Voto:
Dear Stormino, I absolutely do not criticize complexity: I don't like musical gestures for their own sake, typical of progressive music; there are better ways to indulge oneself, I believe. Musical complexity does not mean technical complexity: let’s agree on this. Otherwise, any fairground virtuoso is more complex than Tim Buckley, Beefheart, Steve Roach, Beefheart, Swans, and the '70s German rock (now that’s really difficult music!). The albums by Dream Theater, technically masterful and perfectly arranged (also with taste), recycle the same tricks endlessly: the super-fast solo, the syncopation, the sentimental singing over the heavy riff that strives to be tough with a heart of gold, the atonal piece (I think of the interlude in Metropolis) to show that they studied harmony at Berklee, the symphonic break: brilliant sounds, all very polished, all very superficial. From what you said, I gather that you’re not familiar with the bands I mentioned, and the misunderstanding stems from this. After all, I too, when I was 16 and listening to Dream Theater, would have defended them tooth and nail; they excited me too! So? Then I discovered Tim Buckley and a different way of making music, and after him, many great and unknown musicians who "risk" much more than Dream Theater. Besides, as a kid, I was crazy about The Goonies (pity me!), now I worship Bergman and Kubrick! I’m not crazy; it’s just that a bit of water has passed under the bridges: it’s not a matter of tastes but perhaps of things one knows. I don’t want to come off as a pompous little professor; I really don’t care about that regarding the music I know. There are better things to do than listen to albums, and the fact that I know about Vampire Rodents hasn’t exactly helped me win over more girls. It frustrates me, though, that great bands who tried to create Art have been forgotten, while much lesser groups, with oversized egos that take the stage to strut like peacocks, can pass as artists. And, by the way, in terms of sensitivity: I find musicians like the Swans to be extremely more sensitive (though very different, it’s true) than Dream Theater, which may seem paradoxical at first listen, especially if you hear their earliest extreme albums, or Pasolini's Salò (which was once included in some soft-core porn collection!), a film that has much more sensitivity than any syrupy rom-com with Meg Ryan… Instead, to Easycure, with whom I obviously share more listening experiences, I would like to say that on one point I disagree: one child was birthed from prog, however bastard it may be: post-rock, beyond its indebtedness to psychedelia, krautrock, and fusion, owes a great deal to progressive as well, just think of Tortoise: it simply has a much less melodramatic and showy style compared to prog… and by the way: how are Magma? I haven’t listened to anything of theirs yet…
