The State of
Jerry Lucky Commentary November 2009
Copyright Jerry Lucky © 2009 All Rights Reserved
This past week
I was interviewed for a small piece in the mass-market
Classic Rock Presents PROG and it got me thinking about how far we’ve come regarding prog print journalism.
And to coin a phrase we’ve come a long way baby. What follows is a very brief history of the English speaking publications
that I’m personally aware of in particular those from the
but that’s for another time.
There was a time, and I’m referring to the mid-eighties
here, where anything to do with progressive rock in print came in the form of lovingly crafted fanzines. These hand-made print pieces
usually took the form of roughly photo-copied pages stapled together but some like the nicely produced Afterglow looked much closer
to a ‘real’ magazine. As indicated by their names, these fanzines started life devoted to specific bands but then as the prog revival
of the mid-eighties took hold they expanded their coverage to include many of the up-and-coming prog bands of the day. In addition
to Afterglow there was Court Jester, Exposure, Slogans, Relayer and quite a few others. Perhaps the best mass-produced commercial
publication of the time was Zig Zag magazine famous for Pete Frame’s Family Trees.
By the early nineties English speaking prog
fans could look forward to reading about their favourite genre in Expose and Progression. Expose, uniquely printed throughout its
publication life on cream-coloured stock provided readers with a wider definition of prog, covering the fringe styles of electronic
and RIO, while Progression stuck a little closer to the trunk of the symphonic tree and resembled a more traditional magazine, even
moving to perfect binding with free compilation CDs at times. Both magazines covered the gamut of a genre that by the late eighties
had taken new life as a thriving underground industry. It was around the same time that the first prog festivals began happening allowing
for more exposure. Both of these magazines continue to this day although if you read the interviews elsewhere on this site you will
no doubt have read that Expose will be going strictly on-line in the coming year.
But to get back to our storyline, in November
of 1998 a new mass-market magazine hit the newsstands in England entitled Classic Rock with the goal of covering bands who were being
shunned by the media at the time and that included prog artists old and new. True to form each month you could find any number of
articles, interviews and reviews with a decidedly positive slant, rather than the usual vitriol many of us had become familiar with.
Over the years as Classic Rock grew they began putting out special issues devoted exclusively to the prog genre, the first one in
my collection dates from September of 2006. Another Special issue came out in 2007 and the response must have been good because by
April of 2009 they began producing a quarterly publication entitled Classic Rock presents Prog, a high-quality, full colour magazine
devoted exclusively to the genre we all know and love.
So as it stands, prog fans have never had it so good. What’s changed
you might ask. While chatting with journalist Malcolm Dome he made the very cogent observation that prog is no longer considered a
dirty word. It’s interesting because as reviewers have changed, many no longer harbour the same ill-will towards the genre that was
readily apparent by journalists who’d come up through the seventies. Many of the new journalists don’t carry the same baggage, but
rather see prog as yet another potential influence on the music being made by bands today. What a healthy change. Personally I wonder
if the fact that word has been shorted to just prog has allowed a new generation to take ownership with a more positive view of the
musical history behind the name. I think yes. This generation likes its own version of prog that incorporates all of what’s gone before
and adds to it.
So what does this mean for us old timers? Well I’m of the opinion we should get with the program. Every generation
has its own heroes, so for us, we can still like old Yes but we can also like new Muse, or we can appreciate old Greenslade and appreciate
new Mew. As for me, I want to keep an open mind. I’m all for listening to new bands inspired by the classic prog bands. At least that’s
what I think.
Jerry Lucky
(11/1/09)