Progressive music was born out of the British Blues Rock scene of the late
sixties. It is a complex music, deserving of a complex analysis. I will
waffle at length later — you know I will — but here is the chase
scene, to which we now cut:
Once
upon a time, and a very good time it was, there was
The Court
of the Crimson King. There have
been many subsequent and wonderful King Crimsons, but after this first
and very fine album, Robert Fripp and lyricist Peter Sinfield were the
only remaining original Crims. If you absolutely love it, the live fragments
of this epoch-breaking ensemble are to be found on
Epitaph, including
a version of Holst’s
Mars, which is something of a clue to the
foundations of this music.
Touch came
out in 1969. It is a rare example of American progressive, beloved by fans
like me who bought it way back then. After a brief blaze of glory they
were hurled into ignominy by Decca Records, who favoured the Zen method
of promotion by total silence. In 2004, the album was resurrected to the
acclaim of
Moby magazine.
As leader Don Gallucci said, much later, it was ‘a search for the holy
grail of its generation by way of sound ... designed to go where no one had
musically gone before in order to break down barriers and walls in the mind;
to cause the listener to achieve an altered state of consciousness not through
meditation or drugs, but through music.’ ’Nuff said.
I
loved
The Yes Album from
the very first moment I heard it (thanks again Charlie). The same was true
for the whole run of albums up to the fabulous but unpopular
Relayer.
From the finger-twisting guitar rag,
The Clap, to the sonorous chords
of
Starship Trooper, this album voices the poignant longing of my
generation. It moves from the incomprehensible, but splendid,
Yours is
No Disgrace to the cautionary
Perpetual Change, as did we
all at some time or other. Original drummer Bill Bruford says
No Disgrace was
based on the theme to
Bonanza, but you can’t believe everything
you read.
Greg Lake left the first and holy King Crimson to join the accounting department
of Emerson and Palmer. Carl Palmer later admitted that the band were the
very definition of pretentiousness, but they also managed to knock out some
rousing tunes. The first and eponymous (ah, that’s better)
Emerson, Lake
and Palmer shows
off their considerable talent, as well as putting a touch of Janacek to
good use in the almost Crimson
Knife Edge. Pretentious or not, Palmer’s
drumming is beautiful to this day, and Emerson knew how to frighten any keyboard.
Genesis
left the playing fields of Charterhouse School for the harsh realities
of everyday rock and roll. Harsh because they insisted on carting a mellotron
around. The first several albums are good, especially the third,
Nursery
Cryme, but
Foxtrot hosts
their interpretation of the biblical
Revelation of St John —
Supper's
Ready — so best to start there, really.
Ian
Anderson was exasperated when his forty-minute satire of progressive pretension
was taken seriously, but
Thick as a Brick is
yet wonderful. Jethro Tull had an absolute right to success after a run
of excellent albums. A shame that the members of the earlier ensembles
couldn’t share in the later glory (and cash). In sneering, Anderson
developed an often sensible lyric, unusual in this world of pomp and pretence —
really
don’t mind if you sit this one out, my words but a whisper, your deafness
a shout, I may make you feel, but I can’t make you think, your sperm’s
in the gutter, your love’s in the sink... Anderson became the
great protagonist of progressive traditional folk rock. Oxymoronic to the
ultimate, really.
Gentle Giant deserved far better than they got. The unwillingness
to compromise became self-fulfilling, given the ruthless nature of the music
biz. There is nowhere a more virtuosic or distinctive music. They maintained
a loving following for over a decade before the irritation of poverty rubbed
too close. Strange, because several progressive bands became multimillionaires.
Giant understood close harmony, complex times, and married driving rock to
a hint of courtly mediaevalism. Always intelligent, always underrated. Grab
a copy of
Free Hand, and enjoy.
Pink
Floyd were the pipers at the gates of progressive. Success beyond anybody's
dreams came with the return to rock of
Dark Side of the Moon, but
the album before,
Meddle, houses
the fine
Echoes and of course the Kop Choir on the great
Fearless (a
song that rings true for anyone who has tried either mountain climbing
or idiocy). It is also worth aquiring their performance in the empty amphitheatre
of
Live at Pompeii to see what
the British sub-species of hippie looked like.
The Moody Blues hi-jacked the orchestra they were meant
to record the
New
World Symphony with, and made
Days of Future Passed, a source
music for progressive. A spacey song-based band with a mellotron, but
well worth a listen or two. Try
On the Threshold of a Dream for
that full ’60s idealist flavour.
Listen to Van Der Graff Generator only if you have no
suicidal tendency. Lyricist and singer Peter Hammill claimed to be a happy
sort who vented his distress successfully by visiting it upon the rest of
us.
H to He
Who Am the Only One is suitably
odd, and oddly suitable. The title refers, so we are told, to the fusion
of hydrogen (H) nucleii to form helium (He), the ‘basic exothermic reaction
in the sun and stars’— you even get the formula so that you can
make a sun and stars in the comfort of your own home. It took me a while to
realize that
Pioneers
over C referred to
C as in the speed of light. The same hideous
state — melting by travelling too fast — has been achieved by
others through that other big C, cocaine. Oh, and you get a free Robert Fripp
guitar solo with every copy.
Colosseum
incarnated as two distinct and wonderful bands. The first produced
The
Valentyne Suite, a fine fusion of classical, rock
and jazz. The second, fronted by the astonishing growl of Chris Farlowe,
gave us
Daughter of Time.
Punk
drew the pariahs of the press away from underground music in the late seventies.
Yes and co still packed arenas and sold huge amounts of albums, but were
sneered at by journos (that must have really hurt). Oftentime Crim, former
Yes drummer and
Bonanza fan, Bill Bruford, took part in a
late flowering called UK , in 1978. Partnered with fellow ex-Crim, John
Wetton, Zappatista Eddie Jobson and my favourite rock guitarist, Allan
Holdsworth, they made the album loquaciously titled
UK.
Many of the old folks kept touring. They gathered together as Asia , or
toured with Genesis’s Steve Hackett, and rocked and rolled in nostalgia.
Good luck to them, each and every one, but these are my quick picks, and here
I must leave you, returning to my unresting quest for the Growly Whale.
28 April 2004
