WOEBOT

Prog(ish).

Er yeah, hi it's me. Just for the record Carlin and I are best of mates now. I invited Mr.Grumpy to join "the boys" for our Gloomcore night-out, and that seemed to go down quite well. He'd vehemently deny this, but I'll bet he felt a bit excluded, and now he's got a "ladyfriend" (Have you seen photos of Gail? She's a right foxy chick!), a book deal......and, er, a duck; he probably feels he has the emotional resources to take on all-comers. To be frank I hope he's finished tearing into everyone and everything, we're just a bunch of losers struggling to do our own thing and though a bit of constructive criticism (of course framed within the context of greater love) shouldn't go amiss, a full on onslaught, character defamation and generally breaking bottles over people's heads like your Sid "Blinking" Vicious (Sid Viscous anyone?), well it's not so genteel, not REALLY so palatable. So cool it Carlin a'ight! Smack wrist!

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Prog.

(ploughs hand through fringe and pulls strained face) Christ how did I get myself into this situation! Surveying the 3 metre stretch of long-discarded Prog-Rock in the bargain basement of Notting Hill's Music and Video Exchange was like being on the diving board at the rim of a gigantic tank of cold baked beans. Hold your breath! I was surprised that there wasn't a larger collectors Prog-Rock bin in the fancy first floor of the shop. It seems that this stuff is losing it's status as commodity. Upstairs it was mainly what looked (to the untrained eye) to be deep obscurities and one-offs. Names I can't even begin to remember. Every record I picked up this week was reduced in price, and once I even got to the counter to be informed a further 25% had been slashed off my chosen item. Yikes.

No one wants Prog anymore. On one occasion I came back to a store a second time a week later (this venture took me to multiple stores in Notting Hill, Camden, Soho, Old Street, Brixton and Islington) to pick up something which I thought upon further consideration was probably worth investigating, looked in the same bin to find the record had gone. Vanished! You mean someone has actually bought it this week! I couldn't believe it. Closer inspection found it filed in the next-door rack.

No one wants it and also it has no cultural currency whatsoever. What the hell does Prog mean to anyone under 40? Absolutely fuck-all. Your over-40s (and I don't mean to be age-ist here) get all nervous round Prog because they fear some spiky-haired tossbag in a leather-jacket and tartan trousers is going to jump out from behind a rose bush and yell "Hippie!", at which point they're going to have to struggle to explain themselves, hide the offending long-playing al-bum. Come to think of it, what the flying rock has Punk got to do with anything either? What does Punk mean to anyone under the age of 30. Absolutely zilch. I'm 32 and I started in on my particular path into music aged 15 with The Velvet Underground. Before that I liked chart hits. At that time, in the mid-eighties Punk still had some kind of charge, some ghostly emanation, but it had largely vanished. It ought to be clearer than daylight that Post-Punk has an immeasurably larger presence today than punk does. The places one feels Punk's musical influence are almost uniformly dire, all that Blink 192 nonsense. This isn't to say that Donna Summer and Kool Herc (to bounce Marcello's pointers back to him) don't have a big/bigger influence today, just that within the field of Rawk, and other whitey noodling Punk means nothing. Again, Acid House! What the fuck does Acid House mean these days? The revolution is long-overdue innit. We're definitely plateau-ing.

And if we have reached a plateau what's to stop us checking out this Prog thing? This shabby behemoth de-invested of anything that made either an anathema or attractive? It's pointless to continue to read it against Punk, something which is patently as irrelevant. I'm surprised Prog hasn't a greater cult, though come to think of it with Kodwo Eshun listening to it on the sly, Vincent Gallo endlessly thumbing Yes, and I'm not going to spool out the myriad of examples that surfaced in the Internet's own Prog Month, perhaps it's bubbling under. In no particular order, ten groovy Prog records:

Kevin Ayers: Whatevershebringswesing.

Ayers is a great character. In fact I'd always wanted to find this record, but hadn't the stamina. I believe it's been reissued recently on CD. It slinks along at a lugubrious pace. Starring the full panoply of horns, string quartet, gently felt wah-wah guitar, grand Piano, and vibraphone but the soundscape is sparse, not an overplayed note in site. Great sample food in fact. Loverman Ayers is incredibly relaxed, there's none of the chocolate box intensity and misery-without-a-name of Nick Drake (dunno why I said that, I DO like Drake) Kevin Ayers was, a former Soft Machine alumni and like Robert Wyatt (who guests on this) was purged from "The Softs" in the drive towards goofy austerity. This is a Canterbury record. You CAN hear vestigial trace of hashish jollies, which as the decade wears on turns into a bad trip, but Song from the Bottom of the Well is pretty dark. Lovely record. Biba Kopf likes it too.

Kevin Coyne: Marjory Razorblade.

Double LP from former Social Therapist and Drug counseller from Darby. I love that career path! So un-glam! So British!? Kevin Coyne like the Third Ear Band got unlikely props when John Lydon played his record on Capital FM. I'd never heard anything by him before, and took it on trust that this was his best record. It's a bloody masterpiece. It has the melodic richness of Dylan circa Blonde on Blonde with sly touches of Beefheart's seventies LPs (The Spotlight Kid in particular). What makes it INTERESTING and SEDUCTIVE is Coyne's Darbyshire croak smack in the middle. Like the very best rock records there is nary a hint of the blues, all the tonalities and shadings seem to come from somewhere quite else.

The Mighty Groundhogs: Who will save the world?

Which applies to this too, the a-side of which (Earth is not Room enough/Wages of Peace/Body in Mind/ Music is the food of thought) is one flowing rock suite. The tuning is distinctly un-blues, "not-Rock" like Tom Verlaine's Television. This I got on recommendation from Julian Cope's mate The Seth Man. Indeed I like Cope's lateral approach to the whole Prog/Punk shebang, seems to reinvigorate both histories. People rabbit on about Prog's overplaying (and fo' sure this is true in many cases) though the playing on this is very streamlined and uncluttered in a Stoogey kind of way. Gorgeous harmonies and delightful clean refrains. Though the lyrics can be bit pompous and leaden, they're truly heartfelt. There's rather a beautiful elegiac aura surrounding the entire proceedings. Again, lovely.

Once, in the course of making a pop promo, I had a Black Dog suit made for a video. The wife of the puppeteer winked to me and said, you won't believe what band my husband used to be in! Queen it turned out. The poor guy had bailed out very early because he thought the future of pop music lay in snazzy instrumentation, better played music, and Freddie and his gang, well they weren't delivering that as far as he could ascertain. On reflection that's a classic Prog thing to do. That era from 1971-1975 (at which point unfussy Pub Rock began to make itself felt as a presence) was one heavily marked by this weird fetishisation of instrumental prowess. I'm certain alot of people were made to feel real daft cos they couldn't play well. In spite of Robert Wyatt being able to sing Charlie Parker's beat-bop solos note-for-note quite early on, he was by his own confession a terrible musician at the start of The Soft Machine. I'm sure this must have played some part in his alienation from that crew. Who even thinks about this nowadays? Everyone's a non-musician now!

The Third Ear Band: Music from Macbeth.

Part Anton Webern, part plainchant-styings (via Leonin and Perotin, if you haven't heard Perotin check him out, real birth of minimalism shit), part naff court of King Henry the Eighth's square-dance, part prole at the homestead folk musings, oboes on overdrive. All very eldritch! In their favour this is a soundtrack to Roman Polanski's Macbeth, and so some of these 15th century trappings do have a calling. I've often nearly bought their earlier Alchemy LP on the strength of the cover, but I'm glad I didn't now. The worst aspects of Avant-Folk find their pre-echoes here.

Hatfield and The North: The Rotters Club.

I did spend alot of time sifting through records, trying to only pick up quality stuff. In the name of this I heard alot of truly dreadful music, groups who I'd be glad to never listen to again: Yes, whose "Close to Edge" is probably the definitive Prog LP, I thought were truly appalling, and here Mark Fisher's comments at K-Punk with regard to Genesis seemed to also apply: "...what strikes me about their music is its lack of nuance. It is either quiet or loud, - no middle ground, no eddying flow or ebbing undercurrents, just a stuttering study in jerky contrast. Isn't that jabbing masculine jerkiness, that anti-plateau jumpiness, what is so much of a turn-off about Prog?" Worse than this Yes's music seems so deeply uncentred (am I contradicting myself here?), possibly due to the amalgam of these 5 very uncharismatic characters. I did buy Yes's The Yes Album this week (so cheap it almost seemed rude not to) and it's really dreadful, horribly bland, and yet I have a fondness for that "Owner of a Lonely Heart" tune. However no-one should be under impression that that constitutes Prog Rock. That would be like calling Starship's "We built this City on Rock'n'Roll" Acid-Psych-Folk Rock. Was Trevor Horn involved with them early on? I don't think so.

I also heard records by Caravan, Family, Sweet Smoke's "Just a Poke" (one of those German records that's too like Canned Heat to be Krautrock), Paladin (who I've been curious about for years, and who are stodgy blues-merchants), and a few whose names escape me. Being selective was the name of the game. Both Simon and this dude rated Hatfield and The North and on the strength of that I picked it up. I very nearly gagged on the cover. What is it with hairies that causes them, at the drop of a shilling, to don a tailcoat and tophat, like it was the funniest fucking joke in the world? Who cracked it first? Cream on the cover of "Goodbye Cream" probably, in those ridiculous white suits. I swear I've come across so many whiskered stoned grinning idiots dressed up like this on record covers in the last week. You goons! EVERYTIME the gag backfires backfires, and they look like sweaty dopey privately educated morons. And of course formal and stuffy to boot! This thirties filmstar on the cover was enough to set my alarm-bells ringing. If the cover is pants, don't buy the record. This is a lame record. The Soft Machine without the fuzz bass. It's too clean, too anemaic, the vocalist is a Robert Wyatt rip-off, while you could make a case for it as a Lonnie Liston Smith/Bob James inspired endeavour at the end of the day it sounds like wet jazz funk. I had been hunting very hard for records by The Egg (The Civil Service and The Polite Force) but on the basis that they're a retread of this, what John Peel would have referred to as "The Hatfields," then they're well worth avoiding.

Quiet Sun: Mainstream.

This I've had for ages, and it is a Prog record despite the presence of Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, Brian Eno, and Charles Hayward (later of This Heat). It's the "suite" approach that is the hallmark. I remember Bill Drummond had slated the third KLF album as a Prog LP. He liked the fact that as kids they'd all crouch round in living-rooms and listen to entire albums, really concentrate on the lyrics, ponder the guitar solos, and after the whole record everyone would lean back and go "Far fucking out! Wow" and make like they'd been sucked into another dimension and had communed with Sir Arthur, Guinevere and hoary trolls. Drummond's feeling was that was a great way to listen to music. It would be nice indeed if one did invest more in music, really did spend a few months with a bit of music like one did when one first bought records. I remember my far-out uncle giving me a tape with Morodor's "Midnight Express" theme on it when I was 8, and my playing that tape (which also had The Beatles "Flying" and some ELO on it) nearly a million times. That and The Police's Zenyatta Mondatta. (I've no shame!)

This LP, which I'm now listening to on headphones, and of course that's how to listen to these records, is fucking great. It's weird and it rocks. Not gonna do a track by track breakout, I'll leave that to the masters! (wink)

Steve Hillage: Rainbow Dome Music.

A favourite of Alex Patterson's. The record he was playing at one of those early chillout sessions at which Hillage showed up and said "Oi mate I made that." (Cue much backslapping and ensuing Ambient high jynx) Pretty, lots of bubbling water and rippling synths. Verging on the tedious. From 1979 so shearing into New Age. A poor man's La Monte Young. I imagine Ultramarine also rated this along with Mike Oldfield's "Hergest Ridge" which I was unable to stomach. My friend Mike has a clear vinyl version of this! (Yawn)

Dashiell Hedayat: Obsolete.

An obscurity! Prog is the absolute elysian fields for obscure albums (I didn't say obscure 7"s!) I once bought some Russian Prog LPs from Ultima Thule which is the spiritual home for this music. They weren't very good LPs and we've since parted ways. In fact I apologise from the well of my heart that this selection isn't more obscure. What can I say? I'm new here too. I was delighted to find this record this week for loads of reasons. It's on the godlike Shandar label. It sports a cameo by William Burroughs , who was lurking in Paris in 1971. It features Sam Wyatt, Robert's 5-year old son. Also it has Daevid Allen on it who I delightedly informed you played on that Francois Bayle Concrete track on "Electronic Panorama." It enables me to include Allen here without recourse to mentioning Gong, who I've always found TOO MUCH. I also couldn't deal with Genesis. Ditto King Crimson. Ditto Jethro Tull. Ditto Gentle Giant.

This is almost a Psych Prog record, as epitomised by the Hard Rock output of Japan since 1971, Lost Araaf innit. This is Jon Dale(k)'s territory, and since we've swapped notes I know he's tackling it head on! Psych because the guitar has a Hendrix-ian flavour. I find the French vocalists seem to narrate and decant, never really sing, and Dashiell is no exception. Even their rappers fail to lock gears with the music, it's just a different approach I guess.

Prog was a europe-wide phenomen, a world-wide phenomenon. Like Metal in that way, the meme spreads. Dale tells me he's got some Peruvian Prog Rock! And Prog was huge in France. I would have touched on Magma, indeed I had a copy of Magma’s “Köhntarkösz,” but I sold it.

Cielo Drive on this record is awesome. Awesome, like the best of the Cosmic Couriers stuff.

The Plastic People: Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned.

Again international Prog. One of the hippest bits of vinyl I own. Been reissued on CD. One to check. Though it's reference points are Zappa, The Fugs, The Velvets, Faust and Tony Conrad its a Prog rock record through and through. Vaclav Havel started here amazingly enough. (punches air) Rock matters! The recording wonderfully barbaric and raw, brutally metronomic and pulsating with a vicious energy.

Van Der Graaf Generator: Pawn Hearts.

And finally, in my Prog odyssey, VDG's "Pawn Hearts", stirringly described by Seth as "...the crowning achievement of English progressive rock." The thing with VDG, and I did have Godbluff at one point, is that like or hate 'em you can't TOTALLY ignore them. This is, to return to Fisher's handy prog put-down, not entirely "quiet or loud," though Godbluff does hinge on that axis. Hammill can be quite an off-putting presence too, his vocals are so absurdly mannered, somewhere between lord of the manor and man from the shed at the end of the garden. However there are some quite sexy themes, some groovy passages and with half an ear shut you can block out David Jackson's oboe-esque saxaphone. No it's interesting AND impressive, and would no doubt repay close listening (ha ha!).

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I must say I've thoroughly enjoyed my grand experiment. Picking out this stuff was about a million times more fun than ALWAYS buying old Ardkore 12"s, and treading into an empty arena like this, well it's a fookin' laugh! A challenge! Some of this music I found fresh as a daisy and utterly thrilling. So what if it wasn't made yesterday! (adopts demeanour of wizened old man lurking in a hut on the moors) "My children, in a blink of an eye your Belle and Sebastian and Pitman LPs will too be old records!"

Posted by Woebot at October 17, 2003 09:34 PM