Customer Reviews

Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Macan's contribution to the burgeoning field of prog rock literature serves as an excellent summary of the genre. As one reviewer mentioned above, it is highly unlikely to tell seasoned vets anything they don't already know, but the excellent discography of all the major bands at the end of his book is well worth the price of admission. It's important to remember that Macan is a musicologist, and therefore tends to analyse his chosen genre in highly technical terms. If you're a trained musicologist, then the esoteric language won't be a problem, but the frequent discussions of "polytonal triads" "bass ostinatos" and "momentary shifts to A phrygian" (to name but a few) will leave the average reader feeling somewhat alienated, although Macan does his best to describe the jargon in simple terms. One slight gripe I have with the book is Macan's open dismissal of all the major progressive rock bands after 1980. Macan convincingly argues that the "loss of creativity" of the major bands was partly due to the titanic changes in the record industry during the late 70's, but he then goes on to practically ignore the major band's output in the 1980's. Hasn't Macan heard Yes's "I'm Running" or "Final Eyes" for instance? But apart from that slight flaw, Macan's book is an excellent introduction into the world of progressive rock.

This is easily the best book on progressive rock on the market.

The reason that the books by Stump and Martin can't hold a candle to this book is that the author is writing about the MUSIC, from the point of view of a scholar who speaks the language of the classical music tradition.

Stump's analysis of the counter-counter-culture of the dissonant wing of progressive rock and Martin's analysis of the political implications of progressive rock are fun. But ultimately, these do -not- give us anything that we fans didn't get by reading all the interviews of our groups in music magazines over the years.

Macan does. His analysis of the harmonic and rhythmic qualities of pieces such as "Tarkus" actually taught me something about music that I hadn't known. It is impossible to read this book without rushing out to play some CD's (or LP's) that you haven't listened to in a long time.....

Edward Macan's book reads like a thesis on progressive rock, its place in modern music history, and relationship with the counterculture it grew out of. He uses his musicology background and a good sense of cultural theory to very thoroughly investigate and explain the many facets that shaped progressive rock, including in depth chapters on the music, the visuals, and the lyrics in progressive rock. To illustrate things further one chapter looks at four specific pieces of music: ELP's "Tarkus", Yes's "Close to the Edge", Genesis's "Firth of Fifth", and Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here". Macan's focus is the English prog rock scene, although he does make mention of both North American and Continental European bands in his discussions of styles and social relevancy. "Rocking the Classics" also touches on practically all of the related styles of music and bands, from jazz-rock fusion, English folk-rock and heavy metal, to minimalism and avant-garde electronic music. In a sense, I discovered much about what makes me enjoy many of the bands I listen to. The book also delves into prog rock's standing in critical circles and touches a little on more recent progressive rock output, even though the majority of the book concentrates on the 70's. Macan compliments things with an appendix containing a very nice discography and personnel listings for most of the bands he has written about.

As a non-musician I often felt challenged to follow many of Macan's music analyses, however I surmise musicians will appreciate such depth. I also found Macan's style quite dry at times, but preferred that this was not a book written by a typical rock critic. Some may argue that Macan elevates progressive rock to a level akin to the pomposity that befell the music in the late 70's, but I think that would be an unfair assessment. Macan's arguments may be somewhat pedantic at times, but I found them sound and well presented. I think that anyone interested in discovering more about progressive rock will find this an excellent guide, and would recommend the book others.

Ed Macan has succeeded in writing the quintessential book on progressive rock music. While not an album-by-album review, the book looks at the origins of prog, the kind of society that allowed its growth, critical reaction to it, the definition of progressive rock, the aftermath of the 70s heyday and many other topics. Aided by a "song study" of 4 different progressive rock epics, Macan explores that which separated progressive rock from contemporary rock music. This book is an absolutely essential starting point for anyone interested in looking at progressive rock from a scholarly angle. While not everyone will agree with Macan's ideas, they are well thought out and defended and will provide plenty of food for thought.

I find this book to be quite informative in the world of progressive rock. It's useful when you want to know how prog rock originated, the sociality of prog rock, why rock critics who have no life like Lester Bangs and Dave Marsh trashed the genre (simply because they live in a fantasyland that rock should forever be just like Little Richard). But I also found a few things I objected about. He acted like England was the only place for progressive rock. Yes, it originated in England, many of the most important prog rock originated there, but it's absolutely ludicrous to believe that the rest of the world did not contribute to prog rock, like the Italian scene, for example. There is a brief mention of non-British prog bands, but he didn't make much of an effort to bring in to focus their works, like Banco, PFM, Pulsar, Triumvirat, Eloy, etc. Also he made it sound like the minute you entered the 1980s, all the analog keyboards were replaced by digital, when in reality, it wasn't until the mid 1980s that the transformation from analog to digital was complete. He does tend to dismiss a lot of the major prog band's works from the 1980s, and often that holds true, try listening to Genesis' Invisible Touch. But he didn't say all bad stuff about the 1980s. The Post-Progressive section actually says favorable stuff about Edhels, Djam Karet, and Ozric Tentacles. He didn't even complete object to digital. He just objected when musicians use digital synthesizers just for solely synthetic sounds just to take the easy way out. There is a bunch of technical terms, as one has pointed out, that leaves many readers alienated, but there's plenty of stuff even the average reader can understand. Just don't buy this book expecting details in to how many prog bands are out there and how many albums they had. Buy this to know how prog originated, what was the social trends that brought the rise of progressive rock, and what brought it down, as well the technical side of progressive rock.

Edward Macan's book is an academic view of Prog rock. Macan seeks to establish the music's credentials, first by exploring the cultural roots of the genre (mostly from an American view) then assembling a cannon of standard Prog classics, then analyzing four important Prog works as if they were serious musical compositions. This approach works. Macan brings a musicians love and a teacher's experience to the discussion. Appreciating just was good Prog was, and why it was good is often not important as the overwhelming musical chops the most famous Prog musicians used - sometimes to the detriment of their music tends to obscure the compositions themselves. Viewed as an extension of the classical cannon, Prog becomes discernable as part of a high cultural continium that intersected with pop and folk styles for a brief span in the late Sixties before it died.

Prog is a middle-class form, hence its dismal by Marxist critics, but as the number of new prog bands and books like this appear, the appeal of the music, the appeal of form over function, of complexity, of ideas, is not dead. One aspect of Prog that Macan gets its the intense religiousity of the music, both in its roots, and in its message.

The best use of Edward Macan's book would be to read it simultaenously with Paul Stump's earthier English history of the genre.

Macan is uncomfortable with the written word; this book is too formal on occasion, leavening the insight with academic style, which is why I did not give it five stars.

Despite being too young to have been a prog rock fan when the canonical prog bands were in their heyday, I developed a taste for prog bands as I became a teenager in the mid 80's.

Reading this book was an eye-opening experience, it gave me an entire framework to consider the music I loved from various angles, both social, and technical. It analyzes progressive rock in terms of the the performers and their influences, audiences, relationship to the 60's counterculture, live performances, music, lyrics, artwork, critical reception, etc. Very comprehensive, easy to read for a layman but with a fairly academic rigorousness which I actually found stimulating and intriguing.

Since reading this, I bought a few other books on this topic, but still prefer this one. The others (such as Paul Stump's book) read more like a history of the bands than a treatment of the genre.

Overall this is one of my favorite books; through it I discovered that many bands and songs I loved were in fact related all along.

This is a remarkable book. Macan appears to have done meticulous and exhaustive research, and additionally offered thoughtful insight and analysis into the music and the surrounding social forces in which it thrived. Once of the best books I've read about progressive rock, or music history generally - highly recommended.

After all the kudos on places like Progressive Ears I guess I was expecting more. This book won't have much that's new for seasoned Prog fans. And while the title does make it clear that this book covers only British bands, it's a shame because the huge and important German and Italian Prog scenes, not to mention the smaller but still important French and U.S. scenes get very short shrift.

The author way over-uses the term "massive." Every chord, note, whatever is described as "massive" which started giving me a massive headache. For a book of this price I would expect better than black and white pictures of horrible quality (they look like copies of copies of copies...very unprofessional.) Also, physically this book is strange, there's some sort of annoying "paper dust" on every page, and I mean all over every page. I found myself keeping a paper towel nearby to wipe my hands on constantly. Again, very unprofessional, and one expects better for this price.

This book really only appeals to those who are interested in the "Big 6" ; Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, ELP, Jethro Tull and King Crimson plus some of the 2nd tier groups like Van der Graaf Generator and Gentle Giant. But it has little to tell that fans of those bands already know.

Having quite a bit of knowledge of music theory, I had no problem with the author's rather pretentious (for the sake of it) language, but others may want to beware.

All in all, a disappointment.

...when Macan gets around to the anti-prog groundswell of the late '70s/ thru the '80s, he goes into a lot of detail to explain what can be put a lot more simply. Or maybe narrowed down to one nationality--mine. The "art rock is an abomination" mindset came from the American belief that art is art and entertainment is entertainment--the one should not be confused with the other. Art is tedious and entertainment is fun, so when you fuse an art form with an entertainment form, you make tedious what was supposed to have been fun. Macan missed that point entirely, so there was no way he could have made the argument that a lot of us wish we had thought to make 25 years ago--we listened to progressive as an entertainment in the same way we also had Rolling Stones albums in our collection. And as such, I still do. I didn't read music back then and I still can't--as an "artsy-fartsy" snob, I'm a poor example. To me, the younger generation of progressive as represented by Spock's Beard, Dream Theater and Echolyn are just as valid as anything I still own by Gentle Giant, ELP and Yes. That's one point that Macan should have made as well (if it occurred to him at all)--that a lot of us of the original fan base of progressive had fun listening to it, as I'm sure the artists had fun playing it.