Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The more you appreciate and enjoy music, the more it becomes incumbent upon you to understand music in terms beyond the social context, beyond "I like it" or "I don't like it". The arts are generally forgiving to lay people: you need not understand the references, the structures, the variations, the sources or the traditions. Which is a long way of saying, you don't need to understand much.
Unless you really want to enjoy what you're listening to.
This book brings together a generous spectrum of opinion on music and the battered category of Progressive Rock. I have been drawn to aspects of this musical "form" for many, many years. And while Prog includes its share of ostentatious and overblown nonsense, it also offers some genuinely original, powerful and moving music.
The positive attributes of this music are best exemplified by Gregory Karl in his analysis of King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" . Here at last is a lucid and insightful essay which clearly connects the music itself with its accompanying subtexts. Mr. Karl does an outstanding job of tracing the elements of the score and structure forward and backward in the King Crimson catalog to make an intellectual connection between sound and meaning. John S. Cotner's analysis of Pink Floyd's "Careful with that Axe, Eugene" is interesting in its attempt to take us through a new system of notation for a new kind of compositional technique. And there are several other essays ranging from lyrical analyses of works by Roger Waters and Adrian Belew, to the time and thematic transformation techniques of Keith Emerson, as well as other perspectives on the music of bands such as Yes and Rush.
These essays may seem dry and overly scholastic in some cases, but an untrained reader needs to look beyond the immediate and sometimes significant challenge of dealing with music theory to the understanding that this music usually goes well beyond the surface characteristics of sound and song to something more profound. In fact, if you like this musical form, this book will better help you understand why you like it, even without comprehending every nuace presented by the authors.
The only topic that seems to be missing is the role of the studio in much of this music. In many cases, signal processing techniques and studio manipulation play a significant role in the resulting music. For example, the article by Mr. Cotner, which goes to such great lengths to develop a system of notation capable of dealing with the vagaries of an Echoplex, never gives a complete nod to the sometimes "experimental" and even "accidental" origin of some of these pieces -- intellect catching up with intuition, as Brian Eno has said. None-the-less, Kevin Holm-Hudson needs to be applauded for putting together a broad-ranging, thought-provoking and -- sorry for the cliche -- challenging book that should compel you to know more about what you think you hear.
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In this book, the glory days of progressive rock are relived in a series of insightful essays about the key bands, songwriters and songs that made prog-rock such an innovative style.
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