Friday 23 February 2007

Prog Rock

The petition is entitled ensure that music education in our schools teaches children that drugs do not need to be taken to either play or listen to progressive rock and the explanatory notes say
Progressive rock music encourages a culture of drug taking to both play and listen to it, expressed by the overlong length and repetitive nature of the songs. We're concerned thats its recent revival amongst young people will promote drug use and we'd like school music teachers to try and inform pupils that drugs do not have to be taken to either listen to or play it."

I'm not an avid Prog Rock fan, but I listen to a bit (always, of course, depending on what you think Prog Rock is) and I can't say I've ever noticed this "drug" association. It's about pretentious nonsense and weird combinations that somehow work.

I have now conducted a debate on IRC among an assortment of people who like Prog Rock and have a lack of history with drugs (except alcohol and caffiene, but then, they're computer geeks). They all dismiss the idea that Prog Rock promotes drug use, and then started off on a fascinating debate about what it actually was.

I'd note that Wikipedia declares that one of the abiding characteristics of Prog Rock is feeling "carefully composed, yet spontaneous and improvised at the same time. It is true to say that progressive rock lends itself as much to intellectual analysis as it does to emotional enjoyment." This is not, to my mind, music that can be created or enjoyed with too much mind-fuddling.

There are, unquestionably, genres which promote drug use more. Many of them. Why on earth the bee in the bonnet about this one? Bah!

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