|
|
What is Prog?
It's Music Jim, but not as we know it ..
Progressive Rock, b circa 1967, England. Influenced by many musical forms but notably blues, jazz and European (so-called) Classical styles. The result tends to be variable in style and quality and distinctly not to everyone's taste, but it tickled many a beard-wearing intellectual boffinesque type through the late 60s and early 70s before exploding up its' own rear-end in a surplus of 20-minute guitar, keyboard, drum or glockenspiel solos, capes and silly hats. Punk did for it, or so they said. However it never really went away but even if it did, it's still here and today, it's stronger than ever. If you like Radiohead, Muse, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree or Mechromantix you not only have exemplary taste but you're also a prog fan.
What do you think of prog - where it was at and where it is at today? Use our contact page to let us know, and as long as it's not rude we'll drop it onto the site so that we can have a jolly-good chin-wag about the whole thing.
Charles Bennett, Mechromantix lead guitarist and composer
My definition? Well, I wouldn't define it as a musical form at all, more a state of mind. As a writer of progressive music I would say that there are no limits, anything goes. That's not always a good thing of course - anything going can sound dreadful and un-musical, but the basic approach is to have an open mind about chord sequences, melody, arrangement and instrumentation. Lyrics are a problem, the Middle-Earth Fantasy World concept has been done to death, resurrected and done to death again, but prog is not an obvious bus stop for conventional boy-meets-girl stories.
|
|