After all, this is an archaeologic dig.... Lets throw in early Pink Floyd and Sid in with Marc Bolan.... All proggier than Jethro Tulls early works. And king crimsons early stuff relied heavily on psych-folk... No?
Might we surmise then that prog is arguably the bastard stepchild of folk, psych, and rock?
Give or take a flute or violin or two? Or a ripped off sonata or Caprice?
Then back to 1956
Last edited by Nijinsky Hind; 04-12-2016 at 08:22 PM.
Still alive and well...
Iirc correctly, John's Children were Mod/Freakbeat/Popsike, but I don't have anything by them. Tyrannosaurus Rex were Psychedelic Folk of an uber-twee variety. I have a couple of their albums but must admit, I''m not a fan. They became a Glam Rock act when Bolan expanded the group to a 4 piece and shortened the name to T-Rex.
This is an impossible question.
Besides depending on the definition - and it's not true that there is no definition of prog, in fact there are thousands upon thousands of them, different for every fan, and every one is correct and every one is wrong - it depends on many other variable and slippery factors as well. Do you go by the sound or the concept or the methodology? You get different answers in each case. Do you count earlier attempts to fuse popular music and formal concert music, such as Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (from 1924)? Do you count classical composers working in the opposite direction, for example La Creation du Monde (1922) or Ebony Concerto (1945)? To me, those are important. To others, not so much.
What you could do, though, is cite a whole lot of sources, propose that all of them contributed (even if only a little), and that would probably be as close to accurate as you can ever get.
The Prog Rock origins remounts on the music origins, since it is percussion instrument based music. So, Rock categorizing has always proved to be even more inaccurate than any exact science similar task, after all music is damn far from being exact science. I suspect that when the term progressive was created, many people looking forward to discovering his first Rock band simply was taken out the easier way to naturally find a Prog Rock band.
"Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth. ". Ludwig van Beethoven
The first time I ever heard the term "progressive" applied to the type of music we are discussing was in late 1977 or maybe early 1978 by a guy was trying to describe to me the National Health show he saw the night before at the Paradise club in Boston. Not aware of National Health at the time, I had no idea what this guy was talking about. When he starting to throw in other examples of "progressive music" like Soft Machine and Gentle Giant, then I knew what he meant. So until then I didn't know what it was called, but I liked it. Like porn, I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
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