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Thread: The 1st use of the phrase "progressive rock" (Jimi)

  1. #1
    Member WytchCrypt's Avatar
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    The 1st use of the phrase "progressive rock" (Jimi)

    I was watching a PBS special called "American Masters" last night and the 2 hour documentary was all about Jimi Hendrix. Around the middle of the show they were discussing how the Experience went from the 1st US show at the Monterey festival to becoming the #1 live concert draw in the US in one year. They played a bunch of radio promo's from '68 announcing The Experience concerts and one of them specifically called them prog, like:

    "Come see the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the first progressive rock band!"

    I thought the term came into existence in the 70's but here was some radio promo guy using it back in '68

    What do you think?
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  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by WytchCrypt View Post
    What do you think?
    I think that you shouldn't confuse a term for the thing that it is describing.



    ((BTW, we discussed this show, at length, when it first aired.)

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by WytchCrypt View Post
    I thought the term came into existence in the 70's but here was some radio promo guy using it back in '68

    What do you think?
    The notion that the term "progressive rock" wasn't used until the 1970s is absurd. Sure, it look a while, maybe a couple of decades, to be embraced by everyone, and to mean (basically) the same thing to everyone, but - as someone who has read just about every issue of every UK music periodical going back to about 1966 - I can assure you that it was used even before prog as we define it became into being. Your Hendrix example is spot on, but I remember reading Cream being referred to as "progressive rock" as early as 1966. But in both cases the meaning is clearly "rock music that is progressive" rather than sticking a label onto a defined musical genre. This was one of the many ways for rock to be "progressive" in the literal sense before the definition was narrowed down to "prog" as defined nowadays (which neither Hendrix nor Cream would be labelled as).
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    Member Jay.Dee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by calyx View Post
    This was one of the many ways for rock to be "progressive" in the literal sense before the definition was narrowed down to "prog" as defined nowadays (which neither Hendrix nor Cream would be labelled as).
    Or sometimes expanded. IIRC Emerson, Lake & Palmer were considered heavy-rock in the early 70s.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by calyx View Post
    I remember reading Cream being referred to as "progressive rock" as early as 1966. But in both cases the meaning is clearly "rock music that is progressive" rather than sticking a label onto a defined music
    Which was what it intended to denote in the first place when Tom Donahue launched his KMPX station in early 1967 with the article "AM radio is dead and its rotting corpse is stinking up the airwaves". Note: Donahue was *American* but referred to his project as "the first progressive rock radio broadcaster", and his main virtue was as harbinger of the burgeoning San Francisco and L.A. rock scenes of the day. "Progressive rock" was synonymous with what would later be known as "alternative rock" or "independent rock", it was not "rock that somehow sounds like Genesis, Yes, ELP, William Shatner and a few others".

    You can find the term "progressive rock" applied in US and UK pop cultural media long before there ever was a Robert Fripp recording.
    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
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  6. #6
    In the late 60s, some FM stations in the US were billed as "progressive", because of the wide range of music that the DJs could play. I would suggest that it stuck to the music of some of the bands that became more commonplace on those stations.

    Or not.
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  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by strawberrybrick View Post
    In the late 60s, some FM stations in the US were billed as "progressive", because of the wide range of music that the DJs could play. I would suggest that it stuck to the music of some of the bands that became more commonplace on those stations.

    Or not.
    I specifically remember hearing a recording of a radio show where Donahue introduces Kaleidoscope as "progressive rock". And this was 1968.

    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
    "[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM

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    Progga mogrooves's Avatar
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    By '68 virtually everybody was described as "progressive."

    I first came across the term (lower case) "progressive rock" in 1966 in a review of Paul Butterfield's East-West album (the title track would become a staple of "free-form" radio). The term was used to describe Fresh Cream shortly thereafter, and quickly became common currency in describing a plethora of ideologically sympathetic but stylistically diverse rock bands determined to break free of the commercial constraints of Top-40 radio and the then-common musical conventions of popcraft.

    The term was quickly appropriated and exploited by the record companies as a marketing tool. Tapping into the anti-establishment zietgeist the record labels bargained that music described as "progressive rock" would resonate well with the era's radical rhetoric and, presumably, "progressive" politics of its target consumer.
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  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by mogrooves View Post
    By '68 virtually everybody was described as "progressive."
    Exactly; most "rock" groups who broke away from the singles and hits format were somehow progressive - and why not? Developments were counted by the week back then, as opposed to every five or ten years nowadays. The rush of advancement in rock/pop music only between 1965-67 is amazing, and from there until 1970 it was outright staggering. A band like The Who literally had their music morphose between albums, not to mention The Byrds or The Beatles or Simon & Garfunkel or Zappa/Mothers.
    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
    "[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM

  10. #10
    The term "progressive" in music, as a descriptor indicating the blending of popular and art music forms, goes back to before there was even much "rock music" to speak of. See the use of "progressive jazz" by at least the late 40s.

  11. #11
    I think "art rock" was the preferred term for the likes of Yes, ELP and the Moodies at the time. As noted above, "progressive rock" could be a wide range of bands.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by bRETT View Post
    I think "art rock" was the preferred term for the likes of Yes, ELP and the Moodies at the time. As noted above, "progressive rock" could be a wide range of bands.
    Yep, that's how I remember it.
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    Progga mogrooves's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bRETT View Post
    I think "art rock" was the preferred term for the likes of Yes, ELP and the Moodies at the time. As noted above, "progressive rock" could be a wide range of bands.
    Yes, the term identified a particular genus of (lower-case) "progressive rock" and would be re-figured as "symph," a sub-genre of (upper-case) "Progressive rock" (later "Prog"), which itself replaced "Art Rock" as the over-arching genre name in the mid-ish 70s.
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    Quote Originally Posted by mogrooves View Post
    Yes, the term identified a particular genus of (lower-case) "progressive rock" and would be re-figured as "symph," a sub-genre of (upper-case) "Progressive rock" (later "Prog"), which itself replaced "Art Rock" as the over-arching genre name in the mid-ish 70s.
    As I've said before, mogrooves has it exactly right on this whole genre naming subject. Saves me some typing.

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    Member Since: 3/27/2002 MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER's Avatar
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    Progressive Rock was a term used in the late 60s for bands that eschewed the 3 minute Pop radio singles format.
    It became refined by the early 70s to mean artists who blended various other styles of music in progressive ways with the standard elements of Rock music; mainly backbeat style drumming but also electric Bass and overdriven Guitar as well as modern Keyboards. It was a multi-cultural, worldwide phenomenon that was absolutely *not* centered in any nationality.

    After the first gen of Progressive Rock artists started going in a Pop Rock direction by the end of the 70s, a handful of bands started aping Yes and Genesis in the 80s and the term Prog began to be used as if Yes and Genesis were the progenitors of all that used to be Progressive Rock in the early 70s. Symph weenie revisionism was vomited forth.
    Why is it whenever someone mentions an artist that was clearly progressive (yet not the Symph weenie definition of Prog) do certain people feel compelled to snort "thats not Prog" like a whiny 5th grader?

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    I don't know how common the term "art rock" was in other countries, but I never heard it used in Australia at all, until possibly the 1980s or so. Certainly not in the 60's or early 70's.

    Apropos of nothing in particular, I recall a work colleague back in 1972 showing around the office his copy of Meddle which he had just bought. Most of the guys in the office were obviously unfamiliar with Pink Floyd; I myself remembered "See Emily Play" and didn't know much else about them. When asked to describe the album, he called it "semi-classical". I believe he was simply trying to emphasise that it wasn't your normal pop/rock music. The fact that he didn't use the word "progressive" leads me to think the term wasn't yet in wide use at the time. This was only a couple of years after The Yes Album came out, and I don't think people in this country had yet figured out that this was part of a phenomenon, or decided what name to attach to it.

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    "The Australian Festival of Progressive Music"

    Location: Myponga, South Australia

    Dates: 30 January - 1 February 1971

    http://www.milesago.com/festivals/myponga.htm
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  18. #18
    Originally termed "Art Rock" in the late 60's and in the 70's "Progressive Rock" . The word progressive was a description for a type of playing existing within all styles of music. The term defined a style of composition and improvisation created by musicians who shared the term...but.. years before the term was used for marketing growth. To musicians...the word was used to define the science behind music and the creativity from within.. When it became an industry term, it was to define a specific style of music.

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    Progga mogrooves's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Enid View Post
    When it became an industry term, it was to define a specific style of music.
    Precisely. From a lower-case adjective to an upper-case noun.
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  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER View Post
    It was a multi-cultural, worldwide phenomenon that was absolutely *not* centered in any nationality.
    I would disagree with this, in that there was something uniquely European about applying formal composition techniques to rock music, blurring the border between "art" and popular music (or, to some extent, attempting to turn popular music into an art form as opposed to mere entertainment).

    While it's true there were "progressive" tendencies in just about every area of popular music in the early to mid-1970s and that is was a widespread, international phenomenon, still progressive rock appears to be a primarily British phenomenon and embraced as such, certainly in France and (it seems to me) the US (see Ed Macan's book) and I would guess even Italy although in many ways Italy's own musical traditions made it particularly able and willing to embrace the concept.
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    Member Jay.Dee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by calyx View Post
    I would disagree with this, in that there was something uniquely European about applying formal composition techniques to rock music, blurring the border between "art" and popular music (or, to some extent, attempting to turn popular music into an art form as opposed to mere entertainment).

    While it's true there were "progressive" tendencies in just about every area of popular music in the early to mid-1970s and that is was a widespread, international phenomenon, still progressive rock appears to be a primarily British phenomenon and embraced as such, certainly in France and (it seems to me) the US (see Ed Macan's book) and I would guess even Italy although in many ways Italy's own musical traditions made it particularly able and willing to embrace the concept.
    But why is it supposed to be the "primarily British phenomenon" if you admit that "there were progressive tendencies in just about every area of popular music"? Where does the exclusivity for "progressive rock" term come from then?

    Your definition of "rock art form" matches perfectly some early works of Frank Zappa and Grateful Dead, which were much more "serious" (from the formal point of view) and earlier than any music of Genesis, Jethro Tull and some other luminaries of so-called Prog.

    http://www.phinnweb.org/history/arti...rete_rock.html

    Moreover, there were contemporary "progressive" rock scenes thriving in Sweden, Italy and Germany, which developed their unique music idioms, distinct to the predominant UK progressive rock style(s). As a renown progressive music expert you are very well aware of it.

    As for me, I have really grown tired of this late 20th century music balkanization. I think that it is high time to tear down the artificial walls between genres, erected by music industry and media. If Genesis, Yes and alike do need their own "ghetto", let them keep the term prog. But progressive rock? Hell, no way!
    Last edited by Jay.Dee; 08-30-2014 at 03:27 PM.

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    Member Vic2012's Avatar
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    But why is it supposed to be the "primarily British phenomenon" if you admit that "there were progressive tendencies in just about every area of popular music"? Where does the exclusivity for "progressive rock" term come from then?
    It's all because of The Beatles. It all started with Rubber Soul and Revolver. Those albums influenced The Beach Boys (well Brian Wilson actually), and Pet Sounds was the result. From there it all exploded with Zappa, Moodie Blues, Procol, The San Francisco Psychedelic Groups, Pink Floyd, etc. at least 2-3 years before ITCOTCK. I really don't have a problem with it being deemd "primarily British." The history of Rock music has always been cross pollinated with Britishness and Americanish-ish-ness-ish.

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    Progga mogrooves's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jay.Dee View Post
    If Genesis, Yes and alike do need their own "ghetto", let them keep the term prog. But progressive rock? Hell, no way!
    This highlights the semantic problem at the heart of the matter. Originally (i.e., mid-60s), "progressive" was deployed as an adjective describing an approach/ideology/aesthetic of a shitload of stylistically diverse rock bands, rather than as a specific genre of rock music. In the mid-ish 70s "Progressive" was re-figured as a noun naming a style of rock music, primarily of the sort typified by the groups you cite, all of whom had previously been known by the term "Art Rock." **

    Had "Art Rock" not been supplanted by the newly-noun-ed "Progressive rock"--what we now call "Prog"--it presumably would've continued as the operative term for the "ghetto" in which the groups associated with the term all along would've continued to reside, leaving "progressive" to return to its original adjectival meaning and the stylistic ecumenicalism that informed it. Accordingly, "Genesis, Yes and alike" would've been considered "progressive rock" of the "Art rock" variety.


    ** Current rock histories, in fact, continue to use the term "Art rock."
    Last edited by mogrooves; 08-30-2014 at 03:00 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by WytchCrypt View Post
    I was watching a PBS special called "American Masters" last night and the 2 hour documentary was all about Jimi Hendrix. Around the middle of the show they were discussing how the Experience went from the 1st US show at the Monterey festival to becoming the #1 live concert draw in the US in one year. They played a bunch of radio promo's from '68 announcing The Experience concerts and one of them specifically called them prog, like:

    "Come see the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the first progressive rock band!"

    I thought the term came into existence in the 70's but here was some radio promo guy using it back in '68

    What do you think?
    We all know about the reliability of Wikipedia, but on there it says this:

    The term "progressive rock," which appeared in the liner notes of Caravan's 1968 self-titled debut LP, came to be applied to these bands that used classical music techniques to expand the styles and concepts available to rock music.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progres...0s_classic_era

    It's referencing two books, the first being Edward Macan's 1997 Rocking the Classics. Not saying that's correct. Just sharing the information.

    Phil

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    Member realprog's Avatar
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    It also doesn't say it was where "progressive rock" first appeared. Seems to have at least been kicking around as a term at that time!

    Phil

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