OFF: Progressive really progressive?

[Chris Bates]

If I might delurk for a moment and add my two penn'orth

Steven Tice writes

> Well, sure, none of the great bands of the early seventies are producing work
> at all comparable to their best work.

I think that this _was_ largely true a couple of years ago but there
have been many great albums produced by 70s dinosaurs in recent years.
Some examples... the Coverdale-Page album, most recent HW (IITBOTFTBD
excepted), Yes *Keys to Ascension* which  is comparable to any of their
early albums, Rush *Roll the Bones* and *Counterparts* are both truly
great (I don't have *Test for Echo* yet), Deep Purple *Purpendicular*
- one of their 2 or 3 best albums ever. Best of all is *Ozzmosis* wherein
Ozzy shows the young pretenders what heavy metal is _really_ all about.

> King Crimson probably is the only exception, and I would say that
> even they haven't quite achieved the quality of the Fripp/Wetton/Bruford
> days.  But I think there's nothing wrong with continuing to use the word
> "progressive" to describe them, even if it's something of a misnomer.

For me KC _have_ gone downhill and in doing so they illustrate what
I think went wrong with *prog*. As the bands became more proficient,
older and more comfortable they lost their creative edge. Most 70s
prog bands ended up trying to be something else - either jazz bands
(Caravan) or pop bands (ELP!!!) - whether out of boredom, inertia or
through record company pressure I don't know.

This isn't to imply that some bands haven't continued to progress and
change in a positive (i.e. interesting) way, here I would suggest my 2
favourite bands - the Grateful Dead and HW.

> eventually or something.  But, anyway, "progressive rock" is a term that
> indicates the music produced by certain bands at a certain time in history,
> during which those bands could actually be considered "progressive" by
> dictionary definition.

Undoubtedly true - it was always a meaningless term, after all there was
less revolution and change in the transition from simple psychedelia
to prog than in the transition from delta blues to Chicago blues!


Chris Bates