Progressive rock
The genre coincided with the mid-1960s economic boom that allowed record labels to allocate more creative control to their artists, as well as the new journalistic division between "pop" and "rock" that lent generic significance to both terms.
Some bands achieved commercial success well into the 1980s (albeit with changed lineups and more compact song structures) or crossed into symphonic pop, arena rock, or new wave.
The Canterbury scene, originating in the late 1960s, denotes a subset of progressive rock bands who emphasised the use of wind instruments, complex chord changes and long improvisations.
[14] The first is progressive rock as it is generally understood, while the second usage refers to groups who rejected psychedelia and the hippie counterculture in favour of a modernist, avant-garde approach.
[18] Writer Emily Robinson says that the narrowed definition of "progressive rock" was a measure against the term's loose application in the late 1960s, when it was "applied to everyone from Bob Dylan to the Rolling Stones".
[38] According to musicologist Walter Everett, the Beatles' "experimental timbres, rhythms, tonal structures, and poetic texts" on their albums Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966) "encouraged a legion of young bands that were to create progressive rock in the early 1970s".
[41] The same[vague] is said for the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), which Brian Wilson intended as an answer to Rubber Soul[42] and which in turn influenced the Beatles when they made Sgt.
[43][44] Dylan introduced a literary element to rock through his fascination with the Surrealists and the French Symbolists, and his immersion in the New York City art scene of the early 1960s.
[50] Many groups and musicians played important roles in this development process, but none more than the Beach Boys and the Beatles ... [They] brought expansions in harmony, instrumentation (and therefore timbre), duration, rhythm, and the use of recording technology.
Pepper was preceded by several albums that had begun to bridge the line between "disposable" pop and "serious" rock, it successfully gave an established "commercial" voice to an alternative youth culture[58] and marked the point at which the LP record emerged as a creative format whose importance was equal to or greater than that of the single.
Americans increasingly used the adjective "progressive" for groups like Jethro Tull, Family, East of Eden, Van der Graaf Generator and King Crimson.
[63] According to AllMusic: "Prog-rock began to emerge out of the British psychedelic scene in 1967, specifically a strain of classical/symphonic rock led by the Nice, Procol Harum, and the Moody Blues (Days of Future Passed).
Pink Floyd and Soft Machine functioned as house bands at all-night events at locations such as Middle Earth and the UFO Club, where they experimented with sound textures and long-form songs.
[68] Jimi Hendrix, who rose to prominence in the London scene and recorded with a band of English musicians, initiated the trend towards guitar virtuosity and eccentricity in rock music.
"[70] Symphonic rock artists in the late 1960s had some chart success, including the singles "Nights in White Satin" (the Moody Blues, 1967) and "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (Procol Harum, 1967).
[75] Martin writes that in 1968, "full-blown progressive rock" was not yet in existence; however, albums were released by three bands who would later come to the forefront of the music: Jethro Tull, Caravan and Soft Machine.
[78][79] The Nice, the Moody Blues, Procol Harum and Pink Floyd all contained elements of what is now called progressive rock, but none represented as complete an example of the genre as several bands that formed soon after.
[80] Almost all of the genre's major bands, including Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, ELP, Gentle Giant, Barclay James Harvest and Renaissance, released their debut albums during the years 1968–1970.
[105][verification needed][nb 11] The "Kosmische music" scene in Germany came to be labelled as "krautrock" internationally[107] and is frequently cited as part of the progressive rock genre or an entirely distinct phenomenon.
[156] Martin credits Roxy Music's Brian Eno as the sub-genre's most important catalyst, explaining that his 1973–77 output merged aspects of progressive rock with a prescient notion of new wave and punk.
[158] Bands in the genre tended to be less hostile towards progressive rock than the punks, and there were crossovers, such as Fripp and Eno's involvement with Talking Heads, and Yes' replacement of Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson with the pop duo the Buggles.
[160][161] According to Martin, Talking Heads also created "a kind of new-wave music that was the perfect synthesis of punk urgency and attitude and progressive-rock sophistication and creativity.
[165] Most of the genre's major acts released debut albums between 1983 and 1985 and shared the same manager, Keith Goodwin, a publicist who had been instrumental in promoting progressive rock during the 1970s.
[181] Progressive metal reached a point of maturity with Queensrÿche's 1988 concept album Operation: Mindcrime, Voivod's 1989 Nothingface, which featured abstract lyrics and a King Crimson-like texture, and Dream Theater's 1992 Images and Words.
According to Entertainment Weekly's Evan Serpick, "success stories like System of a Down and up-and-comers like the Dillinger Escape Plan, Lightning Bolt, Coheed and Cambria, and the Mars Volta create incredibly complex and inventive music that sounds like a heavier, more aggressive version of '70s behemoths such as Led Zeppelin and King Crimson.
[176] ProgFest, organised by Greg Walker and David Overstreet in 1993, was first held in UCLA's Royce Hall,[198] and featured Sweden's Änglagård, the UK's IQ, Quill and Citadel.
[211] These aspirations towards high culture reflect progressive rock's origins as a music created largely by upper- and middle-class, white-collar, college-educated males from Southern England.
[213] Progressive rock's exotic, literary topics were considered particularly irrelevant to British youth during the late 1970s, when the nation suffered from a poor economy and frequent strikes and shortages.
[214] Even King Crimson leader Robert Fripp dismissed progressive rock lyrics as "the philosophical meanderings of some English half-wit who is circumnavigating some inessential point of experience in his life".
[215] Bands whose darker lyrics avoided utopianism, such as King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Van der Graaf Generator, experienced less critical disfavour.
