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Originally Posted by Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra
One could argue a large portion of their discography has very little of rock, and blues in it.
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Blues, I'd agree, but Gentle Giant is one of my all-time favourite bands and they've got plenty of rock in their discography in my opinion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra
I think prog is any music promoted to a singularly rock audience in order to open their minds of the potentials of rock. Sometimes it resembles classical more, sometimes it's nothing more than straight jazz fusion. In the end, however, the thing that really distinguishes it is the target audience, and the means to appeal to them.
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I don't necessarily disagree with all this, but I think defining the music a band plays by it's audience instead of what they do is a very difficult way to achieve perhaps the same result. Plus, you would sometimes need an audience to know if a band is rock or not.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SIRIUSB
Where does PR turn into Jazz Fusion? (I hate these labels but whatever) |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Necromancer
That would be "Steely Dan".
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I don't think Steely Dan is a particularly good example. Sure, they have plenty of jazz aesthetics in their later music, but it's not really what most think of as fusion which in a purer form is more or less the music you'd find on Miles Davis albums like Bitches Brew or played by 70s fusion bands like The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report or Return to Forever to name the three big ones.
Prog rock and fusion mixes all the time. Samla Mammas Manna mentioned above sound very much like a fusion band on occasion (just listen to what happens after about 7:10 into
this). Another good example are canterbury bands like Hatfield and the North or National Health. National Health is a rock band that play compositions which definetly mix a rock and jazz aesthetic in my opinion.
Here's an example from their debut :
Sometimes jazz approaches rock. What I'm about to write isn't always straight forward, but I think of rock music as composed music because that's where it's roots come from. Much of jazz fusion relies very much on improvisations and jazz has improvisation at it's roots so that's alright. However, sometimes a jazz piece can become so strictly composed that if you add a jazz rock band like Return to Forever to that which is pretty much a band like National Health, they may start playing something which is similar in many ways.
I'd say this is an exmple of a jazz fusion band approaching prog rock :