in praise of pretension

[gurdonark]

I miss the days of progressive rock and early heavy metal. We have a problem nowadays--the problem that people don't take themselves too seriously in appropriately silly ways anymore. This results in international crises, Ari Fleischer, and the RIAA. But in the days of yore, pretension roamed the earth, and dwelt among people, in a way that can only be described as groovy.

Consider the radiowaves in the early days of FM, for example.
You flip the dial, and the Moody Blues are playing some Justin Hayward song with a great line like "Beauty I've always missed/with these eyes before/just what the truth is/I can't say anymore". Never mind that the refrain of the song is the poor fellow moaning "I love you" as this odd set of refugee strings sounds as if it has taken over the coat closet and issued an ultimatum to the brooms, or something similar. It doesn't matter that the words are needlessly pretentious, or don't mean anything. In those days, the distant radio station is probably fading in and out too often for one to hear it in any event. All that matters is that one is 15, and this guy with a cool accent is saying "just what the truth is, I can't say anymore", which must mean something. In those days, even girl-you-met-at-parties-and-took-drugs-with songs had a sort of grandeur. Consider Uriah Heep's hit "Sweet Lorraine" (Box, Byron, Thain). First, for those who don't know Uriah Heep, David Byron had a voice that sounded like he was auditioning to play Richard Harris playing King Arthur in the musical Camelot, except that he wanted to do the role as Anthony Newley crossed with Charlton Heston, after ingesting far too many mushrooms. In "Sweet Lorraine", the audience is assured that "she understands--she's been before; it's in her hands/to find the door", before Lorraine herself is implored to not only "let the party carry on", but also to "swim the seas" and, appropriately enough "feel the breeze". I think that what the world needs now is more theremins and pretentious lyrics, and fewer UN resolutions. I feel as though Pete Sinfield, the old Emerson, Lake and Palmer lyricist, could do a better job scripting 2003 than Donald Rumsfeld has done; in addition, an ELP future would involve lots of pianos spinning in mid-air.

Those were indeed the days, when Peter Gabriel dressed as a giant flower because he could and then led his band to its "magnum opus", the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, a "concept album" in which this fellow named Rael does all sorts of things that don't make any sense, but the lamb, which apparently has chosen to lie down on a crowded street, "brings a stillness to the air" on Broadway. In that time, bands like Magma roamed the earth, who played Euro acid jazz rock with song lyrics all rendered in an invented language that only the members of Magma spoke. David Bowie knew how to use make-up then, the key question for a song was not "was it good", but "does it rock", and bands could make a living just playing every hall in the midwest, speakers stacked high, charging five dollars a ticket.

Those times were swept away, of course, by disco on the dark side, and on the light side, by wonderful bands with cool names like Television, the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Talking Heads. But didn't the world grow just a little colder from then on? Since then, we've had a lot of innovations--the Individual Retirement Account, the "smart bomb", and Fox News. But I miss those earlier, more cynical and yet more naive times. It's not that I ever used drugs or had a particularly hedonistic social life. My life has almost always been lived along rather puritanical lines, with a few exceptions in single days which would be more the stuff of episodes of Everwood rather than of road tours of Status Quo. But somehow I've always had a fondness for these road warrior bands who lived some Spinal Tap existence three hundred days a year, people with mellotrons and scrub boards and lyrics about hiding out from the gnomes. As live intro to the old Black Oak Arkansas song, which advocated an avoidance of long life, postulated, "mankind has lost his mind--he's turned into the Monster. Our generation is his offspring--we're Mutants of the Monster". What did it mean? I have no idea. It took a lot of five dollar bills paid by the Monster to acquire the record collection which would give us clues. But in some odd ways, this series of ridiculous bands, untouched by both the "social insight" of the sixties and the "stern reality" which was to come (but trying desperately to be both in touch and tuned out), these little snippets of pretense seem in retrospect to predict what was to come, and urge us all to find some other, more absurd way.

Comments

[mylastsigh.livejournal.com]

Good post.

And now we also have "alert" warnings on the Weather Channel.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I feel as though sometimes we are all just watching the weather these days, and storms are ahead.

Re:

[mylastsigh.livejournal.com]

yup

[gbdances.livejournal.com]

I too have a soft spot for the pretentious progressive rock of the early 70's. In fact, I've found an Internet station that plays ONLY that music, if you're interested: UK Prog Rock. As a musician as well as an unreformed dreamer and philosopher, there is something about these bands that reaches beyond; while many of them tried too hard at times, the fact remains that they TRIED something that would connect poetry, music and a hopeful philosophy for the future into a single cohesive and convincing package. Some failed, and others succeeded. There ARE some bands that are trying to recapture the essence of that music, but unfortunately, most of them simply do not have the mindset (or perhaps, unjaded innocence that would soon be shattered in the 70's and 80's) to pull off the attitude. Plus, it's like the reason that there aren't any bands today that groove like the bands at the Monterey Pop Festival - there's too much specialization and not enough cross-over, everything has become anesthetized and sterilized (digital, even). Also, the bass players are sadly lacking (but that's another post entirely).

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the web radio address. I must check it out. I totally agree with you about bass players. I thought the passing of John Entwhistle so emblematic of something, because although the Who were not among "my" bands, I always thought that he gave rise to a whole generation of bass players in the prog movement. I think that the electric bass in a rock band should frankly be used as a roving jazz instrument, in the way so many prog bands did, and nobody seems to do now. Now a bass could be one of those jug band instruments, for all the range people show. But I guess that is another post.

I was prompted to write this post by a curious sidenote. I got a "notification" that somebody had added me to their "Amazon.com friends and favorites" list, no doubt because I used to review a lot of CDs and books on their little reader review thing. The fellow's profile revealed that he was a member of an obscure Euro prog band, making a revival. It reminded me so much of those days in which one might wince through one song, and then be transported by the next. It's funny how some of those bands--Gentle Giant, early Genesis, Camel, the best King Crimson line ups--really wanted to take music to new places that jazz, rock, folk and classical had all missed. They really did want to create a new, smart music. That they failed is no great surprise--what serious movement didn't fail in life? I like punk, post-punk and their wayward stepchild alternative, but I've always seen them as fundamental reactionary retreats from the power of the medium. It's easier to be a mod than it is to live in this much more complex world. But everything becomes product---I'll never forget how painstaking Marillion was in trying to "capture" those early Genesis fans.

I largely buy ambient when I buy new music now. I love songs and things that rock, but I wonder if the time has come when music as sound isn't much more a "people's music". of course, I tend to buy people whose print runs are in the dozens or hundreds rather than the 100,000s, so it may be that this is just another misplaced attempt at middle age cool.

But give me a good Jeff Pearce CD, and sometimes I can remember prog. I spend some time at the hypnos.com forum, and I remember a thread there about how much prog influenced so many people who record in the ambient medium.

[theodicy.livejournal.com]

Work this up and sell it to SALON. If they haven't gone out of biz by then.

Sigh. The closest thing kids have today to impenetrable lyrical pretension is, of course, U2.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I love early U2 lyrics. Now that was some good pretentious noble post-punk rock!