THE HISTORY OF THE PROGRESSIVE ROCK
Reflections on a Fascinating Form of Music
Welcome to a journey into the land of unlimited musical possibilities, visions and utopias, dreams and nightmares, boundless admiration and reflexive rejection! The route leads us over twelve stages, one of the king stages is right at the beginning: On 26 pages we shed light on the emergence and development of a kind of rock playing, the importance of which Steve Hackett estimates as follows: "This form of music definitely has its right to exist alongside jazz, blues, classical music and rock'n'roll." The way leads us from England over to the continent, overseas and into the whole world, always on the traces of the..: Progressive rock.
Great Britain 1967/68
After the Big Bang on 1 June 1967, nothing was the same in modern music as before: The Beatles had turned the world upside down with their album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Very slowly a genre developed in the following two years, for which own shelves were furnished in the London record shops - with the inscription "Progressive Bands A - Z".
Great Britain 1969-1971
In 1969 the style of music began to develop in Great Britain, which today is generally known as progressive rock. It wasn't created in a vacuum. His tracks can be traced back to the three great Beatles albums from 1965 to 1967: "Rubber Soul", "Revolver" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". These heralded a radical change, even a paradigm shift, as they addressed "difficult" philosophical, spiritual and political topics. Above all, however, the Beatles and their producer George Martin questioned the standard format of a pop song: they redefined the basics such as harmony vocabulary, structure and time signature; they used sounds and instruments previously unknown in rock; and they pushed the possibilities of a recording studio to its limits, linking recording and songwriting processes....
Great Britain 1972-1974
In 1972 the usual suspects with their new works cavorted in Europe's LP charts: the Rolling Stones, the Carpenters, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and so on. But more and more often and in ever higher chart positions bands joined the band, which until one or two years ago had only been noticed by the public in the area of "underground": Progressive rock bands like Genesis, Yes or Emerson, Lake & Palmer. And they were rightfully stuck in the charts. For this year they presented their most impressive works to date. Genesis preschescheschten with "Foxtrot" and the opus contained on it "Supper's Ready" before, Yes delivered the milestone "Close To The Edge" around the impressive title track, Gentle Giant the grandiose "Octopus", also "Trilogy" of Emerson, Lake & Palmer contained some great compositions...
Great Britain 1975-1983
It's 1975. The prog had settled in. The creative break of the "Big Four" gave the bands of the second row the chance to get more into the focus of the prog world. And lo and behold, Camel followed up with the instrumental "The Snow Goose" and "Moonmadness" (1976), Renaissance told of "Scheherazade And Other Stories" and Gentle Giant got up to their last feat, "Free Hand". In prog gourmet circles, the return of the reformed Van der Graaf Generator, who after the demanding "Godbluff" just completed two works, which 30 years later were given the status of a "world cultural album" by this magazine, was welcomed: the 1976 double-decker "Still Life" and "World Record". Yes played themselves and their fans on the bombastic "Relayer" tour regularly into the "Prog-Delirium". But the surprise coup came from Genesis. First the presentation of drummer Phil Collins as successor of the retired singer Peter Gabriel, then the amazingly strong and varied album "A Trick Of The Tail". If even a prog signboard could be replaced seemingly effortlessly by the beat of Peter Gabriel, what did the prog have to fear at all? The upheavals in the big bands were soberly based on the self-critical assessment that the final albums of the first high phase of the prog could no longer be surpassed in terms of experimentation, harmonic and rhythmic complexity, complexity of arrangements and lyrical extravagance. The musicians involved had produced music for the future, they couldn't (or didn't want to) go this tempo anymore.
RADIOHEAD
Rear Rainbow
We've gotten used to expecting great things from Radiohead. The pressure that should be applied to the belt should be immense. But the British escape the hype surrounding them and are creative instead. Just like that. Their new album "The King Of Limbs" once again bears impressive witness to this unleashed creativity.
ELBOW
My friend Garvey
The jump from insider favourite to stadium band was brilliantly mastered by Elbow. On their fifth album, the British quintet continues to impress with their stylistic adventurous spirit. Furthermore, with "Build A Rocket Boys!" it lives out its passion for the sound aesthetics of Genesis and especially Peter Gabriel even more freely.
FOO FIGHTERS
The Noise Therapy
"Wasting Light", the seventh album of the Californian Foo Fighters, is about Grohl's coming to terms with the past. Finally, 2011 marks the twentieth anniversary of Nirvana's "Nevermind". This circumstance causes the former drummer of the Grunge pioneers an emotional crookedness, against which there is only one remedy: the cultivated noise therapy.
URIAH HEEP
She told me: "Hold on!"
The ten years without new material - the time between 1998 and 2008 - has hardly caused sleepless nights for a fan. After all, Uriah Heep has seldom been able to produce sustainable songs since the departure of main songwriter Ken Hensley thirty years ago. All the more surprising came the grandiose work "Wake The Sleeper" three years ago. Now the British hard rock institution presents another convincing album.
Keep the text up! Cult songs and their meaning
GENESIS - THE MUSICAL BOX
Fairy tale lesson à la Genesis. Peter Gabriel immerses himself in the dark worlds of children's fantasy using an old nursery rhyme, Victorian language acrobatics and human primeval fears between innocent imagination and adolescent lust.
Shopping List New Model Army
The Punkrockmetalgothicfolkpop-Purists
Last year the English band around the tireless Justin Sullivan celebrated their thirtieth stage anniversary. It's hard to believe that New Model Army have been fighting for a better world for three decades and eleven studio albums. However, anyone who believes that he can only recognize the eternally same clubbing good people band in them - a picture that is constantly being tried on in the media - will sooner or later be deceived. New Model Army have of course developed an unmistakable sound. But they succeed in adding new facets to this again and again.
