"Prog" or "Punk" which had the greater influence?

Woohoo! That Marquee Moon review takes some beating. Lol. And five years after it's release, at the height of the Post Punk movement that was somewhat inspired by it. How wrong can you be?

 

I miss the days when it was OK to be wrong! Most of those reviews were written pre-release or the first week or two of an album's release, i.e., no one had any idea how they would be received. In some cases, it could be a reviewer taking an artist down a peg, perceiving the artist to be over-hyped and over-rated. But sometimes, it was just an honest review from someone who didn't like an album. And there was no popular consensus formed, cemented by decades of debate and reappraisal. It doesn't so much take guts as instincts to go against the grain, and sometimes your instincts are wrong.

 

Maybe critics should have their reviews criticised by critics, like records are.

 

R&B/Soul wasn't. Most of the bigger artists were at least a decade into their careers. While I love that spate of male vocal groups, doing synchronized moves in their matching tuxes and platform shoes, afro's flecked with gray, singing sad, heavily orchestrated songs about the perfect lady slipping away (The Manhattans, The Chi-Lites, The Stylistics, etc.), that era was starting to fade, or at least recognize the tide was turning. (Groups like The Spinners would make valiant efforts to stay alive with songs like "Rubberband Man," but the writing was on the wall.) Motown and Stax/Volt were on the downswing. Artists who had huge commercial and creative hits just a year or two earlier (Al Green, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, etc.) were entering a murky mid-to-late 70s phase. As with the male vocal groups, a few made valiant efforts to push forward. I'm thinking Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" and Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, which seemed to be the crowned jewel that ended the era.

Thus, the dawn of disco, which started out tastefully enough and became a monster in 1977. The older I get, the more I find this process fascinating in how it happened, the year or two of radical excess it lead to, and more importantly, how it then exploded and filtered into the culture in ways just as influential and enduring as rock. But I digress: back to Gentle Giant vs. X-Ray Spex.

 

And maybe people who review critics should have their reviews criticized by by people who review people who criticize critics. As I write this, I'm gazing at my image within a mirror, and seeing my image within another mirror, within another mirror, within another mirror ...

 

Good points. There was also a move to funk/r&b groups - as opposed to vocal groups - so P-Funk, EWF, Ohio Players etc.

 

Well, yes of course, that occurred to me too. But heck, critics get away scot free otherwise. Free to be as good or as lazy or stupid as they like with no reproach. Is it ok for musical artists to be wrong, or are the critics gonna hammer them for it?

 

6/10

Decent effort at being witty. Probably won't stand the test of time.

 

But I think that Rolling Stone list referenced was pointing out critics who weren't prescient enough to know that an album was going to have a shelf life like radium. Ironically, RS gave short shrift to punk/new wave for a few years before embracing it more fully ... based on much of their editorial staff being older acolytes of the 60s and looking down their noses at punk. I would guess an album like Emerson Lake & Palmer's Love Beach was seminal in that it made many ageing critics think, "Wait, a minute, what about this punk stuff ..."

 

That doesn't say much for music journalism. I'm not being entirely serious in my critiques of it though. Gives someone a job I guess.

 

There have been times when music journalism has risen to the challenge and noted many great aspects of an artist, album, etc. And times when it was exactly correct in noting when an artist was phoning it in. (And many, many times when reviewers phoned in their reviews.) The best reviews were generally when a writer could tap into the humanity of an artist or album and recognize both good and bad qualities in play. Of course, that age has passed, and it's now pretty much just another promotional tool. Everyone's equal now. Are we any better or worse off?

 

With music these days you can listen before you buy, so it doesn't make a great deal of difference. With other products it's a duff practice that leaves the consumer none the wiser. Thankfully we have user reviews to fall back on, but they can be faked too I guess. As for professional reviewers I guess they've become Ad persons, or perhaps entertainers, because people still like to read stuff. I used to enjoy reading the weekly rock mags up until the mid 90's where I thought they went up their own backsides with self importance. I switched to the monthlies and read those for a good few years. Nowadays I'm on this forum and have all the rock music hoodoo I can stand.

 

And this surely wasn't the case in that classic era or rock/rock journalism. Back then, I can't tell you how many times I read about a band before I heard a note of their music. Especially true of punk/new wave, which was rarely getting played on Top 40 or AOR radio. There were exceptions, like "Psycho Killer," "Allison" or "Red Shoes," and Blondie tracks from Parallel Lines. I was primed to hear The Clash, The Jam, The Damned, Pere Ubu, Ian Dury & the Blockheads, etc. mostly from reading about them in Creem and the occasional thumbnail (never feature) review in Rolling Stone. More often than not, I was often floored after picking up the one copy at the local chain record store and putting it on the turntable. We do live in an enlightened age where you can sample an entire album and choose accordingly. I guess this puts the entire thread in better context as I would assume many punk/new wave fans were in the same boat as me 1977-79 in terms of the press alerting them to great news music as opposed to having it at my fingertips or common currency in the overall culture.

 

Carl Palmer just couldn't care less LOL, and I guess it would even be a matter of honour for those bands to NEVER get nominated for that ridiculous R&R HOF (and yes probably ridiculous only to me anyway HA HA HA!).

I just wonder how hard was life for the musicians and their reputations back then, given how strong opinion formers were the press reviewers and critics LOL...

 

Nice one. Your lack of clarity on here befuddled me again.

 

My point was not that Carl Palmer (or Ian Anderson, for that matter) give a rat's hairy backside about getting into the inanely bogus RRHOF, it is rather the agenda by certain critics to lessen or ignore prog rock altogether. These critics were or are primarily NY based (Rolling Stone, Village Voice, etc.) and got huge erections for anything NY area based (Bruce, NY Dolls, etc.) and shat all over prog albums for the most part. Robert Christgau, for instance, handed out A+ reviews for ever NY Doll studio release, but then panned such stellar and important albums as Court of the Crimson King (a D+ grade, ROFLMAO), Close to the Edge (C+ grade) and Thick as a Brick (C- grade). It only goes downhill from there.

 

Christgau is pretty Europhobic but it's not exactly a crime to prefer one style of music over another.

 

LOL what a bunch of nonsense gets published by those media lords ouch!

 

Go tell the countless, current metal bands, they might have missed the news.

 

I do think it is a problem if music critics start writing about musical styles they don't like to begin with. I completely respect the opinion of a critic who, within a certain musical style, pans a particular album because she thinks it is not good within that particular style. But it is not fair to write about music you don't like in general. Oh! I hate Jazz, so lets pan all Jazz albums!

 

Perhaps, but myopic provincialism is not a characteristic of a good reviewer.

 

Christgau's whole thing is reviewing or, at least, rating everything though? People read him because of who he is and his style, or whatever, and not what he's reviewing. I'm asking because he doesn't mean anything this side of the Atlantic.

 

His thing was that he listened to just about everything that came his way. He was on every record company mailing list and got hundreds of albums a month. He just felt short reviews and letter grades would enable him to get to a lot of music in the quickest time. Granted, that method would certainly not benefit something that needed repeated listenings or was outside his tastes, but more often than not he was spot on. After a while I could even get enough info out of his negative reviews to know if I would like the record. His reviews, the Pazz and Jop Poll, and his music editorship at the Village Voice were invaluable for finding new music and bands.

 

Heck yea well said!

 

That makes me think of an article I once read in Record Collector about Emerson, Lake & Palmer in which the mag discussed what the acronym ‘ELP’ could stand for.