How Progressive Rock Saved Me During Coronavirus

Buenos dias, 

I've recently started listening to a ton of progressive rock. It's saved me during this quarantine. If you haven't already read my post about how the Beatles saved me during quarantine, check it out here.

For those of you who don't know, progressive rock was a more technical, magical, and showy form of rock and roll that appeared after the Beatles, after Cream, after the Hendrix, arguably the three most important rock bands in my eyes. It reached its zenith in the middle or end of the 70s, and was most popular and more well done in England in the richer country areas. So these guys came from wealth unlike those four raggedy Andy dolls from Liverpool. They had college degrees, education, any perhaps money.

Now that you know the background of progressive rock let's talk about the actual style. The style is well, kind of all over the place. Every progressive band sounds different. The biggest prog bands were King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and Pink Floyd [they had their prog moments like the Meddle album and Atom Heart Mother, even the first album]. They all sound totally different and you could never confuse them. 

The style incorporates changing time signatures. The time signature is the beat or rhythm of the music. Most basic blues and rock is in 4/4 time, meaning you count each beat: 1, 2, 3, 4, however, in progressive rock the time signature could change to literally anything: something simple would be a changing time signature of 3/4 to 2/4, meaning you would count the beat like 1, 2, 3-1, 2, and so on. 

The music that goes over these widely varied beats is loud guitars, keyboards, synthesizers like the Mellotron, drums, bass, vocals, and sometimes even a saxophone in King Crimson's case. Sometimes the guitar parts are super soft, other times they're like deafening death metal before death metal even existed. King Crimson goes super hard with their drumming and guitar playing. Yes goes super soft with their beautiful singing. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer makes the keyboard as heavy as a guitar. Genesis is like the perfect arranger's band where the band plays their parts and are well rehearsed. Some bands are like a jazz band and they don't even have to speak to each other about what they did in the band. Others are more tight like an orchestra.

Progressive rock died at the end of the 70s when the youth in England got fed up with pompous grandiose rock stars. So they created their own genre based on three chords and angst. It became punk rock. The most famous band from England being the Sex Pistols with their one and only album, Never Mind The Bullocks, Here's The Sex Pistols. 

Progressive rock has saved me during coronavirus. I've been so bored. Going through all these old bands has recharged my spirit. I go through lots of phases in music. I've been in nearly every music phase since 7th grade, that's how I know so much about music. Almost everything I know from music I learned from YouTube. It's all free! 

There's just something so exciting about revisiting all these bands. It really puts things in perspective. I've heard all these songs ten years ago and ten years after all the music, all of it, sounds so much more refreshing, exciting, and invigorating. I can see why all these bands pushed me so hard to practice guitar as a kid. 

I've had really good memories of listening to progressive music. Some of my prog CD's got damaged because they've had so much greenery spread over them in my youth. If you want to smoke out to some exciting music, this is the style for you. 

I don't think any of the musicians in the genre realized how powerful they were as musicians and just how influential they would be on the world of music. And to think none of this would have even been a twinkle in the eye if it weren't for the Beatles. The Beatles were progressive because they did things like a concept album like Sergeant Pepper. Every progressive guitarist I like: Steve Howe, Robert Fripp, Steven Hackett, Michael Rutherford, Chris Squire, Roger Waters, and David Gilmour all brought something different to the table and inspire me to this day to rock out hard. 

I'll leave you with some lyrics from my favorite Yes song at the moment. The song is called Seen All Good People. 

Take a straight and stronger course
To the corner of your life
Make the white queen run so fast
She hasn't got time to make you a wife

 

Don't surround yourself with yourself
Move on back two squares
Send an instant karma to me
Initial it with loving care (Don't surround yourself with yourself)

King Crimson

Today was an interesting morning. As soon as I woke up I kept thinking about a certain King Crimson song. The song was Lament from their album Starless and Bible Black. It's a terrific record, as most of their early records and late records are. What makes that song in particular so interesting that I was reciting them in my head upon wake up?

Well, the song is, well, a lament of sorts. The song features some interesting lines. Here are some:

I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar

 

But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line

 

I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide

 

And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage

 

Those are all pretty damn good lines for vocals. Even in the 70s. And the music was topnotch art-rock with heavy feedback guitar and mellotron [a synth].  

So yeah those lines in particular really stood out to me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can't escape the influence of King Crimson on my life. When I was 19 years old I would sit in the freezing basement in Wisconsin. I would invite my friend David over and we would smoke a lot of weed and blast progressive rock. But it was always King Crimson that was our favorite progressive band from England. 

 

There's something about King Crimson that makes them stand out apart from the other English art-rock bands from the 1970s. Robert Fripp's guitar playing and lead role in forming and keeping the band going through many permutations made them a much better band than say, ELP, Genesis, and even Yes. Fripp was a art-rock guitar god. He knew how to play any chord for any feeling. He was like a jazz guitarist in a rock band. He knew many great 'noise chords,' as I would call it, but he could always mellow out and play something that a nice jazz guitarist could play. I credit him for this day for helping me develop my guitar sound. 

 

 

What's also interesting is the fact that when my friend and I were listening to King Crimson stoned all those years ago is that we are both black kids. I know this might be kind of arrogant to think, [but I definitely believe this is true] but I actually believe that David and I were probably the only black kids [or at least part of a very select few] in America in the mid 2000s that listened to and loved King Crimson. That's actually truly remarkable. 

 

King Crimson is one of my favorite bands. I listened to them more than any other band from England, including those four lads from Liverpool [who they were inspired by of course]. Their legacy lives on. Fripp was and still is a monster and I credit him [and countless others] for inspiring me to make noise on the guitar. The art-rock thing died but its influence will live forever through indie rock and its noise variants.

 

As Pete Townsend [the guitarist from The Who] said about the first album, the critically acclaimed In the Court of the Crimson King, "an uncanny masterpiece."

Smartphones are good, but they aren't great.

Hello, readers. I recently got a smartphone, a cheap android phone. It's my first smartphone. Here are some general thoughts upon the first time ever having a smartphone. 

Going from never owning a smartphone to now owning a smartphone is like going from black and white television to colour television. It really is that much of a big difference. The ability to have a mini computer in my pocket on the go is much needed for the 21st century. 

However, we must beware of the 21st century schizoid man [king crimson reference, from the first album, great album-In the Court of the Crimson King and song-21st Century Schizoid Man]. I've already noticed some good AND bad elements of owning a smartphone. First the good.

1) Mini-computer always on your person. If I need to go online to check literally anything from emails, Twitter, Facebook, and apps like Instagram, the smartphone is always there for you. The ability of WI-Fi literally changed the world and made life for the young modern person that much easier. Data too is like virtual energy, like a spell by Tesla.

2) I can use the Lyft app to call a ride in case of an emergency. If I'm ever super late at night at someone's house and end up without a ride, Lyft is always there for me. 

3) I can use the transit app if I want to take the bus, anywhere, and know what time the bus will arrive. 

4) I can go on social media and dating apps and potentially meet people. 

Now for the bad!

1) Always having a mini-computer on your person is terrible. You'll be compelled to always be on your phone, literally at all times: upon wake up, at work, on work break, on the walk back home, late at night, before bed...It begins to take a bad toll upon you. It is very toxic and most people are like this.

2) Overusing apps is terrible. I started off on a bad start by calling 4 Lyft rides in one week. That's such a waste of money. There was a way I could've got home via transit, or even asked a friend.  

3) It's a time waster. Get hooked to it and you'll forget about real life. You'll go on it on a date, you'll go on it while talking to your girlfriend, you'll go on while talking to your kids, you'll be on it while on the job at work, the time it will take away is virtually unlimited. 

So yeah having a smartphone for the first time is quite the experience. But if anything, being connected online all the time doesn't feel good, it feels like people can get to me much easier because of it. These things have their uses but relying on them too much will lead to idiocy, the likes of which we see everyday when somebody's in public glued to their phone when the moment would be better off without it.