In Defense of Prog Rock

Sick riffs, chunky melodies, wild arrangements, what's not to love?

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Prog rock gets a bad name. It’s the punchline in movies like I Love You, Man, hasn’t been commercially successful since the 1970s, and is generally considered the domain of dads who smoked a little too much pot in high school. When people point to things they don’t like about it, they usually call out the fact that there are a lot of 20+ minute songs, wildly esoteric lyrics, and very few hit singles. And hey, fair enough. But, as I will try to convince you, Prog Rock is one of the single best genres of music to get into in your late 20s and early 30s.

Like all genres, prog rock, short for “Progressive Rock,” is hard to define. It came about in the late 60s, had its heyday in the 70s, and then slowly faded out of the public consciousness. Bands like Rush, Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, and Pink Floyd all made their name as prog rock bands. Today you can still find the influence of prog rock everywhere, in bands like Coheed and Cambria, and in songs like POWER by Kanye West which samples King Crimson directly. Hallmarks of prog rock in its heyday had a heavy focus on exploring all the possibilities of sonic templates and pushing the skills of the musicians to the extreme. This experimentation often included using recording studios as instruments and working with newer proto-synth instrumentation. Think acid jazz with guitars and orchestral arrangements. Lyrics often, but certainly not exclusively, dealt with fantastical themes, including journeys to foreign planets, or about fighting elves, but also exploring psychological torment, and loss. Lots of almost jazz-like solos, building up into huge crescendos in six-plus minute-long songs.

The joke is that you need to be stoned out of your gourd to listen to prog rock. Listen, a lot of these musicians were out of their minds on weed when they made this stuff. But you as a listener are not required to smoke pot before you listen to one of these albums. In fact, one of the best times to listen to prog rock is at like eight in the morning on the train on the way to work. Really gets you in the mood for work.

So why defend all of this? It’s not like they need it. Most of these guys are retired by now or went on to making non-prog rock music. They do not need my help. Mostly, I just think more people should give it a shot. I also wanted an excuse to talk about some of my favorite albums.

The two biggest sticking points people have with prog are the song lengths and the jazz influence. At least in my mind, that’s what they are. I’m happy to be corrected. With regard to the song-length stuff, I get it. There’s a reason that rock radio stations would only play songs under three minutes for a long period of time. There’s an apocryphal story I once heard that some rock band like Rush or Lynyrd Skynyrd once put 2:72 as the length of a song so that DJs would play it, betting they would only look at the first number. In the age of digital music especially, when skipping is just a tap away, people want songs to get to the point. It’s also easy to get bored and just go to the next thing. I do this all the time. Depending on what mood I’m in I can occasionally listen to like thirty seconds of twenty songs in a row, never fully listening to one.

There are benefits to longer songs though. It allows for things to build, for musical ideas to be explored, and for full sonic tapestries to be woven. Now, as with all this, I’m not saying that no bad prog rock songs exist. Plenty of bad prog rock is out there. The same is true of any genre. The history of pop is littered with garbage. So too for prog rock. But genius exists too. Take for example the little-known Lady Lake by British prog rock band Gnidrolog. This album contains beautiful, heart-stopping arrangements, and also the biggest most bad-ass baritone sax (I think?) solo and melody I’ve ever heard in my life. I think it also might contain an oboe solo. Now, I don’t care who you are, that’s just cool. Long songs allow you to naturally fit all that cool stuff into them.

Prog rock is also wildly influenced by jazz. That’s true of every rock genre of course, but prog rock wears its influences on its sleeves. Different rock genres take different things from jazz, and prog mostly takes from the solo tradition, and much of jazz’s focus on experimentation and pushing the borders of what music theory will allow you to do. Interesting time signatures, chord structures, and funky key changes are a staple of the genre. Importantly though, prog rock isn’t the taking form the jazz that you hear in your local coffee shop. This isn’t the “Jazz to Fall Asleep Too” Spotify playlist jazz. This is the Sun-Ra shit. The heady, outer-space jazz. That’s what Prog Rock is taking from.

This may feel like I’m giving you a homework assignment to listen to. A project that is due in three days and is forty pages of writing. It’s not. It’s actually quite enjoyable. If you’ve spent any time at all listening to classic rock radio you’ve probably even heard a bunch of prog rock standards. “Money" by Pink Floyd, “Aqualung” by Jethro Tull, “Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. All these and more are all singles culled from prog rock albums. There is a whole wealth of stuff out there just waiting for you to discover. Here are a few of my favorite albums

Thick as a Brick – Jethro Tull

In the Court of the Crimson King – King Crimson

Lady Lake – Gnidrolog

A Farewell to Kings – Rush

Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd

The Snow Goose – Camel

Future Days – Can

Time and a Word – Yes

Climbing! – Mountain

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