I’ve been a progressive rock and metal fan for well over a decade now, and describing progressive rock to others has always been difficult. The recent Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage documentary discusses one band’s rise to stardom by pushing their musical talents and remaining true to their sound and principles. Yet BBC4’s television program Prog Rock Britannia: An Observation in Three Movements discusses the rise of the progressive rock sub-genre by primarily examining the movements just prior to mainstream success in the mid-1970s.
Tracing the roots back to just after the psychedelia phase of rock n’ roll, this documentary recounts the Canterbury scene in which free-Jazz and English-folk would form the foundations for the successful progressive rock bands. The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and The Moody Blues‘ Days of Future Passed helped define the need for experimentation with music as well as how it was presented in the album cover. After Sgt. Pepper and Freak Out, the gate-fold cover became the essential way to distribute this new sub-genre of music (it also made for a great way to start to roll a joint, apparently).
In this documentary, Genesis, Yes, King Crimson and ELP are the most discussed bands. The four bands, as well as any progressive rock band, had a landscape that depended on competitive collaboration . Each new album, the bands chose to push their music and their art form beyond their previous release, and beyond the last release from other bands within the genre. While being grouped in the same sub-genre, these bands continued to produce within their own styles while supplying the fan-base with musical candy.
Excess and showmanship are two elements which gave progressive rock musicians their fan-base, but was also the sub-genre’s demise. With King Crimson, Yes, ELP and Genesis writing twenty minute epics, the genre’s bubble broke with the many of the same groups’ gravitation toward more accessible, more financially appealing music and marketing. Except for King Crimson, which folded just after their zenith Red album, each band either continued on with more emphasis on accessibility.
One of the most amicable topics discussed in this documentary, is how progressive rock itself is pretentious and self-serving; to which all the talking heads agreed. Prog Rock Britannia does an excellent job in framing the whole story. Prog rock is defined by musicians who obtained high-level music training during teenage years. Unable to rebel at that present time, these musicians chose to bring their classical training to rock n’ roll, giving us a eventual evolution into progressive rock.
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This documentary is primarily aimed towards current progressive rock fans, other viewers can easily find themselves uninterested, even boring. While many great musicians are featured in interviews (Bill Bruford, Phil Collins, Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Carl Palmer), some of the interviews featuring members of lesser-known British bands tended to slow down the pacing, even if for chronological purpose of necessity.
The documentary ends just prior to the semi-rise of English Neo-prog rock. Overall, Prog Rock Britannia: An Observation in Three Movements is a well-conceived documentary that can essentially pose as an excellent stepping point for the rise of the American progressive metal movement in the early-1990s and again in our current generation.