Apyuxjj.177 net.music utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!pyuxjj!rlr Thu May 6 12:52:01 1982 re: Asia and "progressive" music "Progressive rock is alive and well. Now let's see if we can keep it this way for awhile!" ---from mhtsa!bso's Asia review progressive - of, relating to, or characterized by progress progress - a forward or onward movement, gradual betterment, Somehow I thought progress involved change and improvement. I looked in the dictionary and I was indeed correct. So how can something that's been the same for ten years be progressing or progressive??? Or, to put it another way, how can something progress if we "keep it this way"? Perhaps Bert was referring to another definition of progress - "a royal journey marked by POMP and PAGEANT" (etymology: see R. Wakeman's "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table Ice Capades" or "The History of the World on Thirty-one Albums Containing One Continuous Track" Or perhaps by progressive rock one is referring to an elite club admitting only schooled musicians (Brian Eno, stay home) with years of "classical" training, all of whom play with lightning speed (Alvin Lee???) and dazzling technique. Their music of course involves sophisticated chord changes (XII-7/XLII, VIII.Vb9/I, iii-4 2/I, ...) played in23/17 time, which only those of us who also spent years in training can hope to understand (The others, of course, are welcome to marvel at the huge stacks of keyboards and revolving drums, and to gape in awe at the demigods of regressive music and their knowledgeable fans.). What was progressive ten years ago is not progressive now!!!!!!! Playing the same chord changes and riffs watered-down after 10 years to bring back memories of the glorious days of Close to the Edge and Karn Evil 9 is not what I would call progressive. Sometimes you have to take a few steps backward to know in which direction to go forward. Rock in general, and progressive rock in particular, are dinosaurs (I'm quoting Robert Fripp here, a prog-rocker if ever there was one). Dinosaurs are supposed to be extinct, but large established systems (bureaucracies) tend to continue to exist only to perpetuate their own existence (quoting Fripp quoting someone else). Dr. Death's review of Asia here on the net perfectly described them with the term "vapid excess". What's the real difference between seeing Kiss or Rod (the Clod) Stewart and seeing Carl Palmer take off his shirt or watching the keyboards catch fire (I know they didn't do that, but I'm sure the crowd would have loved it.). Also, why glorify the Fairlight? Yes, it's a great machine capable of making incredible sounds (which Downes didn't apparently do; it was just up there to impress us). In fact I'd like to learn to use one myself. But let's not glorify this machine for its own sake. I guess I prefer the Beatles' way: to put a sound on a record and let it stand on its own, without saying "The sounds on Strawberry Fields Forever were produced by a Mellotron Mark III" It may or may not be obvious from this note that I've been on the very same trip as those I'm directing this to. I've found that the music loses a lot of its emotional appeal if I analyze it too carefully, figuring out what Emerson played or how Yes got that sound. I've come to the conclusion that while this is not necessarily bad in and of itself (it leads to a certain sense of discipline and the mistakes you make along the way CAN lead to new ideas), in the long run it detracts from one's appreciation of the music as sound (a sense of mystery about the sound rather than a mystique about how it was created is what I seek here), and leads to 1) derivativeness which is rampant in virtually ALL of what is called progressive music today and 2) this exaltation of the musician-god and his machines. In conclusion, (WHEWWWWW!) I simply find it offensive to refer to the tripe coming out of modern-day Asia, Genesis, and, yes, King Crimson (boy, am I asking for hate mail now) as progressive music. (The people who send me hate mail will probably be the same ones I sat next to at Yes concerts.) Give a listen to some REAL *new* music, even though the practitioners of modern truly progressive electronic/"new wave"/whatever music may not have gone to Juilliard, or may lack the most expensive and flashy equipment. (Mind you, a good number of them DO, and they flash it about in the same way, but that's just yet another link to the dinosaur that calls itself "progressive rock".) Rich Rosen pyuxjj!rlr ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.