In a message dated 28/08/2005 20:23:53 GMT Standard Time, tron@... writes:
I don't think you can. The silliness and conceit of a rock musician who
suddenly thinks that - just because he has been ham-fistedly ripping off
the bits of classical music he can understand for the last ten years -
he can write an erzatz concerto is only beaten by the sheer drudgery of
listening to his eventual effort. What makes progressive rock risible
thus is because you don't tend to find that hopeless level of idiot
aspiration in other musical styles.
The only thing that makes these unusually irritating people get by is
the fact that their audiences wouldn't actually know what a sonata was
if it drove over their heads in an eighty seater coach with with the
word 'sonata' written on it. Having grown up with people like this I
always found that deep down they were really wanting to hear a 4/4 jam
in E as much as anyone else, but that they felt secretly guilty about it
and chose instead to pretend to like music about hogweed and lighthouse
keepers, artifically stuffed into 9/8 by someone who would probably have
been happier doing the 4/4 in E as well.