You Want Noodles With That?

On the face of it, it is difficult to see any similarity between the Eurovision Song Contest and prog rock. On the one hand  Eurovision makes us think of artists like Cliff Richard, Dana and Engelbert Humperdink; when we consider prog rock, we associate it with bands like Genesis, Yes and Pink Floyd. Not much commonality there, except that of all music's genres (and I think that we can call Eurovision a genre all of its own), these two come in for more derision than most others. While I'm no fan of Eurovision, it appears that plenty of people enjoy it, so who am I to knock it? Those who dislike prog seem to have no such qualms, however.

I know what I like............

Critics of prog, and there have always been many, will mock it for concept albums with pretentious or incomprehensible lyrics; for long, complex songs replete with self indulgent guitar, keyboard and drum solos. They will sneer at the live shows where the caped keyboard player is hidden behind banks of instruments and the lead singer wears some outlandish costume; they will scoff at the extravagant stage performances, complete with laser light show and other assorted pyrotechnics and effects. Throw in a Roger Dean or Hipgnosis album cover and the critics have all the ammunition they need. In the days when I read the New Musical Express, some music critic or another would periodically throw all of these criticisms and more into a review of an album or live show, but when the critics of prog get desperate they call it boring and they usually mention the noodling. Technically, noodling in a musical context is to improvise music on an instrument in an idle, haphazard fashion, for instance when talking to the audience between songs when the guitarist may play some fairly random stuff, but in a prog context it is sometimes used to describe some of the more complex instrumental pieces that its critics so abhor. Personally I rather like the noodling.

.........and I like what I know.

My introduction to prog rock was not particularly auspicious. I was at school when I first heard Close to The Edge by Yes on the record player in the sixth form block and the first time I heard it I thought it was messy, noisy rubbish[1]. It didn't improve when I heard it a second time, or a third for that matter, but by the time I had heard it once a day for about two months it was growing on me! It was here that I was also introduced to albums such as Wish You Were Here, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, Fragile and In The Court Of The Crimson King. From then on a major proportion of my record collection was prog and the first live show I saw was Genesis on their Wind and Wuthering tour.

Not an album by Gilbert O'Sullivan

Over the years my musical tastes diversified and then in the 1980's, when bands like Yes and particularly Genesis took a more commercial, poppy route (they were heavily criticised for that, both by their detractors and by many fans) it appeared that prog had gone the way of the dinosaurs. Or had it?

Fast forward to the early years of the 21st century and my music collection appeared to have become stuck in a time warp. I went through a period of at least two years when I bought no new music at all; indeed if I bought anything it would be really old stuff that I had owned on vinyl before my record collection went off to a charity sale to be replaced by CDs. I still had my old prog music, but hadn't bought anything new for years, frankly I didn't think that there was any new prog until one day, idly rummaging around MySpace (remember that?) I came across a section labelled "Progressive." I took a look out of curiosity and the first thing that struck me was that I didn't recognise the names of any of the bands. One name in particular stood out, so the first new prog song that I had heard in perhaps a decade was Arriving Somewhere But Not Here by Porcupine Tree. It was like an epiphany and from that moment my interest in prog rock was rekindled. Then I saw Porcupine Tree play live at the Indig02 on their Fear of a Blank Planet tour, and just to prove that prog rock is not all middle aged men in Yes t-shirts, the audience comprised a wide range of ages and in fact included my elder daughter (then just seventeen).

Since that moment I have discovered a whole host of other bands that I was previously ignorant of, like Riverside, Spocks Beard, Big Big Train, The Watch, Beardfish, Kino, Frost*, Galahad and RPWL to name but a few and Muse, who are pretty mainstream in most people's eyes, but have often been described as prog. Most of the new music that I have come across I have enjoyed immensely, although inevitably there has been a clunker or two (for instance I could not get into The Mars Volta {just plain weird} and some of the American bands that are more metal than prog in my view). And that is where prog is much more diverse than it was in 1975; nowadays there are whole sub-genres such as prog metal, symphonic prog, neo-prog and the like.

There is still a place for the old stuff however and to prove it, Steve Hackett has been touring and playing old Genesis material under the banner of Genesis Revisited 2013. I saw the show at the Hammersmith Odeon recently (yes, I know it's the hmv Apollo now, but to me it will always be the Hammersmith Odeon and remains my favourite music venue) and from the opening chords of Watcher of the Skies to the show closing Supper's Ready and the encore of Firth of Fifth and Los Endos, it was brilliant stuff. It has to be said however, that the audience was all of a certain age and the only surprise was that there were no Zimmer frames in evidence! Still, we all remembered the acapella opening to Dancing With The Moonlight Knight, which was sung with gusto by the whole audience. Not everyone agrees however; there is a pretty spiteful review by Ian Gittins in The Guardian that reinforces all the prejudices people have about prog rock.

Steve Hackett and band at Hammersmith, May 2013

Although the critics may feel that prog takes itself too seriously, I don't believe this to be true. In fact I think that it has sufficient sense of humour that a UK prog rock entry in next year's Eurovision Song Contest might be fun; in fact it might be even more fun if there were a prog rock version of Eurovision, say with Riverside representing Poland, The Flower Kings for Sweden, The Watch for Italy and in keeping with the ages of the UK's last two Eurovision contestants, the seventy seven year old Engelbert and the sixty two year old Bonnie Tyler, perhaps Steve Hackett and Chris Squire could reprise a song from their recent album Squackett as our entry. Since I doubt that either Terry Wogan or Graham Norton are particularly fans of prog, I suggest that Whispering Bob Harris could compere.

The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of a Eurovision Prog Rock Song Contest, and let’s face it, it would delight many music critics too, their two most detested genres together in one package!

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[1] We had three other albums in permanent residence, Led Zeppelin IV, Abbey Road by The Beatles and a Gilbert O’Sullivan LP. I’ll leave you to guess which one was played the least.