Genesis, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Yes – The History Of Punk
Know thine enemy! While Glam at least was providing some light relief from those bands who had grown massive like the Stones, Who and Led Zeppelin there were an even more pretentious wave of bands like Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer and Yes, who espoused the view that rock was very very serious and who were dominating the very very serious weekly music papers.
Prog-Rock was mostly listened to by grubby polytechnic students who wore flares and duffle coats, never had any girlfriends and who would sit cross-legged at gigs on the floor bonged out of their brains. They would gather in bedsits drinking coffee out of chipped mugs and ponder the meaning of the universe while listening to the aforementioned and Van Der Graaf Generator, Camel, Gentle Giant, Caravan, Greenslade and a thousand others.
These people knew what they wanted; lots of windswept guitar histrionics, gushing keyboards, lyrics full of mystical allusions and song titles bearing no relation to the music and almost as long as the music itself! As you read this feature you can see why punk had to happen. Weighed down by the weight of its own pretensions the scene was set for someone to point out that the emperor in fact had no clothes on. Read on and learn the horrible truth.
Genesis
Genesis were a full-blown prog-rock band, inspired by musical bluster and arcane philosophies, capable of churning out as much barking nonsense as any of their early Seventies contemporaries, including the magnificently daft Yes. Under the direction of the consummately eccentric Peter Gabriel, Genesis indulged in all manner of theatrical buffoonery and special effects.
While the group turned on the pomp and pyrotechnics, Gabriel would nonce around the stage in a variety of costumes as illustrated. The peak of their absolute foolishness came with the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, a virtually incomprehensible narrative about spiritual awakening spread over a double album. beloved of sixth formers with long hair and greatcoats who had too much time on their hands.
No one could understand what Genesis were prattling on about including Gabriel! This is the wittering old fool trying to explain a song called I know what I Like (In Your Wardrobe) to an understandably fuddled hack.
” ..he lives a life that is pre-conceived by the people around him, and the only time that his identity comes out is when he’s actually on the lawn, mowing the grass. I mean I get this tremendous buzz from the sensation of the cutters slicing thru a whole layer of grass. There’s a sort of therapeutic ultra-violence simply in the act of mowing the lawn….”
What a dickhead.
Unsurprisingly Gabriel left the band only to be replaced by something far worse in the shape of the scheming and diminutive Phil Collins who took over and turned them into a withering bland AOR machine perfect for Thatcher’s eighties before going solo and torturing us with even more 80’s style blandness, bad fashion and songs about his wife shagging some other bloke while playing with a paint pot on his piano. Phil Collins is without doubt the Anti Christ. Destroy all Genesis and Phil Collins records.
Emerson, Lake And Palmer
Even the name Emerson, Lake And Palmer sounds like a gang of lawyers or estate agents. They were prog rocks most vulgar trawler men. Their first public appearance, at the Isle of Wight Festival was prefaced by a thunderous cannonade loud enough to wake the long time dead. This was an appropriate fanfare for a group that would become internationally famous for its bombastic extravagance.
Warning! the video above is over 10 minutes of keyboards masturbation. If driving remember to pull over for regular breaks and/or coffee.
Right -keyboards attack annoying man
ELP produced the ugliest music the world has yet to endure Pictures at an Exhibition, Brain Salad Surgery and even a triple live album of dross. Everything they did was dragged own by the weight of their own bloated pretensions, their vivid idiocy, the stupifying grossness that was their unique contribution to early seventies rock. Tipping over a Hammond and stabbing it with a knife to make distorted sounds does not excitement make.
For the punter so far back he can see fuck all, it might as well be a baboon jumping down on the keyboards. Unable to come up with anything resembling a decent tune, they regularly vandalised the classics sending several dead Europeans spinning in their graves. The ridiculousness of their music is just so far-fetched that you can’t help but laugh and wonder at Mark P and Danny Baker who praised them. God ELP were stupid.
Yes
Like Genesis, Yes managed to produce an extra bastard son to terrorise good taste in the shape of Rick Wakeman. Without doubt the stars of the progressive genre if only for the sheer long windedness of everything they have ever done. The icon for the era has to be their magnum opus Tales from Topographic Oceans luckily they made every album identifiable with the godawful Roger Dean designed covers so there was no way you could buy one by accident and you could warn your mum. If by chance you do want to buy them its a credit to Yes that you can buy their whole back catalogue in secondhand record stores for about £5 as people realizing later on in life what shite they had bought turned them in their thousands. Topographic Oceans had all of prog rocks defining characteristics in spades.
It also had the funniest sleeve notes ever written. This is Jon Anderson explaining the inspiration for the album
“We were in Tokyo on tour and and I had a few minutes to myself in the hotel room before the evenings concert. Leafing through Yoganada’s Autobiography of a Yogi, I got caught up in a lengthy footnote on page 83. it described the four pat Shastric scriptures which cover all aspects of religion and social life as well as fields like music, art and architecture. For some time I had been searching for a theme for a large scale composition. So positive were the Shastars that I could visualize then and there four interlocking pieces of music being structured around them. That was in February. Eight months later, the concept was realised in this recording.”
Says it all!
Interestingly The Clash have two links to Yes. Firstly just seeing one of their covers reputedly saw bassist Paul Simonon want to be sick. Original guitarist Keith Levine however was a roadie for the band and actually liked the stuff. Somehow now that he sadly has died this seems to have become acceptable and somewhat endearing. Errr No!
Punk just had to happen!
More albums like this here if this floats your boat
TalkPunk
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