Customer Reviews

The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is essentially a compilation of album reviews with a very personal approach by the author.

Most of the book is dedicated to avant-garde, ambient music, electronic music, modern classical works, jazz-fusion and lengthy instrumental and experimental music in general that is closely related to prog-rock but it is definitely not progressive rock and sometimes not even rock music.

However many progressive rock albums are also included. Some of them real classics, others over-rated due to the author preferences and of course many important classic works and artist are missing.

On the other side, the album reviews are excellent.

The reviews usually open with an excellent and brief overview of the band, followed by a little more extensive album overview and a song by song analysis.

The articles are very smart, nice to read, full of valuable information and his analysis reflect solid knowledge of music and a clear understanding of its meaning on every context.

Even when Bradley writes with love about a music I hate, it is a pleasure for me to read his article and his arguments sustain equally his love and my hate.

I would say that this book becomes a "must" for a prog-rock fan when we consider that most of prog album reviews sources like GEPR, AMG and even some other books and web site are very poor and amateurish.

This book offers excellent comments on the albums you already know. It will introduce you to many other less known and excellent bands and it eventually would open a door to other music styles closely related with the progressive rock.

But definitely not for novices who should look for an approach closer to the progressive rock classics.

This book is very misunderstood by those who have critiqued it thus far, and I feel like some of thier critisisms have a lot of validity. I mean yes, Smith should have included those progressive greats such as Van Der Graf Generator, Gentle Giant, and Dream Theater... and Brian Eno did a lot more for Progressive Rock than only the 3 albums that Smith chose to review. But what anyone who reads, reviews, or even just glances at this book need to understand is that Smith has written this book about the genre of Progressive Music, not just Progressive Rock Music, hence the including of such New Age artists as Liz Story and Emerald Web and Space Music artists such as Tangerine Dream and Lightwave. He is exploring a huge genre of music that goes way past Progressive rock, but deals with progressive music on the whole. If you are a progressive rocker, this book is less value to you, and I suggest Paul Stump's book; but if you are truly interested in exploring not just progressive rock but all progressive music, then this book is without a doubt for you! So criticize all that you want critics, but Smith absolutely knows his stuff when it comes to progressive, and the book has become a guide for my personal progressive music collection. A GREAT BUY FOR MUSICIANS!

When applied to musical styles, the meaning of the term "progressive" has always been hopelessly elusive. This book does not solve that problem. In fact, Smith makes things even more difficult by claiming that "Progressive" is a distinct genre of music, not just a qualitative judgement. Most of his examples of this genre are rock-based, but many are not. He also states that this music is structurally different from modern classical idioms, although there are exceptions to this rule also (Terry Riley, Annea Lockwood, Robert Ashley). Adding to the confusion, Smith considers only that music which is currently progressive, leaving out progressive music which apparently no longer qualifies as such. As a result, many readers will detect glaring omissions from Smith's inventory, and many readers with be baffled by his seemingly inappropriate inclusions. Perhaps "progressive" should be abandoned completely, in favor of terminology less vague. Personally, I prefer the term "Unpopular"--which is exactly what most of this music is. As Bertrand Russell said, "If not popular, then unpopular."

Footnote- Two caveats: (1) Smith stresses the importance of well-designed album covers. Therefore, it is a bit amusing that this book features such cheesy graphic design. Why is that Eddie Van Halen look-alike on the cover, and why is he holding a Gibson hollowbody? (2) Some of Smith's prose is certain to rub many readers the wrong way. He describes "dewy washes" of keyboards, "saucy" interludes, etc. Yuck!

Face it. You cannot have an overview of an entire genre of music written by a single author as opinionated as Smith. Apparently he believes that if he doesn't like something, it's not worth mentioning at all. Examples? The entire progressive rock output of a quite important contributor to the progressive rock movement: Italy. Not a word! Smith also feels that it's more important to talk about bands like Throbbing Gristle than mentioning bands like Van Der Graaf Generator and Gentle Giant. These are two of the most important groups of the genre behind the biggies (Yes, Crimson, Genesis). Smith oddly enough mentions bands influenced by these groups, but feels their influences are unworthy of mention. Rather than an overview of a genre, it's an overly opinionated guide to Bradley Smith's favorite bands and nothing more. I cannot recommend this book.

Whatever you think of author Bradley Smith or any of his sins of omission in The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music, you have to admit that he at least tried to give prog fans a useful compendium of prog rock and its practitioners. The chosen theme is a vast subject and in tackling it Smith was bound to attract naysayers who think that either his definition of progressive rock is too broad or is too narrow.
Though like many other reviewers I can think of bands that Smith should have included, there are also many others I had never heard of and so I enjoyed learning something about them. The book is largely very well written and informative and it is the nature of the beast that it was bound to be opinionated as well.
I have only two real complaints: Smith seems to get overly verbose about bands like Throbbing Gristle which is not prog at all but rather is avant-garde. He makes the same mistake with jazz-fusion groups like Return to Forever and Passport. The other is that he focuses too much on certain groups that he obviously favors.
If you like progressive rock music, you should find this guide interesting at the very least. But given the huge number of new quality prog recordings since this book's publishing date, you may also find this guide badly dated. I say its time for Smith to give us an encore!

I found this book to be very enjoyable reading. Smith's candid and colorful descriptions of the titles he reviews are well written and easy to understand. His choice of music is very diverse and gives a good overall view of the progressive music movement. As for the reviews that focus on everything from the titles he excluded to his appearance on the back cover are shallow and baseless. How many good looking writers do you know? What matters is the content of the book (and the music). This book is fun to read and a valuable resource for porgressive music enthusiests.

For me, Mr. Smith's book is a refereshing breath of fresh air. Yes the book is very subjective, and perhaps at times opinionated, but that is the quality of a book like this that draws me in. I don't want lame synopses; I want colorful insights and opinions that allow me to contrast with my own. Reading, like listening, is an experience, so it needs to challenge me. His book does just that. It is clear to me that Smith places a very high value on the experience of listening, and he does an outstanding job putting into words experiencs that are really hard to describe. Books on this topic are very rare, so Smith boldly ventured onward and risked a lot by writing on this topic. For this I give him a lot of credit. By doing so, he opened himself up to criticism, but he should not be discouraged by it. I also enjoy that he has included information about the existence of other forms of media, such as laserdiscs, videos, etc. The collection of some perhaps hard-to-find pictures of the artists puts a nice final touch on the book. I would highly recommend the book to anyone (like me) who has not had the time and resources to accumulate material and study the artform to the degree that Smith has. It is an excellent guide for anyone wishing to begin a collection of Prog titles. I am more than willing to accept the omission of some titles, considering the fact that the book is filled with 320 pages of others. Nice job, Brad.

Smith's guide to progressive rock music is a good start but far from complete. The book ignores the existence of bands he does not like: for this reason Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator and most Continental European, Asian and South American prog is ignored. What is covered -- much of the British symphonic, space rock, experimental -- is done quite well. I believe if Mr. Smith were to expand his coverage in a future edition it would be worth five stars, but as it is it can serve only as a partial guide. Stick with the Macan and Martin books for now.

Bradley Smith defines "progressive music" quite broadly, encompassing progrock and fusion, but also ambient, new age, avant-garde and experimental, and even indie thrash and industrial. Progrock purists will be enraged by some omissions and dubious entries in his progressive "canon," but most readers will make some surprising new discoveries. The writing is engaging, and Smith includes a number of useful appendices of source information.

After having read some of the author's negative reviews of other prog books (so young, so angry, damn that prog music), I felt inclined to review his. Generally speaking, this book is a decent listing of the author's opinion of what is significant progressive music and video.

As other reviewers have stated, there are some obvious omissions of bands/artist that most people consider to be progressive "legends." Futhermore, there are numerous inclusions of music that is on the "fringe" of the progressive scene. Many of the included artists would be considered by most prog fans to be new age, ambient or industrial (Throbbing Gristle is a cool name, but are they a progressive rock band?).

The author also seems to have a preference for what most people would consider fusion music. Most prog fans are interested in this, but don't prefer it to the traditional symphonic sounds of the big six. My other criticisms of this book are twofold. First, I believe the author underestimates his audience's ability to determine what they like. Some of his accounts of cds sound "preachy" and like he is stating "if you really knew about music you would be listening to this instead of" (Van Der Graaf, Banco, PFM, Hands, Yezda Urfa, etc. etc.).

The other issue I have is that while I like his format of listing "essential" prog cds, I did not find myself discovering very many new cds to add to the collection from reading this. Once again, this may be due to differing ideas as to what prog is.

Where this books succeeds is in providing detailed descriptions of a variety of artists and cds. The material the author does cover is thorough (everything from sound quality to album art). Overall, this is a worthy, but flawed, addition to a prog-rock library (even if his definition of what constitutes progressive rock is "creative"). However, you should also include the Macan and Martin books (which Mr. Smith is truly hostile in his review of, I mean, does it really matter if an album came out in November of 70 or February of 71?). I don't know about anybody else, but I just want to read about this stuff and find more music I like.

I also find myself questioning Mr. Smith's reviews of newer prog books, since he seems to so negative about all of them, and I frankly enjoyed some of the prior books he thinks were terrible. Ah, but what do I know, I think Gentle Giant is more progressive rock than Liz Story.