Progressive Rock Reconsidered (Composers Resource Manual) [Paperback]

Kevin Holm-Hudson (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0815337159 | ISBN-13: 978-0815337157 | Publication Date: October 21, 2001

In this book, the glory days of progressive rock are relived in a series of insightful essays about the key bands, songwriters and songs that made prog-rock such an innovative style.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kevin Holm-Hudson is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Kentucky.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (October 21, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815337159
• ISBN-13: 978-0815337157
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,309,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars YOU BETTER HOPE SO, March 10, 2003

By 

Kerry Leimer (Makawao, Hawaii United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Progressive Rock Reconsidered (Composers Resource Manual) (Paperback)

The more you appreciate and enjoy music, the more it becomes incumbent upon you to understand music in terms beyond the social context, beyond "I like it" or "I don't like it". The arts are generally forgiving to lay people: you need not understand the references, the structures, the variations, the sources or the traditions. Which is a long way of saying, you don't need to understand much.

Unless you really want to enjoy what you're listening to.

This book brings together a generous spectrum of opinion on music and the battered category of Progressive Rock. I have been drawn to aspects of this musical "form" for many, many years. And while Prog includes its share of ostentatious and overblown nonsense, it also offers some genuinely original, powerful and moving music.

The positive attributes of this music are best exemplified by Gregory Karl in his analysis of King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" . Here at last is a lucid and insightful essay which clearly connects the music itself with its accompanying subtexts. Mr. Karl does an outstanding job of tracing the elements of the score and structure forward and backward in the King Crimson catalog to make an intellectual connection between sound and meaning. John S. Cotner's analysis of Pink Floyd's "Careful with that Axe, Eugene" is interesting in its attempt to take us through a new system of notation for a new kind of compositional technique. And there are several other essays ranging from lyrical analyses of works by Roger Waters and Adrian Belew, to the time and thematic transformation techniques of Keith Emerson, as well as other perspectives on the music of bands such as Yes and Rush.

These essays may seem dry and overly scholastic in some cases, but an untrained reader needs to look beyond the immediate and sometimes significant challenge of dealing with music theory to the understanding that this music usually goes well beyond the surface characteristics of sound and song to something more profound. In fact, if you like this musical form, this book will better help you understand why you like it, even without comprehending every nuace presented by the authors.

The only topic that seems to be missing is the role of the studio in much of this music. In many cases, signal processing techniques and studio manipulation play a significant role in the resulting music. For example, the article by Mr. Cotner, which goes to such great lengths to develop a system of notation capable of dealing with the vagaries of an Echoplex, never gives a complete nod to the sometimes "experimental" and even "accidental" origin of some of these pieces -- intellect catching up with intuition, as Brian Eno has said. None-the-less, Kevin Holm-Hudson needs to be applauded for putting together a broad-ranging, thought-provoking and -- sorry for the cliche -- challenging book that should compel you to know more about what you think you hear.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thick as a Brick, but excellent for the thinking prog fan, May 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Progressive Rock Reconsidered (Composers Resource Manual) (Paperback)

Some previous reviewers have lambasted this book as "pretentious" (kind of funny, seeing that from alleged prog fans). What is so pretentious about an academic writer taking an "academic" perspective on rock? It's not as if this music was the Rolling Stones, after all. I don't see the pretense here; this IS an "academic" book, in that it does require some thought from the reader (it also helps to know the music that is written about well). But I enjoyed it for that very reason.

This is NOT a book for beginners, for those who want to know what prog was/is all about or for those looking for VH-1 "Behind the Music"-style bios. If you want a "survey" of progressive rock--what it was, its history, etc., check out Ed Macan's text "Rocking the Classics." If on the other hand you love this music, and maybe you're tired of reading the same facts over and over but instead you want to learn about how a body of music may be "read" from a number of different fields (philosophy, musicology, journalism), then this is for you. For that reason I would recommend it not only for serious prog fans, but for anyone interested in popular music studies.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A critical study on progressive rock, January 11, 2002

By 

Kimi Kärki (Finland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Progressive Rock Reconsidered (Composers Resource Manual) (Paperback)

Edited by assistant professor of music theory at the University of Kentucky, Kevin Holm-Hudson, this latest book on much disputed and mocked "genre" of progressive rock, "Progressive Rock Reconsidered", brings forward the questions of how we should approach the history of music. Because of its large timeframe and range of topics, the book really conveys us through different perspectives on the nature of 1970s musical popular culture. Some ways it could be compared to Edward Macan's in my opinion already classic study "Rocking the Classics. English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture". However, I find Progressive Rock Reconsidered to be very interesting effort in itself because of its interdisciplinary nature. In this book are eleven articles, written by academic scholars, some of them professors, who are discussing progressive rock from different perspectives. Their fields of study include musicology, comparative religion, and sociology, but its easy to find also traces of historical, political, journalistic, feminist, and self experienced-that's not a crime in "the academic world"-analysis tied in it. I find this book to be rich and critical overlook on progressive rock, its past and present.

The book has a kind of chronological structure in three parts, beginning with historical context-setting in part 1. Part 2 includes most of the articles (seven of them), analysing the heyday of the progressive rock, from Pink Floyd to Yes, EL&P, King Crimson, Yes, and Rush. Part 3 considers the influence and legacy of progressive rock in the 1990s and onward. We still find mighty King Crimson progressing and stretching its limits, but also some newcomers that find elements to their style from progressive canon. Radiohead, and Sonic Youth, just to mention two bands, have been successful reformers of progressive ideology.

As both a musician (progressive rock, and doom metal) and a cultural historian, I find the common notions of "academics in their ivory towers" to be somewhat stereotypical. If academic scholars use special methodologies in their analysis of popular culture, can this be considered to be intentional distancing of language? I'd have to say their language is specialised, but in no way separated. If you are not able to read scores (of written music), should you then claim that all musicians are living on a different sphere of existence? Some parts of this book are not maybe understandable to everybody, but that's the price you pay for digging deeper. The same goes with progressive rock itself, right? There are countless points of view to this world we live in, and the varieties of academic discussion give some extra to those willing to go through the effort of finding out more.