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Thread: Is Kansas Progressive-Rock?

  1. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by Zappathustra View Post
    if someone approached you and asked you "hey, I saw this record with a funny huge bird on the cover, called Song for America, what is it about?", what you would say?
    I hear'ya, 'thustra-man. But truth be told, you'd might just get as much mileage from checking their entry at Wikipedia, or rather the entries on individual albums. I mean, when is this so-called 'Ameriprog' going to finally take on the status of a separate, uhm, subgenre? Lotsa stough to put in there.

    Obviously, Wiki also tells us how Asia, GTR and Triumph were/are "prog", so that's another side to it. In other words; it doesn't matter. We'll all be dead soon enough anyway. There's no conundrum in death.
    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
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  2. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by TheH View Post
    Can anyone come up with a good argument why they aren't Prog?

    They are proggy like Hell (maybe not in an eclectic or avant way).

    Is it because they really Rock?

    And why the Hell (I'm not saying that three times) are they always compared to bands like Journey, Styxs or Boston who have hardly anything
    to do with what Kansas did.
    Bring it on man! If a song like Pinnacle was sung in Italian, they would be busting our balls with how majestic their symphonic prog was.

    But they are American. And they are named Kansas. Maybe that's an argument in itself, who knows.

  3. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by Scrotum Scissor View Post
    I hear'ya, 'thustra-man. But truth be told, you'd might just get as much mileage from checking their entry at Wikipedia, or rather the entries on individual albums. I mean, when is this so-called 'Ameriprog' going to finally take on the status of a separate, uhm, subgenre? Lotsa stough to put in there.

    Obviously, Wiki also tells us how Asia, GTR and Triumph were/are "prog", so that's another side to it. In other words; it doesn't matter. We'll all be dead soon enough anyway. There's no conundrum in death.
    I will not die until Doro and Warlock are included in the Enciclopaedia Progressiva, written by yours truly. So please, don't waste time. You don't want me to haunt you.

  4. #54
    Member Vic2012's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheH View Post

    Is it because they really Rock?.
    It's because they wear overalls..

  5. #55
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vic2012 View Post
    It's because they wear overalls..
    So that's less Prog than wearing Kaftans?

  6. #56
    Member Vic2012's Avatar
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    I had to "look up" Kaftan.........

  7. #57
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    Kansas is THE great American prog band IMO. They were my first prog album, my first prog concert, and my gateway to everything else.

  8. #58
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steve F. View Post
    Does anyone really care about what 'box' they are put in / stuck under? I know I don't. YMMV
    Best response in this post.

  9. #59
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vic2012 View Post
    I like their Boogie/Southern Rock songs too. The last great Southern Rock song they did was "Stay Out Of Trouble" from Monolith. How My Soul Cries Out For You is quirky and whacked. What is it? It's not symphonic prog, but it's not quite Southern Rock.
    To me that is what made them both unique and great. Mixing prog with the southern rock / boogie thing created their own unique thing that sounded like no one else.

  10. #60
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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveSly View Post
    To me that is what made them both unique and great. Mixing prog with the southern rock / boogie thing created their own unique thing that sounded like no one else.
    Totally agree.

  11. #61
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    They are Bar Band Prog, of course. A perfectly valid sub-genre, in which they rule supreme.
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  12. #62
    Quote Originally Posted by Steve F. View Post
    Does anyone really care about what 'box' they are put in / stuck under? I know I don't. YMMV
    EXACTLY.

  13. #63
    Quote Originally Posted by Tom View Post
    You mean, 'cause it has mellotrons?
    Am I right that Kansas never used a mellotron?

    I thought it was a little strange that mellotron samples were used on the latest album.

    For my part, the sound of the most symphonic-y parts of the early Kansas albums are my reference point for what "proggy" sounds like, so much so I'd say it was almost a caricature if I didn't like it so much.
    Last edited by undergroundrailroad; 11-10-2017 at 07:00 PM.

  14. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheH View Post
    Can anyone come up with a good argument why they aren't Prog?
    If I am reading Chris Cutler right (based on his book of essays File Under Progressive), he would say that it was because Kansas did things that had been done before. They weren't going off into the musical unknown, they followed various (mostly British) models - who themselves weren't going off into the musical unknown - and they didn't pretend to be doing anything else. At their best, they did what they did as well as those British bands, but still, it was nothing new, just a combination of existing rock, older classical music, and occasionally jazz. Chris appears to most interested in those relatively few artists who used the potential of their new, still-being-invented instruments to create new sounds, and used those new sounds to create new music not beholden to the past - that was what he considered "progressive", and anything less-groundbreaking wasn't.

  15. #65
    Ameri-prog. If I recall some of the earlier albums, there were songs that were just flat-out rock, boogie, bluesy, etc. with no prog elements, mixed in among some proggy songs. So they weren't tied into the notion that every song they wrote had to be slotted into the category of prog. I guess Styx and even Boston were like that to a degree. I call it Ameri-prog.
    You say Mega Ultra Deluxe Special Limited Edition Extended Autographed 5-LP, 3-CD, 4-DVD, 2-BlueRay, 4-Cassette, five 8-Track, MP4 Download plus Demos, Outtakes, Booklet, T-Shirt and Guitar Pick Gold-Leafed Box Set Version like it's a bad thing...

  16. #66
    Member Jerjo's Avatar
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    Got my Kansas playlist going on the computer right now. Damn I love this band!
    I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart

  17. #67
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    Quote Originally Posted by Baribrotzer View Post
    If I am reading Chris Cutler right ...
    I can categorically ASSURE you that Chris Cutler really DOES NOT give a flying fuck if you call Kansas prog or progressive rock. Or not. Honest.
    Last edited by Steve F.; 11-10-2017 at 07:32 PM.
    Steve F.

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  18. #68
    Quote Originally Posted by Baribrotzer View Post
    If I am reading Chris Cutler right (based on his book of essays File Under Progressive), he would say that it was because Kansas did things that had been done before. They weren't going off into the musical unknown, they followed various (mostly British) models - who themselves weren't going off into the musical unknown - and they didn't pretend to be doing anything else. At their best, they did what they did as well as those British bands, but still, it was nothing new, just a combination of existing rock, older classical music, and occasionally jazz. Chris appears to most interested in those relatively few artists who used the potential of their new, still-being-invented instruments to create new sounds, and used those new sounds to create new music not beholden to the past - that was what he considered "progressive", and anything less-groundbreaking wasn't.
    That's a valid argument but it would leave something like 90% of what is considered prog out of the "box". Not just Kansas as some would have it.

  19. #69
    Quote Originally Posted by Sean View Post
    Sorry, Ian, your hifalutin, avant taste preempts you from answering this question properly, and you know it.

    Zappathustra, all those pieces you listed are prog.

    The only time you hear otherwise is when someone has only heard the hits on the radio (so they are clueless about the catalog as a whole), or they have evolved past prog of this caliber into more sophisticated realms, like my friend Ian. There's no looking back when you do and a lot of stuff seems pretty tame in comparison once you go there.

    Not every tune on those first eight album is prog, but you can bet the epics are.

    If they were not prog we wouldn't be discussing them here and we often do. Meanwhile, their contemporaries like Journey, Boston, Styx, etc don't come up much because there isn't much prog in their catalogs to discuss. None of them have arrangements as grand as SFA, Magnum O, etc...
    Yeah. Geezaloo...
    Last edited by Polypet; 11-11-2017 at 03:18 PM.
    And the code is a play, a play is a song, a song is a film, a film is a dance...

  20. #70
    Quote Originally Posted by Steve F. View Post
    Does anyone really care about what 'box' they are put in / stuck under? I know I don't. YMMV
    Exactly.
    And the code is a play, a play is a song, a song is a film, a film is a dance...

  21. #71
    Member Since: 3/27/2002 MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER's Avatar
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    nothing is "prog"

    "prog" is nothing
    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?

  22. #72
    And yet threads on reglazing a bathtub get shut down. Go figure.
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  23. #73
    They were as prog as Genesis. There are any number of songs from Genesis that weren't prog, even while Peter Gabriel was in the band, yet we still consider them a prog band.
    "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."

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  24. #74
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Dark Elf View Post
    They were as prog as Genesis. There are any number of songs from Genesis that weren't prog, even while Peter Gabriel was in the band, yet we still consider them a prog band.
    indeed!

    that is... if such a notion of boxing up music existed in reality outside weenie world
    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?

  25. #75
    Quote Originally Posted by Zappathustra View Post
    That's a valid argument but it would leave something like 90% of what is considered prog out of the "box".
    Primarily because Cutler never really addresses that point of the idiomatic issue; he doesn't actually concern himself with our "prog rock" but rather alludes to a normative discussion on what an idiom denoted as 'progressive rock music' should/would imply. Alas, Cutler's theories on the matter don't really apply here. Elsewhere, yes - but not in this case.
    "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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