The Future of Progressive Rock

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

Progressive rock as a term was definitely in general use by 1973/1974, because I was using it by then.

^^The same here. I've read posts here saying the term art rock was used in the 70s and the term progressive rock came later. I knew it as the progressive rock in the mid 70s when I first became aware of the genre. It was rarely or never called art rock.

both correct

the term "progressive" was being applied to many artists playing heavy electric music in the late 60s
the term "progressive Rock" began to be used in the early 70s and included many artists of all races and musical backgrounds from Jazz to Classical to R&B that often toured together as "progressive Rock" artists. It was definitely not a Brit-centric term.
the term "prog" appeared in the 80s seemingly to exalt only the British bands, practically expunging the contributions of all the great artists who were a huge part of the foundation of the whole scene in the late 60s-early 70s. It was commonplace in the 90s to hear Symph Weenies talk as if Genesis and Yes single-handedly created progressive Rock music and often point at earlier progressive artists as "not prog!"

as far as any 'return to glory', one should keep in mind that the songs that got heavy rotation back in the 70s were usually the weaker songs on their respective albums. Radio is and always has been a 'lowest common denominator' medium.

[Steve F.]

By the way, I only heard it called "prog" during the last twenty years or so.

I first heard it called prog in the early 80s and it was used in a derogatory way. Which is still how I think about the term. YMMV

[Jay.Dee]

Is it in any way possible that he's joined forces with Svet?!

Too much computer junk on board let the Serbs shoot down a F-117A stealth aircraft?

[Yodelgoat]

Since I have started playing live again, and playing a LOT of Prog/70's stuff, Some of the people who have heard it have said "nobody sounds like you". I do kind of like a one man band thing. The music I play is stuff that people here on PE might enjoy, though not exclusively. I play to people who are mostly younger, with strong ties to country. What I do isn't country, but it still seems to be working. I think as long as you keep the genre issue out of the conversation, prog does well with the public. I don't think the well has been poisoned among this crowd to get them to hate "progressive" music. The word "progressive" carries a bad connotation here in Texas (small town). I just play songs I like, and so far, Response has been great.

After only a few shows, I am wondering if this might just be an anomaly, but as long as I am enjoying it I'll keep doing it. The second it becomes a burden, I am done. But it does seem like Prog could do OK if it were being played in bars and restaurants - as long as Greg Harris and Jason Hanley don't get wind of it. I think a band playing epics would appeal to video game junkies. They are already mostly nerds to begin with.

[Lino]

I think post rock is the prog of the modern day even though it's not prog. If I was 16 all over again, chances are I'd be a post rock junkie the way i was "prog" junkie back in the day.

Young people making music in the same style and fashion as the big 5 in the hey day of "prog" aren't new progressive rock, they are recreating a style popular years ago. And all the power to them, may not be my cup of tea, but hey go to town lol. But to call a band of 20 year olds in 2019 "new prog" because they sound exactly like Genesis...well.

[Purple_Camel]

My feeling is that progressive rock as was known back in the day was inspired by music that was more sophisticated than the popular music of the time. With the infusion of classical music influence and sophisticated jazz harmonic structure, it gave the music a new sound. But this only took to the ears of popular culture because those fans where more inclined to relate to it, because THEY were more sophisticated in their listening palates. I don't know the numbers but for instance I would guess that a significantly less number of high school graduates don't read music or did not take any kind of music classes in high school. If they have taken classes, I would question the content of their teachings.

[Sturgeon's Lawyer]

I think that progressive rock will ultimately go the way of Jazz: a limited but highly-appreciative audience that just about replaces itself as people age out (or simply die), and supports a vibrant live scene. It has a similar intellectual appeal to that of modern Jazz.

[proggy_jazzer]

I think that progressive rock will ultimately go the way of Jazz: a limited but highly-appreciative audience that just about replaces itself as people age out (or simply die), and supports a vibrant live scene. It has a similar intellectual appeal to that of modern Jazz.

One way for this to happen would be for progressive rock to make its way into the college music curriculum in the way that jazz did in the 1970s. I think a very strong case can be made that the "jazz education" movement in the United States was/is a significant contributing factor in the creation of today's jazz scene and its audience.

[Steve983]

I think that progressive rock will ultimately go the way of Jazz: a limited but highly-appreciative audience that just about replaces itself as people age out (or simply die), and supports a vibrant live scene. It has a similar intellectual appeal to that of modern Jazz.

Except that most people have heard of jazz.

[Baribrotzer]

Since I have started playing live again, and playing a LOT of Prog/70's stuff, some of the people who have heard it have said "nobody sounds like you". I do kind of like a one man band thing. The music I play is stuff that people here on PE might enjoy, though not exclusively.....
.....I think as long as you keep the genre issue out of the conversation, prog does well with the public. I don't think the well has been poisoned among this crowd to get them to hate "progressive" music......

In a way, I'm doing the same thing in Portland, OR: I sort of fell sideways into running an open mic at a local cafe, I perform every month, and prog is what I play. Not easy-to-listen-to stuff, either. It borders on avant, and the only reason I say "borders on" is that I don't have enough compositional or playing skill to write or play material like Univers Zero or Thinking Plague - that's what I'd do if I had the ability. As it is, it sounds a bit like bad ELP (or, at least, ELP with fairly limited keyboard and vocal ability, if you could imagine that). Some of the people in the audience and some of the other artists do know what my musical reference points and influences are, and I don't avoid discussing them, but nobody seems to mind. Part of it, I think, is that there aren't many other people in town doing anything like that - there's The Decemberists (who have become mostly a straight-up Americana act at this point), the excellent Mercury Tree, and a few other proggish bands, but that's about it.

And yet people accept and even enjoy it. One guy apparently said (I heard this second-hand) that it was his favorite open mic because I played this strange stuff with so much passion, and was completely open-minded to anyone else's music or poetry or other performances, no matter the style or skill level. Other open mics tend to be more rigid, I guess, either by design or because they've fallen into it.

[Shadow]

There is a local band in Baltimore that plays early 70's progressive rock. They have a hard time finding places to play because they don't draw dancing girls which draws drinking guys. The one bar they will be playing on 7/20 said they draw more people than the other bands.

[Yodelgoat]

I was in Sedona last Month and saw a live band of young guys - in their 20's, playing In memory of Elizabeth Reed, and La fiesta - their whole bit was doing 70's music. They were good musicians. The older crowd seemed unimpressed but I was shocked That they would even know that kind of music....

[Dana5140]

yodelgoat- where in Sedona? I have family in Flagstaff and visit the area regularly so must visit any place willing to put on thatt music. I love Sedona. Sorry to go OT here.

[Yodelgoat]

I saw them at the Sound Bytes grill. I was so surprised to see them - All of them far younger than the music they were playing. I had to notice (snob that I am) that on memory of Eliz, the guitarist played just the melody as a single note. In The original Dickey or Dwayne (whichever) played octaves.. so I pointed that out when I talked to them after the show... I am an ungrateful picky bastard.

The band was called after some guys name. It may have been the father of one of the guys, or something like that. It wasn't any of their names.

I love Sedona. My mom lives there, she is getting on in years and I spend a total of a couple months a year there visiting and caring for her. She's having knee surgery in late July so I'll be there another 2-3 weeks then. Gonna catch me some Flamenco music at Telaquapache Sunday thru Tuesday nights... The guitarist - I cant recall his name, is world renowned, and its just him with another guy on the Cajon - and they are terrific. The percussionist is a big DreamTheater fan, so he also plays drums very well. He told me he used to play in a Jethro Tull tribute band. How cool would that be to see?

[Firth]

There is a local band in Baltimore that plays early 70's progressive rock. They have a hard time finding places to play because they don't draw dancing girls with draws drinking guys. The one bar they will be playing on 7/20 said they draw more people than the other bands.

Who is that?

[Firth]

I saw them at the Sound Bytes grill. I was so surprised to see them - All of them far younger than the music they were playing. I had to notice (snob that I am) that on memory of Eliz, the guitarist played just the melody as a single note. In The original Dickey or Dwayne (whichever) played octaves.. so I pointed that out when I talked to them after the show... I am an ungrateful picky bastard.

The band was called after some guys name. It may have been the father of one of the guys, or something like that. It wasn't any of their names.

I love Sedona. My mom lives there, she is getting on in years and I spend a total of a couple months a year there visiting and caring for her. She's having knee surgery in late July so I'll be there another 2-3 weeks then. Gonna catch me some Flamenco music at Telaquapache Sunday thru Tuesday nights... The guitarist - I cant recall his name, is world renowned, and its just him with another guy on the Cajon - and they are terrific. The percussionist is a big DreamTheater fan, so he also plays drums very well. He told me he used to play in a Jethro Tull tribute band. How cool would that be to see?

Great venue with beautiful Red rock views. Was there in April for a week and saw a duet. Great sound, but not very Prog. Good Tom Petty covers.

[Jacob Holm-Lupo]

The thing is - prog really has experienced a bit of a renaissance inasmuch as it has gotten a positive critical reappraisal, it's got its own successful magazine, prog songs are being used in soundtracks and mainstream artists have been namedropping prog for a couple of decades now.
BUT: Prog is still a nostalgia genre. It will never conquer the hearts and minds of people like it did in the 70s, simply because that was a different time. The musicians who created progressive rock belonged to the first generation of young British men (and women) who were exposed to rock music. Most prog musicians came of age during the 50s and 60s. This was a culturally schizophrenic time, because these kids grew up in two different worlds: The world of their parents, which was (especially for middle-class Brits) classical music on the radio and choir in church, and on the other hand the world that was for the first time being marketed to young people: Rock'n'roll and American youth culture. It was really that friction between the "respectable" world of the Silent Generation and the rebellion of the Baby Boomers that created progressive rock, IMO. That's a condition that does not exist anymore. Cultural references from the "old world", meaning pre-WWII, mean nothing to Millennials, their cultural understanding really just stretches back to the Cold War - which is why shows like Stranger Things are so popular.
What would be equivalent to progressive rock (understood as a meeting of "old" and "new" culture, or high and low culture) would be mashups of nostalgic 80s/90s pop and modern music technology - vaporwave, for instance. It's got nothing to do with what we consider "progressive" but it offers something of the same connection between past and present for current generations. My two cents.

[miamiscot]

It's been discussed for a long time, but we are in a new time now. Will we ever see an epic return of Progressive Rock into popular culture as significant as the music was to it's former glory days?

No.

[Purple_Camel]

I saw them at the Sound Bytes grill. I was so surprised to see them - All of them far younger than the music they were playing. I had to notice (snob that I am) that on memory of Eliz, the guitarist played just the melody as a single note. In The original Dickey or Dwayne (whichever) played octaves.. so I pointed that out when I talked to them after the show... I am an ungrateful picky bastard.

The band was called after some guys name. It may have been the father of one of the guys, or something like that. It wasn't any of their names.

I love Sedona. My mom lives there, she is getting on in years and I spend a total of a couple months a year there visiting and caring for her. She's having knee surgery in late July so I'll be there another 2-3 weeks then. Gonna catch me some Flamenco music at Telaquapache Sunday thru Tuesday nights... The guitarist - I cant recall his name, is world renowned, and its just him with another guy on the Cajon - and they are terrific. The percussionist is a big DreamTheater fan, so he also plays drums very well. He told me he used to play in a Jethro Tull tribute band. How cool would that be to see?

I was there years ago and met that great Chapman Stick player, Anthony Mazzero who resided there. He was always playing around town and exceptional. I wonder if he ever put together a progressive rock band?

[Shadow]

Who is that?

Black Light Orchestra. They are playing at Sonomas in Columbia on July 20th, no cover.

[Buddhabreath]

(double-posted)

[Buddhabreath]

^^^

Shucks, that's very close to me and I would have checked it out but I'll be out of town and back just in time to miss Cheer Accident.

I'll keep an eye out for them in the future. Thanks.

They have posted some videos:

https://www.mdparty.com/performers/default?id=14416

Not bad!

[mnprogger]

there's probably a better chance something comes out that shares the ideology of it, but sounds very different from it.

[Baribrotzer]

there's probably a better chance something comes out that shares the ideology of it, but sounds very different from it.

Although it doesn't (to me) sound all that different. Anna (the composer/keyboardist/clarinetist/percussionist) has remarked that she listens to Queen a lot. And even if it doesn't sound much like Freddie & Co., there are definitely some other classic prog bits in what they're doing, in the midst of the electronica and trained classical-composer sophistication. There's a similar impulse there, of pop music elaborated upon. You, on the other hand, seem to be suggesting something completely unrecognizable as prog: maybe music entirely generated on a laptop by a DJ who doesn't play any conventional instruments, can't conceive of anything but 4/4, and uses the same I-V-vi-IV or i-VI-III-VII progressions everybody and his dog does because those are all he knows - but is really inventive as regards texture, arrangements, rhythmic superimpositions, and parts unexpectedly dropping out.

[Animal]

^^^
that was kind of amazing. the composition, performance, the video, all very impressive.