Also, there’s this guy. Although he’s not really the first openly gay country star and I wouldn’t call him a star exactly, but an up-and-comer who may or may not succeed. His music is appropriately bland but catchy, perfect for young pop-country fans. (Disclaimer: I sometimes sing along loudly to pop-country in the car because I am super cool.)
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How did punk and new wave virtually destroy rock music?? That doesn’t make any sense. Punk? Really?
There’s an argument to be made that, taken together, punk, new wave, and disco teamed up to kinda destroy prog rock at least. My brother was the singer in a locally-popular San Diego-based prog band in the early 70s. They moved to L.A. to try to hit it big, and landed there just as punk and disco were on the rise. By 1978, the band had broken up and they all got day jobs. Nobody wanted to hear prog anymore. Rush seemed to be the only survivor, such as it was. Genesis got a whole lot less proggy, Gentle Giant vanished into thin air, the Moody Blues and Procol Harum had fallen off the face of the earth.
But otherwise, yeah. I think the idea that Punk and new wave destroyed rock is pretty silly.
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I doubt very much that there’s any campaign, however tough and mudslingery, that Hillary Clinton couldn’t survive. She’s been through much, much worse than anything anyone could dish out on her today, and she’s more popular than ever.
I’d prefer Elizabeth Warren, myself, but maybe a couple of cycles down the road she’ll want to do it.
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oh dear prog rock. how terrible.
or maybe idk it’s just changing styles and tastes as the years go by? i mean there have been huge advancements in technology since the beginning of music. to think that punk rock or new age or disco or whatever were “the” reason for the downfall of prog rock is silly.
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Boston is playing the ’70s-era Allman Brothers six times more frequently.
This has me utterly flummoxed!!! Allman Brothers? In Boston… then I remember that one of my committee members is from Western Mass and plays mandolin in a bluegrass band…
[edited to add] also, it’s a veritable sausagefest there, except for Heart, at least on the lists he has on the article. I’d expect the Pretenders to make it on the list, too, but i guess they don’t play “brass in Pocket” quite enough?
And how come Atlanta isn’t on there? We have at least 2 classic rock stations (though I can’t remember the last time I listened to either of them).
Anyway, this is why I like my local college radio, thanks - enough songs on the specialtiy shows that I know and love, plus regular rotation of some new stuff of the college charts. Even the show that plays 60s music is more interesting and full of surprises. There are currently 2 shows, Tower of Song (Tuesday nights) and Charm Academy 88 (Saturday afternoons). I think there is a show that plays psych and kraut rock, but I’m not sure when it’s on… and there is a metal show, and then there is the classic soul show, Soul Kitchen. Commercial radio is so damn boring, even if they play stuff I like now and again…
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Once again, you seem to be assuming that the fickle fashions of pop radio really represent everybody. A small pool of people deciding that there isn’t money in it anymore doesn’t mean that there was really less of the music, or less demand. A lot of post-punk of the time bordered on prog. As did RIO and Zeuhl. I know of a lot more prog from the 1980s-1990s, it just wasn’t getting that minority to play it on radio.
I’m right there with you. It’s so scary seeing intelligent people reduced to mental drones. Especially when they’re related to you.
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Certainly the tastes were changing. Prog became unfashionable (well… more unfashionable) just as punk and disco were on the rise. Looking back, it’s certainly possible to appreciate (even love) all those genres of popular music, but at the time I suspect not too many people embraced all three.
Haven’t hung around many youth ministers, have you? Fraud-spewing historical revisionist nationalist theocrat is a good description for many of them as well.
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Rick Wakeman’s still going.
I dunno… I love me some punk, can appreciate Rush/Yes/Gabriel-era Genesis, for what they were, and always enjoy a good ABBA tune (because ABBA)…
I kind of wonder if the changing nature of the industry helped to “kill” off the uber-theatrical Prog? My white board tells me that 1978 was a highpoint in recording industry sales, and the next year was a major slump (which the industry blamed on home taping, which is of course nonsense - but that’s a story my dissertation adviser already sort of told). What happens when an industry has a slump - you cut back on expenses, so staging complicated stage shows just wasn’t in the cards, and as some Prog bands had those, only the ones who had made their bones were going to still be supported by their labels, who are now looking to cut costs - so why not go with cheaper, DIY minded punks, who are sending you an endless supply of demos made in their garages with their new boom boxes? With a change in popular tastes and stagnant sales, it’s unlikely that A&R guys (who were probably a new crop as the guys from the early days of rock were retiring) would want to go out and hunt up bands who were going to need a huge touring budget and a state of the art studio in order to perfect their sound.
This is all conjecture on my part, BTW - except the part about 78 being an industry high point, that I know to be true.
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Do I do that a lot?
No, but the demise of my brother’s band wasn’t the cause of the downfall of prog, just a symptom. No musical subgenre seems to vanish without a trace anymore; there’s always some underground scene or other keeping the torch aflame. And yeah, prog didn’t vanish completely, but neither did it ever enjoy the same level of popularity it did at the height of the careers of Yes, Gentle Giant, Peter Gabriel’s version of Genesis, ELP, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, et al. The demand had diminished, even if the number of music listeners had increased.
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It’s certainly better-informed conjecture than I could supply, at any rate, and it has the ring of truth. Plenty of pixels have been spilled on What Happened To Prog. Look at the Wikipedia page: 367 notes and an ungodly list of references. Quite a rabbit-hole for the prog propellerhead.
Certainly a good point, but a lot of my Democrat friends seem really tired of her, and I think are much more excited about O’Malley or Warren.
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Your’e not wrong but this isn’t really a reply to my comment.
There is some prog rock I like. So I’d say I fit into the category of all three. It’s just easy to make fun of.
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Rick Wakeman will go on forever.
His bloody albums feel like they do, anyway.
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And let’s not forget Neil Young’s “Lets Roll” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A6dYR7q0Uw
One of classic rock’s greatest’s tribute to the greatest heroes of 9/11. Not exactly tin soldiers and Nixon coming.
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Well, it was meant to be. You had mentioned that it was silly to blame the downfall of prog on the rise of punk, new wave, or disco, and I didn’t want to leave the impression that I thought any one of those was “the” cause for prog’s decline, but I do think that they contributed strongly to it. I, too, really enjoy all of those genres (well… less so new wave, I guess, but I like punk, disco, and prog about equally now), but when it came to the popular tastes and fashions of the era, what people were talking about, what got the radio airplay and the magazine covers, prog was regarded as dinosaurish. But anyway, I still think that the original point that punk and new wave virtually destroyed rock music is not just wrong but utterly unsupportable.
This. This indeed. I do love it, but its earnestness and pretentiousness can be pretty damned hilarious.
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Prominently features a plane crashing. Sad that I can recall this. >.<
