Jim DeRogatis Doesn't Understand Progheads

November 17th, 2009

Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, the pop music critics from the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, respectively, took on progressive rock this past weekend on their radio show Sound Opinions. Their guest was Charles Snider, author of The Strawberry Bricks Guide to Progressive Rock. While it was fun to hear my beloved genre dissected, it was also rather disappointing as they approached the subject in a rather ham-fisted way and there were also some inaccuracies & inconsistencies.

The show focuses on the first wave of prog from the late 1960s up until 1979. As with any genre, you’re going to necessarily be leaving out more than you put in and it was the symphonic prog sub-genre that got the nod as it was the most popular and probably the one most people think of when they hear the term “progressive rock”. I wish that they’d recognized this explicitly because I thought they were rather ambivalent about the whole thing. It was rather odd to my ears to hear the hosts say that prog was English and that all they’re going to talk about are English bands because all non-English prog bands just “tried to be British”. It got all awkward when Snider was asked what 3 proggers he would take with him to a desert island only to list Kraftwerk in the bunch. Krautrock is a prog sub-genre which bears little to no resemblance to its symphonic cousin. One of its progenitors, Can, recorded their first album contemporaneously with King Crimson who are generally thought to have got the symphonic ball rolling with their 1969 debut.

They hemmed and hawed when Kraftwerk came up. They weren’t really progressive rock as the hosts wanted to define it but share a lot of the same traits. And I think this analysis is total bullshit. But, of course, it is direct evidence that their prog-is-strictly-English thesis is wrong so it has to be dismissed.

Another annoying aspect was how DeRogatis frequently felt compelled to summarize the aesthetic of progressive rock by simply invoking Henry VIII. Towards the beginning of the discussion, he says, “Everybody had to be in the court of Henry VIII.” OK, Rick Wakeman did record an album called The Six Wives of Henry VIII and I suppose you could drag the likes of Gryphon and Gentle Giant into this argument, but it’s difficult to see what albums like Aqualung, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Dark Side of the Moon, and Brain Salad Surgery have to do with the Tudors. The closest Jethro Tull ever got to Henry VIII was the cover for Minstrel in the Gallery and Ian Anderson’s minstrel stage outfit from 1974-75. Genesis, Tull, ELP, Yes, Floyd – where is all this 16th century influence?

Several minutes in, Kot remarks that the willingness to be pompous and ridiculous was inherent in European prog (vs. the U.S. mainstream). This leads Snider to the obligatory ELP bashing which is led by the oft-repeated accusation that Greg Lake refused to go onstage unless he had his favorite Persian carpet to stand on. DeRo piles on by adding that Rick Wakeman’s cape was a nod to Henry VIII and that he was aware that wearing such a cape was a “rather silly thing to do”. So yeah, I’ll agree that proggers were having fun by dressing as they did or dressing the stage as a Roger Dean cover, but I have to wonder if DeRo really feels that Wakeman was simply trying to be silly by recording The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

DeRo kind of loses it when they begin discussing the fall and decline of prog in the late 1970s. He characterizes proggers as being old, rich, and bored-with-everything so they look at punk, find some inspiration, and give prog a last gasp of energy. He cites Floyd’s 1977 album Animals and says that it had an edge that the band hadn’t had in 15 years. Firstly, there was no Pink Floyd in 1962. Secondly, the majority of that album was written in 1974 so most of it even predates that album’s predecessor, Wish You Were Here. “Dogs” was originally “You’ve Got to Be Crazy” while “Sheep” was born as “Raving and Drooling” and you can hear these songs in their original incarnations on bootlegs from the Floyd’s 1974 tours. There are some distinct musical differences to be found but the edge that DeRo was referring to is not one of them and these songs pre-date the emergence of punk in England as a mainstream phenomenon.

I would also dispute that punk had a big effect on any of the other big-time prog bands. Take Yes. There’s no punk edge on Going For the One or Tormato. Have you heard their demos from 1979 before Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman left the band? No burst of energy there. OK, Gentle Giant made a nod to punk in 1977 with “I Bet You Thought We Couldn’t Do It” but that is just one song. As punk was taking hold, Jethro Tull went bucolic with Songs From the Wood and had a paean to draft horses on the follow-up, Heavy Horses. And does anyone really hear Genesis reacting to punk on Duke?

On a minor note, DeRo says that Yes’ Going For the One was released in 1979 when, in fact, it came out in 1977. He makes a more important comment by noting that Johnny Rotten wore an “I Hate Pink Floyd” t-shirt onstage and that this act should be interpreted as being the ultimate statement against the excesses of prog as embodied by Greg Lake’s carpet predilection. This brings into play the serious vs. silly dichotomy again. Rotten has since revealed that the shirt was a joke. But, for DeRo, Wakeman’s outfit cannot be taken seriously at any cost while an inflammatory shirt worn by a punker just has to be a serious statement.

Back at the beginning of the show, Snider defined prog by noting that it was characterized by virtuosity in execution, virtuosity in composition, and that it required the attention of the listener. DeRo himself says that prog musicians were trying to make art. In other words, the music is “serious” in a certain way that other rock is not but DeRo seems to be arguing that that is the only part of the whole prog endeavor that can be so. I don’t understand why stage presentation and costumes just have to be seen as silly. There certainly was silliness to be had at prog concerts. Take, for instance, the guys in Jethro Tull coming out on stage in bunny costumes.

But fun onstage doesn’t necessarily translate into silliness. Look at Peter Gabriel’s costumes which he wore while in Genesis. From reading interviews, I think he meant them to be fun but not silly. He wanted to be theatrical and add something to the performance which would complement the music, not simply joke around. His persona onstage was serious at the very least in so far as it wasn’t throwaway. Most proggers took to the stage dressed as they did not for a joke but because it was fun and it emphasized something in the music. I think that prog musos did a lot in earnest that DeRo seeks to dismiss as self-conscious silliness.

This really disappointed me. All too often I got the feeling that the guys felt prog was a guilty pleasure and that listeners had to dig beneath capes and fantasy lyrics to get to something “genuine” instead of seeing progressive rock as having a serious aesthetic that manifests itself in ways othe
rs than the music. Besides, Led Zeppelin referred to The Lord of the Ringsmore often than did the big prog bands. I mean, when did Floyd sing about hobbits? In what Jethro Tull songs does Ian Anderson mention Gandalf? What’s the name of that Genesis song about Lothlorien again?

It’s too bad DeRogatis feels the need to be an apologist of sorts who has to deride prog rock and only intimate he enjoys it in an ironic way. Before he can say “Here’s a good song”, he has to go through this complicated prelude to establish that the genre is mostly about Henry VIII, hobbits, and Persian rugs and that there’s good music to be had despite all this.

Go to a performance of The Musical Box, a band who recreates Gabriel-era Genesis shows from the music to the costumes to the slide projections to the stories to the hand gestures. Ask the progheads there if they think it’s all just silliness. Having been to many prog shows and being a proghead myself, I can tell you that we don’t take it all just as a joke. The music, costumes, lights, slide projections, films – we dig this stuff because it all adds up to a Gesamtkunstwerk, of sorts, that a Britney Spears concert cannot approach. We enjoy the music and the way it makes us feel and we appreciate the presentation because it adds to the music, it adds to the experience. We take it seriously as art that moves us.

Related posts:

1. PROG @ The Overture Center
2. Puzzles for Progheads
3. PROG @ High Noon
4. PROG, Arp of the Covenant Tonight
5. For Your Entertainment…