I watched a couple of shows on BBC 4 (satellite) last week. Prog Rock At The BBC has some brilliant performances on it – especially from the likes of Wishbone Ash , The Nice , and Caravan . It was just a shame that the spotty-faced oik responsible for the captions for each performance were focused on taking the piss out of the whole Prog Rock phenomenon.
Some of the best rock bands ever came out of the Prog Rock movement – try to imagine saying the same of today’s lame offerings in 40 years time: it just won’t happen. So it is annoying when 18 year olds with ADHD are allowed to comment on something which they are incapable of understanding, and which was musically capable of producing 43 minute long tracks with almost no repetition. Your average Hip Hop act can’t go 5 seconds without repetition – it’s the only thing they can do.
There was a follow-up show – Prog Rock Britannia. This was typical BBC – basic summary: Prog Rock was the direct result of the Beatles and The Sex Pistols, just like all musical genres. End of matter . Time has no meaning to those at the Beeb (well, they make Doctor Who and hype it into the stratosphere, after all), and justifying the past using more recent history is one of its favoured ways of misleading the public.
It was even irritating to see some of the Prog Rock pioneers half taking the piss or criticising what they did back then – especially when you consider that some of them still tour and make a passable living out of it now!
But the only real problem with these shows was that they specifically made out that Prog Rock was a quintiessentially English phenomenon. Anyone at the Beeb heard of Frank Zappa ?
Most annoying of all, though, was the omission of the best Prog Rock band ever: Rush. And they’re still going strong…