![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Just watched a prog rock documentary on BBC4, which had been billed as saying "maybe it's time we stopped dismissing prog, and started to give it a fresh listen". Oh, how unimaginably surprised I was (or, more accurately, wasn't) to see that the last section, allegedly covering up to 2008, stopped in the late seventies... maybe at a stretch following some hangers on into the early eighties.
"Lets give it a fresh listen" by ignoring everything that happened in the past quarter of a century! Nice one BBC! Ignore the whole Neo Prog scene from the 80s, and the 90s/2000s post-prog scene that's given prog a much needed shot of credibility.
Things have really been rekindled of late, and it's all starting to kick off again, but this documentary was stuck not just in the last iteration of the genre, but the one before it! It was focussed strongly on British prog, so I can forgive them for ignoring the currently amazing stuff coming out of poland. I can forgive them for ignoring the scandinavian prog scene of the past decade and a half for the same reason...
But the British scene is really thriving right now as well, and in much the same way that it did in the 70s - off the radio and out of the mainstream. Maybe these parallels could have been looked at? They commented on Peter Sinfield from King Crimson moving on to success as a pop songwriter and producer... Maybe they could have noticed Jem Godfrey going the other way with Frost*? They noted how when prog started, bands could do what they wanted with minimal label interference, and how that changed later on. Maybe they could have commented on how new technologies and business practices have started to bring that freedom back - hell, there's even an established music business model called "The Marillion Model". Perhaps a musical business model designed to regain some of that freedom and named after a prog band might have been considered relevant in that discussion?
Or perhaps the BBC could not bother to actually go for a fresh listen at all, but instead to trot out the same tired old bollocks.
By "tired old bollocks" I don't just mean Rick Wakeman - he was in fact endearingly entertaining and humble, which makes a change. I have long held the opinion that the only reason that Rick Wakeman hasn't vanished up his own arse is that his ego wouldn't fit. In recent years I have been slowly revising that opinion, and this programme did help a bit... Now if only they'd talked about his son a bit as well, since he's a prog recording artist in his own right and is often held in quite high regard as a musician.
Shame on you BBC.
"Lets give it a fresh listen" by ignoring everything that happened in the past quarter of a century! Nice one BBC! Ignore the whole Neo Prog scene from the 80s, and the 90s/2000s post-prog scene that's given prog a much needed shot of credibility.
Things have really been rekindled of late, and it's all starting to kick off again, but this documentary was stuck not just in the last iteration of the genre, but the one before it! It was focussed strongly on British prog, so I can forgive them for ignoring the currently amazing stuff coming out of poland. I can forgive them for ignoring the scandinavian prog scene of the past decade and a half for the same reason...
But the British scene is really thriving right now as well, and in much the same way that it did in the 70s - off the radio and out of the mainstream. Maybe these parallels could have been looked at? They commented on Peter Sinfield from King Crimson moving on to success as a pop songwriter and producer... Maybe they could have noticed Jem Godfrey going the other way with Frost*? They noted how when prog started, bands could do what they wanted with minimal label interference, and how that changed later on. Maybe they could have commented on how new technologies and business practices have started to bring that freedom back - hell, there's even an established music business model called "The Marillion Model". Perhaps a musical business model designed to regain some of that freedom and named after a prog band might have been considered relevant in that discussion?
Or perhaps the BBC could not bother to actually go for a fresh listen at all, but instead to trot out the same tired old bollocks.
By "tired old bollocks" I don't just mean Rick Wakeman - he was in fact endearingly entertaining and humble, which makes a change. I have long held the opinion that the only reason that Rick Wakeman hasn't vanished up his own arse is that his ego wouldn't fit. In recent years I have been slowly revising that opinion, and this programme did help a bit... Now if only they'd talked about his son a bit as well, since he's a prog recording artist in his own right and is often held in quite high regard as a musician.
Shame on you BBC.
