Why did prog rock never have mass popularity?

[yodedude2]

Last week I listened to Godley and Cremes album "L". Pure prog. Very Zappa influenced. All because I read a recent interview of Godley. "The label kept giving us money to compose and produce this type of music, which was surprising. So we did. I'm very grateful!".

I love that album! I got my promo copy from a record store back when it was new (1977?) Nobody at the store wanted it or wanted to hear it, they were gonna throw it away but instead handed it to me when I politely asked for it--because I thought the cover was intriguing! As I was an Aerosmith fanboy at the time, "L" really opened my ears! I played that album a lot, a couple of years before I heard any Zappa ~

 

[Lance Bunyon]

I love that album! I got my promo copy from a record store back when it was new (1977?) Nobody at the store wanted it or wanted to hear it, they were gonna throw it away but instead handed it to me when I politely asked for it--because I thought the cover was intriguing! As I was an Aerosmith fanboy at the time, "L" really opened my ears! I played that album a lot, a couple of years before I heard any Zappa ~

It's amazing. Glad I read that interview. I wasn't aware those dudes did anything beyond 10CC.

 

[58kites]

Thick as a Brick was pure prog. One song on each side.

I agree, my point was that Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull have never had any other band come along and sound at all similar to them.
They both tend to defy categorization.

 

[Lance Bunyon]

I agree, my point was that Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull have never had any other band come along and sound at all similar to them.
They both tend to defy categorization.

Agreed. Makes me wonder how many dudes took up flute hoping to be the next Ian Anderson.

 

[Michedelic]

Agreed. Makes me wonder how many dudes took up flute hoping to be the next Ian Anderson.

It’s not like Anderson was first in line with that either. Not only did he take quite a bit from Eric Dolphy and Rahsaan Roland Kirk(whose “Serenade To A Cuckoo” was covered on the first Tull album), there were rock bands beforehand like The Blues Project, Sweet water, The Hello People, and even the Moody Blues incorporating flute, not to mention The Association with their flageolet/recorder on “Along Comes Mary”. Then there was the work of session player Jim Horn, most famously on the Mamas and Papas’ “California Dreaming”.

 

[Lance Bunyon]

It’s not like Anderson was first in line with that either. Not only did he take quite a bit from Eric Dolphy and Rahsaan Roland Kirk(whose “Serenade To A Cuckoo” was covered on the first Tull album), there were rock bands beforehand like The Blues Project, Sweet water, The Hello People, and even the Moody Blues incorporating flute, not to mention The Association with their flageolet/recorder on “Along Comes Mary”. Then there was the work of session player Jim Horn, most famously on the Mamas and Papas’ “California Dreaming”.

Sure absolutely. But Anderson was definitively the first "Rockstar Lead Flautist". Dude is amazing and still making music!

 

[Michedelic]

Sure absolutely. But Anderson was definitively the first "Rockstar Lead Flautist". Dude is amazing and still making music!

This was an interesting collaboration with Marc Almond from Soft Cell…

 

[LBS-bass]

Last week I listened to Godley and Cremes album "L". Pure prog. Very Zappa influenced. All because I read a recent interview of Godley. "The label kept giving us money to compose and produce this type of music, which was surprising. So we did. I'm very grateful!".

Great album I haven’t heard in ages.

 

[LBS-bass]

Since their inception.

That was more psychedelic than prog.

 

[Michedelic]

Since their inception.

That was more psychedelic than prog.

Absolutely, there was no self-aware notion of “prog-rock” as a genre at the time, the Floyd were a product of the psychedelic revolution. The term “progressive” got bandied about alot in that time period, loosely applied to anything that didn’t sound like the usual concise Top 40 fare, with extended instrumental solos and non-standard song structure, the sort of thing heard on the emerging FM rock stations of the time. I would hear bands like Iron Butterfly and the original line-up of Deep Purple being referred to as “progressive”.

The first album with Syd stands alone as a singular classic, and as they moved on, I and others just thought of them as “space rock”, with Hawkwind and later Gong joining in with their own particular takes on the concept.

 

[HHudson]

One of the little secrets of punk is that a fair few punk notables have expressed a liking for prog more recently. And some bands labelled as punk in 1977 had certainly flirted with more, er, expansive material earlier in their careers. This isn't unusual - a number of the ska revival bands in the UK around 1980 had started out as something much closer to punk but were also listening to reggae, ska, soul, singer-songwriter stuff, film scores etc. The issue is labelling to some extent as few artists keep to a narrow genre even for one album.

Hi @-Asdfgh- ,

Just curious, I know a couple, but which musicians are you referring to?

"Officially" at least - if you can use that word with punk, prog rock was the antithesis of punk... even Matlock's [Sex Pistols] bass lines were considered too complex by Rotten... (listen to the demo tapes [Spunk/This Is Crap] some excellent bass lines on those, missing on the NMtB LP, regardless who actually played them on that album). But especially Jerry Dammers (The Specials) certainly wanted to move much further in that direction with the Specials & did later rather extremely on his own. Though part of the scene in NYC, the Talking Heads never considered themselves Punk, more Art Rock especially after Eno became involved with More Songs About Buildings & Food. Art Rock is more or less synonymous with Prog Rock perhaps minus the symphonic influence (which not all "Prog Rock" stamped bands had). They certainly were not 3 minute Radio ditties about romantic love, but none the less very danceable . Even Fripp's League of Gentlemen (Sara Lee on bass) while perhaps a bit too far out there for many, was danceable, albeit in a more punk manner .

=> "The issue is labelling to some extent as few artists keep to a narrow genre even for one album."

+1, as always. Such containers never really fit for most, we as humans like to stick things in confined drawers, put black & white labels on them and ignore the bleeding & complex full color spectrum of life/reality with most everything unfortunately. They can be helpful sometimes, but only as long as we remember they are very imprecise.

 

[Gluvhand]

Hi @-Asdfgh- ,

Just curious, I know a couple, but which musicians are you referring to?

"Officially" at least - if you can use that word with punk, prog rock was the antithesis of punk... even Matlock's [Sex Pistols] bass lines were considered too complex by Rotten... (listen to the demo tapes [Spunk/This Is Crap] some excellent bass lines on those, missing on the NMtB LP, regardless who actually played them on that album). But especially Jerry Dammers (The Specials) certainly wanted to move much further in that direction with the Specials & did later rather extremely on his own. Though part of the scene in NYC, the Talking Heads never considered themselves Punk, more Art Rock especially after Eno became involved with More Songs About Buildings & Food. Art Rock is more or less synonymous with Prog Rock perhaps minus the symphonic influence (which not all "Prog Rock" stamped bands had). They certainly were not 3 minute Radio ditties about romantic love, but none the less very danceable . Even Fripp's League of Gentlemen (Sara Lee on bass) while perhaps a bit too far out there for many, was danceable, albeit in a more punk manner .

=> "The issue is labelling to some extent as few artists keep to a narrow genre even for one album."

+1, as always. Such containers never really fit for most, we as humans like to stick things in confined drawers, put black & white labels on them and ignore the bleeding & complex full color spectrum of life/reality with most everything unfortunately. They can be helpful sometimes, but only as long as we remember they are very imprecise.

Pete Howard, drummer of The Clash when they were on their last legs, said in The Clash documentary that he was a big progressive music fan and had to keep it hidden from his band mates.

 

[HHudson]

Pete Howard, drummer of The Clash when they were on their last legs, said in The Clash documentary that he was a big progressive music fan and had to keep it hidden from his band mates.

LOL "keep it hidden from his band mates"
Thank you!

 

[Lance Bunyon]

Pete Howard, drummer of The Clash when they were on their last legs, said in The Clash documentary that he was a big progressive music fan and had to keep it hidden from his band mates.

As a teen I had an inner punk rocker I had to hide from my metalhead friends.

 

[Gluvhand]

As a teen I had an inner punk rocker I had to hide from my metalhead friends.

I guess I was lucky. Me and most of my friends liked a lot of different stuff and would turn each other on to it. We would bust chops about some bands but it was all in good fun. I dug metal, progressive, punk, new wave...we were mainly metal/hard rock fans though.

 

[Michedelic]

Hi @-Asdfgh- ,

Just curious, I know a couple, but which musicians are you referring to?

"Officially" at least - if you can use that word with punk, prog rock was the antithesis of punk... even Matlock's [Sex Pistols] bass lines were considered too complex by Rotten... (listen to the demo tapes [Spunk/This Is Crap] some excellent bass lines on those, missing on the NMtB LP, regardless who actually played them on that album). But especially Jerry Dammers (The Specials) certainly wanted to move much further in that direction with the Specials & did later rather extremely on his own. Though part of the scene in NYC, the Talking Heads never considered themselves Punk, more Art Rock especially after Eno became involved with More Songs About Buildings & Food. Art Rock is more or less synonymous with Prog Rock perhaps minus the symphonic influence (which not all "Prog Rock" stamped bands had). They certainly were not 3 minute Radio ditties about romantic love, but none the less very danceable . Even Fripp's League of Gentlemen (Sara Lee on bass) while perhaps a bit too far out there for many, was danceable, albeit in a more punk manner .

=> "The issue is labelling to some extent as few artists keep to a narrow genre even for one album."

+1, as always. Such containers never really fit for most, we as humans like to stick things in confined drawers, put black & white labels on them and ignore the bleeding & complex full color spectrum of life/reality with most everything unfortunately. They can be helpful sometimes, but only as long as we remember they are very imprecise.

If anything, the ‘Punk’ uprising, with the attendant New Wave umbrella, was a reaction to the blandness of mainstream rock of the mid-70’s, the sorry state of things on FM rock radio at that point, after all that incredible exploration and experimentation of ‘66 to about ‘72. Granted, not all of that had been sucessful, and then right at that point was the flowering of what was regarded specifically as “prog”, but the status quo radio only recognized a certain small number of bands that fell in that catagory, ones that had a pleasant, more accessible sound in spite of having multi-section suites and flashy instrumental play, let alone catchy short songs that would work as chart hits, which meant that they were back playing the game that the era they came from was supposedly in opposition to. Sure, many of the underground bands of ‘67/‘68 had Top 40 hits, but that fell by the wayside quickly as the freeform era of FM rose to prominence.

John Lydon later admitted that his “(I Hate)Pink Floyd” DIY Tshirt was more for agitating people, getting a rise out of them, and that he didn’t specifically have a problem with the band; after all, he followed Hawkwind around as a teenager, for what that’s worth. He also cited Van Der Graaf Generator’s Peter Hammill as vocal influence, and there was, by all report, an admiration for at least Syd Barrett and German band Can among the London punk scene, plus there was Eno, who had a foot in both camps, as well as bands like BeBop Deluxe. Even before that crew, and setting the stage for them, was Pub Rock, a back to basics movement that rejected the pomposity of ELP, Yes, and the like.

 

[Neil Folkard]

I agree, my point was that Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull have never had any other band come along and sound at all similar to them.
They both tend to defy categorization.

Disagree with that on the Floyd side. Early Porcupine Tree, Riverside, RPWL, Eloy, to name a few, are all heavily in that Floydian vein.

 

[Neil Folkard]

Because the entire point of prog is to not be popular, it’s to be cerebral. It’s complexity in music for the sake of complexity in music, and it doesn’t move booties on the dance floor. The way human brains perceive music is intimately intertwined with how human bodies move; Adam Neely just released a really good video about this very topic.

The very nature of popularity means appealing to common denominators.

Disagree with the highlighted section. Some people are just wired to compose music that way. Even at my level, I come up with a fair amount of odd-metered riffs just because they naturally sound good to me; not because I'm trying to write in non-standard Western pop music time signatures, for the sake of it.

 

[ElectroVibe]

Then they released The Wall and suddenly the joke was on him.

 

[Michedelic]

Disagree with that on the Floyd side. Early Porcupine Tree, Riverside, RPWL, Eloy, to name a few, are all heavily in that Floydian vein.

I’m surprised that Radiohead hadn’t been mentioned.