement 'The Clash'. Which writes melodically inferior songs but slaps on pretensious themes. With a world full of sociologist, psychologists, poets, politicians, and philosophers with PHD education that go unheard of, isn't it a little pretentious for a rock band to cover 'deep topics' simplifying the actual melodic content because it 'isn't as important as the message'. If you ask me, that's more pretentious than anything.

At least, Prog pretension stays in the field of 'musicians playing music' not 'musicians being poets, and deep social commentators'.

C) The Clash is a mindnumbingly dull, outdated, and boring band. I highly doubt 20 years from now they'll be deeply celebrated, because they BARELY are today. The Sex Pistols will, The Ramones will, but the Clash will ****ing remain an obscurity to those who are not self educated rock historians. ****, Even The Misfits will probably connect deeper to future youths than The Clash will, whether you like it or not. Furthermore, with the cheesyness, pretension, and outdatedness of their sound. The Clash are more laughable than 90% of prog will ever be.

Turn of VH1, please. Quit reading 'The Rolling Stone'. The world is much bigger than spelled by 1960+ American/British rock biased tabloids. The accumulative history of music that spans centuries is far to big to think the world centers around the post-Shadows world of Anglo-American rock n' roll. The proggers only sin is acknowledging that, and trying so hard, ultimately failing, to bring Jazz, classical, and misunderstood world music to an already 'Beatles and Stones are Christ and Yawei'-brainwashed music youth. A very noble concept, one of which is not 'laughable' in the least.

Furthermore, GOOD prog involves new techniques. Not liking most mainstream prog bands is not a sin. I tend to like the Zuehl/RIO/Avant Prog world much better than it's cleaner, more stencilled mainstream counterpart. But to piss on the entire concept, fitting all who partake in it under the banner of Yes, and Genesis is ludicrous. If anything, the progressive concept is one of the best things to happen to Rock N' Roll, and music in general.

Magma >>>> Genesis, and Yes Combined

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Al Pacino = God

debaserr

Yes, they peaked better than anyone else. Close To The Edge, Foxtrot and Selling England By The Pound may be my top three prog albums.

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Last.FM

Urban Hat€monger ?

Skaligojurah, you're a smart guy but every so often you'll say something so inherently dumb it leaves me scratching my head.

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BastardofYoung

I do not remember praising grunge. Maybe I am just missing something... will address this one first. Maybe I just do not remember doing so.

I said I like Nirvana and their contributions to rock. but do not remember speaking specifically to grunge. I said on another forum here grunge is only a term used by critics to define bands of that time. However it is more a style owing more to punk and Black Sabbath like sludge sound.

So i may be not remembering something I said. link me to a specific comment where I praised grunge, so I can see where this came from.

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last.fm

‎"I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people." - Jack Handey.

BastardofYoung

This is what is stopping me from tackling much of that comment at the moment.

As well as everything he said about The Clash, which is about as ignorant as anything I said about prog.

oh, and Sex Pistols being remembered more than The Clash, wow.... no.

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last.fm

‎"I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people." - Jack Handey.

BastardofYoung

"The fact they don't take themselves as seriously as rockstars makes them far less laughable than those who obsess over image."

"Magma >>>> Genesis, and Yes Combined"



So prog wasn't about image either?

look kinda like Ramones to me... with maybe some proto- Death Metal.

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last.fm

‎"I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people." - Jack Handey.

Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

They're wearing leather jackets, and they have long hair. Doesn't really distinguish them. If you actually watch any of their concerts, they just stand, and such. Yes, Klaus, on occasion, looks quite badass, and they dress oddly. They even have their own mythological symbols. But it's not like the benefited from having 'Mick Jagger' larger than life rockstar characters. The members, even Christian Vander, seem very private, and elusive. Allowing the centralised image to just be on mythology created BY the music not music created by the mythology of the images.

Further then, even if you scratch away all of that, and you have a band that relies almost entirely on it's melody to tell the story. So far, they refuse to layer words on top to describe it.

I find no evidence that Magma utilised it's image to gain an unfair competitive advantage nor sacrificed the quality of their actual music to fit it. Doing so, since their music is not an extension of the image itself, they were able to explore a much more massive palette of emotional expression than your typical rock band which was rooted in the rather exploitive illusion of 'relatable angst'.

Therefore, they are less image obsessed, and more centralized on music which generates images through it's ambiguity, and depth.

Remember what side of the pond I'm on. The Clash are barely recognised here except by punk rock specific people, and rock historian types. Furthermore, I just find their music dull, and their themes incredibly self indulgent.

From EVERYTHING I've seen of music history painted, punk was a rainbow out of the Sex Pistol's asses. It's untrue, but I'm fairly sure that the Sex Pistols, and maybe the Ramones, will be the last two things to fade into obscurity when punk becomes just another subdivision of the 'Rock Era' of music. The Clash will be considered a very important contributor, but not as big, and will have decreasing appeal as generation on generation arrive.

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Al Pacino = God

Necromancer

The Clash are nothing more than being a part of the Pioneers of the British punk rock scene, and the unpopular opinion that (The Clash can express more with 3 chords than Yes can with 20.) Well Hell! They only knew how to play 3 chords.
Progressive rock attempt's to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility. Progressive rock bands pushed "rock's technical and compositional boundaries" by going beyond the standard rock or popular verse-chorus-based song structures (bla, bla).
The Clash and other bands of the same era and genre like the Sex Pistols for instance, are important bands that have contributed to the development of new genres (genealogy). But they are not in any way better or more important than bands categorized in the Progressive rock genre.

BastardofYoung

The Clash are barely recognised in Florida? I find that hard to believe.

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last.fm

‎"I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people." - Jack Handey.