"Every Home Is Wired": 2 -- The Progressive Rock Subculture and the Net

"Every Home Is Wired":
2 -- The Progressive Rock Subculture and the Net

In effect, then, Prog is less indebted to the counterculture's ideology as such than to the cultural environment it created -- while "there are links between the music and elements of countercultural ideology ... at the same time ... there are many references to mainstream cultural tradition. ... The relationship of progressive rock and the counterculture is thus uneasy and internally contradictory", as Middleton writes (31). Ironically, such internal contradictions can also make the Prog community more interesting for its members: due to its heterogeneity much in Prog is subject to debate, ensuring lively (if perhaps sometimes heated and divisive) discussion in communal fora (centrally now in its Internet newsgroups).	Bit 29
Prog's eclecticism has also forced its artists to use particular tactics in their relationship with their publishers: in much of rock, "artistic status depended on personal autonomy, on the ability to use mass media forms without being used by them; there was a clear difference between rock music -- which might reach a mass public via mass media but was made according to the artistic choices of its creators -- and pop music, which was determined in both form and content by market considerations" (Frith & Horne 98). This is even more pronounced for Prog: it has become quite obvious that Prog failed whenever the industry's strategic control of the means of music production infringed on the musicians' artistic freedom -- "the crucial characteristic of 'progressive pop' during the great creative age of the late 1960s was that the performers, not the controllers, were able to decide on the artistic content of the music" (Willis 164-5).¹⁹ The 80s Prog revival, too, occurred in a period when the musical industry was less interested in the musical styles it produced than in the money it made -- a sign, thus, that an arrangement with the industry is possible. Still, ex-Marillion singer Fish has lately had his career delayed repeatedly by bitter legal battles with EMI, and American band echolyn broke up largely over Sony's overly strict administration.	Bit 30

In effect, then, Prog is less indebted to the counterculture's ideology as such than to the cultural environment it created -- while "there are links between the music and elements of countercultural ideology ... at the same time ... there are many references to mainstream cultural tradition. ... The relationship of progressive rock and the counterculture is thus uneasy and internally contradictory", as Middleton writes (31). Ironically, such internal contradictions can also make the Prog community more interesting for its members: due to its heterogeneity much in Prog is subject to debate, ensuring lively (if perhaps sometimes heated and divisive) discussion in communal fora (centrally now in its Internet newsgroups).

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Prog's eclecticism has also forced its artists to use particular tactics in their relationship with their publishers: in much of rock, "artistic status depended on personal autonomy, on the ability to use mass media forms without being used by them; there was a clear difference between rock music -- which might reach a mass public via mass media but was made according to the artistic choices of its creators -- and pop music, which was determined in both form and content by market considerations" (Frith & Horne 98). This is even more pronounced for Prog: it has become quite obvious that Prog failed whenever the industry's strategic control of the means of music production infringed on the musicians' artistic freedom -- "the crucial characteristic of 'progressive pop' during the great creative age of the late 1960s was that the performers, not the controllers, were able to decide on the artistic content of the music" (Willis 164-5).¹⁹ The 80s Prog revival, too, occurred in a period when the musical industry was less interested in the musical styles it produced than in the money it made -- a sign, thus, that an arrangement with the industry is possible. Still, ex-Marillion singer Fish has lately had his career delayed repeatedly by bitter legal battles with EMI, and American band echolyn broke up largely over Sony's overly strict administration.

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Section 2 -- Go on to Bite:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30