Customer Reviews

Progressive Rock Reconsidered (Composers Resource Manual)

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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.

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.

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.

You ought to have at least a Master's Degree before you open this book. Highly technical, and written in mostly academic jargon, the essays in this book reflect the current views of progressive rock among people who work in higher education. Some of the essays are a bit of a shock -- not that that's bad - to long time prog fans. The Queer theory version of Close to the Edge is a new perspective, as is the Lesbian view of Jon Anderson's lyrics. I learned new things by reading them, which is the point.

If you have some knowledge of music theory, you might enjoy this book better. Kevin Holm-Hudson's essay on "Trilogy" is quite good, as is long-time academic Rockist Deena Weinstein's decontruction of Roger Water's lyrics. All of the articles are worthwhile, even if takes a while to get through some of the more technical musical discussions. Give yourself some time, and you may come to value you this book.

Awesome book by a provocative and diligent writer who remains the authority on stuff like this.
This stuff he is an expert on, mostly. Dr. Holm- Hudson, who while an expert on stuff like this cannot find socks without holes or even clean underwear, continues to amaze all his fans out there, mostly me and his family of a lovely wife, son and daughter, with gripping work like this, which he remains the ultimate expert of, providing you want to read stuff like this, of which Dr. Holm- Hudson is the pre- eminent authority.
Just thrilling stuff really!
I mean it just gives you goosebumps!

Progressive rock is a genre that has been consistently maligned ever since the emergence of punk around the time of my birth in the late 1970s for its movement away from the Dionysian values, working-class roots and blues-based songs characteristic of rock and roll in the days of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley.

This is especially true in Australia, where one consistently sees progressive rock albums listed as being "the worst albums ever" in entertainment guides (I recall "Nursery Cryme" being described in that way by Melbourne newspaper The Age - I cannot myself judge having never heard a note of it or related works), and artists who weren't progressive rock are maligned and distorted if their music failed to conform with the critics' party line of simple, stripped down rock - Australia is perhaps the most prog-phobic of major rock markets.

The book attempts to outline why progressive rock is different from the simpler styles of rock that dominated in the sixties. It contrasts progressive rock with earlier styles in terms of orientation (to body or mind), social status (working or middle class), lyrics (fastasy or romance & fun); and the song structures (extended suites such as "Echoes" or "Supper's Ready" in place of simple verse-bridge-chorus songwriting).

The amin focus, sensibly, is on the "true" progressive rock bands, where the emphasis was on flashy solos rather than, as in the case of numerous other artists of the era, improvisation. However, the book, I feel, ought to define progressive rock much more clearly than it does - and explain these definitions too. Often, especially in a prog-phobic country like Australia, there was never a great deal of care in this process. Moreover, those artists lumped in with progressive rockers (whether by punks or musicologists is irrelevant) were often as radically different from each other as they are from "true" progressive rock bands.

Most of the book deals with song structures of various pieces by such bands as Yes, explaining key musical points in their songs to show how progressive rock evolved. The later part of the book focuses on the piece "2112" by Rush (based on a work by Ayn Rand) and on "math rock", a little-known genre of rock in which unorthodox time signatures and shifting rhythms are used constantly rather than as occassional changes in rhythm. This is very interesting for someone interested in music theory, but it is not done by any means thoroughly so that everything is clear to the less knowledgeable. Rather, only a few tiny fragements are given attention.

Moreover, in the latter part of the book, unauthenticated calims are made that certain critically acclaimed bands in the 1990s (like Sonic Youth, generally classed as experimental rock - a genre which in some ways is an odd point between progressive rock and punk) have been influenced by progressive rock - and if we do, it does not seem to me to be very well done even though I am not knowledgeable about the bands concerned.

However, this is a most interesting read nonetheless.

Bradley Smith revieved this book and didn't remember that his own
"book" about progressive rock is just stupid collection of reviews of prog records and videos.In the matter of fact most of the records in his "book" are not progressive rock and almost every record is better than the previous one and vice versa. He doesn't seem to have the slightest idea of for example italian/french/scandinavian (and so on) progressive rock genre from early 70's. I liked K.Holm-Hudson's book just because the writers are professionals and not bad reviewers like B.Smith.

An outstanding book, with pungent and well written aricles that trace and explore the origins and development of bands such as King Crimson, Pink Floyd, and ELP. A chapter on the lyrics and life of Roger Waters remains my favorite. A great read about great music!

If postmodernist thought had no other ill influence on humans, I would still loathe it for enabling such writing on a topic so dear to my heart. Barely interesting at best, barely intelligible at worst. Hey, Derrida -- thanks for making it possible for me to hate a book about one of my favorite topics.

A few bits are OK--the introduction and the chapter on Rush. Otherwise, I wonder who this is aimed at, and whether there are enough people like that for this to have been worth the effort.

This book is really nice on a shelf. It also sits well under a coffee cup or with a diet coke sitting on it. It sets off the colors of a ficus or cactus really well but suffers from a lack of pictures.

My kids like the colors a lot. I am sure the author's mother is very proud and talks about it to her bridge club a lot, especially since he is now tenured and she can stop worrying about him on food stamps. Of course he is always travelling to frozen godforsaken places above the arctic circle to do research, but still overall a good boy who despite sharing a bedroom when he was growing up, managed to write a very nice book that sits well under a coffee cup or with a diet coke sitting on it.