[skyechurch]

Progphobia is the last acceptable prejudice and is tied up with people's fear of being silly, which is a silly thing to be afraid of, as being silly and being awesome are two sides of the same concept album LP. Led Zeppelin is deeply and profoundly silly, but everyone kind of ignores it because they are great. Going bankrupt putting on a King Arthur-themed ice skating opera[0] is deeply silly but also a pure example of artistic commitment which transcends petty aesthetic criticism and can only be understood spiritually, perhaps as a Werner Herzog movie. And no, I won't ever listen to it because give me a break, but it's still a completely awesome thing to do.

Punk etc which came afterwards was also very silly, and also mostly wasn't very good at all, because it was fashion and performance art and social criticism and musically quite conservative and dull in addition to being amateurish. None of which stopped it from being awesome in its own way, which explains why Robert Fripp played guitar with The Damned while King Crimson was on hiatus, because fun is fun and genre wars are just publicity stunts and you would have to be a rock critic to fall for it. Prog rock is really wonderful and there's more fun stuff than anyone could ever listen to, and that's why 50 years of music critic complaining has failed to kill it.

[0] https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/06/the-stranger-than-f...

[leemcalilly]

Boy do you not understand punk:

“Punk mostly wasn't very good at all, because it was fashion and performance art and social criticism and musically quite conservative and dull in addition to being amateurish”

That is just an objectively wrong worldview—that Punk was just fashion and a mostly dull, amateur genre.

And I agree with everything you say about Prog.

Go listen to Pink Flag by Wire. It basically is Prog, but stripped all the way down to pure elegance and irony, imbued with the attitude of the earliest rock and roll. Still fresh today.

So many great bands and classic albums. Were the beatles and elvis proto-punk, or were the clash and ramones early rock and roll?

The kinks you really got me, the stooges search and destroy. You’re right Led Zeppelin is silly next to that.

But dull and amateurish, no way. That’s the mindset of someone with a narrow palette.

Good thing Punk is the ultimate palette cleanser. The smartest genre of music we’ve created yet.

[shrimpx]

> That is just an objectively wrong worldview—that Punk was just fashion and a mostly dull, amateur genre.

It was dull and amateurish and "not very good" if you take "good" to mean the intricate, virtuoso, polished mainstream music that punk forcefully rejected.

Also "smartest genre of music" is a stretch. You'd have to justify that in dimensions beyond music, like its impact on society/culture. The pinnacle of musical achievement cannot be 3-chord music.

[UncleMeat]

> The pinnacle of musical achievement cannot be 3-chord music.

Why not? Harmonic difficulty isn't a virtue. Jazz musicians were doing one and two chord and they are criticized for being obtuse.

Heck, difficulty in general isn't a virtue.

[shrimpx]

I agree that difficulty isn't a virtue, and I'm a big fan of minimal art and music, but I don't think 1-4-5 power chord music is the pinnacle of musical achievement. But I think those simple songs were extremely powerful in their cultural context and the rejection of norms that they represented.

That said, though, a lot of what is considered "punk" today abandoned those simplistic song structures of the 60s lo-fi/garage/protopunk (Stooges, MC5, Sonics, etc.) and started doing intricate and musically-complex studio productions. Including the band "Wire" which the comment I was replying to hails as a high achievement of punk.

[CPLX]

Explain to me the difference between search and destroy and the immigrant song in a way that clarifies how they are categorically different.

[jaxelr]

> Good thing Punk is the ultimate palette cleanser. The smartest genre of music we’ve created yet.

Heavy metal would like a word.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What was great about punk was the DIY ethos. The actual music, for the most part, never did anything for me (my stepfather has what is probably an insanely valuable collection of the first wave of UK punk singles). But the ethos that you could make music yourself, release it yourself, get gigs yourself, define the culture you were a part of yourself ... even if these ideas did not 100% align with the reality of what was happening, they were very powerful.

They fed over into other genres of music, including a variety of dance music styles from reggae to house and on to techno and its many (particularly UK-based) branches. And later, of course, grunge and what followed.

I do love me some prog - I listened to "Seconds Out" every time I drove the 35 minutes each way to Santa Fe for the whole of the pandemic. But punk, for all of its dirtiness and mess, brought some fresh air into the very idea of making music, and I'll always be grateful for that even if I don't love the most direct results.

[defrost]

> Led Zeppelin is deeply and profoundly silly, but everyone kind of ignores it because they are great.

Not always, in some case it they've inspired others to crank up the silliness; the 1990s Stairways to Heaven cover series was sublime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqwPcGuSpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQuGub7yzpA

> Robert Fripp played guitar with The Damned while King Crimson was on hiatus, because fun is fun

He may have taken fun too far (if that's even possible): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3MTlJF2qqM

[hayley-patton]

> which explains why Robert Fripp played guitar with The Damned while King Crimson was on hiatus

"The Stranglers and Friends" is an excellent live album of punks and prog figures (including Fripp) playing with the Stranglers while Hugh Cornwell was in jail. Though the Stranglers themselves were quite sophisticated, with Dave Greenfield (RIP) playing keyboards and Jet Black (also RIP) having been a jazz drummer beforehand.

Fripp's debut solo album Exposure, Daryl Hall's Sacred Songs and Peter Gabriel II constituted a sort of trilogy of...interesting rock.

Edit: Sandinista! by The Clash and the first four Simple Minds albums are also musically interesting "punk" albums.