Prog bands in Eighties and Nineties.

[YesNY]

Which of these progressive heavy-weights did the most commendable job at updating their sound during the decades of the eighties and nineties? Vote for two.

[Ahkin]

Definetely Yes and Kin Crimson. The two foundation stones of progressive rock have shown their strength in the test of time and both are still going very strong. King Crimson has stretched the borders of rock/jazz improvisation since the 70's and they've created some truly innovative music also in the 90's. Yes has found the right path again after wandering around for some years for the delight of so so many.

[Q]

I see Jethro Tull is missing from the choices - a shame, their CREST OF A KNAVE was a spectacular revision of their sound, in keeping with the times yet sacrificing none of their trademarks!

[YesNY]

The ommission of Jethro Tull was not meant as an afront to this talented band.

One of the reasons I didn't list Tull is their material in the 80's and 90's seemed to me to have a less easier to define change than the other bands. The bands I listed all had such a significant change in sound that it was almost as if it were the sound of a completely different band--and in the case of King Crimson it nearly was.

[Lerxst]

I too, given the options, agree with Yes and Crimson

What about Rush and Dream Theater ? - They did certainly break barriers from Rush's Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures to Counterparts and Test For Echo

And Dream Theater definitely shows progress and the breakouts with Tony Levin on Liquid Tension Experiment are, IMO, Outstanding ! - As are Spock's Beard and TransAtlantic.

[YesNY]

All the bands I listed date back to the late 60's and have a substantial catalog spanning the 70's for us to judge their output in the later decades against. And even though the bands I listed diverged quite a bit when it came to each one's signature sound, they had enough in common (late 60's British roots, predilection for long form conceptual pieces, etc.) to make them suitable for comparison.

Rush came about a little later and took influences from the progressive bands and melded with other pop and rock influences. If we want to compare apple to apples, then comparing Rush to mid seventies vintage neo-progressive bands like Kansas, Queen and Supertramp --all had a wide divergence of signature sounds much like the initial wave of prog rockers did-- would seem to make more sense.

Lets wait another eight or ten years for question wondering how well Dream Theater and its contempoaries adapted their sounds in this present decade (what the heck do we call these years anyway?). No need to age them, if we don't have to.

[Martin Riley]

Picking two makes the task fairly easy I think. It has to be Crimso & Yes. Crimso took their music to a whole new plane in the 80's and then yet again in the 90s, retaining their ever questioning attitude to music. How can we progress? How can we develop this theme? Where can we take this?
Yes didn't succeed quite as succesfully as Crimso but they still maintained an atttitude of development whilst not always achieving the appropriate ends, usually due to managerial/business problems. But I think even their so-called retro stage circa the KEYS albums was still a step forward and their more radio friendly Rabin era material was at least still in the field of rock music. This is where Genesis lose out. They certainly updated their sound for the 80s & 90s, but did they do it as the question says 'commendably'. I don't think so. They took an easier option and certainly got to ride the gravy train for a number of years, but musically they stagnated. Floyd & The Moodies don't even come into the equation.

[porcupinetreeguy]

Well Transatlantic and da Beard are great of course. I saw Dream Theatre in Boston a few months back and the fans went nuts, personally I can do without the vocalist but the musicianship cannot be denied. And here i must plug my favorite obscure entity, the fantastic Porcupine Tree.....
Bozzio, Levin and Stevens released a nice piece of work awhile back too...Ozric Tentacles is a fusion prog type band they are good if you like that kind of Return to Forever type thing.....What IS Stanley Clarke doing these days...
As for the old reliables I have to go with Crimson who played very well back in Dec here but TOO SHORT a set...Trey Gunn is great and Belew is a hoot but ole Bobby F needs to LIGHTEN IT UP..

Naturally we all gravitate back to the Masters here on YesFans and that's as it should be but ......yes BUT....psssssttt...Steve sometimes (NOT EVERYTIME) BUT sometimes Stevie mails it in kids and sometimes everybody's fave guy Alan misses a piecekinda brutally (Harborlight Boston 2000 he butchered Gates during Masterworks Tour) BUT he played GREAT last year Symphony version of Gates...so...lets hope that Ricky's return challenges them ALL musically as well as benefits them all financially which I have no problem with..last year i went upstage to look at Howe's stuff(I had never done that in some 30 years of shows ) and that Pedal Steel looks like its been beaten and dropped and kicked all around the world which it probably has been and the little "Danelectro" foot pedal/button to activate I guess the Electric sitar sounds looked straight out of 1967...he's a pack rat our lil Stevie! Monty Burns lookalike you say????well..maybe so..I guess thats enough stream of idiocy for one day
thx

[YesNY]

Originally posted by Martin Riley
Picking two makes the task fairly easy I think. It has to be Crimso & Yes. Crimso took their music to a whole new plane in the 80's and then yet again in the 90s, retaining their ever questioning attitude to music. How can we progress? How can we develop this theme? Where can we take this?
Yes didn't succeed quite as succesfully as Crimso but they still maintained an atttitude of development whilst not always achieving the appropriate ends, usually due to managerial/business problems. But I think even their so-called retro stage circa the KEYS albums was still a step forward and their more radio friendly Rabin era material was at least still in the field of rock music. This is where Genesis lose out. They certainly updated their sound for the 80s & 90s, but did they do it as the question says 'commendably'. I don't think so. They took an easier option and certainly got to ride the gravy train for a number of years, but musically they stagnated. Floyd & The Moodies don't even come into the equation.

I agree with you on some of what you have to say. Genesis really did a job in the 80's that demands we play with the English language and invent the word "uncommendable" just for them. Everyone seems to have their own a point of departure where they got off the Genesis train. Myself, I think of Genesis in terms of Duke and before (good), and post-Duke (mostly bad). I know alot of people like to think of Genesis in terms of the Gabriel era, the Collins era and the Wilson error. But if you subtract the vocals from the equation, it seems to me the the early Collins Genesis remained faithful to a creative innovative sound pioneered by his predecessor in the center spotlight.

Designating the eras for the other bands are much easier. Yes substantially revamped its lineup and changed its sound with the addition of songwriter-guitarist-keyboardist-vocalist Trevor Rabin. And while the exagerated volume drum and guitar sounds could be sometimes annoying, the group came up with a streamlined sound that produced some pretty darn good songs. The turn of the century edition of the band (with another re-worked lineup that more closely resembled the seventies one) has done a good job, too.

The other bands returned to performing after significant years of inactivity. The Moodies really disappointed. They remind me of the band Chicago. In the early seventies, great radio friendly songs that would go down as classics. In the eighties, churning out a bunch of bland hits.

King Crimson innovated. But those rapid short notes can wear one out after a while. And they still, even with a vastly different lineup, ooze with that aura of "attention class, this is your listening assignment until the next release".

Pink Floyd. Two studio releases, and a redundancy of live album rehashes. If you dwelve far enough into the first album, and actually read the CD booklet, you might even conclude it is really a David Gilmour solo album in Floyd packaging. People seem to gravitate toward that one more than the followup release, The Division Bell, but I prefer the later. It has a seamless ambient sound that I think better deserved the Pink Floyd label. And it is a genuine PF album, if you can get past the absence of Roger Waters. Rick "Time" Wright even does a vocal lead to break up the constant stream of Gilmour singing near everything in sight.

My first vote goes to Yes. That was the easy choice. My other vote goes to Pink Floyd.

[Martin Riley]

King Crimson innovated. But those rapid short notes can wear one out after a while. And they still, even with a vastly different lineup, ooze with that aura of "attention class, this is your listening assignment until the next release".

I can agree that Crimso do indeed sometimes come across as too academic in their approach, Fripp has always seemed to have something of the owlish,bookish professor about him but I would still argue that they should get the vote ahead of Floyd. As far as updating their sound I couldn't possibly see any of Crimso's work on ,say, VROOM fitting in with something from the 70's like ISLANDS, perhaps. However, I think an awful lot of what Floyd did on MOMENTARY LAPSE & DIVISION BELL could have easily fitted on their later 70's material such as ANIMALS or WISH YOU WERE HERE(although, obviously, they wouldn't have fitted in with those concepts but musically they were still fairly similar)

[PO]

Yea, Martin.

I would say that Floyd is the only one of the choices that didn't (or didn't have to) change "with the times". I respect them a lot for that. Personally, I would rather lead than follow. "The Wall" went over well and defined them as a "concept band for the eighties.

Everyone else was trying to adapt and suffered the consequences in their own ways.

[yarstruly]

Yes, and Add Rush to the list :)