While going to a local bookstore, I bumped onto an issue of "Q magazine", which featured a brief piece near the back named "Peter Gabriel's Ten Commandments".
Suffice that I quote the first: "Prog-rock is like masturbation --- it's a healthy part of growing". (He was presumably referring to his erstwhile bandmates in Genesis.)
As much as I respect Peter Gabriel: gimme an F-ing break. [Background sounds of band laying down groove in F minor over which FB improvises on his favorite axe :-)]
When detractors of prog-rock (or fusion jazz, or similar music genres) use the "M-word" they generally are referring to supposedly ostentatious displays of musical virtuosity and/or pretentious musical experiments.
The late Leonard Bernstein had another view, much closer to my own: he referred in one of his last interviews to the then emerging hip-hop and related scenes as not requiring any musical talent or effort beyond being able to program a beat-box: "it's like masturbation: [imitated beat-box] BABY! [whack-whack] I NEED YOU! [whack-whack]".
The word also comes to my mind when I think of certain "alternative rock" or "rap metal" bands where the guitar part sometimes consists of such "innovative" things as thrashing the same "power chord" over and over and over, preferably by some idiot with twenty-five piercings (twelve where you can't see them ;-)) and wearing a "SATAN", "F*ck Bush", or whatever T-shirt. (One such on-stage-self-abuser I saw, with an outfit called "Queens of the Stone Age", had "B*ttf*ck" tattooed on one arm and "Conformity" on the other.)
"Epic" by Faith No More is actually not a bad song but, except for the harmonized lead break which is kind-of cool, the guitar part mostly consists of exactly what I described: WHACK-whack-whack-whack-WHACK-whack-whack-whack-WHACK-whack-whack-whack WHAAAACK-whack-whack (all played on the same E5 chord except for the last three "whacks" which are G5-F#5-G5).
And don't get me started on "Trance" or "DJ" acts. I once had the extremely dubious pleasure of seeing an act named "Darude" in "concert": the musical "performance" consisted of some dude standing behind the control panel of a sequencer and tweaking the speed knob and a couple of mixer controls. I could almost picture him bashing his bishop to the monotonous droning beat to check if the BPMs were just right for pleasuring oneself...
But I do agree with Peter Gabriel that prog-rock can be a healthy part of growing up musically for some people, albeit emphatically not the way he meant it. For some people, it offers the first window into a musical world beyond lowest-common-denominator rock and pop music. I've known more than one guy (or gal) getting turned on to classical music after going through a prog-rock phase. I've always loved serious classical music (the "light classical" fluff I grew up with I hate with a passion to this day), but I would maybe never have learned to appreciate jazz without passing through prog-rock. And it may indeed be true that I rarely if ever listen to old Yes or Genesis anymore... but chiefly because I used to listen to (and in some cases play) that stuff so often that I pretty much know it all by heart :-)
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