Musical Musings...
Mar. 21st, 2010 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endlessraritiesGood old BBC Four was up to its old tricks on Friday evening. First of all there was a wonderful programme on the religious music of Faure and Poulenc, and later on, there was a one and a half hour programme detailing the rise and fall of prog-rock.
I suppose I'm a bit too young for prog-rock. I was born in the late 60s, but raised in a family which listened almost exclusively to Classical music. I started piano lessons when I was 5 or 6, progressed onto violin at primary school, then onto the viola, then ended up studying the French Horn to a pretty serious level.
My parents occasionally made forays into the world of popular music. They liked James Last (bleaugh!) and Steeleye Span (I'm warming to them now...) . My mother sang in a performance of Hergest Ridge which got them interested in Mike Oldfield, and they also bought all Sky's albums.
I went through the inevitable teeny-bopper stage in the 80s (I liked synth-pop and New Romantic) but I had to learn about 60s and 70s music in retrospect. And prog-rock, the domain of the geek and the nerdy intellectual, is a genre which I find quite fascinating. I discovered Genesis and Pink Floyd in my late teens/early twenties, and of course, there was the Mike Oldfield/Sky influence from my childhood. Bands like Yes and Emmerson Lake & Palmer just passed me by, and I wonder now if I should make efforts to investigate them further. To me, Jon Anderson of Yes is more familiar from his collaborations with Vangelis...
The documentary was fascinating. It portrayed the worthies of the prog-rock world as young go-getting muscial intellectuals who eventually got too clever by half. Their optomistic, other-wordly visions of the future gave way to the uncouth, uneducated bad boys of Punk who were the original 'Underachievers, and Proud of it, Man.'
Some of the stuff by King Crimson and the like went way over my musical head. I don't do Bach, and I don't do Schoenburg, and I don't do traditional jazz. All these things are way too celebral for my tastes, and some of the prog-rock bands were obviously singing from the same hymn-sheet. I like music that tells a story, or that inspires me to tell a story.
As the documentary drew to a close, a number of the exponents of prog-rock shook their heads in sadness and lamented the passing of the world that they knew. Punk destroyed something. An idealism, a celebration of technical achievement and musical ability. The world became a poorer place with prog-rock's passing.
But has it really vanished so completely? For a long time, there's been a tension in the world of popular music between the intellectual bands and those who are proudly anti-intellectual (Oasis being the prime example).
Genesis certainly remained successful well into the 80s, as did David Bowie and Pink Floyd (both of whom were not, strangely enough, mentioned as exponents of prog-rock, though in my understanding of what the genre's trying to say and do, surely they were...). If prog-rock was characterised by its desire for technical achievement, intellectual writing and its emphasis on narrative and other-worldly experiences, then I think there's still a few bands out there who manage to embody its ideals.
Muse is probably the most obvious example. Their albums are technically brilliant and rather operatic in their writing. And their music invites you to venture beyond the confines of humdrum, tedious reality. I find Kasabian equally enlightening - they convey the impression that they're rock 'bad boys' who are tagging along in the shadow of the Gallagher brothers, but IMO they far surpass them in all respects (except maybe record sales, but I don't think that counts for much these days - and don't get me wrong, I quite like some Oasis tracks...)
All in all, I found the prog-rock documentary quite depressing. It struck me that the transformation in the music industry that resulted in the decline of prog-rock mirrors that currently taking place in the world of writing and literature. Speculation and thoughtful writing is being marginalised by the hum-drum world of chick-lit and crime. I'm sure there will always be a place for science fiction and fantasy, a place for those of us who yearn to find escapism in a world beyond celebrity culture, soap opera, sport and the rabid acquisition of Gucci handbags and Jimmy Choo shoes. But it sure as heck isn't going to be in mainstream culture.
Or is it? Muse have made it big. They have sellout stadium tours and mass appeal. And surely the Harry Potter generation aren't going to be content with banality once they grow up and become consumers of adult books...
I live in hope. But I won't hold my breath. Not just yet...
I suppose I'm a bit too young for prog-rock. I was born in the late 60s, but raised in a family which listened almost exclusively to Classical music. I started piano lessons when I was 5 or 6, progressed onto violin at primary school, then onto the viola, then ended up studying the French Horn to a pretty serious level.
My parents occasionally made forays into the world of popular music. They liked James Last (bleaugh!) and Steeleye Span (I'm warming to them now...) . My mother sang in a performance of Hergest Ridge which got them interested in Mike Oldfield, and they also bought all Sky's albums.
I went through the inevitable teeny-bopper stage in the 80s (I liked synth-pop and New Romantic) but I had to learn about 60s and 70s music in retrospect. And prog-rock, the domain of the geek and the nerdy intellectual, is a genre which I find quite fascinating. I discovered Genesis and Pink Floyd in my late teens/early twenties, and of course, there was the Mike Oldfield/Sky influence from my childhood. Bands like Yes and Emmerson Lake & Palmer just passed me by, and I wonder now if I should make efforts to investigate them further. To me, Jon Anderson of Yes is more familiar from his collaborations with Vangelis...
The documentary was fascinating. It portrayed the worthies of the prog-rock world as young go-getting muscial intellectuals who eventually got too clever by half. Their optomistic, other-wordly visions of the future gave way to the uncouth, uneducated bad boys of Punk who were the original 'Underachievers, and Proud of it, Man.'
Some of the stuff by King Crimson and the like went way over my musical head. I don't do Bach, and I don't do Schoenburg, and I don't do traditional jazz. All these things are way too celebral for my tastes, and some of the prog-rock bands were obviously singing from the same hymn-sheet. I like music that tells a story, or that inspires me to tell a story.
As the documentary drew to a close, a number of the exponents of prog-rock shook their heads in sadness and lamented the passing of the world that they knew. Punk destroyed something. An idealism, a celebration of technical achievement and musical ability. The world became a poorer place with prog-rock's passing.
But has it really vanished so completely? For a long time, there's been a tension in the world of popular music between the intellectual bands and those who are proudly anti-intellectual (Oasis being the prime example).
Genesis certainly remained successful well into the 80s, as did David Bowie and Pink Floyd (both of whom were not, strangely enough, mentioned as exponents of prog-rock, though in my understanding of what the genre's trying to say and do, surely they were...). If prog-rock was characterised by its desire for technical achievement, intellectual writing and its emphasis on narrative and other-worldly experiences, then I think there's still a few bands out there who manage to embody its ideals.
Muse is probably the most obvious example. Their albums are technically brilliant and rather operatic in their writing. And their music invites you to venture beyond the confines of humdrum, tedious reality. I find Kasabian equally enlightening - they convey the impression that they're rock 'bad boys' who are tagging along in the shadow of the Gallagher brothers, but IMO they far surpass them in all respects (except maybe record sales, but I don't think that counts for much these days - and don't get me wrong, I quite like some Oasis tracks...)
All in all, I found the prog-rock documentary quite depressing. It struck me that the transformation in the music industry that resulted in the decline of prog-rock mirrors that currently taking place in the world of writing and literature. Speculation and thoughtful writing is being marginalised by the hum-drum world of chick-lit and crime. I'm sure there will always be a place for science fiction and fantasy, a place for those of us who yearn to find escapism in a world beyond celebrity culture, soap opera, sport and the rabid acquisition of Gucci handbags and Jimmy Choo shoes. But it sure as heck isn't going to be in mainstream culture.
Or is it? Muse have made it big. They have sellout stadium tours and mass appeal. And surely the Harry Potter generation aren't going to be content with banality once they grow up and become consumers of adult books...
I live in hope. But I won't hold my breath. Not just yet...
