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Thread: Are Prog Musicians Just Failed "Jazzers"?

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    Moderator Sean's Avatar
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    Are Prog Musicians Just Failed "Jazzers"?

    A good friend of mine that is a great jazz keyboardist mentioned to me recently that he never was much into prog and got the impression that it was a genre full of musicians that hoped to play jazz, but just settled for prog because they didn't have what it took to do jazz well.

    I told him as far as I could tell most of the prog musicians I know really didn't care much about jazz or wish to play it, that their playing of prog was because of their love of the genre, not just "settling".

    Thoughts?

    And is great prog really easier to play than great jazz? I'd venture to guess remembering a ten minute tune with twenty parts isn't in most jazzer's wheelhouses. Though they could probably do it easier than a prog guy convincingly playing jazz, I suspect....
    Last edited by Sean; 04-09-2018 at 04:18 PM.

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    Member Mikhael's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sean View Post
    A good friend of mine that is a great jazz keyboardist mentioned to me recently that he never was much into prog and got the impression that it was a genre full of musicians that hoped to play jazz, but just settled for prog because they didn't have what it took to do jazz well.

    I told him as far as I could tell that most of the prog musicians I know really didn't care much about jazz or wish to play it, that their playing of prog was because of their love of the genre, not just "settling".

    Thoughts?
    As far as I'm concerned, you are correct. Most jazz, especially of the "round robin" variety, bores me to tears. I'm into composing and playing prog because that's what I like. Most jazz snobs will see it his way, but jazz is only one of many influences I bring to my material. Now, good fusion is another matter; but jazz snobs don't like it either...
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    Member Zeuhlmate's Avatar
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    But what is jazz - Louis Armstrong, Allan Holdsworth, Nick Bartch Ronin?
    Jazz is for me mostly a method, about, improvising, experimenting...
    You can do that on top of a great composition.
    King Crimson: The Great Deciever period, was in that respect pretty jazzy to me.

    Often jazz has a bigger palette of chords than you hear in most other music...

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    No.

    Some of them are failed classical composers or performers - Tony Banks, for example.

    Some are failed rock-'n-roll musicians, because they don't have enough raw, from-the-gut feel to play the same old thing and make it sound new, so they elaborate upon it in a misguided attempt to find a "voice" of their own.

    Some are failed singer-songwriters - typically they don't have the lyrical depth to make great poetry out of the most basic, traditionalist songcrafting, so again they elaborate upon the music to put their own stamp on it; they don't realize either that originality may achieved by doing what everybody else does, or that it isn't necessary and isn't even desirable.

    Some are failed Tin Pan Alley songwriters - no one else will play their songs, so they have to perform their music themselves.
    Last edited by Baribrotzer; 04-09-2018 at 12:58 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sean View Post
    And is great prog really easier to play than great jazz? I'd venture to guess remembering a ten minute tune with twenty parts isn't in most jazzer's wheelhouses.
    I think most jazzers could sight-read that sort of thing, just like any good classical player can sight-read a symphony. They wouldn't go about remembering it because they don't usually need to, but they certainly could if the situation required it, and they'd probably get it together faster than most proggers. Think about big bands, where much of the music is written out, where there can be pages and pages of it, and where things come together with quite limited rehearsal.

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    Member proggy_jazzer's Avatar
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    Oof. So much depending on how one defines "jazz", "prog", and "failed". Personally I think it's not necessarily determined by skill level relative to any particular style, but by what direction a musicians chops and muse take them. A few names off the top of my head to stir the jazz v. prog soup:

    Chick Corea
    Allan Holdsworth
    Adam Holzman
    Billy Cobham
    Ben Monder
    Tony Levin
    Cuong Vu
    Chris Potter

    If jazz has as part of its sine qua non the ability to improvise within (or without) a set of guidelines, and prog is taken to mean something beyond its narrow big-P/big 5-or-6 definition, then it would be hard to deny that both could apply to any of the above and many, many more. Would any of them be considered "failed" anythings?
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    Member Sputnik's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sean View Post
    A good friend of mine that is a great jazz keyboardist mentioned to me recently that he never was much into prog and got the impression that it was a genre full of musicians that hoped to play jazz, but just settled for prog because they didn't have what it took to do jazz well.
    I'd say this is way off base, both historically and in the present. Musicians who played or play Prog were musicians who liked rock and who were attracted to taking rock music into unusual territory. Some of the players may have had some exposure to jazz, classical, or other musical forms. But for most, the path was not into jazz or classical music, it was into a more standard type of rock band.

    It didn't hurt that in the late 60s/early 70s it was "fashionable to be unfashionable" and that you could achieve financial success by expanding rock's boundaries by including elements of classical, jazz, or other musical forms. Today, the impetus to do this within a rock context has remained, despite the financial hurdles. But the players remain largely geared at rock music, not jazz or classical.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sean View Post
    I told him as far as I could tell most of the prog musicians I know really didn't care much about jazz or wish to play it, that their playing of prog was because of their love of the genre, not just "settling".
    I think that's largely right, particularly among modern Prog musicians. Historically, as I said above, I think they loved rock music, and it was popular at that time to be incorporating elements of classical music and to a far lesser extent jazz, into rock music.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sean View Post
    And is great prog really easier to play than great jazz? I'd venture to guess remembering a ten minute tune with twenty parts isn't in most jazzer's wheelhouses.
    IMO, totally different skill sets. Prog is probably closer to classical music in that it is typically more through-composed. The "tricky" stuff in jazz is usually in the solos, particularly soloing over moving chords which as a rule is not something rock musicians, Prog or otherwise, are particularly good at. I think most jazzers would have an easier time with Prog music because they can read, but it wouldn't mean they'd be particularly good at writing it or rendering it with enthusiasm. But I think they'd have an easier shot at doing it well than most Proggers would of doing jazz well, just because of the knowledge it takes to solo over moving chords with sophistication. I've played some jazz in high school and it was definitely a different ball-game than Prog stuff and I felt required a lot more of me as a player.

    So I'd say jazz is harder on average, and much harder to do really well.

    Bill

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    Man of repute progmatist's Avatar
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    I would rephrase it to: prog musicians are jazzers who like more structure in their lives.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

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    I would replace "failed" with "bored".

    They might have a classical jazz background or training, but got bored with the repeated variations of the same chorus.
    They might have been classically trained, but got bored performing incessant "covers" of other composers.
    They might have had a rock and roll background, but got bored with the trite 4/4 time signatures and verse/chorus formula.
    They might have had a blues background, but got bored with the invariable 12-bar blues chord progressions.
    They might have had a singer/songwriter background, but got bored with that simplest form of musical expression -- strumming chords.

    Progressive music arose because these folks got tired of the formulaic rigidity (or simplicity) of all of these other musical forms, and wanted to innovate and take musical composition and styles to completely new places. If they've "failed" at anything, it was a failure to fall into line with the status quo.

  10. #10
    Sputnik nails it. Nothing I've ever encountered playing prog or prog-influenced music has been as challenging as improvising convincing lines over the sort of shifting and frequently convoluted chord structures often heard in jazz. To solo like that, fluently, requires years of dedication and mental programming; learning to execute prog-like song structures is a whole different ball of wax and, for my skill set anyway, wayyy easier. There's also the ineffable component of "swing" - you might learn the notes to "Donna Lee," and learn to play them perfectly, but unless you got JUST the right amount of lag between the notes, it's gonna sorta suck.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sean View Post
    A good friend of mine that is a great jazz keyboardist mentioned to me recently that he never was much into prog and got the impression that it was a genre full of musicians that hoped to play jazz, but just settled for prog because they didn't have what it took to do jazz well.
    What's his opinion of Jan Hammer?

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    Quote Originally Posted by mkeneally View Post
    Sputnik nails it. Nothing I've ever encountered playing prog or prog-influenced music has been as challenging as improvising convincing lines over the sort of shifting and frequently convoluted chord structures often heard in jazz. To solo like that, fluently, requires years of dedication and mental programming; learning to execute prog-like song structures is a whole different ball of wax and, for my skill set anyway, wayyy easier. There's also the ineffable component of "swing" - you might learn the notes to "Donna Lee," and learn to play them perfectly, but unless you got JUST the right amount of lag between the notes, it's gonna sorta suck.
    Very hard to argue with this, coming as it does from someone with seemingly unlimited chops. To sum up:
    1) Many jazz musicians could play prog if they desired; they have the chops, and ;
    2) Many prog musicians would have a very difficult time playing a convincing improvised solo in the jazz idiom, especially if swing is the rhythmic feel desired.
    But it doesn't have to be about which type of musician is better. I find much more interesting the musicians who are able to play convincingly in multiple idioms, or who have a style that seems to transcend idiom. The names in my previous post fall into that category, IMO, as does someone like Bill Frisell.
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    Originally Posted by Sputnik

    ...soloing over moving chords which as a rule is not something rock musicians, Prog or otherwise, are particularly good at
    I agree, but IMO the very best musicians should be able to do that at least if they are familiar with the changes. I like the analogy to classical players. I understand that there are accomplished classical players that can't improvise to save their lives. On the other hand, I knew a first violin/soloist in the SF Orchestra who could absolutely tear up an improvisation and thought nothing of it. When you have absolute command of your instrument and can hear that a chord is a C7b5#9 it is amazing what you can do.

    Perhaps a good example are Gentle Giant, I absolutely love them to death, but their strength is clearly composition and not soloing or improvisation although they are all great musicians. The best leads or solos IMO were played by Kerry on both keys and vibes. He was a classically trained guy but I have the feeling he would have had the chops to hang with the jazz cats if he put his mind to it and was so inclined.

    I also have the feeling that with time and dedication one can learn to be a great classical player but the same is not necessarily true of becoming a great jazz soloist.

    All IMHO I do not myself walk among these giants.

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    I'm sure sputnik's and Mike's observations on the relative difficulty here are entirely valid. I'm no musician, but as a long-time jazz fan I've seen many many great and not-so-great improvisers do their stuff, and the really high level of chops and in-the-moment creativity and responsiveness that it takes to pull this stuff off convincingly is more than apparent.

    I also feel that at least in the modern era a “failed jazzer” is on the whole more likely to either carry on playing jazz not very well, switch to a much less demanding but more commercial form of popular music, or just quit. I mean if your heart was in jazz, but you realised you couldn't cut it, would you actually want to switch to another form of fairly rehearsal-intensive music that you didn't really dig and where you also had almost no chance of making a living? Post-seventies, prog strikes me as too much effort for too little expectation of material reward for anyone to pursue it seriously who wasn't into the music for its own sake.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sean View Post
    A good friend of mine that is a great jazz keyboardist mentioned to me recently that he never was much into prog and got the impression that it was a genre full of musicians that hoped to play jazz, but just settled for prog because they didn't have what it took to do jazz well.

    Thoughts?
    Is he making this comment based on knowing the personal histories of many prog musicians, or is it simply from the perspective of an accomplished jazz musician who has heard some progressive rock with jazz influences who wasn't particularly impressed with what was going on, from a jazz perspective?

    My own thoughts are that progressive rock music fans often over-estimate the amount of musical complexity and accomplishment on display in the music. "Prog" has expanded to include so many kinds of music now that making generalizations can be difficult, but - staying within the margins - it fundamentally is a form of rock music, with dollops of influences from other places. Those dollops might add something genuinely interesting to the overall context of what they're doing (or might be just window-dressing) but in either case on their own might not be considered to be of any great import or substance, to someone dedicated to one of those genres. For example, I have a couple of classical music musicians and fans who I have never found a single progressive rock album that they didn't turn their noses up at, as amateurish and/or compositionally boring. I'm not close friends with any professional jazz musicians, but your comment would seem to abe an example of the same kind of thing.

    In the case of jazz, though, there are actual accomplished jazz musicians who have played *with* prog musicians so I'd wonder what your friend would think of the supporting players in those situations.

    Or, what he'd think of Bill Bruford. Does he think of Earthworks as being an example of his point, or a exception to it?

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by proggy_jazzer View Post
    1) Many jazz musicians could play prog if they desired; they have the chops;l.
    Not everyone was able to pull it off though, for lack of the songwriting element-- Jan Hammer for example made a couple of rock albums that weren't that good. Some of Chick Corea's stuff is arguably great prog, but even he tripped up when he tried to go further and add vocals.

    Jazz players doing dance music could be a mess too, like Tony Williams' notoriously awful "Million Dollar Legs."

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Sputnik View Post
    I think most jazzers would have an easier time with Prog music because they can read, but it wouldn't mean they'd be particularly good at writing it or rendering it with enthusiasm.
    In prog, the structure of a song is at least equal in importance to the melody, rhythm etc. Jazz doesn't tend to explore macrostructure in the same way as prog.

    While you'll find jazz artists attempting to turn Smiths or Joni Mitchell tunes into standards, you're unlikely to see Herbie Hancock do a version of One for the Vine, The Remembering or even Mumps, as much as sections of those pieces would lend themselves to it. The prog epic edifice doesn't fit into the jazz framework. When jazz starts to go that direction (a la third stream), actual in-the-moment improvisational opportunities are massively infringed, robbing it of its jazzness.

    Recognized prog artists are invariably creators of absolutely fresh material on some level. If I were to condescend to jazz, I'd point out that armies of prominent jazzers never wrote anything of significance. They derived entire careers performing pre-existing material. Not an option for a prog band, who has to drop an album setting their own individual vision in stone to gain any recognition. I wouldn't claim it makes jazz less creative, but that the creative impulse is largely directed to a completely different objective.

    Prog, perhaps more than any other kind of music, is a scavenger of genres. To say a prog musician is a failed jazzer is also to say that he's failed at blues, country, klezmer, flamenco, metal, doo wop, tin pan alley, baroque, free improv, serialism, etc. I have no trouble ignoring such shortcomings. While a jazzer will be celebrated for doing what he does best over and over again, prog musicians at their best (such as the failed jazzer Bill Bruford) ideally are celebrated when they push themselves out of their and the audience's comfort zone, even when the results aren't totally successful.

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    Quote Originally Posted by bRETT View Post
    Not everyone was able to pull it off though, for lack of the songwriting element-- Jan Hammer for example made a couple of rock albums that weren't that good. Some of Chick Corea's stuff is arguably great prog, but even he tripped up when he tried to go further and add vocals.

    Jazz players doing dance music could be a mess too, like Tony Williams' notoriously awful "Million Dollar Legs."
    But these failings probably have more to do with lack of taste (or to put it less pejoratively, lack of feeling for the form) than technical shortcomings.
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    Member rcarlberg's Avatar
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    From the 10,000 foot level:

    * Jazz is about improvisation. Playing without a net. Harmonizing some given chord changes with no set notes.

    * Prog is about carefully-worked-out tunes with a lot of changes, unusual time signatures, and interlocking pieces. No room for improvising. Just a need for a lot of memorizing (or reading scores).

    Of course in real life neither description fits any known music.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Buddhabreath View Post
    I agree, but IMO the very best musicians should be able to do that at least if they are familiar with the changes.
    Well, maybe. I think it depends on exposure. A classical player who's had no exposure to improv is going to struggle with improv no matter how familiar they are with changes or good they are on their instrument. Improv is something you just have to get comfortable with.

    Quote Originally Posted by Buddhabreath View Post
    I like the analogy to classical players. I understand that there are accomplished classical players that can't improvise to save their lives. On the other hand, I knew a first violin/soloist in the SF Orchestra who could absolutely tear up an improvisation and thought nothing of it. When you have absolute command of your instrument and can hear that a chord is a C7b5#9 it is amazing what you can do.
    My suspicion is that the violinist in the SF Orchestra had extensive exposure to improv in addition to his/her classical training. I don't think it's quite as simple as what you're saying, though the more knowledge you have to draw on certainly makes any musical activity easier.

    Quote Originally Posted by Buddhabreath View Post
    Perhaps a good example are Gentle Giant, I absolutely love them to death, but their strength is clearly composition and not soloing or improvisation although they are all great musicians. The best leads or solos IMO were played by Kerry on both keys and vibes. He was a classically trained guy but I have the feeling he would have had the chops to hang with the jazz cats if he put his mind to it and was so inclined.
    I'm not sure where Kerry got his improv skills. My guess is that in addition to his degree from the Royal Academy of Music he had extensive exposure to playing blues and some jazz on his own. It's also possible that he "composed" a lot of his solos, which is not quite the same thing as improvising. My guess is maybe a bit of both.

    Quote Originally Posted by Buddhabreath View Post
    I also have the feeling that with time and dedication one can learn to be a great classical player but the same is not necessarily true of becoming a great jazz soloist.
    That could be true, but to really be at a top level like that requires an unusual amount of dedication, and a mind that can handle the pressure of that kind of training. So either way, we're still talking about a pretty small number of people who can do this at a top level. And I think that's true of jazz as well, when you're talking about people who really are at the top of the pyramid in that world.

    Prog I think is more forgiving, because even someone with average chops can still be successful with Prog if they can write something good, and do enough with their instrument to render it credibly.

    Bill

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    Moderator Sean's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Facelift View Post
    Is he making this comment based on knowing the personal histories of many prog musicians, or is it simply from the perspective of an accomplished jazz musician who has heard some progressive rock with jazz influences who wasn't particularly impressed with what was going on, from a jazz perspective?
    I'd say the latter.

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    Member proggy_jazzer's Avatar
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    I've spent almost the whole of my adult life in and around professional musicians and collegiate music education, and there has definitely always been a certain level of snobbery between the different factions. Generally, the serious classical musicians look down on the jazzers, and to the extent they're aware, on rock-oriented musicians as well. The jazzers don't really look down on the classical musicians, as they know their chops on their instruments can be superior, but they do tend to emphasize the fact that they can improvise while the classical musicians in large part can't. Jazzers can look down on rock music, but in order to do that they also have to look down on artists like Miles and Herbie (or just discount those phases of their careers). Those who enjoy playing more rock-oriented material (including prog) are usually out of the jazz camp, but are also sometimes classical musicians who grew up listening to rock and prog and see playing it on the side as a release and diversion from their more serious studies. That all being said, I have to say that I see less of the snobbery now than I did, say, 20-30 years ago. The way the boundaries between genres have blurred since CDs and now streaming and on-demand services have made more music more available has had somewhat of a leveling effect among the musicians I know and spend time with. I'm much more likely anymore to talk to a classical musician who expresses a love for jazz or Yes, or a jazzer who tells me he's a fan of Bartok and Primus than ever before. It's quite exciting really. There are kids in our school of music involved in projects outside of their studies as diverse as indie-folk, grunge, classic rock and hardcore metal. Instrumentalists sing, and singers play guitar. [Of course, everybody plays bass.] I know they don't get a whole lot of traction around these parts, but I've seen a huge influence here by groups like Snarky Puppy; a collective of great players that draw from just about every conceivable influence to put together music that appeals to a wide variety of ages and musical backgrounds.

    To circle back to Sean's original question, everybody goes through phases as they develop their musical acumen. It's clear that some prog musicians played jazz before they played prog, but they're just as likely to have played classical as part of their development. Would that also make them failed classical musicians? Turn this around in any of a number of ways, but I don't really see any of it as failure, just part of the journey. If you end up creating something satisfying in the end, is what you did that might not have been as successful along the way very important?
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    Member Steve F.'s Avatar
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    Your good jazzer friend says stuff as ignorant as prog fans say. I guess I should not be surprised....

    Quote Originally Posted by Sean View Post
    A good friend of mine that is a great jazz keyboardist mentioned to me recently that he never was much into prog and got the impression that it was a genre full of musicians that hoped to play jazz, but just settled for prog because they didn't have what it took to do jazz well.

    I told him as far as I could tell most of the prog musicians I know really didn't care much about jazz or wish to play it, that their playing of prog was because of their love of the genre, not just "settling".

    Thoughts?

    And is great prog really easier to play than great jazz? I'd venture to guess remembering a ten minute tune with twenty parts isn't in most jazzer's wheelhouses. Though they could probably do it easier than a prog guy convincingly playing jazz, I suspect....
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    Member moecurlythanu's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Baribrotzer View Post
    Some of them are failed classical composers or performers - Tony Banks, for example.
    Tony Banks started playing Rock professionally when he was what, 17? He was still in school or just out. Not much of an opportunity to fail at anything.

    As for the larger point,.. if Prog-Rockers were failed Jazzers, there would be more forensic evidence in the music they create(d.)

    Sounds more like a snide comment from a Jazz honk. Is your friend N Singh?

  25. #25
    In the late 70's and early 80's ...there was a Jazz Fusion scene in the air when I traveled the road. I loved some of the Jean Luc Ponty, RTF, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report music ..but I diminished myself from the hype. One example of the hype would be a musician or even a crowd hopper saying to a bassist on stage...."Hey..why don't you have a fretless bass?" "You don't know how to play bass until you play a fretless" It was a egotistical mentality evolved from hype. Progressive Rock , (depending on the artist)..or sub genre ..can be difficult to play in a entire different technique than Jazz....why? Because it is influenced by Classical. But then again...to succeed with perfection as a Jazz player or Classical player is limiting yourself to one style of music , based on your sole devotion to one. Several brilliant musicians focus on Classical and Jazz, dividing the time between them...and expand with originality when combining them. Some people confuse musicians abilities with their hype. For example...there are several "Rock Guitarists" from the 60's and 70's that knew how to play Jazz and if they were asked to sit in with a Jazz combo...they could do it. So the hype of being a "Rock Star" is a disgrace to the Jazz World and so therefore...Jazzers question..."A Rock Guitarist plays Jazz?"..."I don't think so"...My answer or simple explanation would be this: "maybe his Dad was a Jazz guitarist and taught him when he was young" Is that so far fetched? I mean...just because you see Rick Derringer on a 70's film...playing "Teenage Love Affair" doesn't mean that he can't play Progressive Jazz fusion....I mean..that is so insulting when an abundance of people actually believe if a musician is in a Rock band..that they're ONLY capable of that. Even though they were classically trained by their Uncle and their father taught them Jazz..that doesn't count nor is it logically meaningfully or understood by the average person. That is hype! Music has no barriers. Not all the musicians standing up on stage are playing the way they play at home or in private. And it is really foolish to assume otherwise.

    I knew several guitarists who played in touring Rock Bands ...their record deal fell through, and they quit and joined a Show Band backing a "Has Been" entertainer to play Broadway style ...chord melody...Jazz improvisation..on the road. People just don't get it. Much of what they can do that is brilliant is often masked by hype. Is Progressive Rock just as technical as Jazz? I would say it runs a close race with technique and depending upon the artist. Some instrumental Prog is complex ..Some Univers Zero pieces are complex and difficult to play. Of course this is R.I.O. I'm making reference to...however...it still contains some of the 70's progressive Rock structure...not unlike King Crimson . I wouldn't have an opinion of Progressive Rock players until I heard everything they could do. Otherwise it doesn't make good sense to do that ..unless your comparing great Jazz players to the guys in Spinal Tap...instead of comparing Jazz players to Ruth Underwood, Eddie Jobson, and Chester Thompson who all played in a Rock Band with Frank Zappa.

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