----------------------------------------------------- AUGUST 15, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------- Source: Austin American-Statesman http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/thursday/xlent_11.html Close to the edge: Art-Rock appreciation really isn't a stretch (even if you don't play the drums). By Joe Gross Try this the next time you're out with a pal: Ask him or her, "Do you like progressive rock?" Given the general slick pop/hip-hop/post-grunge composition of today's Hot 100, punk's dominance of the underground and Austin's preference for all things rootsy, chances are you will receive one of the following two responses: 1. "My sweet Lord, no. What gave you that idea?" 2. "It was a youthful indiscretion, which I sincerely regret." Unless of course, your respondent is a drummer, in which case you'll likely hear: 3. "Oh yeah!" All drummers, after all, go through a Rush phase, whether they admit it or not. You'll probably see a lot of them at Saturday night's Rush show at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater or Yes' show Friday night at the Backyard, or the Joe Satriani/Dream Theater/King's X bill at Austin Music Hall Saturday. But the vast majority of the listening public either doesn't think about prog, doesn't like prog, or, and this is the killer, thinks that the music it likes bears no relation to prog. Asking "Where did prog begin?" is not unlike asking "What was the first punk band?" Prog rock begins at the moment when bands begin to think about extended songs and concept albums, trading moon-June-spoon lyrics for "wagon-flagon-emerald-eyed-dragon" verse. More than anything else, '70s prog was about the intersection of technical virtuosity and conceptual extravagance. For our purposes, progressive rock -- more-or-less interchangeably known as art-rock -- begins in England around 1970. Yes, perhaps the most egregiously stereotypical progressive act, was devoted to intricate, painterly compositions, oblique concepts and musical precision. Genesis added legit-theater theatrics to extended songcraft. The Canterbury scene, with bands such as Soft Machine, Gong and Camel, was a mini-movement of pomp and circumstance. King Crimson jumped from psychedelic wandering to airtight compositional precision within a hard-rock frame. Jethro Tull single-handedly made the flute an acceptable rock instrument (sort of). Hawkwind was psychedelic sci-fi quasi-metal. Roxy Music bridged the gap between glam's campy intellect and prog's artistic pretensions. Henry Cow wedded atonal classical music to free-jazz gambits. Emerson, Lake and Palmer eternally endeared themselves to Texans by releasing a concept album about a mechanized armadillo. This was rock for people who thought rock was something one outgrew, that musical virtuosity could be an end in itself. Or that was the idea. And these were just the Brits. Until punk made all rock local again, prog marked the first time that continental Europeans contributed something substantive to the rock dialogue. France's Magma trafficked in a thunderous big-band hard rock with its own language and a mind-erasingly complicated story involving aliens. Italy's Goblin soundtracked roughly a billion Dairo Argento horror flicks. And let's not forget the Germans, whose kosmische musik, embodied by the likes of Can, Faust and Neu, rewired rock's forward motion in a whole new way. As for North America, just when much of the British scene was dying down -- King Crimson was gone by '74, and Yes' initial spate of innovation was over -- the Americans were just getting into the nonswing of things. Rush represented suburban, Canadian virtuosity, while bands like Kansas and Styx began constructing their own AOR epics. And for a music that was virtually defined by its lack of a groove, art-rock saw its conceptual grandeur embraced by American funk bands such as Parliament-Funkadelic and Earth, Wind and Fire, which produced concept albums as egregiously absurd as anything by Genesis. Likewise, most jazz fusion sounded like Hawkwind arrangements of Duke Ellington tunes. What made all of this ambition so loathsome to rock critics was pretty much the same thing that its adherents loved. Prog was hated for the sheer arrogance and pretention it projected, not to mention its elevation of virtuosity over passion -- the really baroque stuff, like mid-period Yes, moved rock about as far from its R&B roots as it was possible to go. But it's a myth that prog was a dead-end in and of itself, that its influence extended only to the nerdily devout. Prog is everywhere. Johnny Rotten's legendary "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt is oft cited as an example of prog and punk's oil/water relationship, but the Sex Pistols leader's follow-up band, Public Image, was deeply indebted to Can's abstract propulsion. Hip-hop's first great single, Afrika Bambattaa's "Planet Rock," was built on top of Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express," an early Krautrock anthem. Wire's debut album, "Pink Flag," one of the key punk documents, originally appeared on prog stalwart label Harvest Records. Hawkwind bassist Lemmy took the meatiest aspects of the band's space metal and formed metal gods Motorhead. Roxy Music's Brian Eno virtually invented ambient music and became one of rock's most vital conceptualists, most famously as U2's longtime producer. And King Crimson's precision-tooled rock had a seismic impact on contemporary American punk, inspiring weird time signatures and chunky riffs in bands such as Shellac and Don Caballero. Let's not forget the big guns. No Pink Floyd or Genesis, no Tool or Radiohead. Rush seems indestructible and has made its mark on everyone from King's X to Primus. Frank Zappa's attempts to cold-fuse greaser rock with Edgard Varese were as influential as the Grateful Dead on Phish and the whole jam-band scene. Extreme metal, no stranger to funkless brutality, concept albums and lightning-fast fretwork for its own sake, simply took prog tenets and made them more brutal. Even hip-hop has borrowed prog's devotion to the concept album. Progressive rock has always suffered from an image problem. But it is also responsible for countless hours of compelling music that has stood the test of time. Prog -- it's not just for drummers anymore. Yes plays the Backyard in Bee Cave on Friday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $40-$47.50. Call 469-7469. Rush plays the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Selma on Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $22.50-$72.50. Call (210) 224-9600 or go to www.vwatx.com. Joe Satriani, Dream Theater and King's X play the Austin Music Hall on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $31.50. Call 263-4146 or go to www.austinmusichall.com. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com