As I sit here listening to Trilogy by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, I am reminded of a joke I heard relating to ELP and prog-rock in general. It goes: “Q: How do you spell ‘pretentious’? A: E-L-P.” As most of you know, one of the main criticisms against prog-rock and its offspring, prog-metal, is that it is highly pretentious music. Critics both in the 70s and today whined and still whine about the supposed excesses of its proponents. “Who do they think they are, composers? They're just rock and roll bands!” “They take themselves too seriously! Pop music isn't meant to be taken seriously!” “Its self-indulgent mutual masturbation, that's all. They think that just because they can play well that they can just showboat the night away and call it music.” “Just because technology has given us the ability to have songs lasting 20+ minutes doesn't mean they should use it.” Most real fans either take it about as seriously as the aforementioned critics take pop music and their analysis of it or lash out against it in seeming futility. I choose to turn the tables on the overfed critics: prog music isn't pretentious, flavor-of-the-month pop music is, as anyone making a side-by-side comparison can see.

      Consider, if you will, the styles which are currently popular on eMpTyV, and thus also with the unwashed masses. This is mainly rap (or “hip-hop” as rap fashions require one to do get anywhere) and “electronica”, the bastard child of electronic music pioneers such as Tangerine Dream or Jean-Michel Jarre. Both feature a heavy emphasis on the beat of the music (note I didn't say “drumming”, as few rap or electronica “artists” use actual drums) and a general lack of actual instrumental elements aside from the occasional bassline and frequent bastardizing sample (“Ill Be Missing You”, Puff Daddy style, anyone?). All this and cliched lyrics, too! (While ELP frequently had cliched lyrics, it WAS the 70s, and the worst of these is better than the best of currently popular “music.”) Yet these people are called “artists”, and prog music, when it is actually known, as it mostly isn't with the MTV generation, is shunned as pretentious. Am I the only one who sees this as ridiculous? People who can chant tonelessly over samples and white noise (Mace comes to mind) sell platinum records, yet for a prog musician, a truly great album and 2 bucks will buy him a hot lunch? Who is truly pretentious, and who is really masturbating musically, a lame cover band playing top-40 or a prog band playing 40-minute suites with long virtuosic solos and polyrythms?

~Craig Griffith