From Detroit Techno to Prog Rock in One Step

Going through some old magazines last weekend and I came across some great music reading.

Last July, Shuja Haider did a piece in the New York Times Magazine on Detroit Techno. I just re-read it and found some really good Techno playlists on Spotify for my morning commute. In case you missed it, Haider cites a now sadly out-of-print 1988 compilation by 10 Records called "Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit." If you have a spare $75 you can find a used copy online. Derrik May wrote the liner notes. He is pictured here on the right with his legendary "Belleville Three" colleagues, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins, who are together credited with creating Techno. How does May describe Techno? "Its like George Clinton and Kraftwerk are stuck in an elevator with only a sequencer to keep them company." Beautiful.

Techno apparently started with some Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composers and TB-303 Bass Line Synthesizers with built-in sequencers.

Another musical movement deeply indebted to synthesizers was Prog Rock. There have been several recent books about this hugely popular music greatly despised by punks and rarely taken seriously by critics. In The New Yorker last June - a month before Haider's piece came out in the Times as a matter of fact - Kelefa Sannah published an article entitled, "The Prog Sound." The piece revolves around a number of books, new and old, that purport to celebrate and critique the much maligned music of such popular bands as Yes, Kansas, Styx, Rush, and many others. 

I was never a fan of Prog Rock, brainwashed as I was by my early studies of the Rolling Stone, which tended toward the authentic and the singer-songwriter, but I always had a soft spot for Yes, especially the enormously popular "Close to the Edge" album, sometimes called the greatest Prog Rock album of all time. (Will Romano has a new book about the album called "Close to the Edge: How Yes' Masterpiece Defined Prog Rock.") In the last few years, I have become more attracted to synthesized sounds, especially in Moogs and Arps and other modular synthesizers. I like their aesthetics and their quirkiness. As a non-musician, I think I might even have fun with one!

A couple of recent books on Prog Rock seem to have sent Sannah back to some older books and his meditation has renewed my interest, too. Last year, David Weigl published a book called "The Show That Never Ends." I haven't read it yet; Sannah says it is too short in contrast to an older more voluminous history by Bill Martin dating back to 1998, called "Listening to the Future." In this book, Martin includes a list of his sixty-two "essential" Prog Rock albums. Everyone loves lists and this one actually sounds useful! 

One of the most interesting points that Sannah raises in his article on Prog Rock is about its connection with Jazz: "Jazz played an important but disputed role in the story of progressive rock." He cites Soft Machine, Matching Mole, Hatfield & the North, and others, but doesn't really explain. And no mention of Detroit Techno and their use of the same instruments that epitomize Prog Rock.

Is any of this covered in Martin's book? Weigl's? I guess I will have to read them and find out.

I also never realized that Asia was made up of musicians from Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Their 1983 album rose to #1 in the U.S. that year. I may have to dig up a copy and give it another listen....