On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Joe Gracey wrote:
In 1971 we started looking for a name for it and the best we could do
was "Progressive Country", which was decent enough but somehow
unsatisfying.
Gee, right around that same time people were looking for a name for the
kind of overworked poppyclassicojazzrock hodgepodge played by people like
Yes and ELP and they came up with the name "progressive rock." The idea
of there being any link between these two, even if only by an adjective,
gives me the heebie jeebies.
Will Miner
And the pre=newwgrass bands of that same time were called "Progressive
Bluegrass" if that helps! Remember, "progressive jazz" was a term already
over a decade old then. (In 1961, Progressive Jazz means something like,
say, Maynard Fergusonand I guess they'd even used it before that for
Brubeck etc...Even then it meant a well-intentioned middle class
intellectual watering down of something harder!)
Joe could fill in more detail, but in '71 the "progressive rock" label was
not being born, but horribly transmorgified into what Will just described.
It had been used since the advent of FM album-playing rock stations in
'66-'67--and the stations themselves were usually called "free form" or
"progressive"...so anything over 2 minutes and 8 seconds on a single was
progressive rock! Part of me still feels we were better off with the 2
minutes 8 seconds, and I say this as a known Dylan fan.
Barry
