Proggin’

I’ve been moderately obsessed with prog music lately. Genesis, Yes, Rush, Gentle Giant, Transatlantic, Wobbler, and Porcupine Tree have been my most constant musical companions of late.

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One of the things that’s drawing me to this particular style of music is that I have no interest in playing it. It’s just music I can listen to and appreciate without feeling the urge to pull out my guitar and start learning it, because I am otherwise focused creatively and learning prog songs would take up far more free time than I have. So I’m free to just appreciate it.

I admire the amount of effort that goes into making good prog rock. The rap on prog is that it is full of tuneless, mindless noodling. I strongly disagree. I find prog music — the best stuff, at least — to be inventively melodic, passionate, intelligent music.

Genesis has been the greatest surprise of this phase of my music listening. I have never really “gotten” Genesis. The closest I have until recently has been a sincere appreciation for Peter Gabriel’s first for solo albums and a passing interest in The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. At this point, I’d say my favorite Genesis album is Selling England by the Pound, although I really have a great fondness for Trespass, Nyrsery Cryme, and Foxtrot as well. I love Peter’s voice, but I have to say that though he has a timbre very similar to Peter’s I seem to have some resistance to Phil Collins’s voice. He was too prevalent in the pop culture at a certain point, and I can’t get past the annoyance I felt at his ubiquitousness. Even Trick of the Tail, which I can hear is musically on a par with Selling England, leaves me somewhat cold. I think of Trick of the Tail is the trio doing the quintet’s sound. I know Steve Hacket was there, but he was a player much more than he was a composer on that record. The vast majority of the material came from Collins, Banks, and Rutherford.

Other older bands have made their way back into my current rotation. In the past I’d stopped with Moving Pictures by Rush, Drama by Yes, and The Wall by Pink Floyd. I haven’t gotten any farther with Floyd, but I have spent a fair amound ot time with a few later albums by each of the other two. I have a new copy of Signals by Rush in my CD player right now, but I have also recently picked up Roll the Bones and Presto. None of the three quite compares with the first eight albums, although none of them are bad, by any means. I hope to spend more time with them. Yes, on the other hand, has given me a late-period album to compare with their earlier catalobue in Magnification, which I’ve been quite impressed with. In the matter of later-period Floyd or Roger Waters solo, let’s just say I haven’t been motivated to seek them out, really. If I want something newer that hits those Pink Floyd buttons, I am much more likely to go to Porcupine Tree.

A few years ago, I started a series of posts where I would listen to Porcupine Tree’s albums chronologically and write about each next album on Facebook. I never made it past Signify, but not because of the quality of the music. It was more a matter of my wandering mind. I actually quite like Signify, as a representative that early part of their catalogue. It’s transitional: they started to have their own sound on it. I might have been excited if I’d continued through to some truly great albums like Fear of a Blank Planet and In Absentia. I also have The Incident, which is a fascinating record. I love that it’s a long CD and an ep. The 4-song ep is particularly good. The hour-long “main” CD is some sort of concept album or other, very distinctively structured.

Two other more “modern” prog bands I’ve taken a liking to are Transatlantic and Wobbler. Transatlantic is a modern-prog “supergroup” with members of Marillion, Spock’s Beard, the Flower Kings, and Dream Theater. I’m currently trying to sort out whether or not I think Transatlantic is too squeaky-kleen for me, but I think the answer to that dilemma is probably “no, they are not too squeaky-kleen for me.” They’re very sincere and very good. Their playing is super clean, but doesn’t squeak. I have three of their albums: SMPTe, Whirlwind, and two verions of their last one, The Absolute Universe.

My friend Butch, when I introduced him to Wobbler, said “Oh, yeah, kinda like Yes meets Gentle Giant.” and that’s accurate. Absolutely ferocious playing throughout the two CDs of theirs that I own, Dwellers of the Deep and From Silence to Somewhere.

It’s been great to hook my ears into this music. I’ve found that music which doesn’t require my full attention isn’t really worth my time, and I’ve found all of the above music to reward deeper listening, to not have truck with anything resembling “postmodern irony,” — I am SO done with irony for irony’s sake — and that it requires so much dedication to play prog well that there is no way to fake it.

I’ll have more to say on this subject in the future.