Roxy Music -> King Crimson -> Yes (& Genesis, ELP, Soft Machine, etc.)
Having an (currently) unhealthy fascination/obsession with Krautrock it was natural to start revisiting that other bastion of 70's out-there rock, the UK. Krautrock is great and requisitely wierd & exotic, but they *all* (ok, maybe not all) were taking more tips from bands like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, than from the more oft reported Ayler, Stockhausen or Dada. And if you open your ears and listen to what can be easily ignored as Prog you can hear even more of the greatness that is 70's music (the best decade for rock music?).
Retrospectively it's easy to clump British Art/Prog/Post-Psychadelic Rock off into little sectors or genres. Roxy Music goes there in Art-Rock/Glam (throw Bowie in there too), King Crimson & ELP go in here in Prog, Soft Machine and Gong go over in the Cantebury scene, etc. The reality is not so simple. Not that these classifications are worthless but they don't reflect the reality on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, that is I don't think Phil Collins and Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt and Robert Fripp saw themselves as working in different genres. Sure they end up sounding vastly different but in essence they were approaching the same problem, with generally similar POV. That is say taking the (middle-class striver) gauntlet thrown down by the "ART" of the Beatles late-60's album. (I got yr ART right here!) Driving it home is the fact they cross-pollinated heavily. Phil Collins and Robert Fripp played on Eno's solo albums. Eno and Fripp played on/produced Wyatt's 2nd Matching Mole album.
It's not like it these groups weren't successful either. College kids (in the UK) ate this stuff up as a sign of rock'n'roll sophistication in the face of the oncoming onslaught of (percieved) dumbing down of rock via Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The still-another-step-down-the-cool-ladder and mega-selling prog groups of Yes and ELP can just as well included in the 70's art rock scene. Greg Lake of ELP was in the first incarnation of King Crimson. Bill Bruford (of early Yes) was in King Crimson mk 2. (on a side-note; How great is the Lark's Tongue -> Red version of KC? Fucking Great.)
Maybe significantly in the UK the Beatles were a *cultural* phenomenon as opposed to more of a *pop* phenomenon in the US. I'm sure heads were opened by the psychadelics in the US, but most were to worried about following the Grateful Dead or dancing in the rain at Woodstock, unlike in the UK, where the Beatles were serious Artistes. An aspirational Goal to shoot for.
Not surprising then the UK art-rockers weren't trying to make a new Outside statement, but trying to make the next great step in Inside statements up until when the mask was pulled off (via Punk and Time) and prog rockers shunted off into more LCD pop friendly territory. Indie labels not being a thing in the 70's art rockers generally recorded for major labels. The M.O. being working with Virgin/Richard Branson or Island Records (the analog to hippies working with David Geffen). With the changing times people moved to the poles, with a previously united art-rock camp split twix insider strivers and outsider pioneers. See Phil Collins/Genesis. See Peter Gabriel. Even see Eno working w/U2. On the other side of the coin you have Robert Wyatt at Rough Trade and Fred Frith trudging through the DIY underground with the Art Bears. One way to look at it is a culling posuers from not; another (and more proper) way is the times changed. The cynic says the curtain was dropped away from the Wizard; the even more cynical that the Wizard just changed his look. Oh Well I digress.
(another side note -> I'd argue that US Punk: Ramones, Talking Heads, Pere Ubu, Blondie (and frankly VU too) was working from this same Art-Rock paradigm. Even David Thomas says as much. They weren't making prole music but instead they were making the new edge-y establishment music.) (And one last thought; maybe it wasn't the musicians/music that changed but the market and the labels?)
To sum it up: check out King Crimson, Roxy Music and Soft Machine.
Retrospectively it's easy to clump British Art/Prog/Post-Psychadelic Rock off into little sectors or genres. Roxy Music goes there in Art-Rock/Glam (throw Bowie in there too), King Crimson & ELP go in here in Prog, Soft Machine and Gong go over in the Cantebury scene, etc. The reality is not so simple. Not that these classifications are worthless but they don't reflect the reality on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, that is I don't think Phil Collins and Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt and Robert Fripp saw themselves as working in different genres. Sure they end up sounding vastly different but in essence they were approaching the same problem, with generally similar POV. That is say taking the (middle-class striver) gauntlet thrown down by the "ART" of the Beatles late-60's album. (I got yr ART right here!) Driving it home is the fact they cross-pollinated heavily. Phil Collins and Robert Fripp played on Eno's solo albums. Eno and Fripp played on/produced Wyatt's 2nd Matching Mole album.
It's not like it these groups weren't successful either. College kids (in the UK) ate this stuff up as a sign of rock'n'roll sophistication in the face of the oncoming onslaught of (percieved) dumbing down of rock via Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The still-another-step-down-the-cool-ladder and mega-selling prog groups of Yes and ELP can just as well included in the 70's art rock scene. Greg Lake of ELP was in the first incarnation of King Crimson. Bill Bruford (of early Yes) was in King Crimson mk 2. (on a side-note; How great is the Lark's Tongue -> Red version of KC? Fucking Great.)
Maybe significantly in the UK the Beatles were a *cultural* phenomenon as opposed to more of a *pop* phenomenon in the US. I'm sure heads were opened by the psychadelics in the US, but most were to worried about following the Grateful Dead or dancing in the rain at Woodstock, unlike in the UK, where the Beatles were serious Artistes. An aspirational Goal to shoot for.
Not surprising then the UK art-rockers weren't trying to make a new Outside statement, but trying to make the next great step in Inside statements up until when the mask was pulled off (via Punk and Time) and prog rockers shunted off into more LCD pop friendly territory. Indie labels not being a thing in the 70's art rockers generally recorded for major labels. The M.O. being working with Virgin/Richard Branson or Island Records (the analog to hippies working with David Geffen). With the changing times people moved to the poles, with a previously united art-rock camp split twix insider strivers and outsider pioneers. See Phil Collins/Genesis. See Peter Gabriel. Even see Eno working w/U2. On the other side of the coin you have Robert Wyatt at Rough Trade and Fred Frith trudging through the DIY underground with the Art Bears. One way to look at it is a culling posuers from not; another (and more proper) way is the times changed. The cynic says the curtain was dropped away from the Wizard; the even more cynical that the Wizard just changed his look. Oh Well I digress.
(another side note -> I'd argue that US Punk: Ramones, Talking Heads, Pere Ubu, Blondie (and frankly VU too) was working from this same Art-Rock paradigm. Even David Thomas says as much. They weren't making prole music but instead they were making the new edge-y establishment music.) (And one last thought; maybe it wasn't the musicians/music that changed but the market and the labels?)
To sum it up: check out King Crimson, Roxy Music and Soft Machine.
posted by furtanic at 12:12 PM
3 Comments:
Not to mention the sweet 1-2 punch of Brian "Windows 95" Eno and Robert "Vista" Fripp.
the '70s were not the best decade for rock music.
what was the best decade for music?
By the extra-historical markers of decades I'd say '70-'79 has more GREAT music than either '60-'69 or '80-'89. Sure the peaks of the 60's may have been higher, but the beatles first album doesn't come out until '64 and some of the great 60's bands released great records in the 70's (exile on main street - '72).
if you said '65-'75 is best ten years in rock, I'd have to concede, but even then not-by-much because of the weight of great punk albums '70-'79 also encompasses.
and if you said '50-59, well since the style was birthed around then, it might have to win. (though most of those greats contempo-to-Elvis - Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley - put out their early and best music in the late 50's; Rock still in the small time pre-Elvis.)
whatever, this is a silly point to argue.
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