Go back to go forward: the resurgence of prog rock
by Alexis Petridis (Guardian)
At the end of 2008, the journalist Jerry Ewing pitched an idea for a new magazine to a publishing company. His idea was a magazine dedicated entirely to progressive rock, long reviled in the critical mainstream as the apotheosis of the musical excess of the pre-punk 70s, a largely forgotten realm of concept albums, difficult time signatures and extraordinary instrumental virtuosity. Ewing says he wasn't surprised when his publishers agreed to the idea – "there was a tidal shift in favour of prog; the BBC had done that Prog Britannia documentary, which seemed a kind of acceptance" – but even he seems taken aback by the success of Classic Rock: Prog. It currently sells around 22,000 copies an issue, half the circulation of the NME: not bad, given that Ewing is surely the first editor in four decades to utter the sentence: "Our best-selling issue had Jethro Tull on the cover."
There seems little doubt Ewing is right about the tidal shift. Not every new band tarred with the prog brush seems overjoyed about the label – when I mention it to Mike Vennart, of Manchester's Oceansize, he responds with a groan about "musical masturbation" – but you can see prog rock's influence on mainstream rock in Coheed & Cambria's concept albums topping the US chart; in Muse and Pendulum, who collaborated with nu-prog stalwarts Porcupine Tree on their current album Immersion. This weekend, the High Voltage festival in east London will not only boast a headlining performance by Emerson Lake & Palmer – whose first British live show in 15 years seems to have been greeted with widespread delight, rather than the yell of horror it would once have provoked – but a dedicated prog stage, playing host to Marillion, Asia, Pendragon and Transatlantic. The latter, a latterday prog supergroup featuring members of Marillion, Spock's Beard and Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, are what you might call the full Roger Dean-designed triple gatefold sleeve; in contrast, Muse look like the Dead Kennedys. Transatlantic's current album, The Whirlwind, features just one song, which runs to 78 minutes. "The sound of Transatlantic is very purposefully stuck in the 70s," says Portnoy, proudly. "All of us in Transatlantic are huge fans of [the Yes double album] Tales from Topographic Oceans and all the excesses that prog was infamous for. That stuff appeals to us! We miss that! Tremendously long, challenging pieces of music! We have no problem embracing that!"
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