Prog guilty pleasures and true confessions

[rcarlberg]

It is well played and well sung, but mostly it just makes me very sad because it smells so hard of not knowing what to do because of marketplace changes. Which to me is sad for someone with such a unique vision.

Anytime an artist starts producing "what they think will sell" rather than "what they like" it always spells disaster.

[Lopez]

Smegma! (Your fault Steve F)!

Is that Smegma of Smegma and the Nunz, the 80s Boston hardcore band that evolved into Gang Green?

[Progatron]

Alanis Morissette, Elton John, Simon & Garfunkel, Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack, The Smiths, Love And Rockets, and death/black metal bands like Arch Enemy, Dimmu Borgir, etc.

I don't feel an ounce of guilt or shame though. Not even about liking Phil Collins solo!

[Steve F.]

Is that Smegma of Smegma and the Nunz, the 80s Boston hardcore band that evolved into Gang Green?

No - long long lived Pacific NorthWest noise makers, making noise before making noise was 'cool'

[bill g]

The Smiths

Yes! Love the Smiths, and Love & Money, another 80s classic(or should have been) though I agree with you, I don't feel guilt for what I like. Even for liking 'Ventura Highway' by America or 'Please Let Me Wonder' by the Beach Boys.

[winkersnufs]

Hello There Folks ~

Interesting thread and I'd like to share a few pleasures as well. Music, Oh! Music...

A few from the past : Cleveland's Michael Stanley Band
Aerosmith through Rocks
Heart through Dog and Butterfly
Alice Cooper Band
Duke Ellington
Stanley Clarke through Rocks, Pebble, and Sand
Foghat Nightshift
Frampton Comes Alive

More recent years : Fanfare PourPour
Paris Combo
Katzenjammer (thanks Dave Sr. for this and Paris Combo also)
Brian Ferry 'the Jazz Age'
Brian Carpenters Ghost Train Orchestra

For Now
Carry On
Chris Buckley 'and I 'ain't' guilty'

[Halmyre]

You know, we're often rather ignorant towards American culture here in Europe. So we don't always catch on while it's happening.

Thus I hadn't actually heard the original Glen Campbell version of "Wichita Lineman" until the ending credits in that episode in season 2 of Ozark, and I thought - Wow! This is like hearing "God Only Knows" for the first time all over again!

I think it's an absolutely fantastic tune, and with a mutha lyric to boot; there are Keith Reid'ian assets to the levels of thought in it. Completely gorgeous!

And it's not even finished. Campbell took Webb's work-in-progress and ran with it.

[Halmyre]

I heard the Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" in a shop the other day. It is a fantastic track, and I can't be bothered with anything else they've done. Same with Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You OUt Of My Head".

[Progatron]

I heard the Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" in a shop the other day. It is a fantastic track, and I can't be bothered with anything else they've done.

Lots of great tracks, just not always the well known singles. Left To My Own Devices is my favourite by them.

[JJ88]

'Please Let Me Wonder' by the Beach Boys.

Fabulous song, as are 'Kiss Me Baby' and 'She Knows Me Too Well' on that album (Today!).

[progmatist]

2 of my most guilty pleasures are Yanni and John Tesh.

[walt]

I heard the Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" in a shop the other day. It is a fantastic track, and I can't be bothered with anything else they've done".

I dig" Behavior" and "Very".I don't have anything else by PSB

[Zappathustra]

I heard the Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" in a shop the other day. It is a fantastic track, and I can't be bothered with anything else they've done. Same with Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You OUt Of My Head".

I hate Pet Shop Boys, but West End Girls is the coolest piece of music ever written.

[moecurlythanu]

I dig" Behavior" and "Very".

Those are very good albums. "Discoteca" is a particular standout.

[moecurlythanu]

2 of my most guilty pleasures are Yanni and John Tesh.

Those aren't just guilty, they're prosecutable.

[rcarlberg]

Those aren't just guilty, they're prosecutable.

Yanni's first album (or two?) were capable-enough Newage.

Tesh -- so far as I know -- never put out a straight-face album.

[GuitarGeek]

re: Magma's Merci

It is well played and well sung, but mostly it just makes me very sad because it smells so hard of not knowing what to do because of marketplace changes. Which to me is sad for someone with such a unique vision.

But wasn't the case with everyone at that time? It seems like everyone who had survived the 60's and/or 70's were trying to figure out how to keep going. Well, maybe something figured it out a bit quicker, before going into the studio, but I suppose I see your point.

I think it's rather unfortunate the album opens with Call From The Dark. I've grown to like the song, but the arrangement it has there, with the damn drum machine and the "ooh ooh baby" refrain must have made a lot of fans just go "What...the...FRELL?!" I forget who it was who said "Either they're singing in English, or there's a phrase in Kobaian that sounds exactly like 'ooh ooh baby'". A lot of people must have just said "NEXT!" after hearing Stella singing that first line.

I can tell you I was one of them (though I didn't hear the song until a decade later, when I called up a college radio station and asked the programmer to play "anything by Magma" and that's what she picked). I was just like "OMG!", it was like Christian Vander had a meeting of the minds with Peter Graves and Martin Landau and between the three of them, they somehow created the greatest Mission: Impossible episode ever, only in real life.

For me most of the rest of the album is actually much better than that opening track. Notably, I still think I Must Return is brilliant.

I remember the first time Magma played NEARfest, there was a great line in the band bio in the program about how Merci saw the band "Embracing pop and dance music forms, while incorporating French and English, but any opportunity for mainstream acceptance was undercut by the fact that the album was a concept album about death".

For me, though, the highlight of the album is this:

[MJBrady]

Well, I bet this topic fits a LOT more progsnobs than one would think, for me, outside my abnormal diet of "real" prog or jazzrock fusion.
I have a ton of music I love some might consider prog, I wouldn't:
Snarky Puppy
Shpongle
Infected Mushroom
Thin Lizzy
Deep Purple
Twelve Foot Ninja
Toto
The Brothers Johnson
Tears For Fears
Level 42
Steely Dan/Donald Fagen
Rascal Flatts
Phil Keaggy
Pages
Gino Vannelli
Max Webster
Louisiana's LeRoux
Little Feat
Allman Brothers
King's X
Freak Kitchen
Bob James
The Rippingtons
Atlanta Rhythm Section
Flim & The BB's
Tower Of Power
Rufus
Twennynine with Lenny White....

I can't stop!!!
Alison Krauss
Cara Dillon
Debussy
Earth, Wind & Fire
Fela Kuti
Jamiroquai
Tchaikovsky
Wang Wei
Eagles
James Gang
Shawn Phillips
Rachmaninov
The Alan Parsons Project
Handel
Ravel
The Steve Miller Band
Wet Willie
Claude Debussy
Stravinsky
JS Bach
Mozart
Bartók Béla
George & Ira Gershwin
Brahms
Sibelius
Stan Kenton and His Orchestra
Woody Herman
Glenn Gould
Most Big Band music..
Anúna
Shooglenifty
The Chieftains
Luar Na Lubre
Tchaikovsky
Paganini

[rcarlberg]

But wasn't the case with everyone at that time? It seems like everyone who had survived the 60's and/or 70's were trying to figure out how to keep going. Well, maybe something figured it out a bit quicker, before going into the studio, but I suppose I see your point.

The disco and punk years were brutal for a lot of musicians. Suddenly, being able to actually PLAY an instrument became a liability, songwriting was passé, and development money and signings evaporated overnight in favor of one-offs produced for a pittance by one guy in his basement.

A lot of established musicians took day jobs.

[Rarebird]

I don't feel guilty about anything I like. Why should I.

I love a whole lot of German stuff, like:
Bap
City
Ina Deter (prog connection, most of Hölderlin played on her debut)
Haindling
In Extremo (the odd one out in this list)
Udo Jürgens
Karat
Heinz Rudolf Kunze
Udo Lindenberg
Maschine (Dieter Birr, formerly of Puhdys)
Ulla Meinecke
Nena
Puhdys
Pur
Pe Werner
Wir Sind Helden
Zara-Thustra

Some international stuff:
Adele
A-ha
Alphaville

[vmartell]

1. -To my Classical friends, my love of Jazz, Prog, Punk/Post Punk/New Wave and Motown is a guilty pleasure
2.- To my Jazz Friends, my love of Punk/Post Punk/New Wave and Motown is a guilty pleasure
3.- To my Punk/Post Punk/New Wave friends, my love of Classical and Prog is a guilty pleasure (most seem to respect Jazz and Motown)
4.- My Pop loving friends know nothing of the styles above, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Some do not know they even exist. Some Pop fans know of Punk/Post Punk/New Wave but that's it. I do tell them that they should be guilty of something...

v

[Teddy Vengeance]

OP here. Of course people can and will write what they want, but the thread has diverged from ‘guilty pleasures’ to any non prog likes. And there are lots of threads on the latter. For example, I love Joy Division, The Pixies, and Richard Thompson but there’s no shame associated with those.

But Donna Summers’ I Feel Love... well, there’s a bit of a ‘coming out of the closet’ quality to admitting that on PE. It’s like walking into a biker bar and requesting a K-Pop tune.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

Stanley Clarke through Rocks, Pebble, and Sand

but those albums are nothing less than full-on progressive Rock music (of the original essence kind)

[Wah3]

But Donna Summers’ I Feel Love... well, there’s a bit of a ‘coming out of the closet’ quality to admitting that on PE. It’s like walking into a biker bar and requesting a K-Pop tune.

Ha, you might be surprised at how many people like ‘I Feel Love’. According to David Bowie, who was then recording his Berlin Trilogy, his collaborator Brian Eno "came running in and said, 'I have heard the sound of the future.'... he puts on "I Feel Love," by Donna Summer ... He said, 'This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.' Which was more or less right."

[GuitarGeek]

The disco and punk years were brutal for a lot of musicians. Suddenly, being able to actually PLAY an instrument became a liability, songwriting was passé, and development money and signings evaporated overnight in favor of one-offs produced for a pittance by one guy in his basement.
.

Well, I think you're talking about something different than what I'm talking about. There were a lot of people who didn't necessarily play "virtuoso music" who were sort of trying to figure out what to do to appeal to the MTV audience. Some of the stuff like Aretha Franklin or Barbra Streisand comes to mind.