Tuesday, August 22, 2017
the not-often-mentioned proggers
love it when the proggers just carried on as if New Wave never happened - this is 1979
"A hardback book and double vinyl album... conceived, written and illustrated by Patrick Woodroffe, with music written and performed by Dave Greenslade. The title means, approximately, 'the first five books (pentateuch) of the creation (cosmogony)'. The story and artwork within 'Pentateuch' concerns the discovery of an abandoned spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter, and the project to decipher the ideograms in the pentateuch 'document' discovered within. Most of the book is a retelling of the document, in much the same way as a modern translator might retell the contents of a Babylonian tablet or Egyptian papyrus scroll. Particularly remarkable is the combinatorial ideographic script created by Woodroffe and used throughout the artwork."
Although I've seen the band's logo and their album covers countless times when flicking through piles of second hand vinyl, it doesn't feel like Greenslade is a name that comes up much in discussions of prog, either pro or anti (like the articles written around that new book The Show Must Go On)
it's a man and it's a band at the same time
well that one starts with some quite nifty drumming and jauntily florid keyboard work
Other not-often-mentioned proggers:
- Stackridge
- Barclay James Harvest
- Gryphon
- Camel
- Renaissance
- Strawbs (not precisely prog but on the edge of it)
Who else gets forgot?
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8 comments:
Alan Parsons Project
Supertramp
Peter Gabriel's first solo album
Utopia (two albums in 1977: Ra= before punk and new wave, Oops Wrong Planet= after)
Alan Parsons is a good call.
i suppose Supertramp were a bit proggy especially early on, but they seem very on the lite, pop side of it. but certainly seldom talked about
i think Gabriel comes under the heading Genesis really
yeah Rundgren doesn't tend to get seen as prog, but why not?
I suppose Utopia took the hit for prog rather than his solo stuff. A Treatise on Cosmic Fire took up a whole album side mind you!
Acc to Spotify he's touring at the moment with some iteration of Yes.
re Treatise on Cosmic Fire
someone at NME - possibly Ian Macdonald - coined this term for Rundgren - a sort of category for him and similar minded artists - it was something Great Cosmic Buffoon or something like that. Meant not to be exactly an insult, but a kind of "we need people like that who are prepared to risk foolishness in their pursuit of vision". Bit like Lester Bangs describing Jim Morrison as a bozo - but saying that was what was good about him. In fact he called him Bozo Dionysus if i recall right.
The Enid have been generally forgotten I think.
I've always been fascinated by them, as everything about them is so aesthetically repulsive, even by Prog standards.
now you've got me interested in them!
i remember years ago Bark Psychosis referring to The Enid in an interview as if they were a heavy influence on their sound. but when i interviewed them, disappointingly they confessed they had just been joking.
Another group that has been totally forgotten is If, who were quite a big deal at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQc5qnbJ5WE
Not my thing at all really, a bit too prissy and tasteful, but your mileage may vary. Don't think there's anything I like less than arpeggios.
Solo Robin Trower pretending to be Hendrix is good fun though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT21jl9Afbc
Rundgren's work ethic was relentless though, his reputation as a producer seems to be of someone whose attitude was my way or the highway. Would account for why he worked with B-listers most of the time.
The Enid were bombastic nonsense and none the worse for it. More fun to listen to than Pink Floyd by that time anyway. Roger Waters kind of knew deep down in his blackened soul that he was never gonna be a GCB like Sid or as inspiring but that just made him more hectoring and tedious to try and compensate
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