- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (Feb 18 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0195098889
- ISBN-13: 978-0195098884
- Product Dimensions: 23.3 x 15.6 x 2.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 531 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #412,334 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Library Journal
The enormous success in 1967 of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band inspired other bands to expand and refine this blending of rock, folk, and classical into a style that came to be known as progressive rock. Throughout the 1970s the form developed into a core element around which colossal light shows, elaborate props, and outlandish costumes were added as bands like Genesis and Yes moved the music into arenas and stadiums. Though hugely popular, many critics considered the music emotionally cold and pompous. By the end of the decade a backlash against progressive rock and disco led to do-it-yourself movements like Punk and New Wave. The music's continued success, however, indicates that this is an important if controversial subgenre of rock music. This extremely detailed and scholarly book offers a unique overview. Its style limits its recommendation to libraries with serious music collections that focus on contemporary forms.?Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"This extremely detailed and scholarly book offers a unique overview."--Library Journal
"Outstanding....Highly recommended--a must-have book for any fan of progressive music."--Progression
"While there have been thousands of books written on every form of music, progressive music as such has gotten a raw deal. Edward Macan has been brave enough to write the quintessential book on a curiously underrepresented form of music--and it's about time."--Keith Emerson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer
"An impressive piece of work....Macan knows this music backwards and forwards: he combines a fan's detached knowledge of minutiae with what if often a quite sophisticated agenda of cultural criticism....I was delighted to find some intelligent, detailed, and nuanced writing about progressive rock....The writing is excellent--the author is always vivid, elegant, and engaging....It contributes another valuable genra study to a burgeoning field."--Robert Walser, author of Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music
"I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book; once I began reading it I found it almost impossible to put down. Macan has put together a wonderful account of the Yes-Genesis-ELP crowd, and much, much more....Macan does an exceptional job of pulling together a tremendous amount of information and assembling it into chapters that are very user friendly. His understanding of the English roots of this style is perhaps the most valuable aspect of his account and will be often cited....Intelligently organized. The number of albums referred to is a remarkable feat of scholarship."--John Covach, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"Comprehensive....Macan gives the much-maligned genre the kind of respect and serious study it deserves."--Cleveland Scene
"[Macan's] first chapter exploring the roots of progressive rock in 1960s psychadelia is masterful; he is able to generalize across hundreds of songs by dozens of bands while keeping the social context in view in a way that enhances the reader's understanding of the music, the musicians, and the audience. Likewise chapter 2, in which he offers a reliable characterization of the principle musical features of progressive rock, again drawn from hundreds of songs."--John Covach, Notes
"Outstanding....Highly recommended--a must-have book for any fan of progressive music."--Progression
"While there have been thousands of books written on every form of music, progressive music as such has gotten a raw deal. Edward Macan has been brave enough to write the quintessential book on a curiously underrepresented form of music--and it's about time."--Keith Emerson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer
"An impressive piece of work....Macan knows this music backwards and forwards: he combines a fan's detached knowledge of minutiae with what if often a quite sophisticated agenda of cultural criticism....I was delighted to find some intelligent, detailed, and nuanced writing about progressive rock....The writing is excellent--the author is always vivid, elegant, and engaging....It contributes another valuable genra study to a burgeoning field."--Robert Walser, author of Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music
"I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book; once I began reading it I found it almost impossible to put down. Macan has put together a wonderful account of the Yes-Genesis-ELP crowd, and much, much more....Macan does an exceptional job of pulling together a tremendous amount of information and assembling it into chapters that are very user friendly. His understanding of the English roots of this style is perhaps the most valuable aspect of his account and will be often cited....Intelligently organized. The number of albums referred to is a remarkable feat of scholarship."--John Covach, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"Comprehensive....Macan gives the much-maligned genre the kind of respect and serious study it deserves."--Cleveland Scene
"[Macan's] first chapter exploring the roots of progressive rock in 1960s psychadelia is masterful; he is able to generalize across hundreds of songs by dozens of bands while keeping the social context in view in a way that enhances the reader's understanding of the music, the musicians, and the audience. Likewise chapter 2, in which he offers a reliable characterization of the principle musical features of progressive rock, again drawn from hundreds of songs."--John Covach, Notes
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quite informative,
By
This review is from: Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (Paperback)
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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Musician looks at Prog Rock,
By Mark D Burgh "Music, Writing, Art, Film, Hist... (Fort Smith, AR United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (Paperback)
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.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good scholarly approach to the music itself, but...,
By
This review is from: Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (Paperback)
...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.
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