Prog rock, revived and digitized

Since progressive rock's inception in the late '60s, gleeful distaste for the genre has been a point of agreement for the rock mainstream and intelligentsia. Sure, there are those who swear by Yes's The Yes Album (1971) and King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), but the general opinion since the '70s has been that prog rock's utopia of bulky composition, self-conscious genre-mating, and often excruciating vocal stylings is an empty one, and that its more-is-more aesthetic makes for exhausting and pretentious listening. Every prog fan in the here and now knows he inherits a legacy of derision, and more recently, simple disinterest.

COURTESY BRANDON WU Wu got wax like Yes got synthesizers.

Brandon Wu, TD '03, is no exception, but his passion for the music led him to action. A year ago, he started the website Ground and Sky (www.progreviews.com) as an outlet for the enthusiasm of both potential and chronic prog fans. As a high school student in Winston-Salem, N.C., Wu discovered King Crimson through his brother, but it was Internet sites on prog (such as the recently resurrected Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock) that fed his habit, broadened his knowledge, and expanded his CD collection. Through Ground and Sky, Wu sought to create a similar resource for musical exploration. "It's basically meant to be a big archive," he said.

That it is, and it's getting bigger. Ground and Sky currently has reviews of 468 albums, many of them by multiple contributors. In addition, the site offers artist information, sound clips for some albums, and links to pertinent prog web resources. Though Wu wrote many of the early reviews and articles himself, he had little trouble enticing others to contribute. "Because it's such a small genre, it's also a very tight-knit community online," he said.

All but one (Sean McFee of Exposé, a prog magazine) of the Ground and Sky's writers are amateur enthusiasts; they write with the obsessive subjectivity that I imagine would embarrass them in cocktail chatter, but that pours freely forth when isolated or thrust into the world of Internet bulletin boards. "The vocals don't really bother me (though I do not love them either)," writes Eric Porter of After Crying's Megalázottak és megsz-omorítottak. At best, there is a lucid awareness of a larger musical context: "Close to the Edge retains...the rock element that reminds people not to take something too seriously, while evolving the band, wittingly or not, into a stage of composing rock symphonies," McFee writes of Yes's magnum opus. At worst, the writing attempts sonic description—searching for the verbal equivalent of Yes's airy meanderings is a recipe for regurgitation, but gooey adjectives abound in several reviews.

Wu suggests that both the intensity of the fan base and the indifference of the music world at large are due to progressive rock's rather slow progress as a developing style. "Despite the name, it's a pretty static genre. Most of the current popular bands are very derivative of the original groups from the '70s," he said, pausing. Then he added, "A lot of it is pretty pretentious."

The latter observation will be shared by any non-fan that peruses Ground and Sky and happens upon, say, the debate as to whether Pink Floyd's music is complex enough to be classified as "prog" (this, I noticed, is the subtext of many a Floyd critique). But of course, these are not the people the site is meant for. And the fact is, someone looking to trace the genealogy of progressive rock, and find informed (and occasionally fanatical) opinions will find no site tighter or easier to navigate.

Back to A&E...