Are some people too stupid to like Prog? | RANT WARNING
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- Опубликовано: 21 авг 2024
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I am 56 and I began listening to prog rock when I was 11...and I have just discovered the magnificent Cardiacs, so the journey goes on ...
When I was a teen I was so stupid , I didn't even know I was listening to prog.
I've seen critics have a chip on their shoulder over the average music fan, even outside of the genres of prog or jazz music. I remember a review of the album _"Parallel Lines"_ as released by Blondie in the 1978. The guy praised it, and talked about how "the average person" wouldn't get how great this album was. He thought the song _"Heart of Glass"_ was a brilliant joke in that it was a disco song done by a new wave band, and that Blondie had done a great job with it. "Disco-ish beat, and yet it isn't crap!"
About three weeks later I was reading a review in the same magazine, and this one was ripping Blondie's album apart. The reviewer was ranting about how it was a horrible sell-out to the pop music of the day. "And of course" the unwashed masses were buying this album _(so he said),_ and it was such a shame that music buyers bought this crap and never appreciated the *GOOD* albums that Blondie had released before this pathetic album. And I thought "Isn't this the same magazine who had praised the album just a few weeks ago?".
So I dug up the previous issue, and the new review was written by *THE SAME GUY* who had written the review which had praised the album. But now that the album was popular, he claimed that he hated it.
Busted him, lol! Sounds like the sort of critic who gives critics a bad name. Like the guy in the check jacket and striped pants, straight from Central Casting, who gives used car salesmen a bad name.
Some people don't like a band that becomes popular regardless of the quality of the music. If it's popular how could it be good?!
That Is patethic!
"No one has ever erected a statue for a critic" - Sibelius.
I don’t know, I just like the clothes.
Hawkwind is kind of unique among bands. One day when I was wearing a Hawkwind T-shirt, some guy commented that he really liked them. We got talking about them and I said I came to them through progressive rock. He said he came to them through punk rock. A friend of mine said she came to them through goth rock!
Don't panic!
The keywords are patience and focus. You have to give yourself the opportunity to absorb music. With waning attention spans this seems to get more and more difficult over time... even for me: a lover of prog in his fifties.
I think the pandemic produced many more lovers of prog though. People were forced to slow down and try out 'new things'.
Yes, you hit the nail on the head. It took me a LOT of listens to appreciate Frank Zappa's so-called "jazz" albums, for example.
An open mind is all you need.
I dont have to understand the music to like it , but I find it satisfying to crack the polymetric
codes in prog.
Love your channel Andy , and you are a cleva Man.
fanks
I'll tell you something about clever people. We're not well liked.
I usually think "clever" is a step away from dishonesty myself, so it's not a positive thing. It might be a British/American connotation thing though.
Jealousy is , truly , a terrible thing .
@@sfmag1 It's also pejorative in America, but the angle is anti-intellectualism rather than suspicion. "Well, don't you think you're so clever," etc.
If said unironically with a straight face, it's usually taken as a positive. It's also more often applied to children than adults. Which is weird.
@@3stringovation IMO I would say its not dealing with a situation openly, honestly, and in a forthcoming transparent way but rather foregoing that for whatever reason and resorting to a kind of furtive sneakiness(e.g. A kid manipulating parents). To me, its a last resort.
@@3stringovation We Brits have a similar system, whereby 'clever' can be used as a synonym for devious, sly, crafty, deceptive etc, but on the whole, being smart is seen as desirable. There seems to be less call for "keeping it real - real dumb" (Chris Rock) and people rarely boast about it. Clever, as an adjective, is more often applied to acts or strategies than it is to grown adults.
Exceptions abound, however. When economists all warned that Brexit was financial suicide for the UK, its proponents fought back, not with evidence, but with the slogan, "we're sick of experts", in an obvious attempt to appeal to morons in the same way that Trump pandered to his base with "I love the uneducated". Trump was clearly talking to "his people", but Michael Gove, who coined the expression "sick of experts", was an elite Oxford educated Conservative from an extremely privileged background, patronising the "herd". This was blatant anti-intellectualism for political gain. People correctly accused him of trying to play the "everyman" card. (There is no one less "everyman" than Gove).
I don't think we are smarter than Americans but we don't seem to fetishize ignorance quite as much. There seems to be more of a stigma attached to being openly dim-witted in the UK. Our politicians have stopped short of calling algebra "fuzzy math" (G.W. Bush) to discredit statistics they don't understand. They would be laughed out of parliament if they ever described themselves as a "very stable genius" or bragged about passing a test designed to spot early onset alzheimer disease like they'd just solved Fermat's last theorem.
Nevertheless we are not immune from feeling some sort of pride for our cognitive limitations in particular fields. No Brit will ever boast about being illiterate. Being unable to read as an adult is seen as tragic, even shameful, yet you will hear people happily report that they were terrible at maths at school and switch off as soon as numbers are mentioned. They seem proud of it for some reason.
My stepbrother would play "Tales From Topographic Oceans" when I was 8, and I LOVED it, and it's still my favorite prog rock record ever.
I'll say that he was supportive. He lent her his entire legendary first synth/ moog set up that resembled a 1930s telephone operator switch board. She played The Endless Enigma at Emerson's memorial concert. She got extremely emotional and started crying uncontrollably at one point .
It's Funny you brought this up. i was always a listener who almost always could "know" what music hit me, and what did not. I Love It immediately, and it dominates my musical psyche.
Listening to Fragile, The Yes Album, and Close to The Edge back to back in that order when I was 12 in '74 was a takeover of my musical mind. I couldn't not like Yes, Pink Floyd, LZ, Steely Dan
"Yours is No Disgrace"....
100% correct on music journalists, it’s almost beyond dispute. Even stranger are the huge numbers of intelligent people who in the seeming absence of being able to reflect on or contemplate why they like music, willingly let their taste be subsumed into an alignment with that of the journalist, wrongly assuming that said journalists flamboyant and confident rhetoric indicates an understanding beyond their own that they must be seen to agree with so as to appear knowledgeable.
Andy your thumbnail game is ON.
Well done.
Thanks for all you do Andy
Thank you too!
Excursions as you say is a great way to describe active listening. (Or expeditions as moody blues called them)
and I think Prog and Fusion are perfect for this.
This is one reason I love these 2 genres. The amazing thing is that sometimes a first listen will sound unlistenable and after awhile something clicks. Some of Sun Ras stuff is a great example.
Critics tend to write off Prog mainly because it seems gimmicky like sci fi and fantasy is wrongly pigeonholed. (Coincidently the album artwork is similar)
Final thought is look at what drugs most of the genre are doing and that's where they are going. Are they numbing and distracting or explore inward? 🌈🌈❤
I'm at work. We have a test case. Stupid people listen to the music my coworkers are listening to today.
I used to work on the cleaning team at a Cheese factory. They used to work in silence......
I'm not having that......
So I took a tape player in, and started playing my music. I didn't pander to the alleged intelligence level of cleaners, who are looked down on by many people. I played classical music (mainly Bach, plus some Debussy, Stravinsky), Tom Waits (the clunky stuff, not the Ballads), Captain Beefheart (not Trout Mask Replica 😄), War of the Worlds, Tubular Bells, and Philip Glass.
After a few moans, they ended up enjoying it all, even Beefheart (Doc at the Radar Station).
If I have a point, it's that it's impossible to classify people, and that a bit of exposure to the good stuff can do wonders.
Very clever thumbnail. The answer to your question was on the album cover!
Spot on, as usual. Always have a predisposition to run against the self professed "smart set" when it comes to art. If you ever want a great example of how the elite musical press went to great lengths to disparage progressive music and be the virtual gatekeepers of musical taste, read the glowing reviews and 4-5 star ratings of all the early 70's Prog greats in Rolling Stone's first edition of their Encyclopedia of Rock&Roll. Then compare the exact same albums in Rolling Stone's subsequent 3rd, 4th and 5th editions where 5 star albums suddenly are re-written to 2 1/2 - 3 star ratings.....In addition to the reason's you gave above, I also think the reason has something to do with much of the Progressive music's roots are in Western Religious tradition (and I'm not a religious person).
As Eleanor Roosevelt said (in a rather prescient moment):
"Great minds discuss progressive rock;
average minds discuss Taylor Swift;
small minds discuss rap and hip-hop."
Don't knock rap. Like all music, the best is incredible and the best rappers and turntablists are virtuosos
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer The only rap I've ever liked was Gil Scott-Heron. But if we discuss that anymore, well....
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer Yes they are. Some are very clever in their word play.
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer
Turntablists?
Ive been putting records on for over 50 years and never ruined a needle!
Just this morning when playing The Lamb lies down on Broadway, I thought " that's another great piece of Turntable ism" 👍😁
It depends on artistic integrity.
If someone is making noises purely to make money and become popular, then it doesn't originate from an artistic intension.
If, on the other hand, they make noises because it gives them fulfillment whether or not other people like those noises, then they are coming from an artistic standpoint.
You don't create art to order. You create art because it gives you personal satisfaction.
I think elitist is the wrong word. I just think artistic people continue to have the child- like imagination that most adults lose when they mature.
A couple of thoughts... People like what they like, not everyone likes prog or other types of complex music, and that's OK. I personally like prog. My introduction to prog was the Fragile album. As much as I like prog, sometimes it's fun to just turn off your mind and rock out to some stupid rock and roll.
For me "prog", short for progressive, means going forward, moving on to a hopefully better place. Kind of in the Miles Davis sense of changing direction. I started in hard rock and have moved through blues, funk, and now Jazz, while still "progressing". As far as the "esthetic", the bassist Rufus Reid said something in his instructional video that struck me. You can change your approach or note choices,for example, till your result is something that "SATISFIES". This, for me, has been my standard for awhile now. I can't know if it satisfies others,but hey, it's going out to other human beings so maybe it will satisfy them as well.😮
Hi, Andy. It's "time ghost" or "time spirit", so your translation is spot on.
hawkwind spirit of the age,great lyrics
Thank you for the recommendation in the background. I really enjoyed it!
Thanks Andy, I feel smarter than yesterday... I think.
Glad to help
Blue is a good colour for the hair.
Are some people too snobbish to like anything else but Prog ? In the early 1970s I was a Grammar School boy [Brainwashed that we were the top elite strata of intelligence in society - obviously measurably brainier than Public School Boys..] Consequently we were expected to only like Classical and it's 'lesser reputed' modern offshoot Prog. Until I was 13, I didn't disagree, I liked Prog.. [Prog was what my middle aged dad bought home from the record shop every Saturday to show off his big loud Hi Fi Stereo. He made a ritual of coming home from a mid day pub session, and sitting me down on the sofa beside him to continue my weekly Prog & Audiophile indoctrination]. So Prog ruled - if any boy at school dared admit to liking Slade and T.Rex they'd be treated like a moron and get bullied. Bowie was tolerated slightly better only because of his pretentious poetic lyrics. Though we'd still get called a p**f for liking him. Imagine the aggro I'd get if I was found out for buying Alice Cooper LPs. One of my schoolmates got it even worse for being spotted buying a chart topping soul LP by heaven forbid a black band !!! Obvious 'common knowledge', Prog could only be truly appreciated by the white male gender - blacks and females were only capable of understanding Pop music, it was unimaginable that most girls could ever play real instruments to a serious enough level for Prog. So, the reality was institutionalised racism and misogyny were also acceptable components of our elitist Grammar Boys School ethos. However, outside of school, me and my mates thrived on both Top of the Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test, so my expanding LP collection encompassed as many diverse genres as my pocket money could stretch too. In the evenings I taught myself rudimentary guitar and ended up eventually chord bashing in a Punk band. I had one of the best Punk record collections at 6 Form College - I was a 'leader' in the cutting edge in-crowd elite. But even then I was still buying Gong, Hillage, Greenslade, and Gentle Giant, etc, LPs - and didn't care who knew it. .. Times changed, by then we snobbily considered Led Zep and Sabbath fans to be brainless sheep.. Yes, another old git enjoying nostalgia for the irrational intolerance of teenage music fans. Thank the music gods for Punk opening our blinkered provincial minds to all women bands and Reggae, and beyond !!!!!... Oh, and I can still like Prog.
Super-I-Ometer probably needs to be consulted on some aspect of this
You're right-Zeitgeist means the spirit of the age .
There is prog I like, and prog I think I’m supposed to like because it’s clever. If I don’t connect with it I can still appreciate the artistry and musicianship, but it won’t end up on my playlist. I don’t care about all the noodly bits and technical prowess, I want a song that goes on a journey and makes me feel something.
Totally agree. Love this channel but not sure if I am really a prog diehard. Love King Crimson but can't stand Yes of Rush etc. Appreciate Cardiacs but not enough to buy them. I hae a lot of genres I identify with but every genre has crap in it. And genres I don't like always have exceptions. Recently just caught onto Laufey - have never been into jazz vocal but she has hooked me well.
One of the things I love about prog is a lot of the pieces are mind movies. Songs like Supper’s Ready, ELP’s Pirates, Tarkus and Karnevil 9, Yes’s Starship Trouper are mini movies for the mind. I discovered prog when I was in high school in the mid 1970s and used to smoke marijuana (GASP! Say it ain’t so!). But it made the music sound really good 😊. I don’t think of myself as being clever. I played violin in the school orchestra, took eight years of piano lessons and played guitar in a garage band. I still play now that I’m retired and I still enjoy listening to my little mind movies sans the marijuana. Say what you like about the esthetics of prog but it is a very entertaining and stimulating genre.
Thanks for the video and thanks for the work you do.
This is the best authentic crap around Andy! 🤘🤪
To me the most interesting & appealing period for Hawkwind was around the time they jumped to Charisma Records. They were writing songs around stories by new wave SF writers like Mike Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, & Phillip Jose Farmer. You need not be an intellectual to listen to that period in their music, but it helps if you've read some of those books. Rock fans who are curious about Steve Reich might check out Electric Counterpoint: I. Fast from *Different Trains.*
🎯Bingo! "Art IS elite." All art involves *distillation* of reality/life. This requires a certain degree of intelligence/focus/subtlety. Which is to say - artfulness. I have an admission: I am elite. I think everyone ought to be elite! In the sense of say, 100 people attending an obviously large picnic and the main fare is, atypically, grilled steak & lobster. Some of arrivals are aghast and protest, "This is elitist!" To which I respond, "Oh, I'm sorry, you're welcome to picnic on the grub up here, but there's is a table just for you way down that way, far away from the central gazebo & performers, and they serve hamburgers & hot dogs, and if, um, that's too elitist for you, even farther away is a table with gruel & chips. OK?" Them: "Well, that's BETTER!"
Im only clever enough to interrupt listening to this to say- Andy’s new album is great! Okok, I’ll watch the rest now
Being a lover of Progressive rock is having an album on in the car, arriving home with 15 minutes of the current track to play then sitting there in the car while it finishes (despite the frozen peas defrosting in the boot) and as it finishes shouting ..."MARVELLOUS"*! Then getting the shopping out!
*Thanks to Brian Watson for the shout: "MARVELLOUS"
Hi Andy - great video - I can’t believe that we share a favourite movie - I was obsessed with A matter of life and death back in the day - it was always on!! Mind you I don’t profess to be a clever person or fully understand all the music I listen - but I do like the sound it makes 😀
I saw Yes twice in the late 70s. Used to wake up to Starship Troopers every morning.
22:20 ".. and carbon trumps sillicon." 😂
To each his own - why do you have to disparage people if they don't like prog?
cuz prog
I'm not too stupid to like it, I'm impatient
Andy, that shelf of vinyl looks like it's about to collapse
Okay, the exact Translation of Zeit is Time.
In two major Meanings:
What Time is it?
and
In what Times do we live in?
The second Meaning now gets fused in this unique German Way to create a new Word with Geist.
Geist can mean „Ghost“ or „Mind“. For this Fusion also the second Meaning is used: Zeitgeist is the Collective Mind of a certain Time in History. That Time can be in the newest Part of History: „Now“.
The Zeitgeist can adopt to knew Events or abruptly Change. It can be near static, evolutionary, revolutionary or erratic.
John Lydon loves Can, very clever man.
I totally agree? Prog is complicated and you dare say you need a certain degree of intelligence and musical awareness to appreciate it? I think you are spot on...??
I think that 'music appreciation' is something that is an actual decision one pursues and those who pursue it do not necessarily all gravitate toward the same type of music. I have known so many people who do not own many albums if any. They don't get music that hasn't been floating in the air their whole lives in malls and supermarkets and they don't care. I became a music enthusiast in my teens and now have thousands of albums of all styles of music. There are styles I do not like to be sure, but there is likely an artist of that style who I might like. I think some people, (hopefully not the majority of "prog" fans, but I've encountered a number of them) who very narrowly define progressive Rock music as Symphonic Rock only made by white artists, (they couch the 'whites only' part but those are the only artists they laud) are the opposite of intelligent, even though they claim that the music they like is superior to all other kinds of music. There aren't many people who have album collections of thousands like you and I Andy, but I've encountered, really too many, who have a few dozen or perhaps even hundreds of albums all of a very limited, narrow style and speak of styles of music other than their very narrow view of music as inferior
I think it's mostly musicians who love prog because it showcases virtuosity. It's exciting as well as inspiring. There are dozens of techniques that can be learned from listening and studying prog. Now one can say that Pink Floyd has a widespread audience with a lot of mainstream commercial appeal among non musicians , but...they're not prog.
Andy, this is a fun video, even if you are lying about liking Hawkwind. You don’t like Hawkwind. 😜As another commentator said Hawkwind is space rock not Prog. And I could see why a lot of Prog and jazz rock fans would not like Hawkwind. And I love jazz rock. But I also love Hawkwind. I am a massive Hawkwind fan. Sure they’ve never been the most virtuosity band. But it’s not about that even though they have many albums with some pretty strong playing.
Fantastic episode Andy! Love your references to Van der Graaf Generator lol. I am an avid book reader and loved to play Dungeons & Dragons back in the 70s and 80s and received plenty of elitist backlash.
You have to be intelligent to listen to 90s house, and hot, and glamorous, and have incredible lamps
Intelligence is an open mind and a bit of patience. Nothing wrong with hating something but always give it a chance and know it before you dismiss it. Some of my favourite albums are ones I didnt like for a while but something kept me trying. Others I liked straight away.
Exile On Main St not a first listen album. Nor is Shakespeare a first go round read to really appreciate it.
@@edwardyazinski3858 I actually liked it since I was a kid but I always thought some of the songs were filler. Now im in my 40s I realise that theres no filler on it at all. Its got to be the most consistent double album ever
Exactly. Put a ? on the end and you can say anything. "I'm just asking a question "
I think I'm too stupid to understand and write prog, but I enjoy listening and practicing guitar chops, not sure why I find writing basically impossible lately. Part of me thinks you need a certain amount of ignorance to confidently settle on material, as I always find myself thinking "this sounds like something I heard somewhere" and overly self critiquing to the point of not being able to write, although I might also be so ignorant I'm dont realize I'm just not creative. Music is so so hard.
Maybe you are just to much Bound to Good Taste. I do not mean that you should lower your Skills, just allowing yourself to be a Savage from Time to Time.
Just get like 5 songs you're already witten and stick em' all together, and boom!
Ah there you have it, 'art is elitist" and I agree wholeheartedly!! If any of these great videos you are making become lost, they will become known as the Lost Andy Edwards Sessions!
I haven't watched this yet, but can't resist commenting. I've long thought that you can judge a musician by the music he writes or listens to. Complexity of music suggests (there are always exceptions) complexity of mind.
That said, I wouldn't say that it's about being smart or being dumb. It's about being in the right mood or frame of mind when listening to an album. And if you listen to an album a dozen different times over a few weeks, then sooner or later you'll be in the right mood and your brain will be running at the right speed to match up with the music. And then you might find that you like it. And once you get past that, you'll start to listen to that music *because* you're in the mood which fits the music, and you'll like it even more.
There are several albums which I didn't like at all the first few times I played them, but which I now consider some of the best albums in my entire collection. And yet there are other albums or songs that I've heard dozens of times, and the songs are "okay", but they have never connected with how I feel at any time.
Some people are maybe too willfully ignorant (or stubbornly clinging to a casually arrived at conclusion) to connect with music that's generally labeled as prog. We all do this to some degree about all sorts music and other things.
For me the issue isn't whether a song is more complex than the average, or that to play it you need a modicum of talent and dedication to play it or that you need to appreciate the intentions/background/skill of the performer to understand the music.
All these things can be learnt. It takes time, dedication, opportunity and curiousity, admittedly. But it isn't innately elitist. That you've had to work a bit harder to obtain your Latest Pop Thrill makes that moment of understanding and revelation more precious. (At least for me it does.)
No, the issue is gatekeepers. People who say 'you won't get this, you're too thick' or 'this is not for the likes of you'. Or 'I like this so I am therefore better than you'. Or 'Why are you still listening to that?'. Or 'that band isn't REAL '. Or 'I liked them more before they became popular'. Those are your bona fide elitists and they are why we can't have nice things.
These behaviours make regrettable sense in teenagers while they are still trying to determine a sense of self in an overly competitive social environment - i.e. school - but less so in adulthood. Real grown-ups evangelise and share their musical discoveries, not jealously hide them away from the unworthy.
I've watched quite a few of your videos, Andy and in one you mentioned Tool being overrated. As a prog rock enthusiast since the early 70' (still my favourite genre of music), I discovered Tool about six months ago. After a little research on their last two albums, I was hooked. I would say that everything you are saying about prog rock, relates to both Fear Inoculum and 10,000 Days. They take me on a thought-provoking journey, both lyrically and musically, with complex time signatures and polyrhythms. I'm not as engrossed with their early music, but both of the albums mentioned are worth a listen and certainly have a concept driving the narrative.
I had an 18 months prog rock phase when I was 16/17 just before I started to listen to John Peel. It's a bit embarrassing to me now, though I love Godspeed you! black emperor and they are Prog Rock I guess. And if an 19 minute pop song based on a book by Herman Hesse is not pretentious, it's at least extremely melodramatic. Add to that the kitschy and escapist Roger Dean artwork and esoteric stage presence, it's no wonder the attitude of the Ramones was so much more appealing for a teenager in the 80s.
Nothing to add, I am born 1959, your are a soulmate! I am not Alone on this Planet!, by the was, interesting guitar on your wall back there!???
Looks like a Gibson ES-175. Or similar from another manufacturer. In any case, a hollow body electric guitar, usually preferred by Jazz players. Steve Howe plays an ES-175 quite often.
Wow! I have never commented on this channel before, but have watched quite a few episodes and am inspired to type away. So I watched this while eating a frozen pizza on September 11 and you were mentioning Zeitgeist (not sure if you have ever seen that movie, but very fitting for the date). I got to questioning your very existence with the whole A.I. thing going on among many other philosophies mentioned beyond the realm of progressive rock. 29 minutes of rant that could be equal in itself to listening to one side of a perfect prog rock album. I think I get what you are trying to say....or was it the algorithm telling me what I wanted to hear? They say there is a thin line between genius and insanity and I think I just danced on that thin line while watching this video while eating a frozen pizza that may or may not be real. I am going to listen to Alan Parsons, "I Robot" now and re-think my humanity. Thanks for the stimulation.
Yes - Close to the edge -- is a masterpiece.
I think one of my favourite quotes (mis-quote since I can't remember exactly) was a quote from some progressive rock guy (Maybe King Crimson?) saying that it struck him looking out at the audience, that it was just blokes. I always found that really true and funny.
This has to be one of the profound videos about music ever- life and death and the Aesthetic. My wife and step daughters are very clever and they are not keen on prog. But is that down to patience?
Your robots points; a robot might understand the feelings in a dry unemotion way. Say the robot sees you are sad, so the robot puts a sad face on, the robot will not feel sad. When we humans have emotions the body releases hormones which make us feel a certain way.
It’s such a shame the critics hate prog - I think they are threatened by it
I like to enjoy smart music in a stupid way and stupid music in a smart way.
One comment would like to make revolves around Tom Petty’s old mantra “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.” And the failure of many proggers ability to use the edit. Elitism does not correspond to twiddling hence Grateful Dead as an example.
That’s exactly what I think!
I think a quite large proportion of the populace associate music entirely with dancing, so simpler forms with repetitive rhythms are preferred. In these cases, I don't think intelligence or cleverness plays into it. Your assessment of the taste-makers/critics that convinced many generations to avoid complexity in rock music is spot on, however. There is an additional prejudice against intelligence / science / complexity in general that is quite problematic and ubiquitous here in the US. This applies to music as well.
I wouldn't put Iggy Pop in the dumb column as a Detroit area teen I saw the Stooges when he was still just Iggy. The average music fan back then did not like the Stooges their speed was Ted Nugent and Grand Funk. They thought I was weird. But Stooges (& MC5) fans like me were listening to Zappa, Beefheart, Crimson Jethro Tull, Spirit, Colosseum et al.
You're excellent, Andy 😃👏👏
Thanks! 😃
I think perseverance is also key and the willingness to listen until the unfamiliar is familiar.
Persistence is needed for some subject matter, to be sure. I think Prog listeners are willing to put off immediate gratification for long term rewards. That actually is a sign of intelligence in certain aspects of life.
One of Johnie Rotten's favourite albums was Aqualung and Kurt Cobain liked Red.
At the second-hand cheeseburger shop, one guy said, "Is prog too stupid for some people to like?"
I LOVE LOVE LOVE your thumbnail.
This is very click baity. Its a video about me! Truth is, I'm probably too stupid to understand prog or fusion, but I love it because it touches me on a visceral level. I backward engineer my reasons for loving it after the fact.
Great topic, Andy. Still my favourite music discussion channel on You tube!
My 5 cents worth:
You can be erudite, clever, well educated and still have a low musical IQ. The opposite can often also be true. Then there's personality -> taste, patience, attention span, passion, etc. So it's very complicated, as you say. Let's not forget education -> understanding. Red flags for low musical IQ -> no clue about recognising appropriate timbres, narrow field of interest (I only listen to Heavy Metal,) confused by intricacy and almost always referring to it as 'experimental' music, attracted to obvious kitsch, inability to recognise objective qualities about something that moves or repels them, especially the inability to explain it even in the simplest terms -> Ace of Spades makes me want to jump up and down, do some head-banging, get drunk with my mates, screw a bird I just met at the pub Fracture? Blah! Forces me to have to sit down and listen, and doesn't make me want to pick a fight at a football match. Btw, I love both tracks, so the aforementioned is just a random example.
The British musical press are a bunch of wankers. They somehow manage to politicise music into a class struggle rather than critique it on its merits -> Rock 'n' Roll is good because it's Working Class; Prog is wanking because it's made by the same tossers we're rebelling against, plus they're pretentious. Hardly anyone goes to the trouble of actually understanding what the word 'pretentious' means and what it can be appropriated to. A person can be pretentious; music can sound bad and pompous, or good and grandiose, but it can't be pretentious.
I'm not a Prog person, or a Metal head, or someone who just listens to Classical music, or thinks Jazz is the greatest. Just love music, any music that engages me, is unique, makes me glad that I'm alive. So I do have many Prog albums, as I do Metal, Classical, Jazz, even PoP, but probably Jazz the most. Yet I'd rather listen to a good blues number than a below average Jazz record.
So, having a decent music IQ is a pre-requisite to understanding Prog, as it would be for appreciating A Love Supreme, or The Rite of Spring, as it would be for understanding that one of the key qualities of David Sylvian's Pocket Full of Change is the timbre of the keyboard sound which he spent months developing to get it just right, the same reason why Peter Gabriel is so unique and just oozing high musical IQ. But whether someone likes it or not can also purely be a matter of taste. As Fripp says - Like and Dislike are cheap, but either way, taste is taste and can't be argued. But it can be explained.
Popular music is mostly made for people who have very little interest in music, and people with low musical IQs far outnumber those who have the capacity to have a proper love for, and relationship, with music. So, if you prefer to listen to Kylie Minogue's Locomotion instead of Keith Jarrett's I fall in Love too Easily/ The Fire Within, it's quite probable you have a very low musical IQ, simply suffer from a severe case of bad taste, or aren't interested in music to begin with.
I’ve said before that the British music press and it’s hatred of anything mildly adventurous,( especially prog with its Charterhouse educated boys), is a simplistic and misguided attempt to politicise music. I’d agree with pretty much everything you’ve said there.
Last time I heard Iggy Pop presenting on the radio he played Magma
I heard Iggy Pop presenting on BBC 6Music last week, still going strong!
Yes. Next question?
Beg to differ on the cake issue, it could simply be predicated on greed.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, critique
i love u Andy
I never thought I liked prog rock because I'm smart and a intelligent head. I just love it, as much as I love classical, jazz and fusion music.
Good music captures something magical. It is a window into a little drama in which we feel something authentic, whether that be beautiful or ugly, true or mendacious, cruel or kind.
The progression in progressive music is twofold. Its in the originality of the emotional/experiential geography to which it transports us, and in the sounds it uses to reach that.
Pretentious music doesn't achieve that. It might have all the harmonic and rythmic bells and whistles, but it just sounds "trying", contrived - it lacks the magic.
A good pop song has that magic element. But it differs from progressive music because it speaks to a well
trodden emotional comfort zone. Lets be honest and admit we all like that comfort zone. Its enchanting, full of fun, love and happiness, or maybe loss, grief and sadness, but Its human life as we all know it.
But progressive music is exploring the margins and yes it does take a certain kind of person to be interested in the margins, to believe that there are other possibilities.
As a teenager listening to Close to the Edge I used to think, "wherever this place is, its where I want to be" and it took me quite a while to realise that the world described doesn't exist, even in nature, and can never exist. It is just an imaginative moment, a holistic vision grown from the seed of a much smaller and more partial encounter with reality.
So both pop and prog are equally legitimate. If everyone was an explorer, there would be no home. If we're honest we all like to go home for a bit even if all our mates are still in the same pub telling all the same stories.
Beautiful video
I tend to look at it this way, it is about being grounded or not. I have a very good friend who is the opposite of me in so many ways, he is totally grounded, has only ever lived in the town in which he was born, likes films that are about real life and likes songs he can relate to, he likes his entertainment structured. He watched the film Banshees of Inniskillen , enjoyed it but hadn't a clue what it was saying and was asking me what it was about. He likes Springsteen, Dylan, Waits, The Smiths and Joe Strummer and will occasionally buy some prog albums at the prompting of myself and another friend, his favourite Jethro Tull album being Songs From The Wood because it is more song based, jazz he cannot understand at all When The Comet is Coming were on Jools Holland, for me they were the best thing on there, his comment was "them Comets can fuck off".
Me, I've always been a dreamer, I'm never content with what is around me, I want to know what is over that hill, or round that bend. As a child I would look up at the stars and want to know what was out there which drew me to science fiction. Prog and jazz fitted me, it was music made by dreamers for dreamers like me, not rooted in reality but pushing the boundaries of reality.
Does that make me more intelligent than my friend? Does that make my friend stupid? No, neither statement is true, it just shows that we have different ways of thinking and looking at life and reality.
Most people don’t want to put the time in.
Yes.
People who just say that the are "music lovers", should be seasoned music listeners. Otherwise people become like people say that they love cinema and their cinema diet is MCU, Disney, and DC movies. Speaking of Steve Reich. Check out a video of Rachel Flowers playing the Steve Reich peice "Piano Phase", actually composed for two pianos. Rachel, who I believe is now in her mid 20s, is blind and is frighteningly musically gifted. She is a mult instrumentalist that is able to play play guitar,bass, flute and Chapman Stick. Her primary instrument is piano/keyboards.She has been playing Emerson since her early teens and was mentored by him. Rachel Flowers is worth checking out. I believe that she now has three albums of original compositions.
Rachel Flowers - I think she started her career playing ELP and Keith Emerson was very supportive
I don't understand prog, but I quite enjoy it.
"Anyone who devotes themselves entirely to the spirit of the times is a poor idiot. There is something castrating about the eternal avant-garde's addiction to innovation." H.M.E
Given you a tenner, buy some Grecian 2000 with it.
If you are about to take someone on a date, insist on going through their record collection first.
I’m not into prog, it may well be I’m too unintelligent to get it, but I think it’s timing, in 1979 when I started buying records and finding my own taste, I was into the punk, new wave and 2 tone bands, that music opened a door way to reggae and dub, then in the 80s I got into soul/funk/jazz/disco, now being into soul especially, I wanted to hunt down as many soul records I could find, and a popular thing in the 80s and working my way back through 70s stuff was a lot of jazz fusion albums contained one or two vocal tracks sung by soul/jazz singers and I loved them, but I tried to listen to the rest of the album and I just couldn’t get along with it, it’s not me, I’m bass lines and vocals.
6:15 Like the moving meditations, or focusing on martial arts as meditation.
You make a lot of good points here Andy. Ever since the late 70's when I discovered Prog the sneering critics have been bashing it and pushing their opinions onto people who have never heard it. It's the worst kind of inverted snobbery.
exactly...so now it's seen as a bit of a joke which is very insulting to the incredible musicians involved in it's making
Hawkwind are Spacerock. they never claimed to be prog.. in fact.. ''prog'' is a journalists label NO band ever used... And btw.. the fact ''silver machine'' was all you could think of when claiming to love Hawkwind is actually a confession that you've never even HEARD Hawkwind except that one time on Telly.
I'm not a massive Hawkwind fan, but I had friends who were and so I've listened to quite a bit. I've seen them a few times and I've seen some of the spin-off bands at festivals. I might easily freeze and only think of Silver Machine if under pressure. I might also get tongue tied thinking of Stacia dancing to Silver Machine. Andy might also have been wanting to reference Lemmy as someone more at home with visceral rock&roll.
Except for when I used to listen to Levitation and the compilation album Masters of the Universe which are the two albums I grew up listening, And of course later on Space Ritual, but if you ignore those, yes, I have only ever heard Silver Machine.
@@AndyEdwardsDrummer to be fair, considering just how prolific they were, that's a pretty small sample.
@@davidmorgan6896yes, but he included Space Ritual which is quintessential Hawkwind. They have made many musical twists and turns since, but Space Ritual is their home base.
I know I am.
Zeitgeist - the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era. There you go.
I don't know how old you are Andy but I'm nearly 62 and one of the great things about getting older is frankly you don't give a fuck what other people think. There seems to be the assumption as you said that prog is somehow music for the middle classes. I'm proudly working class and have loved prog since my teens. Yes I felll into the trap when punk came along of feeling that I had to hide my prog albums, never mind that most of my mates were probably also listening to their older siblings copy of Rumours in private. That whole 'year zero' attitude when punk came along was almost Stalinist in it's approach. Even when I was younger I listened to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Aretha alongside Yes, Genesis and Floyd. I do have blindspots mind. I love Krautrock especially Can but whenever I listen to Tago Mago I usually skip Augm and Peking O. There was also a lot of crossover between hippys and punks in the late 70's/early 80's. Take a band like Here And Now, who toured with the likes of ATV and The Fall, played for free and lived an anarchist lifestyle. Crass were old hippies who utilised punk to get their points across. It's the same with the snobbery by people of my generation about rap and hip hop. My dad loves modern jazz/bebop but his interest stops around the mid 60's so consequently I rejected it for years because I think subconsciously you reject what your parents are into. I liked Miles fusion stuff but that and Mahavishnu Orchestra was about it. What got me into earlier jazz was investigating the samples that A Tribe Called Quest used. Now I love stuff like Coltrane's Giant Steps and Blue Trane. Thete's a very funny Fast Show sketch called Indie club sort of a companion to Jazz club which parodies that NME approach you mentioned. Hugely hyperbolic intro to a band, including the line 'everything you know is wrong', a line very familiar to anyone who read the NME back in the day. Followed by a band who sound so wet insipid and jingly jangly. It absolutely nails that inverted snobbery that was the music press's stock in trade.