Why no 'USA' Prog bands made the big 5?

i think in general all sorts of bands take inspiration and ideas from all sorts of bands. i mean i have heard pop bands use zappaisms in their songs, even if only sparingly.
so far as what i can see, and there may well be much more that i am unaware of, the roots of progressive rock seem to come from zappa freak out (66) - pet sounds (66) - sergeant pepper (67) - days of future passed (67) - procul harum (67) - (possibly) deep purple - concerto for group and orchestra (69) court of the crimson king (69) - tommy (69) and some of the early floyd.
i know not all those bands are considered to be progressive rock bands (for example floyd's early stuff was classified as psychedelic) but i think the boundaries they were stretching influenced and inspired other bands to stretch out somewhat. it could also be suggested that lyrically dylan had an influence with his 65-66 electric move that showed that lyrics could be approached from a different perspective than was generally done in rock music.
i'm sure bands kept their eyes open for who was doing what and the nature of music and bands is to hear something somebody else did and draw inspiration from it. for example the famous to and fro between the beatles and the beach boys. so it certainly wouldn't be out of the question that any band from anywhere gave someone inspiration.

 

floyd were number one in the u.k. with atom heart mother and all their previous albums were top ten ... dark side broke them in the u.s.

 

Wrong again. Bands like Can, Amon Duul II, Caravan, Camel, etc. were considered progressive rock, and they had many tunes in 4/4 time signature. There were no set rules. The general aim with these bands back then was--as I stated above--to expand the musical palette/vocabulary of rock music. To break the constraints put on it by commercial considerations. The only so called "rule" (if you want to call it that) was there were no rules.

 

Again, exactly correct.

One way of describing it would be to say that 'progressive' was an approach to music-making rather than a genre in and of itself.

Best Wishes,
David

 

Can and Amon Duul II never were considered as Progressive rock; they were considered only as Psychedelic rock and (or) "krautrock" which is actually a pejorative term invented by British journalists, originally for all rock music made in then West Germany.

I'd like to repeat: Progressive rock wasn't a badge of honor back in the day. Actually, Psychedelic rock was a bigger and way more popular genre in the 7os, e.g. Pink Floyd.

 

Exactly. And the whole math-rock genre seems inspired by King Crimson's Red.

 

Agreed - I never heard anyone or read anywhere Can, Neu!, Amon Duul etc being classed in the same category as the English progressive/prog bands - if they were discussed at all that is.

When I was reading this thread earlier I found an article on "German Rock" in an old Let It Rock magazine from Feb 1975. Not a single mention of the term "progressive rock" and not a single English band used to compare with any German group.

 

Yes, when people talk about Prog, I generally assume that they're talking about the classic British symphonic sound as exemplified by "the Big 5", a genre that is more or less definable. But in my mind, "progressive" is a broader adjective which describes the experimental blending of rock with other styles like jazz, classical, avant garde, world music, etc. IMO, Prog was generally progressive (though not always, particularly as the genre seemed to calcify in the 90s) but not all progressive music is Prog. A band like Can is certainly progressive to my ears, but not really Prog in the traditional sense. I'm more drawn to that broader progressive approach, which I consider to be a crucial part of the musical zeitgeist of the late 60s and 70s, but I understand that terminology has grown muddied over time. (Being born in 1970, I honestly can't speak to precisely how these terms were used at the time. Back in the 80s in the U.S., I seem to recall Prog being referred to as art rock, but that term now has a different kind of association, referring more to artists like Bowie or Kate Bush.)

I remember at one point over on Progressive Ears they tried to contend with this semantic problem by redesignating symphonic Prog as "Flonkus", so then everyone could be free to use "progressive" more broadly. Needless to say, "Flonkus" never caught on as a piece of terminology, but it was a nice idea.

 

i'm not surprised that didn't take off lol sounds like a punishment hahaha be good or you'll be put in flonkus

 

Thread title: Why No U. S. Bands Made The Big Flonkus?

 

that sounds like an orgy hahaha

 

I spewed my coffee all over.

 

"Progressive music" actually was that zeitgeist, a meta-genre that encompasses the genres like Progressive rock (e.g. Family, King Crimson) in England, and Experimental Rock (e.g. The Mothers of Invention, Silver Apples) and Jazz-Rock / Fusion (e.g. Tony Williams Lifetime, Miles Davis Band) in the U.S.

However, "progressive music" was used also as a pigeonhole for some albums that was impossible to categorize them on another way back in the day, as they didn't belong to rock music nor to jazz, and as they undoubtedly belonged to the wave of progressive music, they were tagged as such, i.e. "progressive music"; e.g. Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, Oregon's Distant Hills and so on.

 

i was actually laughing

 

Maybe it would have caught on if it didn't conjure up visions of what comes out of your nose when you sneeze.

 

Just like with punk, Alternative, etc., the philosophy/sensibility came before the music. My brothers played in bands through out the late 60s/early 70s. They spoke of this new idea amongst musicians about getting away from the hit singles, expanding, progressing, making album statements, rock becoming as serious as jazz and classical, progressive.


Well, we always used to think that Zeppelin was a progressive rock band until it became [laughing] a slightly dirty word. Well, we thought we played progressive rock. People asked, "What sort of band are you?" I said I had played progressively – progressive rock – thinking that it just meant forward-thinking as opposed to anything [inaudible, laughing]. John Paul Jones

Lemon Squeezings: Led Zeppelin News: John Paul Jones defines 'progressive' rock (interview part 13 of 22) »


Ted Drozdowski: What did you think about being labeled Southern Rock?



Dickey Betts: We didn’t like it at first. It was kind of a reckless business label put on us by record companies. We thought of ourselves as progressive rock. We wanted to be more sophisticated than “Southern Rock.” We also didn’t think the Southern bands sound that much alike, so why categorize them that way? As I get older I understand it was about record company marketing, but the difference between Marshall Tucker and the Allman Brothers Band is vast. They were more Western and we had a lot more jazz and blues, and improvising. My favorite was Molly Hachet — that little Southern Rock band… from Michigan. [laughs]


Gibson Legend Dickey Betts Talks about Duane Allman and Southern Rock

 

They could be if people were to use them that way with any commonality/consistency, with a distinction that makes sense, but that's not the case. What's the case is taking small contingent of folks who have a cognitive problem with the notion of synonyms in general each make up their own idiosyncratic, seemingly arbitrary distinction.

 

???? I'm not a Molly Hatchet aficionado but I'm vaguely certain they're from Florida.

(It was a nice thought up until the punchline.)

 

There used to be no prog fans who didn't like zeppelin. And Zep fans liked prog. It was the audience those records were made for.

Todays prog fans probably like zeppelin. But todays zep fans are punks, basically. Take that any way you want to.

 

Alternatively: What progressive rock did sound like at that moment, precisely because it did progress, even if the detractors of a few bands decided once and for all that only those bands and bands that Sounded Just Like Them would henceforth be labeled "Prog."

 

Reading this thread makes one thing very clear: labels suck.

Good music is good music, regardless of what genre it is put into by fans or braindead critics.

 

Mellotrons
Mellotrons
Mellotrons

Real prog has gots ta have them Trons

Dammit!!!

 

If you have heard Periphery or Animals As Leaders you would know that wasn't true.

 

I agree 100%, though not only the U.S. Jazz Rock / Fusion & Experimental Rock bands represented the U.S. regarding that the late Sixties' wave of "progressive music". There was also a strong influence on London's underground scene by the U.S. Progressive rock band Touch with their only one, eponymously titled album released in 1969, because Touch LP was played, as a promptly import as well, by DJs in London's underground clubs during early mornings "relaxing time" after the concerts of the bands that in the Seventies will became well-know English Prog stars.



Their only one album has since been credited as inspiration for Yes and Uriah Heep (UH were considered as progressive rock band in their early phase), and even an inspiration for Genesis' transformation and rebirth after departure of Peter Gabriel. In America, they directly inspired Kansas*.
If Touch were able to continue in the Seventies, i.e. if their private reasons sadly didn't stop them, and if they were continued with Progressive rock, I'm sure that they would be a great Progressive rock act in 70s, with nothing less of "stars status" than English "big 5".
Although Touch's leader & keyboardist Don Gallucci and the band's guitarist Joey Newman wrote and recorded together a film music in 1973, Touch sadly never came together again to record their second album.


*Kerry Livegren said this about Touch. "I first heard their music while driving back from a gig in western Kansas sometime in 1969 or 70. It was about 2am and I was listening to a powerful AM station out of Arkansas. I got about halfway through the song "Seventy Five" before I had to pull off the road and listen (it's been a long time since i've done that).The next day I bought two copies of their album, one to absorb and one for posterity.Their song writing, musicianship and arrangements were quite an inspriration to me.They were way ahead of their time, and one of the best American progressive bands".

 

Exactly. Back in the Seventies, we, "prog-heads" - a term that we consciously accepted as a somehow witty term although we knew that it was coined as a pejorative term by sworn enemies of our beloved genre, lol - although we weren't considered Led Zeppelin as a Progressive rock band, we loved their songs like Your Time Is Gonna Come, Rumble On, Tangerine, That's The Way, The Battle of Evermore, Stairway to Heaven, Going California, No Quarter, The Rain Song, Kashmir..
Thus, all of the 70s prog-heads loved at least that Led Zep's post-hippie mysticism that even today spread so majestically from above mentioned songs.