on musical forms and their context(s). But if we also want a way to say that progressive rock is significant and important music, there has to be a perspective from which to make this claim.
Of course, others are most welcome to develop their own perspectives. In my book on Yes, I’m sure I got it wrong here or there, or went overboard, and I know that I didn’t engage with some contexts that are also important for understanding the music of Yes or progressive rock more generally (for instance, I didn’t go deeply into the influence of non-Western belief systems on Jon Anderson or Steve Howe, in part because it is beyond my competence to discuss these things). I certainly hope that readers will correct me or extend the discussion where needed—and I will certainly be happy if one major outcome of this book will have been to provoke such discussion. Like any great art, progressive rock music works on many levels and inspires many interpretations. But I will stick to my claim that there is something fundamentally liberatory and utopian about progressive rock, and I imagine that readers, whatever they might have heard about some things called “Marxism” or “Communism,” will for the most part agree with this.
Incidentally, if such a thesis can be fleshed out, this will help to show not only how social theory and philosophy have something to contribute to the understanding of music, but also how an exploration of music can contribute to social theory and philosophy. The approach I take, then, has the virtue of avoiding both purely sociological or purely formalist perspectives, even while availing itself of the best insights of either. I think this approach fits progressive rock pretty well, and it also helps to flesh out the better possibilities of the radical communitarian perspective.
So, I would argue that following out such a perspective is not a distraction if there are important reasons for taking up such a perspective—but it can be rough going, undoubtedly. In this respect, I would like to quote my friendly critic one more time, because I feel that he has understood something important.
I did find myself occasionally skimming through the philosophical sections, just to get to the musical “meat.” However, in retrospect, all of the writing is significant, and it short-changes the book to read it merely to get the “warm fuzzies” from experiencing someone else’s praise for something that one already admires (although this DOES unmistakably feel good). (p. 4)
This is very generous and much appreciated. Naturally, I don’t want to prevent anyone from getting a warm feeling from revisiting the glory days of progressive rock—on the contrary, I want to help us seize again those days and the great energy and inspiration of them.
Edward Macan situates progressive rock in terms of a broad sixties counterculture. Progressive rock is no longer a part of this counterculture—which itself now only exists in the form of embattled or recuperated fragments. But if there was ever a “culture” (if such it is) that needed to be countered, the one we live in is it. In two important books, Postmodernism and The Seeds of Time, Fredric Jameson has spoken to the way that meaning and history are flattened and consigned to stasis and oblivion in this period of postmodern capitalism. In the latter book, he describes this in terms that are brutally stark:
Parmenidean stasis [changeless Being in itself, to which Jameson is comparing the postmodern resistance to history] . . . to be sure knows at least one irrevocable event, namely death and the passage of the generations. . . . But death itself . . . is inescapable and [has been rendered] meaningless, since any historical framework that would serve to interpret and position individual deaths (at least for their survivors) has been destroyed. A kind of absolute violence, then, the abstraction of violent death, is something like the dialectical correlative to this world without time or history. (p. 19)
When I argue that we should seize again the day, and take up again the idea that music, and a certain music in particular, was and is important, it is ultimately this absolute violence to which this argument and this proposed raid is opposed.
As Macan argues, progressive rock has gone from being part of a more general counterculture to being simply what sociologists call a “taste public.” This means, as Macan explains, that whereas there was something like a world view associated with being an afficionado of progressive rock at a time when this kind of music was part of a larger counterculture, after the heyday of progressive rock it is more likely that afficionados only share an interest in the music, and do not necessarily share any larger set of values (see especially pp. 72–83). There is a good argument to be made that the degeneration of a counterculture into a mere taste public fits in all too nicely with a more general “culture” of consumerism and with the idea that there is nothing more at stake than individual “tastes.” Furthermore, and returning once again to the question of formalism and my friendly critic’s attempt to isolate “purely musical issues” from “political” questions, the move from counterculture to taste public is surely a monumental defeat, in that the move is an acceptance of the idea that music is not really that important in terms of this larger thing called “life.”
So, again, What is music? If it is only capable of being entertainment, something to occupy us in our leisure time, but of no greater importance, then perhaps some of the components of the sixties counterculture really were invested with a significance all out of proportion to their actual worth.
The response to this charge, I think, is seen first of all not in one of my more theoretical discussions, but instead in the fact that people who are into progressive rock seem to love this music, seem to think that it is important, seem to feel that it speaks to them on the level of the soul and not just as passing entertainment; there is a deep feeling that this music can be engaged with. Why, then, retreat into a sterile formalism when the larger issues begin to get rough and where one is challenged to examine where one’s commitments lie? My aim, instead, is to show why we need to go in the opposite direction.
Another way to put this is that, if I dealt with this music only from the standpoint of history or musicology done from a purely academic perspective, or as a mere nostalgia trip—“warm fuzzies” and nothing more—then there wouldn’t be much point, as far as I’m concerned, in attempting to deepen our understanding of this music. Instead, I’d just put on Thick as a Brick or Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, and sit around with my friends and say, “Man, that is really something, that is really cool!” Of course, it is really something, it is really cool (in the pre-jaded sense of “cool,” that is), and it is good to just sit back and listen from time to time, without too much of an agenda as to what one will make of the experience. But my perspective is that there are two central issues here that are deeply linked. First, there is something about progressive rock that is not only to be enjoyed on the surface, but also to be understood and appreciated in depth. This depth appreciation is not unassociated with enjoyment, but here we would be interested in moving beyond surface pleasures and more into the realm of what speaks to the possibilities of human flourishing. Second, I would argue that, if we break with formalism (which, again, doesn’t mean absolving ourselves of the need for analysis of musical structure), then our perspective on the aforementioned understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment must be an engaged perspective. That is, we accept that, although “music” (or art more generally) and “life” do not at every point describe the same thing or activity, neither is there a way to strictly separate the two. This would go even more for the kinds of music that one could get very seriously involved in, “wrap one’s life around”—and, of course, I hold that progressive rock is one such kind of music. (In this connection, I can’t help but think about the title of Valerie Wilmer’s book on four major jazz innovators, including Cecil Taylor: As Serious As Your Life.) Therefore, a commitment to the importance of a kind of music that goes beyond surface enjoyment, toward that which speaks to the human spirit and the possibilities of human flourishing (and even a cosmic co-flourishing), must be understood, on reflection, to also entail a commitment to working those changes in the world that will enable this flourishing.
This is to ask a great deal of music and of any one kind of music. And yet,
