You said it. Who else? Genesis? ELP? They or any of the Canterbury bands haven't moved forward in years. Rock has a very short history with a relatively low capability for progression. Jazz has been around for much longer and has a much richer history, and unbeknownst to most, has far more skilled musicians today than rock does. Hell, Weather Report was more progressive than the kings of prog.Originally Posted by Svetonio
Reduce the drink.
Not drinking. Edumacate yourself. Without being glib, why don't you tell me what you disagree with exactly. You're not exactly free of odd perceptions yourself. But I suppose you already knew that.
How to sober up fast in 3 steps:You said it. Who else? Genesis? ELP? They or any of the Canterbury bands haven't moved forward in years. Rock has a very short history with blablah blah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgaETQh4uXg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNiAA355IeU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1X_nl6gkS4
Blah blah blah. Please. It's like you're stuck in a time warp. You're hitting me with songs from the 70s. Where's the progression? This is like the constant waxing poetic about lightning caught in a bottle 40 or 50 years ago. This has more balls and was far ahead of that stuff even in 1966. Musical telepathy at its finest. Listen as much to the notes not being played as the ones that are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-rrt8IYhe0
Jeez.
I don't "disagree" actually. As you can see very clear in my posts in this thread, I was just going to say that (imo) it's weird to make a list of KC's best songs from the seventies, because the best songs from the debut - released in October 1969, so at the end of the Sixties - make (imo) an inseparable begin of the greatest phase of the band that disbanded as early as 1974. That's all. And I said that as a big KC fan who will be at their concert in Vienna, December 1, 2016.
"Battle of Glass Tears", "Fracture", "LTiA, pt.1" and "Sailor's Tale" - Yeah. Not the rest, IMO.
"Groon" (studio), "The Letters", "Providence", perhaps... And the proto-industrial neurotic attack that was "The Devil's Triangle" - Holst abbreviated or not.
And I agree with Svetty here in that KC had some serious competition elsewhere as far as "potency for progression" went. They might have rocked a little less hard or played third league commercially speaking, but in terms of levels of compositional sophistication and pure instrumental refinement there were indeed more advanced artists out there than KC.
I still love KC, though. When selling off much of my 70s 'big name' collection of "prog" some 15 years back, KC's temporal discog was the only one to survive intact.
Last edited by Scrotum Scissor; 11-25-2016 at 09:31 AM.
"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
Compositional sophistication (not that KC has ever lacked this) and pure instrumental refinement (nor this) has nothing to do with moving forward. As a Crim fan yourself, surely you understand why the Larks period is the OVERWHELMING fan favorite, right?
For a musical group so obviously content to stay within the contraints of "rock" (possibly because they wouldn't know how to transcend it), compositional sophistication and pure instrumental refinement may have pretty damn much to do with moving forward. On closing down the ever so efficient KC factory in '74, their leader avoided the artistically (potentially) menacing scenario of having his band's experimentalist aspirations juxtaposed those of numerous up-and-coming artists of the day - seeing how some of the argument essentially amounted to the equation of "we've 'progressed' as far as we can, i.e. are able to".
If you listen to a piece like "Le Poison Qui Rend Fou" by Present, released a full decade after KC finished initial activities (and unlike many others I do not hear much "progression" in post-70s KC), it bears every single hallmark of continuation yet complete advancement on the formula behind "Fracture" - harmonically, dynamically, instrumentally and compositionally as such. It has, by definition, actually progressed. And yes, as a KC fan I was exhilarated on finding out how KC's 70s music had indeed spawned developments moving way beyond their offset in terms of applied music theory and musicianship. The ventures of math-rock and so-called "brutal prog", for instance (donning dozens and dozens of names, some rather well-known), utilized that offset in conjunction with other influences (classical minimalism, primitive folk musics, sonics as "tone", Beefheart, Zappa, Rock-in-Opposition, hardcore punk, noise et al.) to come up with something altogether strictly of and for their own day and age.
"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
Do you really think Fripp feared competition, ever? Fwiw, Crim melded rock and baroque classical better and differently than I've ever heard it melded, so Fripp and company were hardly constrained by the obvious limits of "rock". He pushed the boundaries, and he is the only musician in rock that could be favorably compared to a Miles Davis (who is arguably the most important musician of the 20th century in ANY genre). That, and he refused to fall back on the typical 12 bar blues that Hendrix and his contemporaries were content to squeeze every drop out of. For all the blinding (lack of critical thinking/brain dead) trance-like worship of Jimi, I'd much rather hear Fripp than another screaming Hendrix solo ANY DAY OF THE WEEK. If you hear no progress beyond 1974 in Crim, that's on you and your ears.
I'm honestly not the tiniest concerned with what Fripp "feared" or any other odd sentiment the guy may have harboured about his own self-representation. As an academic historian (including that of rock music), a musician and guitarist, I find the adoration of the wannabe-Godlike status of the KC leader one of the single most pitifully limiting and, frankly, embarrassing assets of the "prog" quasi-discourse, a staged token to the imaginary axiom of inherent greatness and transcendence which was better and further pushed by other artists not even a tenth as self-important in their artistic outlook as Mr. Fripp. Having been a militant purveyor of that very same insistance myself however, I can only tell you how ludicrous my past position appeared once I actually found out more. It's all in the perspective, I suppose.
As far as "my ears" go, I'm happy to comply with most other rock historians in maintaining a view which doesn't exactly see Mr. Fripp as "[...] the only musician in rock that could be favorably compared to Miles Davis".
"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
When you said this:
"On closing down the ever so efficient KC factory in '74, their leader avoided the artistically (potentially) menacing scenario of having his band's experimentalist aspirations juxtaposed those of numerous up-and-coming artists of the day",
I believed you were assigning calculated motive to Fripp's breaking the band up in 1974. That's why I said that he feared nothing.
And seriously? You actually see over-valuation of Fripp as being more embarrassing than over-valuation of Hendrix? No way, especially since Hendrix played a brand of rock that was more common.
Name another who changed as successfully and positively as often as Miles did over an almost uninterrupted (save 5 years) 46 year period?
Saying you're an academic historian of music (or anything, for that matter) is as useful as saying you're an academic historian of Americana. It all gets watered down, white-washed and told how others determine it will be told in the end.
And finally, whether you're a musician or not means very little in discussions like these. For all you know, mine could be bigger.
Personal list would be (no order)
Pictures Of A City
Sailors Tale
Larks Tongues In Aspic Part 2
The Great Deceiver
The Night Watch
Fracture
Red
Starless
Dr Diamond
Larks Tongues In Aspic Part 1
Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/
Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
I blame Wynton, what was the question?
There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.
Good list. I have an attachment to "Lament" (Fripp's and Bruford's shared opinion not withstanding). That guitar break is just too wicked to ignore.
I'm absolutely darn convinced that yours is much, much bigger. As if that's the reason why the "thingy" apparently was insinuated in the first place. And I'm as absolutely perfectly fine with that too. You see, there was another and quite different reason for bringing about that detail. And I didn't hold the embarrassment of Fripp's "over-valuation" up to the one regarding Hendrix. You were the one dragging the latter into this. The embarrassment was rather in regard to "prog-internal" self-image donning Fripp as intellectual asset and alibi.
The reason why the point of academic history writing in relation to rock music came up, was to imply how your own stance on the matter of Fripp's and KC's general importance in no factual manner reflects that of established paradigms. You may enjoy and idolize Fripp as much as you want, but this doesn't change matters. And neither will you impress or convince anyone by criticizing fans and enthusiasts for allegedly not being sufficiently enthusiastic or fans in "the right way" or for "the right reason". I hold KC in high regard for what they achieved musically and accomplished artistically - not for what they "left out" or "could have done if they wanted to". You see, I don't think the latter is the case; I believe they performed as greatly as they potentially could - which was more than expected. But others went past that, and if you can't live with this idea and thus have to deny it or disagree, then that's fine as well.
In arts, creative achievement and imprint as in personal language are the only virtues of particular significance. As such I think Mr. Fripp achieved a level of imprint as bandleader and composer by 1974 and as guitarist some years down the line as studio musician. After that he has mainly spent his time sitting on a stool and either repeated himself and his past glories, or alternatively "created" more or less throwaway guitar layers and sounds supposed to form relevance through the purported myth of their maker. And I'm afraid this doesn't render the man much akin to Miles Davis. Seriously not.
"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
Pretty much my list as well. I would put One More Red Nightmare in there as well, probably switch with Dr Diamond.
I have a headache. What was the question?
I believe it was "How and why would you feel different from me about this?"I have a headache. What was the question?
"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
On an aside, I would suggest that there are a few non-British European bands from the Seventies who have kept a high standard through the decades, although perhaps not producing 'a new music' with each album, although I would suggest that's highly debatable also: was Crimson really evolving drastically on their three early eighties albums? Well, I would suggest Magma, Trettioariga Kriget, PFM, maybe even Gong...
Great list! Go Sid....
That's where you and I differ, and was never my point.
Well, at least I obviously made you remember that "point" after all, then.
"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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