Music Opinion Blog

Opinions and occasional rants about the state of the music scene. The views expressed are entirely my own, and do not represent those of any artists or publications with whom I may be connected.

Prog-gate “The Prog Corruption Blog”

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Tim Hall

I really try to steer well clear of backstage politics in the Prog world. But sometimes things happen on public forums that leave me no choice.

There has been something of a ruction in the community over a mysterious blog calling itself the “Prog Corruption Blog”, which claimed to “try to address corruption, scamming, vote canvassing and poll rigging in the world of Progressive Rock Music as dedicated and professional artists are forced out of popularity polls and charts by PR driven outfits“. There was but a single post, which made the claim that the reader’s poll in Classic Rock Presents Prog had been rigged in favour of Panic Room and The Reasoning, two bands recently signed by Esoteric Antenna. The whole thing reeked of an agenda, and read like the work of someone with an axe to grind against either the bands, the label, or both.

I learned of this blog from a link posted in the comments on another post in this blog, I immediately bought it to the attention of CRPP and two of the bands because I felt they needed to know. To say that there was then a significant sewage/ventilation device interface incident would be an understatement. Certainly some of those parties considered the contents of that blog libellous, and there was talk of lawyers.

A few hours later, after a number of angry comments including some from a member of one of those bands, the entire site disappeared.

If you read the whole thing before it got taken down, it was less an attack on the CRPP Poll, and more a direct attack on the professional integrity of two bands and their record company. There was also an implied personal attack on Panic Room’s frontwoman Anne-Marie Helder, suggesting that she did not deserve the Best Female Vocalist of 2011 award because the band “had played no more than half a dozen pub gigs”. (Obviously untrue, we’ll get to that later)

It’s now being suggested that the author writing under the false name of “Beverly Myers” is in fact male. I’m not going to argue with someone with a Master’s degree in psychology on that point. It’s notable that the (probably male) author adopted a voice that read like a crude caricature of 1980s hairy-armpit feminism to make his dubious points. I now believe he has a misogynistic agenda – not only are two of the bands female-fronted, but the record company is also run by a woman.

Given that the author has lied about his identity, nothing else can be taken at face value. The whole thing is full of distortions, half-truths and outright lies which cannot be put down to mere poor research. It should certainly not be dismissed as “a bit of harmless internet fun” – it’s a clear and deliberate attempt to damage several people’s means of earning a living. It’s already diverted a lot of their time and energy away from creating and promoting their music towards countering these malicious lies.

One of the bands has also dropped hints that they have strong suspicions as to the identity of the perpetrators (note the use of the plural here). While I don’t want to speculate on their specific identity, it does feel like the work of a fan or maybe even a member of a prog band made up of ugly blokes who’s bitter that the record label had passed over their dated 80s-style neo-prog in favour of two bands in question. That would put the sneering references to “bands fronted by pretty girls”, “beauty contests” and “they aren’t proper prog” in to context.

Somehow I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this by a long way.

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The Classic Rock Society Awards

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Tim Hall

There has been a fair bit of discussion on Twitter regarding the Classic Rock Society’s annual awards. Despite it’s name, the CRS is mainly concerned with the progressive rock scene, with a membership heavily centred in South Yorkshire, where the vast majority of their gigs take place. They sponsor one of the stages of the Cambridge Rock Festival, which last year featured the likes of Morpheus Rising, Also Eden and the magnificent Kyrbgrinder.

But when it comes to their awards from the annual shindig at that Mecca of Prog, Wath-upon-Dearne, then questions start being asked about how representative of the wider progressive rock scene these awards really are, and what these awards actually achieve.

Don’t get me wrong. IQ, Mostly Autumn and Magenta are all great bands, and I probably ought to declare an interest in that I’m on first name terms with the members of one of those three. Although I’m personally not that big a fan of Pendragon, who picked up no fewer than four awards this year. But when it’s the same half-dozen bands that win year after year, you do begin to wonder exactly what purpose these awards serve. One bass player I won’t name thanked his fans online for his nomination for “Best John Jowitt Award”, which really says it all. The progressive rock scene has got far broader and far more diverse over the past decade, and the CRS awards completely fail to reflect this.

On one hand, if many of the members are diehard fans of particular bands, what’s to stop them voting for their favourites. On the other hand, the conservatism and parochialism of the awards is starting to get embarrassing. It’s getting to be the NME of Prog, and that can’t be a particularly good thing. It can even end up reflecting badly of some of the bands that win awards, in that it opens up their fanbases to accusations of being stuck in an 80s neo-prog time warp, unwilling to listen to anything new or different.

Although perhaps the real problem is simply that some people take the awards too seriously. To be voted best female vocalists by readers of a widely distributed newstand magazine that’s featured Kate Bush on the cover actually counts for something. To get the award for best album and best song on the votes of a relatively small and largely self-selecting group of people from South Yorkshire counts for rather less.

The CRS does a lot of good work in promoting progressive rock, and the leadership does appear rather more clued-in than some of the membership. But perhaps the way they do the awards need a rethink?

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On Gatekeepers and Discovery

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Tim Hall

There has been discussion on social media recently about the changing nature of the music discovery process, and the role of the music press. Some expressed nostalgia for the days when the music press created a buzz about major forthcoming releases ahead of the release date to build up anticipation. On the other hand, I liked the way some artists who have embraced the fan-funded pre-order model reward those who’d paid up front months earlier by letting them be the first to hear the record, some weeks or months in advance of the retail release date. A music journalist suggested that made media outlets less likely review the records when bands did that. I’m not entirely convinced.

As I see it, the press aren’t as central as they were 20-25 years ago. They’re not totally irrelevant nor likely to become so in the foreseeable future but neither are they the sole gatekeepers that they used to be. And this is a good thing; it’s not healthy for a small number of gatekeepers to have complete control over what gets exposure. At it’s best, with human nature being what it is, there will be a degree of politics and favouritism. At it’s worst, you can end up with bands who kiss the right arses getting coverage at the expense of those with the most awesome music. And don’t get me started on the London-centric nature of so much of the press.

I was a prog fan in the dark days of the 1990s when the genre was more or less marginalised and ignored by the media. So the internet has always been a major part of the music discovery process for me, going back long before there was Twitter or Facebook or even MySpace. Who else remembers ROCKNET and UKMUSIC on CompuServe back in the mid-90s?

It’s not necessary to be able to hear the music online although there are plenty of bands I’ve discovered via sites like last.fm. I’m one of those people who will buy a record unheard based on recommendations from a trusted source. I think the collective opinions of a significant number of music fans is at least as valid as those of professional music journalists, and less likely to be influenced by music biz politics.

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Steve Wilson on Prog’s Stockholm Syndrome

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Tim Hall

In a great interview with Steve Wilson, along with talk of his most recent album “Grace for Drowning” and a lot interesting thoughts on the present and future state of the music industry, he touches on the image of progressive rock world.

We’re living in a time when a lot of bands are looking around and seeing that the climate has changed so much over the last 20 years. Many feel the right thing to do is perhaps go back and revisit what made their reputation. Yes famously did a return to that last year. For 20-30 years, classic progressive music was incredibly unpopular and unfashionable. I was talking to Steve Hackett about this. He feels for the first time that people actually appreciate the work he did in the ‘70s. He feels it’s only in the last three or four years that he’s begun to feel people value that work as his greatest achievement. For 30 years, he was told it was shit, that he was a dinosaur, and that the music was worthless and no-one was ever going to want to listen to that hippie stuff again. I cannot underestimate how these guys were brainwashed. Robert Fripp and Ian Anderson feel the same. They were brainwashed by the media into thinking everything they did in the ‘70s was worthless junk. It’s almost like abused child syndrome. It took a great amount of reassurance for them to begin to believe that people love that stuff and that it’s the work that their reputation will ultimately rest on.

This is what I’ve been saying for years. In 2012, nobody cares what punk-era hacks like Paul Morley, Tony Parsons or Julie Birchill think any more; their opinions have not stood the test of time, and they haven’t been “relevant” for years. Yes, a few ignorant music journalists who were in nappies where Johnny Rotten swore on the Bill Grundy show still parrot ignorant clichés from that era, but they’re increasingly a minority, and they’re far more likely to be called out for not knowing what they’re talking about.

As for progressive musicians, the cage is not locked, and the jailers have gone. There is no need to pretend they’re “not prog” because of the alleged stigma attached to the genre. So let us have no more of the nonsense about any musician having to completely disassociate themselves from “prog” because it would damage their career.

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Another Celebrity Death

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Tim Hall

So we awoke this morning to the news of Whitney Houston’s death at the age of 48. While I’ve never been a fan of her genre of music, it’s still yet another life cut far too short and another great talent wasted by substance abuse.

In the last few years I’ve got to know quite a few members of various bands, so celebrity deaths come just a little bit closer to home for me. I pray this never happens to anyone I actually know. Makes me wonder if the price of success and fame is too high for some people.

I really detest the way the celebrity fame machine all-too-often chews people up and spits them out, like Aztec deities demanding blood sacrifices. Worse still is the way some pundits glamourise self-descructive behaviour as somehow “rock and roll”. I’m unrepentant about some very harsh things I’ve said in anger about one particular Guardian music critic over things he said about Amy Winehouse before her tragic but all-too-predicable early death.

I can certainly name of a few artists who’s work I admire who give the impression that they’ve gone very close to the abyss and only narrowly avoided falling in.

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Landfill Prog

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Tim Hall

I’ve been listening to “recommendations” on last.fm recently, for the first time in a while. As before, it tends to overplay the same small subset of bands too much, including rather too many very similar-sounding power-metal bands and NWOBHM also-rans with the word “Witch” in their title. One other act who keep coming up is a European prog band. Their last.fm Wiki description is a cut-and-paste from Prog Archives describing them as being in the style of classic neo-prog bands like Marillion, IQ and, er, Pendragon. Which is the sort of thing to make you fear the worst.

I won’t name the band, but I have to say I wasn’t impressed by what I heard.

The singer sounds as though he wants to be Fish, but without the charisma. The guitarist tries to be Steve Rothery, only without a fraction of the talent. It’s all there; the widdly solo on a 1980s synth, the portentous spoken-word section, even some sub-Pink Floyd FX. The lack of originality might not have mattered so much had the songwriting been great, but sadly, it’s very very ordinary. Bands like this are to prog-rock what The Kooks are to indie.

If bands like The Kooks are labelled as “landfill indie”, then this is surely landfill prog. The stuff that falls well, well below the Sturgeon threshold.

This isn’t a “prog” versus “progressive” thing by the way; that’s something that always degenerates into a “my music is better than your music” pissing contest. The real problem with bands like this is not that they’re “prog” rather than “progressive”, it’s simply that they’re not very good. Neo-prog, when done well, can be great. Bands like IQ or Magenta demonstrate this. They might still wear their influences on their sleeves sometimes, but they can write strong original material with enough of their own identity to be far more than a derivative pastiche.

Which is something the landfill indie bands conspicuously fail to do.

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Black Sabbath

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Tim Hall

I’m part-way through reading Iron Man, the autobiography of Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, which I had as a Christmas present. A fascinating read so far, with tales of rock and roll excess mixed with the stories behind some of the songs, beginning with Iommi growing up in a working-class part of Birmingham. The description of Iommi’s industrial accident, which is not for the squeamish, out to server as a reminder as to why all that health and safety legislation some people want to abolish is there for.

It’s prompted me to dig out a lot of old Ozzy-era Black Sabbath albums, many of which I’ve not played for years, and it’s reminded me just how consistently good they were. Also it’s remarkable just how well-mixed and mastered the albums are, especially when you consider how little time they took recording their earliest ones.

I’d say all the first six albums deserve to be in any self-respecting rock and metal fan’s record collection. It starts with their debut, when they were in transition from the blues band Earth, and blues-rock workouts sit alongside the doomladen distorted tritones with which they made their name, and the quality is consistent right the way through to the metal juggernaut of “Sabotage“, with the face-melting centrepiece “Symptom of the Universe”

Black Sabbath, despite some of their Hammer Horror imagery, were never really the Satanic band portrayed in some sections of the media. When you know that main lyricist Geezer Butler was an Irish Catholic, a song like “After Forever“, with it’s infamous line “Do you want to see The Pope on the end of rope” is clearly all about sectarian bigotry.

As an aside, playing seventh album “Technical Ecstacy” and Led Zeppelin’s “Presence” back-to-back makes me think the often maligned and in my opinion somewhat underrated Sabbath album is the one of the pair that’s aged the best. Take away the obvious classics “Achilles Last Stand” and “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” from Presence, and you’re left with rather a lot of filler.

The best album of the lot has to be “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath“. The monumental title track has to be one of the best songs about being totally pissed-off with life, the universe and everything ever written; “Bog blast all of you” is a great line. But the whole of the rest of the album is pretty much flawless, and displays a far greater musical sophistication than anything they’d done before, whether it’s the keyboard-led “Who Are You”, or the ambitious multi-layered closing “Spiral Architect”.

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Has Classic Rock presents Prog Jumped the Shark?

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Tim Hall

I am very disappointed by the way this month’s Classic Rock Presents Prog has published an appalling attack on one of the bands I follow in the guise of a review.

Even though the review of the actual gig was very positive, the reviewer devoted more space to unfair, inaccurate and deeply damaging nonsense accusing the band of lacking professionalism regarding promotion than to the actual music. Exactly what is this supposed to achieve?

Reading between the lines, which I know is always dangerous, it seems as if their “crime” appears to be spending their time touring the length and breadth of the country playing before actual paying punters rather than spending it schmoozing with self-important music journalists who never venture beyond the M25.

I’m thinking of other bands who I won’t name who seem to have to spend as much time travelling to meet up with the London-based hacks as they actually do out on the road. That to me epitomises the fundamental rottenness of the “Music press as gatekeeper” model of the old-style music business.

It’s sad to see Classic Rock Presents Prog descending into the “Build ‘em up, knock ‘em down” mentality normally associated with style-over-content rags like the NME. I had, perhaps naively, thought this magazine was above that. They’ve done a lot for this band in the past, now they give every appearance of having turned against them for reasons that appear to have far more to do with music press politics than with music.

My copy is now in the bin.

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Where is all the good music?

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Tim Hall

We’ve all heard friends like this. “There’s no good music around any more”, they say, like Homer Simpson. We know there’s all kinds of wonderful music out there in every genre from prog-rock to death metal to alt.country to electronic to solo bass to many many more that most people have never heard of. But they only know of the ITV Indie and Asda-pop of the commercial mainstream.

Steve Lawson said on Twitter

Ever heard anyone complaining that there’s no good music around any more? Those people are insane. Ignore them.

But I think Steve Lawson, thought he has a point, is still being a little bit on the harsh side, and although the people he rails about are indeed quite wrong, I can understand where they’re coming from.

When these people were in their teens and early 20s, they had plenty of time to discover new music. All the best music was well outside the commercial mainstream; they listened to the radio late at night, bought music papers, went to gigs, traded tapes with friends, all of it to discover the good stuff.

Now they’re older, with jobs and mortgages and kids, and they no longer have the time do that. All the new music they hear is the lowest common denominator slop served up by the mass media, drivel like X-Factor or daytime commercial radio.

What they forget is the mainstream media always was rubbish. At their seventies peak even huge selling acts like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were conspicuous by their absence from TV or daytime radio, and people who weren’t active music fans were unaware of their existence. TV was filled with the likes of Brotherhood of Man and The Nolan Sisters in the same way as today has formulaic landfill indie.

Same as it ever was, if you want good music, you have to go look for it.

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Don’t Buy the Pink Floyd Box Sets

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Tim Hall

I see there’s a shock-and-awe advertising campaign for the reissues of the classic 70s albums by Pink Floyd.

Yes, an album like Dark Side of the Moon is all-time classic which has stood the test of time and has finally emerged from the long shadow cast by of Punk to take its rightful place in the British Rock Canon. But let’s face it, if you really cared about the album, you’d already have it on CD, right?

September has been one of the best months for new progressive rock releases I can remember for a long, long time. In the space of two weeks there have been new releases by Dream Theater, Opeth, Anathema, Matt Stevens, Steve Hackett and Steve Wilson. That’s one hell of a lot of new music, and you can have all of it for the price of just one of the ridiculously overpriced “Immersion editions” that you’ll probably only ever listen to the once.

I realise the target market for these things is the middle-aged bloke who stopped caring about new music when he got married and had kids decades ago, and now in the throes of his mid-life crisis is desperately trying to reconnect with his long lost youth. He’s probably never even heard of Opeth.

Don’t be that guy. Don’t buy the box sets. Pink Floyd really don’t need your money. And EMI certainly don’t deserve it.

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