I thought it would be “mind blowing” idea to post about good hippie rock from the early 70′s that was “complex!”  But now I realize just how retarded that thought is.  Of Course there was good hippie rock in the 70′s. And even stuff that was complex. 

The late 60′s and 70′s is when hippies actually existed…

This said, the stuff me and you and everyone else probably “most remembers” from this period is Creedence and Hendrix and The Yardbirds and The Doors.  It’s not stuff that was overly-complex.  Don’t get me wrong – I love this stuff — I love Hendrix and even happen to be  playing Hendrix, this second, as I type this.   (Look for a post with a little Hendrix coming very shortly, actually).  Two real genres seemed to emerge out of the music from these guys.  The first is a blues/folk/rock orientation (think Clapton, Led Zepplin, etc).   And a Progressive Rock movement.

The stuff you’re listening to right now is definitively in the “Progressive Rock” category, and from the early 70′s if it needs to be stated again.  After I heard the stuff you’re listening to as we speak for the first time, I gained a flair for “Progressive Rock,” and started exploring it deeply. Some of it is pretty good, right?

Prog Rock, as it’s called, is actually an influence I got from listening from regular-old Sirius Satelitte Radio of all places.  When I first got Sirius I was super psyched though I quickly faded out as I realized many of my favorite channels, like Jam On!, were playing the same crap 3-4 times a day just like crappy FM classic rock stations.  However, their station “The Vault” – their deep tracks/non-commercial classic rock station (which is now XM Channel “Deep Tracks” — which is also equally as good or maybe even better ) – turned me on to both artists you’re listening to.

It was actually a song that a DJ from their show “Progressions” took on as pet-favorite song and played a lot.  I’d identify him except I can’t get the damn Sirius Satellite Radio site to load (and would comment in general: Sirius- your site blows.  It’s fancy looking, but it sucks.  It’s not usable and loads like ass.  Also, your password/login aspects also totally suck).

The thing about Prog Rock is it got really dorky really quick into the 70′s.  There were plenty of bands that emerged from it with good mainstream tracks (Genesis, for example), but overall it got complicated and weird, became exceptionally male, and drug induced in a lot of ways. 

It also, I guess much like late-60′s Free Jazz, got sort of hard to listen to.  And finally, it also took an unusually interesting and odd European slant with strong infleunce from classic music of all things.  That’s right, rock meets classical music.   Sounds dorky, right?  Unfortunately that’s the case with these two bands.  But these two tracks from them are breakouts and are a little more listenable but you can sense some classical influences, in particularly the second song.

The first song is by Khan – a British band from about 1971-1972.  I don’t have too much to say about them except read their wikipedia article if you want to explore them further.  Most of their limited amount of stuff is pretty good actually.   I call it “virgin prog rock.”  There was a fine cusp in the early 70′s where the prog rock bands hadn’t gone off the deep end yet and were still listenable, in almost an early Pink Floyd style, before even Pink Floyd themselves Euro-prog-rocked-off the deep end in the late late 70s and early 80′s. 

The second is the song is from Focus, a Dutch prog rock band.  This song, Questions? Answers!  Answers?  Questions! is actually sort of a long, sweeping, second half of their one and only hit song “Hocus Pocus.”  If you listened to FM classic rock stations, once in a while a song would play where there was a guy yodeling.  You would recognize it if you heard it.  But this song is sort of like a 17-minute second part of it, where it gets a little crazy, long, drawn out, and actually pretty soulful of all things.  Then a sick rock jam, extremely methodic, at the end.  This band also had a weird setup where the band leader, their organ player, also played the flute.  I really dig the organ player.  Particularly his ability to just turn it up, in all the grit of the organ, in almost a John Medeski style.

So we have a little of everything with Focus…   What is most impressive about these guys, though, is their guitar player.  He is just sick.   Timmy Marcus, if you’re out there and are reading this, he actually reminds me a lot of your playing from high school & college, with it’s particularly complex but smooth rock playing…   I also love the style where he goes a little ‘surfer’ particularly at the beginning of his solo, after the flute solo, for a few minutes.   Shows a real sense of discipline with style and feel..   This is why I chose this live version of the song as it’s much more drawn out surfer style versus their (also awesome) recorded/studio version. 

Does it seem like the music Phish played could be a natural progression for these guys?   The last song is Divide Sky, a signature trippy jam from Phish.  It’s also the best of Phish (and all the other stuff on their Junta album), according to me.  To me, Divided Sky Phish = the U.S. dorky white guy progression of 70’s prog rock in the 80’s and 90’s.  I think that’s pretty cool, personally…    It turns out I might be onto something here: when I google Phish Junta, there are tons and tons of Progressive Rock references.  I like that even the Wikipedia article says “it is considered by many to be the group’s masterpiece.”   Right on… 

I have to say my patience for researching and listening to prog rock diminished relatively quickly once I got into it.  Maybe there are tons of other bands out there I should listen to, but I couldn’t find them.  I downloaded albums from  Egg, Khan(the first of the songs you’re listening too), and the Italian Prog Rock band Premiata, Forneria, Macaroni.   All three of these are all pretty damn good too.  Pretty trippy to listening to decent or even sick prog rock with vocals… In Italian.  It turns out there’s even a whole Italian prog rock genre…  

These guys were all referred to me via social media forums (the new, “mildly trendy” way of saying “chat rooms” or people with similar interests).  I’d asked about bands that were similar to the British band Yes, who I’ve been on & off been listening to since college.  They’re powered by their awesome lead singer,  sick bass player, and their organ player as well.   These three bands are similar because they all have organ players as well (well, four bands, including Focus).   I feel like even in Prog Rock the organ still adds a ton of soul. 

The interesting thing is, if you’ve listened to a lot of Phish (I did, graduating from a New England boarding school in ’97) then you know they take a lot of liberties, particularly musically, but performance wise as well.  Fish (the drummer) would break out a vacuum player and start ‘playing’ that.  Or they’d do an A Capella piece.  On one of their performances on New Year’s Eve they even hopped in a giant hot dog and flew around the roof of Madison Square Garden: 

It’s an extreme case but you can get hear from both the songs and styles one more trait where Phish draws it’s influence from Prog Rock. 

Let me know if you have any thoughts!