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quoted 2 lines I'd like to point out that regarding certain types of music esp. rock & pop

>I'd like to point out that regarding certain types of music esp. rock & pop >as valid 'art' forms it is only a relatively recent phenomenon.

quoted 2 lines It is mainly due to the efforts of the

> It is mainly due to the efforts of the >prog-rockers that some people began applying artistic ideas to popular

music. nah....it's been going on forever. european classical music has forever been culling vital ideas/melodies from popular music and "elevating" it to high art, sometimes selling it back to a popular audience. jazz was the pop music of the 20's, and one of the things about the Ellington band, besides their ability to generate hit singles and pack nightclubs, was the way Ellington was decreed a "composer" in the high art sense. as early as the mid-20's he was getting gigs in concert halls in Europe and getting taken seriously. Not, of course, as seriously as the leading lights of the classical music world, but I think the analogy to prog rock would stand. For better or worse, Ellington responded by writing a series of extended works (his "suites") for presentation at concerts. bebop evolved out of popular styles, but I'm certain that's what Chuck Berry was referring to in "Rock and Roll Music" when he complains about 'modern jazz' taking a simple melody and making it 'like a symphony'. he was reflecting, unsympathetically (on behalf of his teenage audience) on the high art aspirations of bebop. I don't know what the first art-rock project is, but there's a ton of mid-sixties stuff that gets there a half-decade before the 70's prog rockers. thinking of Brian Wilson's "Smile" project, the Velvet Underground to name but two, and, on the more underground side the electric LaMonte Young and the Terry Riley stuff. k --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org