Is 70's Progressive Rock to Blame for New Age Music?
When I first heard this statement made by a Minneapolis-based rock critic, and relayed to me by a friend, I hit the roof. Such sophistry, blaming "Dark Side of Moon" for John Tesh. But when I thought about it some more I realized that he was right -- but the music critic still managed to get it wrong.
Yes, it's true, the progressive rock of Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Roxy Music, King Crimson etc. did spawn New Age music. But to blame it for spawning New Age is as ridiculous as blaming Jazz for spawning Fusion and Grunge for begetting Emo. Blues begat Rhythm and Blues and Rhythm and Blues begat Rock, with Gospel and Jazz in there somewhere. Celtic music helped spawn Country, and Country helped birth Rockabilly, which fed back into Rock, which begat Hip Hop (with a whole lot of help from Funk) -- so today you're left with bands like Wilco who play a type of Alt-country that wouldn't sound out of place at the Grand 'Ol Oprey, but who would then get kicked out two minutes later when they start sounding like Kraftwerk doing Sonic Youth noise experiments. The point is you can't give credit and blame to music styles as they mutate. If you're going to blame Pink Floyd for New Age, you might as well blame Muddy Waters as well, since Pink Floyd started out as a traditional blues cover band, as did most British bands of that period before they started singing about "Pipers at the Gates of Dawn" and doing 15 minute Mellotron solos.
Late 60's to mid 70's Prog Rock was informed by a whole different sensibility than what created Windom Hill. At its best Prog was lyrically and musically ambitious, heavily influenced by the Western classical tradition and Jazz. Song structures and time signatures were complex and sometimes tortuous, lyrics made allusions to literature, art, science and mysticism (rarely politics) -- but they always rocked. King Crimson could sound as much like Black Sabbath as Miles Davis (as Miles Davis often did himself!). On the other hand, New Age always sought to be meditative, somnambulant, never challenging the listener. It ended up relying on sentiment and cliché with song titles repeatedly featuring words like "crystals", "Sedona", "vortex", "dreams" "Celtic" and "dolphins", having become today the aural equivalent of Hummel figures.
There was also what I call an intermediate step on the way from Prog to New Age -- artists like Tomita and Vangelis. Both, especially the latter, made non-vocal synth music, but featured dramatic and harmonically complex melodies that made no concession to do anything other than totally engage the listener. Today this tradition has stayed alive with such techno bands as The Orb, Aphex Twin and Orbital-- and don't forget Tangerine Dream, they're the actual direct link from Prog rock to New Age that proves the point. In the early 70's they'd be discussed in rock magazines along with Yes, Pink Floyd, Mott The Hoople, etc. -- and today they are now squarely in the New Age camp. While Prog is responsible for New Age, the critic is also forgetting that it spawned two other more positive offshoots, Ambient and Techno (plus all of its offshoots such as Acid, House, Drum and Bass etc.) , genres that are not nearly as derided as New Age. Also today's Prog Rock descendents, "Tool", "Perfect Circle" and "The Mars Volta" are bands that are regularly gushed over by rock critics like Mr. Gilyard.
When I first heard this statement made by a Minneapolis-based rock critic, and relayed to me by a friend, I hit the roof. Such sophistry, blaming "Dark Side of Moon" for John Tesh. But when I thought about it some more I realized that he was right -- but the music critic still managed to get it wrong.
Yes, it's true, the progressive rock of Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Roxy Music, King Crimson etc. did spawn New Age music. But to blame it for spawning New Age is as ridiculous as blaming Jazz for spawning Fusion and Grunge for begetting Emo. Blues begat Rhythm and Blues and Rhythm and Blues begat Rock, with Gospel and Jazz in there somewhere. Celtic music helped spawn Country, and Country helped birth Rockabilly, which fed back into Rock, which begat Hip Hop (with a whole lot of help from Funk) -- so today you're left with bands like Wilco who play a type of Alt-country that wouldn't sound out of place at the Grand 'Ol Oprey, but who would then get kicked out two minutes later when they start sounding like Kraftwerk doing Sonic Youth noise experiments. The point is you can't give credit and blame to music styles as they mutate. If you're going to blame Pink Floyd for New Age, you might as well blame Muddy Waters as well, since Pink Floyd started out as a traditional blues cover band, as did most British bands of that period before they started singing about "Pipers at the Gates of Dawn" and doing 15 minute Mellotron solos.
Late 60's to mid 70's Prog Rock was informed by a whole different sensibility than what created Windom Hill. At its best Prog was lyrically and musically ambitious, heavily influenced by the Western classical tradition and Jazz. Song structures and time signatures were complex and sometimes tortuous, lyrics made allusions to literature, art, science and mysticism (rarely politics) -- but they always rocked. King Crimson could sound as much like Black Sabbath as Miles Davis (as Miles Davis often did himself!). On the other hand, New Age always sought to be meditative, somnambulant, never challenging the listener. It ended up relying on sentiment and cliché with song titles repeatedly featuring words like "crystals", "Sedona", "vortex", "dreams" "Celtic" and "dolphins", having become today the aural equivalent of Hummel figures.
There was also what I call an intermediate step on the way from Prog to New Age -- artists like Tomita and Vangelis. Both, especially the latter, made non-vocal synth music, but featured dramatic and harmonically complex melodies that made no concession to do anything other than totally engage the listener. Today this tradition has stayed alive with such techno bands as The Orb, Aphex Twin and Orbital-- and don't forget Tangerine Dream, they're the actual direct link from Prog rock to New Age that proves the point. In the early 70's they'd be discussed in rock magazines along with Yes, Pink Floyd, Mott The Hoople, etc. -- and today they are now squarely in the New Age camp. While Prog is responsible for New Age, the critic is also forgetting that it spawned two other more positive offshoots, Ambient and Techno (plus all of its offshoots such as Acid, House, Drum and Bass etc.) , genres that are not nearly as derided as New Age. Also today's Prog Rock descendents, "Tool", "Perfect Circle" and "The Mars Volta" are bands that are regularly gushed over by rock critics like Mr. Gilyard.
posted by Call Stack at 8:05 PM
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