Your buddy's experience matches my own. None of the groups listed were considered "Progressive rock" (what we now call "Prog") in my circle in the early/mid-70s, though ELO feigned that way occasionally.Originally Posted by Sputnik
Your buddy's experience matches my own. None of the groups listed were considered "Progressive rock" (what we now call "Prog") in my circle in the early/mid-70s, though ELO feigned that way occasionally.
Hell, they ain't even old-timey ! - Homer Stokes
In my mind, and perhaps in the minds of other people, whether or not I think of a band as "a progressive rock band" is defined as much by what they DON'T do, as much as what they DO.
For example, on the Genesis albums from Trespass right though to ATTWT I cannot identify a single track that sounds like "normal" rock or pop - nothing that I could imagine being recorded by the Rolling Stones or The Hollies or The Byrds or Boston. Same is true for Yes from about their third album up to, but not including, 90125.
In post 50 you made two spelling errors.
To keep you all sharp and alert
btw - lets make a spelling contest in danish.
Yeah but what KINDA prog??! Crossover or eclectic? Neglectic prog? Or perhaps progressive prog, aka prog-prog?
"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
^^
Those are the questions that keep this forum alive !
Go on, freak everyone out by spelling water then telling them how to pronounce it
Vand - its easy:
https://translate.google.com/#da/en/vand - press the left loudspeakerbutton - I think you can do it
Here comes the real test: https://translate.google.com/#da/en/...d%20fl%C3%B8de - - press the left loudspeakerbutton and repeat
More so than LZ ever was!
Next you'll be telling me The Rolling Stones and Creedence were prog.
Cher definitely not... not sure who Hazel is....
but Toyah has recorded with Tony Banks, so that must give her prog credibility!
And Robert Fripp!
She'll be standing on the bar soon
With a fish head and a harpoon
and a fake beard plastered on her brow.
µ
well before posting this, I had viewed your YT links and found nothing remotely proggy in any of those... So if you want to convince us, you might want to reassess your choices and post different songs, because so far TRS and CCR have better shots at getting the "prog" label than your pure-pop lady trilogy ...
Meanwhile No Quarter, TSRTS, Achille's Last Stand and a few more are full-on prog
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
Christ.
"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
"Danish" should be capitalized, unless you want to have the contest inside of a danish.To keep you all sharp and alert
btw - lets make a spelling contest in danish.
Yes, that's my contribution to the LZ thread.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
Actually I know - just sloppy.
In Danish you wouldn't capitalize it - basicly only names (there are minor exceptions).
I think it was a good contribution
If you want to discuss that thread then FFS go to that thread and stop trying to hijack this one!
Sorry I meant "What" not "Water" - hvad, which to my ears seems to be pronounced as veh or something very close to that anyway. I was last in Denmark nearly 20 years ago in Struer, for New Year with friends. And the year before that I was in Nyborg for a wedding. Very different dialects between Jylland and Fyn it seemed.
I wouldn't say Led Zeppelin was a prog band, they were not. However, they, like The Who with Quadrophenia and Queen's Queen II and Night at the Opera, definitely explored and contributed to the progressive rock scene of the 70s. It was almost policy at that point for important rock bands to stretch beyond the mean constraints of rock and roll. Because they could and did just about whatever the hell they wanted, unlike the more stratified genres that were to later appear.
I have long been a proponent of a term called "progressive blues", and would consider Zeppelin a practitioner, along with Robin Trower (Bridge of Sighs being a prime example) and The Ground Hogs. Listen to "When the Levee Breaks" for example:
Backward tracking, odd time changes, drum compression, echo effects, phased vocals -- as I said, as progressive for blues as one can get, particularly when compared to Memphis Minnie's original acoustic Delta blues version (which Led Zep did credit):
As far as Zep and prog, I don't know how one would not consider "Achilles Last Stand", "Kashmir", "Battle of Evermore" (with the superb addition of Fairport's Sandy Denny), "In the Light" or "No Quarter" being progressive rock in any sense of the word.
"And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision."
Occasional musical musings on https://darkelffile.blogspot.com/
This is in a backward redneck country in 1970 and the compère uses the term progressive group, even if he was describing a LZ influenced band. He didn't have the benefit of hindsight to pigeonhole the band as a hard rock group.
Yeah, different melody and pronounciation.
We are often told that our language is one of the most difficult in the world to learn, due to difficult/vanished/no logic grammar, often no logic connection between the written and the spoken, the 8 vocals (a, e, i, o u, æ, ø , å) that in the real world each have more than 3 times as many sounds, how you emphasize a syllable changes the meaning of a word, and the more and more sloppy pronounciation. To that adds, that even though our country is only about 350 km x 350 km, very flat and today free of physical obsticles, and the TV have told the people how to talk "properly" for 50 years, there are still dialects, when spoken properly, are totally incomprehensible to people from other counties/areas.
When you grow up with it, its not a problem
I'm not sure production techniques can qualify something as "progressive rock." Or "progressive blues," as you argue.
This is a blues cover with a fairly pedestrian slide riff which doesn't really develop into much of anything other than an interesting blues cover with fascinating production qualities. The song goes on a long time without much happening in terms of thematic development, has no trademarks of anything remotely "progressive" in terms of its arrangement, and basically is more famous for its drum production than anything else.
Better cases for the argument here, for sure. Although I suppose in most of these cases the argument could also be made that it was a few ideas being beat into the ground. Certainly not to be compared with arrangements coming from bands like Yes, or those more typically associated with the genre.
To me Led Zeppelin are heavy metal. They're just as metal as Sabbath, Purple, Priest, and Maiden. I know Led wants nothing to do with heavy metal, but they are metal. They are very metal.
I think for most people what establishes where "Heavy Metal" began and "Hard Rock" ended was the further "metal" pulled away from the Blues. Even if it had ties and often used the same scales in terms of its musical building blocks, it was further removed and began to have confidence in its own unique formula.
Led Zeppelin's strong ties to the blues simply disqualifies them from truly being in that conversation. I know some of their most committed fans think they were too "versatile" to be labeled "metal," but that's really not the reason, IMO. They are far too heavily tied to the blues and despite being probably one of the most amazing "covers" albums ever, the debut is still well within the established context of accepted "hard rock" practices. As is the second album.
Conversely, there is no requisite "You Shook Me" on Sabbath's debut like every other hard rock band of the time. There are no blues covers on Paranoid. In fact, there is little direct lineage to anything previously established except maybe that it is apparent that Cream, Led Zeppelin and others were influential upon their arrival to a different way of doing business.
Personally, I think Led Zeppelin were a hard rock band. While capable of a dazzling array of experimentation, I don't think one in a thousand metal musicians would cite them as having influenced the genre to the extent which Sabbath did.
Of course, Sabbath don't really seem comfortable with being called "heavy metal" either, so ...
Last edited by JeffCarney; 12-24-2015 at 10:20 PM.
I don't believe I've ever seen such a tepid reading of that song; in fact, it's considered by many critics to be the greatest achievement on Led Zep IV, other than the belabored praise of "Stairway to Heaven". "When the Levee Breaks" is anything but pedestrian, offering continuous change, as Jimmy Page noted, "each twelve bars has something new about it, though at first it might not be apparent." In blues circles it is the height of the blues-rock form, and almost symphonic with its down beat crescendos and swirling accompaniments. You use the word "cover" as if it is offensive. I would say it ranks with one of the best adaptations ever in rock, and certainly outdoes the more vanilla reproductions of blues at the time, and it is on a different plane than most of Zeppelin's earlier forays into blues.
Well, I'll take the impactful power of "When the Levee Breaks" over the endless noodling about on Tales from Topographic Oceans, which, to quote Rossini in regards to Wagner, "has beautiful moments but awful quarter hours." I certainly love much of early Yes, but one could say that Yes could beat a repetitive phrase into the ground like on "Close to the Edge", and the endless reiterations of 'I get up, I get down', for instance. Why, "Five Percent of Nothing" is perhaps the most repetitive tune in the rock canon.
"And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision."
Occasional musical musings on https://darkelffile.blogspot.com/
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