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March 7, 2008

A Brief History of Prog

Posted by The Editors under Uncategorized
[23] Comments 

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23 Responses to “A Brief History of Prog”

  1. Todd Says:

    March 7, 2008 at 9:56 pm

    That’s about right.

    Let’s see first we have the KC double trio circa 96. Big sound, very nice DVD where you can control the camera focus on the different members, or maybe that’s just for Bruford. I dunno, “deja vroom” and “eyes wide open” are good archives of this and the subsequent period sans bruford. Interesting, but like the editors point out, there best work was mos def around 72-74. I think everyone in prog had a brilliant album in that window, Yes,, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Van Der Graaf Generator, et al. The new crimson is promising. Porcupine Tree is the only modern “prog” I care to listen to lately. Fear of a Blank Planet and the EP “Nil Recurring”, (on which Fripp plays the best he’s played in years imo)–great!

    I guess Bowie’s glam is proggy enough, Roxy Music even more so, but Fripp’s guitar work on Heroes is nice.

    HBO should re-up on Flight of The Chonchords. Teh funny.

  2. Jim Says:

    March 7, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    It’s re-upped, just nothing new til (I think) 2009

  3. Sifu Tweety Fish Says:

    March 7, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    A less-than-brief history of Pong.

  4. Todd Says:

    March 7, 2008 at 10:36 pm

    KC will be in Chicago over the Summer.

    There’s always:

    Radiohead
    defjux.net
    Wu Tang Clan & Family
    Comets on Fire
    Melvins – A Senile Animal
    Mastodon
    new Magnetic Fields
    Post Rock
    Isis – In The Absence of Truth
    pitchfork media
    Clipse
    1980s I.Q. – The Wake, Tales..(Morissey meets 76′ Genesis, and they fight.)
    Porcupine Tree
    Weird Records from the weird record store, (Rasputin’s)
    Field Recording Blue Grass a la “O Brother Where art Thou?”
    Italian label Mello record’s tribute to VdGG
    Blue Cheer
    Anything from another era that is unintentially hilarious, (see most 1980s neo-prog, pallas is just dreadful)
    Alan Holdsworth can still hold a guitar
    Exile on Mainstreet

  5. Todd Says:

    March 7, 2008 at 10:51 pm

    Plus Shane’s favorite band, ‘Two queers and a synthesizer.”

  6. Chasm Says:

    March 7, 2008 at 10:56 pm

    hmm. that just makes me want to break out the vinyl of ‘USA’ (live) from ’75. haven’t heard it in years. turntable is in the living room – gf is gonna be pissed…

  7. Pinko Punko Says:

    March 7, 2008 at 11:13 pm

    We beefed with Clipse and he didn’t bring shit.

  8. Todd Says:

    March 7, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    “Giving the dog a bone”, “shoot to thrill”, and “let’s get it up” by AC/DC are some of my most favorite romantic love songs. Rarely has such an argument for love been made with such care.

  9. Todd Says:

    March 7, 2008 at 11:37 pm

    When I was 8 I had the following cassettes that I played to death.

    1. AC/DC – Back in Black
    2. Scorpions – Blackout
    3. Asia – Asia
    4. Genesis – Abacab and Duke
    5. Rush – …Exit Stage Left

    I just put those fuckers in my off-brand walkman and I walked fella, I walked. I thought Loverboy was pretty fucking rad too. I was eight, I needed the money. *sigh*

    I went to my first concert and it was Pink Floyd’s Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. They were my big brother’s I trusted them.

    These gateway drugs lead to your King Crimson’s, and *sigh* even ELP. Next thing I know was freebasing Anglagaard and Landberk albums. *sigh*

    This is difficult. I said OK, I’m not a junkie, look I have this Radiohead OK Computer album, it’s not prog, right? Wrong! I like REM, (we hates REM), I like alt rock,(we hates alt rock, play the precious fugazi)NO! You stay away from me Fish!( The precious La Gazza Ladra) Noooooo!

  10. Matt Browner Hamlin Says:

    March 8, 2008 at 12:05 am

    I like that prog rock has moved in a less silly direction. To wit: the Mars Volta, the Receiving End of Sirens, and Coheed & Cambria. Not silly, very progressive, generally a good idea.

  11. Todd Says:

    March 8, 2008 at 12:34 am

    You’ve been rocked.

  12. Todd Says:

    March 8, 2008 at 12:37 am

    He gets it

  13. Todd Says:

    March 8, 2008 at 12:40 am

    Why does Canada hate us?

  14. Todd Says:

    March 8, 2008 at 4:51 am

    Good times.

    “Incubus

    When footlights dim in reverence to prescient passion forewarned
    My audience leaves the stage, floating ahead perfumed shift
    Within the stammering silence, the face that launched a thousand frames
    Betrayed by a porcelain tear, a stained career

    You played this scene before, you played this scene before
    I the mote in your eye, I the mote in your eye
    A misplaced reaction

    The darkroom unleashes imagination in pornographic images
    In which you will always be the star, always be the star, untouchable
    Unapproachable, constant in the darkness
    Nursing an erection, a misplaced reaction
    With no flower to place before this gravestone
    And the walls become enticingly newspaper thin
    But that would be developing the negative view
    And you have to be exposed in voyeuristic colour
    The public act, let you model your shame
    On the mannequin catwalk, catwalk
    Let the cats walk, and the cat walks

    I’ve played this scene before, I’ve played this scene before
    I the mote in your eye, I the mote in your eye
    A misplaced reaction, satisfaction

    You can’t brush me under the carpet, you can’t hide me under the stairs
    The custodian of your private fears, your leading actor of yesteryear
    Who as you crawled out of the alleys of obscurity
    Sentenced to rejection in the morass of anonymity
    You who I directed with lovers will, you who I let hypnotise the lens
    You who I let bathe in the spotlights glare
    You who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask
    Just like a greasepaint mask

    But now I’m the snake in the grass, the ghost of film reels past
    I’m the producer of your nightmare and the performance has just begun
    It’s just begun

    Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppets
    As you stutter paralysed with rabbits eyes, searing the shadows
    Flooding the wings, to pluck elusive salvation from the understudy’s lips
    Retrieve the soliloquy, maintain the obituary
    My cue line in the last act and you wait in silent solitude
    Waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt

    You’ve played this scene before

    ” Fugazi

    Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell
    Extinguishing the fires in a private hell
    Provoking the heartache to renew the licence
    Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule
    Propping up the crust of the glitter conscience
    Wrapped in the christening shawl of a hangover
    Baptised in the tears from the real

    Drowning in the liquid seize on the Piccadilly line, rat race
    Scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth
    Caress Ophelia’s hand with breathstroke ambition
    An albatross in the marrytime tradition
    Sheathed within the Walkman wear the halo of distortion
    Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation
    She turned the harpoon and it pierced my heart
    She hung herself around my neck

    From the Time-Life-Guardians in their conscience bubbles
    Safe and dry in my sea of troubles
    Nine to five with suitable ties
    Cast adrift as their side-show, peepshow, stereo hero
    Becalm bestill, bewitch, drowning in the real

    The thief of Baghdad hides in Islington now
    Praying deportation for his sacred cow
    A legacy of romance from a twilight world
    The dowry of a relative mystery girl
    A Vietnamese flower, a Dockland union
    A mistress of release from a magazine’s thighs
    Magdalenes contracts more than favours
    The feeding hands of western promise hold her by the throat

    A son of a swastika of ’45 parading a peroxide standard
    Graffiti conjure disciples testaments of hatred
    Aerosol wands whisper where the searchlights trim the barbed wire hedges
    This is Brixton chess

    A knight for Embankment folds his newspaper castle
    A creature of habit, begs the boatman’s coin
    He’ll fade with old soldiers in the grease stained roll call
    And linger with the heartburn of Good Friday’s last supper

    Son watches father scan obituary columns in search of absent school friends
    While his generation digests high fibre ignorance
    Cowering behind curtains and the taped up painted windows
    Decriminalised genocide, provided door to door Belsens
    Pandora’s box of holocausts gracefully cruising satellite infested heavens
    Waiting, the season of the button, the penultimate migration
    Radioactive perfumes, for the fashionably, for the terminally insane, insane
    Do you realise? Do you realise?
    Do you realise, this world is totally fugazi

    Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries, where are the poets
    To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary”

    Chippenham you have been rocked.

  15. The Editors Says:

    March 8, 2008 at 9:18 am

    I saw Marillion live at The Shire. They hobbit rocked me like a fucking hurricane.

  16. The Editors Says:

    March 8, 2008 at 9:24 am

    … although, I can understand how it might be hard to stop listening to Marillion if you got into them in jr. high or whatever. Bad hobbits are hard to break.

  17. Gozer Says:

    March 8, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Conchords?
    http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/77-musical-comedy/

  18. Todd Says:

    March 8, 2008 at 9:52 pm

    Older kin will do that. I dust off Fugazi and La Gazza Ladra once a year, because 1. Very tight, skilled band. 2. Mark Kelly the keys player is just playing Irish reels. 3. The lyrics are about 1.booze, 2.broken hearts and never, ever hobbits.

  19. JET Says:

    March 9, 2008 at 2:52 am

    1. Bowie is not Prog. Man of Music, Man of Words (later Space Oddity) is at best Proto-Prog.

    2. There is absolutely nothing sillier than Coheed and Cambria. Rush + Maiden + Emo will turn out silly, however you slice it.

    3. Spock’s Beard ruined modern prog by making it legitimate to be half mainstream AOR, half muscular fusion Prog. Many have since taken up that call. It’s only galling because they call it Prog.

    4. Pure Reason Revolution.

    5. Fish is a terrible lyricist. His word play would be clever from a fifteen-year-old. Less so from an adult.

    6. The Mars Volta are still great, even if the last two albums have been less experimental and groundbreaking.

    7. Squarepuher is more Prog than 95% of what is called Prog.

    8. The Dear Hunter is a whole lot better than The Receiving End of Sirens.

    9. Biffy Clyro used to be great until their latest album.

    10. Prog is not about writing regular sngs and sticking fiddly bits in, however much Neil Morse, The Floer Kings and others tryto make it about that.

    11. It Bites have reformed – best Pop-Prog band ever.

    12. IQ rule.

  20. The Editors Says:

    March 9, 2008 at 11:52 am

    1. Bowie is not Prog. Man of Music, Man of Words (later Space Oddity) is at best Proto-Prog.

    This is nothing but musical hate speech, with some decidedly liberal fascist tendencies. Low and Heroes are cononical prog rock, arguments to the contrary are freaky moonage sophistry, man. Remember: you can’t spell ‘progressive’ without ‘fripp’ and ‘eno’!

  21. Todd Says:

    March 9, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    IQ does fucking rule.

  22. Dayv Says:

    March 9, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    I was gonna start fighting with you over this “prog Bowie” slander, but then I watched that Flight of the Conchords clip and now I’m stuck questioning the sanity of everyone who’s been recommending that show to me.

  23. Dain Brammaged Says:

    March 10, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    Hey Chasm, do yourself a favor and pick up the remastered ‘USA’ on CD. Added tracks fill out the set list, it now plays more like a concert. Saw Porcupine Tree this fall, great live and on record. Would love to catch IQ in person. As for Robert Fripp, I ran into him at a local Best Buy!

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