Certainly there is a noticeable gap between these artists and the more generally rock timbres of some of the larger prog bands, but this only makes sense when limiting the discussion to a purely rock context, one devoid of pop and soul and psychedelia that even a great number of the biggest groups of the style never shied away from themselves. Groups like Supertramp and Saga and even Todd Rundgren are often looped into discussions of prog, and rightfully so, but the likewise mind-bending explorations of groups like Funkadelic, mid-’70s Stevie Wonder and the more stridently avant-garde record Here, My Dear by Marvin Gaye are left out. What’s worse is when we begin to detect in the comparison of what bands are allowed into these discussions versus which are left out notes of bigoted ideas that seem to be rooted more in the patriarchal, white notions that gird rockist ideologies regarding music.
And it’s right that they did! Without the much more limiting definition of what constituted the high apex of progressive rock stylistics, we might not have gotten later groups like Spock’s Beard or Dream Theater, let alone the more widely flowering resurgence of progressive music we’ve seen over the past two decades.īut this limited scope of prog-which privileges extended suite-like song structures and a very particular set of tonalities with guitars, synths, and chord modulations-often leaves out entire worlds of progressive music that deserves to live in the same conversations, even if they don’t hold precisely the same shape. The reasons for this are fairly understandable prog underwent an apocalyptic contraction in the late ’70s with the rise of punk, suddenly finding its social esteem and aesthetic image carved away nearly to nothing, and so efforts to preserve it would take place. We paint the image of the genre space sometimes as unnecessarily narrow. These are important figures, yes, foundational stones upon which the rest of the tale is constructed, but there is more to progressive rock. It’s not enough to just tell the story of obvious figures like King Crimson and Yes and Steven Wilson.