Wednesday, January 07, 2009

reasons to feel guilty, part 3


Having extolled the virtues of the Carpenters and the Style Council in recent posts, I now stride fearlessly on in the quest for a hat-trick of Guilty Pleasures (TM). This week BBC4 brought to our homes its five-night Prog Britannia season in an appreciation of the 1970s musical behemoth that was progressive rock.

Like the music itself, the season had its ups and downs. The hour-and-a-half historical documentary which opened the season seemed to claim that it was at the very time when punk appeared to drag popular music out of the Court of the Crimson King and into a sweaty, pogo-ing crowd at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall, that the music of the main prog acts (Yes, ELP, King Crimson) had begun to cross an ill-defined line into overblown self-indulgence. In reality, you only have to look at Rick Wakeman's spangly cape and huge bank of keyboards and listen to the cod mysticality in, say, Jon Anderson's largely nonsensical lyrics to know that self-restraint was never the prog way.

It's a fair enough assessment though that prog was a logical development of some of the psychedelic meanderings which had begun to appear, for example, in later Beatles albums, and for musicians involved--Steve Howe (Yes), Carl Palmer (ELP), Bill Bruford (Yes/King Crimson)--to claim that they were attempting to combine the complex structures of classical music, the irregular rhythmic metres of jazz and world musics and their own extreme instrumental dexterity, and so create something genuinely original.

Some of the programmes in the season were quite painful to watch. Nothing to do with the music though. Two words. Phil. Collins. Now, I have to admit a certain affection for the early Collins-era Genesis albums, Trick of the Tail, And Then There Were Three, Duke. Lord knows though, it's difficult to warm to him as a man... We'll leave it at that.

Anyway, that's not to generally denigrate the music. I reckon there are some good tunes buried in there among all those 27/8 time signatures and all that instrumental noodling. How about this YouTube gem for example, from the 1971 Genesis album Nursery Cryme? At least Collins could hack it as a drummer...


6 comments:

Wanderer said...

Excellent Video!
Would it be a different world now if he had stayed behind those drums?

Hoops Hooley said...

If only!!

Hoops Hooley said...

On the same theme, Alan McGee's posting on the Guardian music blog "The Non-ironic revival of Phil Collins" yesterday has touched some raw nerves. 127 comments and counting...

Cocktails said...

I had the pleasure of seeing Phil Collins at a live taping of Room 101 a few years ago. He came across ok (talking about drumming, evangelical Christian TV etc.) until he got onto the subject of Oasis. Here, he ranted on for a very, very long time - the version that made it on to TV is severely edited if I remember correctly. He just didn't seem to understand that it is the job of Oasis to hate him, that there is no point in getting upset about it...

For my part, as a shameless pop fan, I like Phil Collins. He has released some tosh but all can be forgiven for Easy Lover and Sussidio.

Hoops Hooley said...

Interesting. I'm sure his complex about people disliking him doesn't work in his favour.

I'll (just about) give you Easy Lover but in my view it was round about Sussudio when the rot started to set in.

And Sussudio?? That's a made-up name right?

Cocktails said...

I think that Sussudio is a fine name. She would make a good sister to little Chardonnay...