To Tear Down Defintions that Defy Listening, Part Two: Prog Rock

The groups that get labeled "prog rock" are so diversely different, and almost all of them are British; these facts alone have led me to believe that really prog might be defined with credible accuracy like this: any sort of British music that American critics could not understand. These groups essentially wanted to develop the range and depth of expression of popular music utilizing everything from interesting time signatures to compositional suites. There are exceptions to the British identity for this music. There were a few German groups, but North America only really produced one, and that one was Canadian and not even pure prog; they were more a hybrid of prog and pomp rock, and they were called Rush (some Americans are so uneasy about allowing them to be called a "prog group" that they are often otherwise defined as "soft heavy metal" -- at least until a growing addiction to synthesizers flattened out Rush's imagination and teeth by the mid-80s), and these embarrassed-by-prog fans position '70s-era Rush with the likes of Blue Oyster Cult (a band which sounds like the Byrds singing and playing heavy metal). But Rush was progressive music, replete with all the high-minded philosophical and mystical amalgam of lyrical conception, classical orchestration and jazz nuances typical of the genre. Their lead vocalist Geddy Lee could sing in upper stratospheres that Jon Anderson of Yes could only dream of. They had the equality of superlative and studious talent between its respective musicians that is characteristic of prog groups, with the rhythm section being as aggressive and pronounced as the guitar and keyboards (another prog trait). Theirs (like others of their kind) was not music for the lazy mind or the repressed imagination, and they were not only North America's perfect answer to Britain's Yes, but they were on the rise in the latter half of the '70s just as Yes began to enter a decline (before its eighties resurgence that is). This is all by way of circuitous but hopefully cognitive introduction to my definition of prog. Prog stands for "progressive music" in the sense that its practitioners believed that popular music should not merely maintain a creative holding pattern, and otherwise only slightly embellish in various idiosyncratic ways the same old rock formula; rather it should evolve while still remaining entertaining. In a way, that is the best way to define a whole host of groups that otherwise bear little resemblance to each other in the details. As much as many "rock purists" would hate to admit it, prog has its roots in the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, and musicians inspired by the album wanted to keep this thread spinning when the Beatles laid it aside after Magical Mystery Tour. Rock critics are fond of saying that "prog is not really rock", and it seems they state this because they don't like how it admixes strong elements of classical music, folk music and even jazz. They forget popular music's family tree, which has never borne purebreds of any sort; so here it goes: rock music comes from blues and country music; blues music comes from African music and European folk music, country music comes from European folk music; classical music comes from European religious and folk music. Those are some pretty involuted branches on that tree, aren't they? Essentially then, prog musicians and their bands simply refused to play nice and stick to the strictures of a false canon of what critics claimed "orthodox" rock music was. In short, prog rockers were heretics! I love heretics! Here is a list of the best of these omnivorous rock bands, each of whom had a different ratio in its combination of the above described elements: Jethro Tull, Yes, Caravan, Genesis, Rush, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer. Oh, I know -- some like to say that Peter Gabriel-era Genesis wasn't prog but "art rock" (just more white-washing, just like calling Rush "thinking man's metal"), but if they were really art rock (in the sense of being avant-garde like Brian Eno), why did so many regular prog rock fans love them?! Here's another thing to consider: if we follow the definition of prog by its overt musical ingredients, the United States could claim it also had a wonderful prog rock band back in the seventies. I'll give you a hint: they were blues-rock based but partook heartily of jazz and folk music elements and would have to be defined as the one and only Southern prog rock band. The answer: The Allman Brothers Band -- they're America's Dixie Pink Floyd! I hope I'm making all the purist snobs squirm!

Interlude: Pomp Rock (Glam's Legitimate Child)

By the mid-seventies, the world was becoming a more difficult place economically, and as the promise of the Age of Aquarius seemed to slip away, young people back then dealt with worsening hopes principally in one of two possible ways: with rugged optimism or with angry disgust. These attitudes fed two different emergent forms in rock music: punk and pomp. Punk rebuked the jam-oriented rock of the hippie culture and pissed on the Romanticism of glam rock. Punk could express itself with righteous frustration (e.g., The Clash), or with gratuitous nihilism (e.g., The Sex Pistols). Punk was also anti-any-form-of-musical-sophistication-or-skilled-performance (i.e, "keep it simple stupid"). Pomp Rock was an altogether different animal. Pomp married traditions of glam with the more intense forms of hard rock as it had evolved in the seventies from blues-inflected-jam-rock to muscular testosterone-fueled riffing, sometimes disparagingly called "cock rock." An extreme form of hard rock included ghastly-dramatic stage performances (e.g., Alice Cooper). A pomp group that partook of this blood-thirsty side of hard rock and merged it with glam was Kiss, which had science-fictional glam-styled costumes and painted on clown-fashion various forms of demonic or animal-like make-up, but the group otherwise made music in a recognizably intensified glam style rather than being heavy metal, as one might have mistakenly expected from their fearsome look. Overall these factors made Kiss somewhat of hybrid in terms of the attitudes it fed. But of the many pomp groups of the late seventies (most of whom thrived particularly in America, whatever their country of origin), there is one that took a happier side of the glam tradition for its inspirations and did it excellently well. This was Queen. The proof of their quality over others of their kind was their durability. While other pomp rock groups hit destructive reefs on the shores of the '80s with the onset of the New Wave movement, Queen carried the banner of pumped-up glam with honor and vigor well into the middle of that decade. Queen was a group with so much talent, inventiveness, beauty of song, excitement of the senses and unflagging energy to match, that one is struck with wonder at the heights of musical experience they so singularly achieved and created. They were operatic, rock-and-rolling, richly melodious, vocally harmonic, instrumentally dynamic and Freddie Mercury's vocals commanded your passion. They were so extraordinary in the enthusiasm they could create that they seemed sprung from the forehead of Dionysus! Glam did not go out with a whimper but with a bang!

To Tear Down Definitions that Defy Listening, Part One: Glam Rock

In America, there has been a bias toward popular music that reflects "street smarts", "street toughness", and emotionality carried to the manic level. Every sub-genre has its place and mood, but there are whole worlds of music people do not listen to because they have been led to believe that they are somehow "alien" to what is "authentic rock'n'roll". The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is reflective of American narrow-mindedness. Prog(ressive) rock and glam rock are the two most glaring absences in their roster of inductees. Inductees David Bowie and Genesis don't count because they were chosen for their pop contributions to the music business, not for the glam and prog eras of their careers. I have seen definitions for glam and prog, but they really don't entirely get at why I fell in love with various exponents of these forms of popular music -- well before I knew they belonged to these categories (I did not grow up in the eras in which they emerged). Just like any branch of popular music, there are strong and weak artists in both these categories. But these aforementioned areas of music have artists that equal the best of any of the other so-called "real" rock artists. So let me propose some working realistic definitions of these two much misunderstood subgenres, starting with glam rock. Glam is a celebratory kind of music; even when it deals with melancholic subjects, there is an heroic take on the emotions of disappointment or tragedy. Glam makes use of early rock'n'roll performance art, musical tropes and instrumentation (e.g., saxophones and pianos, along with the usual guitars, bass and drums). Glam is typically energetic or at least melodramatic in a delightfully knowing sort of way. Glam has humor, wit and gusto, and often plays the persevering underdog or the mystical social alchemy of androgyny in its musical/theatrical stage personae. It is also keenly sensitive to the Romantic identifications and aspirations of youth. Glam's lyrics are often science fictional, baroquely poetic, and have multiple levels of meaning or delightfully nonsensical meaning. We no longer can experience authentic glam on stage -- the cultural context of its time has come and gone. Yet perhaps its stage presence more than anything else is what turned off the hippie generation (though their younger siblings loved it), and caused its later rejection by the punk generation with its angst-ridden aesthetic (though punk borrowed from glam's rootsiness, just as glam had before, in its turn, borrowed from hippie music to create its unique psychedelic-styled updating of '50s rock music). Glam performance was all about entertaining the crowd, and outrageous costumes were often worn, referencing everything from science fiction, to the Golden Age of Hollywood, to Art Deco expressionistic musical theater. With glam you do not have prolonged guitar or drum solos, but you do have skilled and tight musicianship. Yet glam also addressed itself to real feelings and real social situations (especially adolescent ones), otherwise it would not have been so hugely popular. Glam just had its own way of doing this; instead of stewing indecisively or introspectively in unresolved unhappiness, it sent a clear message to not let anything or anyone get you down, but to stand up for your individual self and find your crowd of like-minded individuals! This individuality of spirit made the t-shirt and jeans uniform of puritan hippiedom NOT de rigeur among its practitioners and fans. In a way, it was a liberating art form to young white people the way its musical contemporary, funk, was to young black people; both these genres said: "life is hard, so let's lighten up and fight back with humor and bravado!" Then of course, there is the elephant in the room: glam was often very accepting and frank about celebrating people with a gay identity in its lyrics and dress, which in machismo-minded, homophobic America was probably the chief reason it was not as big a success as in more cosmopolitan England. Yet glam musicians could be anything from heterosexuals, to bisexuals, to homosexuals; the point was, they saw gender and identity as running in a natural and creative continuum. Glam artists generally recognized for their real musical and lyrical merit were: T. Rex, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople and Slade; others accord some estimation for cross-dressing camp groups like The New York Dolls. There are other famous bands and artists that carried the glam moniker, but they are so superficial that they should be more properly classed as early '70s "bubblegum music".

Records of Epical Effect

If we're real music lovers, we've all known two sorts of positive listening experiences when it comes to recorded music. The more common one makes us come away with a sense that it was "good", "interesting", "entertaining", "well-played and well-sung", a "nice bunch of songs". The positive variant is something far rarer. I would simply call it an "epic" listening experience. With this latter kind, you find your mouth gaping, your scalp tingling and a sudden urge to get up and dance like a shaman. Few groups turn out records of such grandeur (or even want to), but there are some that manage to turn out not merely one but even more than one. Such groups are at the peak of their powers with high artistic aspirations and a desire to give their listeners a truly natural high. Epical popular music display compositions that create a sense of conceptual progress or the sense of a grand musical journey. They give a sweeping perspective of the gamut of human feeling yet possess a strong unity of meaning. Such albums employ a balanced orchestration of dynamics that shift from the subtle to the thrilling. They encompass a vast range of ideas that contribute to an astonishing wholeness. Their lyrics are exultant and/or profound in their propensity of insights or fascinating imagery and philosophical observations. Their musical themes are strong, sweeping and energetic, often forming a structure that develops in musical power as they recur like musical architecture in the record's musical cycle. The lyrics are often liberated both in meaning and delivery, and are unencumbered by petty concerns. Overall, the music often maintains an engaging balance of earthly richness through acoustic instrumentation and celestial reach through electric instrumentation, all of it played with virtuosity. The tapestry of ideas may be varied but the individual songs or sections contribute to a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Here are some of my personal favorite examples of albums which have enough of these elements to elicit a sense of epic-like reach in their depth and feeling: The Zombies: Odessey and Oracle [1968], The Moody Blues: In Search of the Lost Chord [1968], Love: Forever Changes [1968], The Beatles: The White Album [1968], The Kinks: Arthur, or The Rise and Fall of the British Empire [1969], Elton John: Tumbleweed Connection [1970], The Who: Who's Next [1971], Yes: The Yes Album [1971], Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick [1972], David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars [1972]. Queen: A Night at the Opera [1975].

The 1970s Were Great! Here's Proof!

The accepted line now in pop-music history was that the 1970s were a disappointment, that the music somehow failed to fulfill the promise of the 1960s. Well, you could say that with some justification about its political-social-economic progress (or shall we say, "regress"), but the music itself is another matter entirely. One easy way to gauge this is to find one of the handful of artists who rode the waves of the '70s successfully and examine their output. Of course, music is constantly evolving, artists (hopefully) are constantly growing. Those groups which manage to hold themselves together for more than a few years are either good at figuring out the fickle tastes of the general public, or, they are able to remain true to themselves, never sell out, and command the respect and loyalty of a core fan-base. I would prefer to look at the 1970s through the filter of the latter kind, and one would be hard put to find a better example than Jethro Tull. Jethro Tull as a group represents a fantastic development of a whole array of musical ideas first introduced into the popular music of the 1960s. They also managed not to crumble before either Punk or Disco. They maintained their integrity and kept going from strength to strength in each of their albums, despite the fact the snobbish/minimalist-oriented musical press hated them. As a fan who discovered them after-the-fact (I was only a young boy during their era of greatness), it is difficult for me to fully understand why the music press were so tone deaf, but then again, they despised the magnificent Led Zeppelin too -- so go figure! However, Jethro Tull did not try to curry favor with the critics when one of their albums got (predictably) slammed, but just went ahead and made another great album of visionary originality. They were unapologetically British, musically progressive, artistic, bluesy, hard-rocking, world-aware, philosophical, comical, witty, and even, medieval. They were a complete ensemble of acoustic, electric, electronic and orchestral instruments, including the usual guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, but also flute, strings, piano, and saxophone. The chapters of their growth make for an incredible odyssey, and each forms a perfect musical and lyrical exploration of a different cluster of ideas. Though there were line-up changes, most who were members at all stayed on for at least several years, and there were some that remained on for at least half or all of the band's rather lengthy peak period, which began before the seventies and spilled over into the eighties. This is a long way to say they remained consistent in quality and musical identity. And they followed their own peculiar nature. If Ian Anderson is the creative heart of the group, then he never lacked for talented collaborators among his band-mates. Nor did they ever do a "rush-job" in the recording studio -- every album from this period has a finished, fully-realized quality. They released five top-form rock operas: Aqualung (1971), Thick as a Brick (1972), Passion Play (1973), War Child (1974), Too Old to Rock'n'Roll, Too Young to Die (1976). Two wonderful hard-rock/trad-rock albums: Minstrel in the Gallery (1975), The Broadsword and the Beast (1982). Two great hippie-rock albums: Stand Up (1969), Benefit (1970). And three exquisite folk rock/social commentary albums: Songs from the Wood (1977), Heavy Horses (1978), Stormwatch (1979). Nowadays the critics would be so lucky to find anyone so talented to write about. That is why they fawn over anyone who approaches even a tenth of such musical ability and inspired songwriting. Back in the day though, your typical critic didn't know how good it was.