The period we’ve been calling When the Prog Rockers Got Real – Just Before They Got Plastic (or WTPRGRJBTGP for short) – the period around 1980, when Genesis and Yes and Rush and company got briefly concise without abandoning their technical proficiency or proclivity for complexity – didn’t last long. [To be clear: I am not presuming to describe a cultural phenomenon here. I am describing a personally important musical period where what certain others were doing gelled beautifully with what I was wanting.]
I never stopped loving this sort of music – heavy, rocking and concise but still angular, challenging, imaginative, considered. I still keep an eye out for it, and here’s a weirdo thing: in recent years, I’ve been finding it in my own backyard. My own 3000 mile wide backyard, known to others as “Canada”. Art Rock, as it seems to like to be called now, is sort of big here, in our small way.
I think the influence of Rush on all teenage male Canadians must have had some influence on this; credit must be given to Rush’s less mainstream cousin Max Webster as well. The influence can be seen in almost invisible cult acts like the Yellowjacket Avenger, slightly more visible weirdos like the Wooden Stars and The Dinner is Ruined, and crystal clearly in our Art Rock darlings the Rheostatics - and in their friends Dave Clark and Ford Pier and the collective Instant Klassix.
I find this a satisfying little turn of events.
Satan Is The Whistler - from the Rheostatics’ Night of the Shooting Stars
hey jep,
I should send you my two new cds “double nature” (just me) and “feelings:the record” (my boys and I in halifax).
Geoffrey.