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Why do some progressive bands sound so dated?

#141
Andy Daventry said:
This thread has been fun. I'm surprised the word "pretentious" hasn't been used. Anyone remember Aphrodite's child or Magma? I quite enjoyed Genesis - and played bass in a genesis cover band for a while in the early 80s - but Yes always left me cold. I had a taste for the hippie stuff - like Gong and the excellent Hawkwind, which wasn't really prog, but most prog rock is thankfully buried. It followed Sturgeon's law.

Prog rock was primarily a European thing, and American music was more fun. Girls could dance to it.
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Not everyday you see a Gong reference! I still put Steve Hillage
“L” on occasionally.
 
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#144
I am a big prog fan going waaaay back. Bands like Gentle Giant, Jethro Tull, Yes, ELP, Flash, Kansas, U.K., etc. were, and still are some of my favorites today. Quite a few of those acts had Top 40 pop chart hits. Even many of the fusion acts like Jean-Luc Ponty, Stanley Clarke, and Mahavishnu Orchestra got lots of turntable play at my house and I still enjoy them today.

When the supergroup U.K. (John Wetton, Bill Bruford, Allan Holdsworth, & Eddie Jobson) came out in 1978, it definitely had a 70s prog vibe; but, some may agree it still sounds good.

Kansas is a band that was able to combine prog elements with rock and pop and I think their tunes have held up well over time.



 
#145
hrodbert696 said:
Speaking as an historian, I think there are some valuable thoughts here. This thread evokes for me the foul cliche of undergrad history papers, that so-and-so was "ahead of their time." There is no such thing as being "ahead of one's time"; everyone lives in one's own time and is shaped by it. What that phrase REALLY means is that the writer finds something about the historical figure that they happen to like or admire, and that the writer is sufficiently ignorant of the figure's time that they can't understand how his time produced him. "People back then were stupid, this guy was smart, therefore this guy was ahead of his time, because he's smart like me!" - not realizing that the assumption of people back then being stupid is not exactly evidence of smarts on your part...
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Ahead of their time.

First of all the Mothers of Invention would disagree with you that there is "no such thing."

Generally, "ahead of their time," means the person was advocating something, or expressing something in an era when it had not yet become popular.

Jeremy Bentham. Star Trek. Martin Luther King. All were clearly ahead of their time, in that things they treated as normal were not at the time they advocated them, and are today.

There is absolutely such a thing as being "ahead of your time."

Prog-wise, In the Court of the Crimson King, Thick as a Brick, and Close to the Edge were all ahead of their time.
 
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#147
mellowinman said:
Ahead of their time.

First of all the Mothers of Invention would disagree with you that there is "no such thing."

Generally, "ahead of their time," means the person was advocating something, or expressing something in an era when it had not yet become popular.

Jeremy Bentham. Star Trek. Martin Luther King. All were clearly ahead of their time, in that things they treated as normal were not at the time they advocated them, and are today.

There is absolutely such a thing as being "ahead of your time."

Prog-wise, In the Court of the Crimson King, Thick as a Brick, and Close to the Edge were all ahead of their time.
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The Mothers of Invention would be wrong.

Gandhi, and millions of independence-seeking Indians, would sharply disagree with you about MLK Jr. So would Thoreau, the NAACP, WEB DuBois, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass. And the entire women's suffrage movement. He took techniques, tactics, and principles that had been developed by generations (if not centuries) of others before him, applied them to problems faced and challenged by generations of others before him, with the support of thousands or millions of people who knew the same techniques and problems and saw the same opportunities he did, and made a dramatic impact moving the needle on those problems. None of this was "ahead of his time" as though the 80s or 90s or 2010s had popped back in a time machine and planted stuff in his head that would never have occurred to him. He, his movement, and the impact he had were ABSOLUTELY a product of his time and the traditions he inherited.

There's such a thing as innovation, creativity and new ideas, of course. But they don't magically pop out of nowhere. People construct them out of existing conditions and resources, whether physical, social, or intellectual.
 
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#148
hrodbert696 said:
Speaking as an historian, I think there are some valuable thoughts here. This thread evokes for me the foul cliche of undergrad history papers, that so-and-so was "ahead of their time." There is no such thing as being "ahead of one's time"; everyone lives in one's own time and is shaped by it. What that phrase REALLY means is that the writer finds something about the historical figure that they happen to like or admire, and that the writer is sufficiently ignorant of the figure's time that they can't understand how his time produced him. "People back then were stupid, this guy was smart, therefore this guy was ahead of his time, because he's smart like me!" - not realizing that the assumption of people back then being stupid is not exactly evidence of smarts on your part...

Likewise, dismissing something as "dated" is the flip side of that same presentist coin. "This was made in the past, I don't like it (now, in the present), therefore I dismiss it as relevant only to its own time." To be sure, there are some aspects of life where timeliness is the essence of the pursuit. Fashion, for instance; the whole game of being fashionable is being attuned to what people will admire NOW. You don't want to get caught wearing last year's look, as that means you "lose the game." You can say something similar in music, if you're talking about the popularity of music - you can say that the wave of popularity for 70s prog was specific to its time, and that popular tastes have changed, so that later bands doing similar things (like Spock's Beard or Porcupine Tree) don't reach the same level of popularity as Yes or ELP.

That doesn't amount to much as a critique of the music itself, though. I can understand a record producer not wanting to invest in an act because he doesn't think he can sell it, the music they make is the kind of thing that would have sold thirty years ago but not today. But that doesn't mean it's inferior music. It may still be vivid, expressive, evocative, creative, virtuosic.

And, of course, there's the phenomenon of the classic, the revival, the retro. The present constantly pillages the past for raw material, in every field of activity. When something that had been unfashionable becomes fashionable again, we then decree it "classic" or even "timeless." Of course, it isn't. Such pronouncements have nothing to do with any quality of the thing in question; they are purely statements about ourselves, that we find something about this old thing that we have decided to like. For now.
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I love every thing about this. Thank you.

Except for one thing.
Miles Davis was ahead of his time.

Yes he was.
 
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#151
ElectroVibe said:
I started thinking about the answer to the question myself after I posted this. All those other old styles had a bigger following in their heydays (doo wop, folk, etc), and you still hear them on the radio. But prog rock was different. They had ventured into unknown territory alone. Alone. They were creating a new kind of music which would influence everyone after they brought it out to the world. Once everyone began to hear this new music, many of them would incorporate it into their own styles. But the originators would be forgotten.
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There are many people who would say the same thing about Bob Will's and Texas Swing! Except for the "originators (being) forgotten".
 
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#152
There's a difference between music sounding "dated" and evoking a particular era. Great song writing reflects--and transcends--its era (think Beatles or Beethoven). I still listen to much of the prog I grew up with in the 70s and think it sounds great today still. Some of it makes me cringe (Rick Wakeman's King Arthur, anyone?). I think the stuff that makes me cringe today probably wasn't very good back when it was released, but I wasn't as sophisticated a listener.

BTW, my 24-year-old son is a computer programmer (and huge music fan) and he's recently discovered 70s-era Yes and other prog classics as great background music for him when he's doing hardcore programming.
 
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#153
hrodbert696 said:
The Mothers of Invention would be wrong.

Gandhi, and millions of independence-seeking Indians, would sharply disagree with you about MLK Jr. So would Thoreau, the NAACP, WEB DuBois, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass. And the entire women's suffrage movement. He took techniques, tactics, and principles that had been developed by generations (if not centuries) of others before him, applied them to problems faced and challenged by generations of others before him, with the support of thousands or millions of people who knew the same techniques and problems and saw the same opportunities he did, and made a dramatic impact moving the needle on those problems. None of this was "ahead of his time" as though the 80s or 90s or 2010s had popped back in a time machine and planted stuff in his head that would never have occurred to him. He, his movement, and the impact he had were ABSOLUTELY a product of his time and the traditions he inherited.

There's such a thing as innovation, creativity and new ideas, of course. But they don't magically pop out of nowhere. People construct them out of existing conditions and resources, whether physical, social, or intellectual.
Click to expand...

The Mothers of Invention are not wrong.

Ahead of Their Time - Wikipedia
 
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#154
hrodbert696 said:
The Mothers of Invention would be wrong.

Gandhi, and millions of independence-seeking Indians, would sharply disagree with you about MLK Jr. So would Thoreau, the NAACP, WEB DuBois, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass. And the entire women's suffrage movement. He took techniques, tactics, and principles that had been developed by generations (if not centuries) of others before him, applied them to problems faced and challenged by generations of others before him, with the support of thousands or millions of people who knew the same techniques and problems and saw the same opportunities he did, and made a dramatic impact moving the needle on those problems. None of this was "ahead of his time" as though the 80s or 90s or 2010s had popped back in a time machine and planted stuff in his head that would never have occurred to him. He, his movement, and the impact he had were ABSOLUTELY a product of his time and the traditions he inherited.

There's such a thing as innovation, creativity and new ideas, of course. But they don't magically pop out of nowhere. People construct them out of existing conditions and resources, whether physical, social, or intellectual.
Click to expand...

As for Martin Luther King, you are focusing on the wrong thing.

Invalid Link Removed
 
#158
Inky13 said:
I still put Steve Hillage
“L” on occasionally.
Click to expand...

Steve Hillage appeared on my Spotify feed one day. I had forgotten about him, but he's really pretty good. I dig Motivation Radio.

Andy Daventry said:
Prog rock was primarily a European thing, and American music was more fun. Girls could dance to it.
Click to expand...

I have a very distinct memory in high school of a girl I knew telling me how she'd purchased ELP's Trilogy because of "From the Beginning" and she was completely baffled, and turned off by, the rest of the album.
 
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