The Music's All That Matters: A History of Progressive Rock (Music)

Rating:
Summary: a fan?
Review: After reading this book one really wonders whether Stump actually even likes prog rock! Stick with the Macan book - much more readable, enthusiastic about the music, just as intellectually challenging and not as simplistic as the Jerry Lucky books.

Rating:
Summary: easily the best book on prog available
Review: I find this book to be superior to the other two leading works on prog by Macan and Martin, respectively. Macan is a musicologist who admittedly has fallen out of interest with popular music since the time of progressive rock; thus, his book is useful only insofar as he can present a musicologist's opinion about certain pieces. When it comes to putting progressive rock in the context of other music happening simultaneosly, or evaluating progressive rock in terms of rock music history as a whole, Macan is mostly useless.

Martin approaches the subject from a sociologist's perspective, and this is valuable. Also, Martin probably goes into depth with the most individual albums than the other writers. However, Martin's knowledge of the genre is too incomplete, too biased towards Yes and too full of needless Marxist claptrap to be on Stump's level.

Why is Stump's book the best? Well, it's easily the best written of the three -- it's an invigorating, entertaining read. Martin even admits in his own book that he wished he had Stump's facility with language. Secondly, Stump isn't just presenting the history of prog from the rose-colored glasses of a fan. He is a fan, but his goal was to describe what actually happened, and what is worth reconsidering and what is not. The fact is, some prog rock *was* garbage, and Stump is perfectly willing to expose what he thinks fits this bill.

Is the book perfectly comprehensive? No. Stump (like the others) focuses almost entirely on British prog. Also, it is arguable that more information on certain major bands would have been preferable. But that would likely have come at the expense of the wealth of information included on lesser-known artists.

Still, there isn't a more intelligent or accurate volume on progressive rock available, so make this your first purchase on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Critical or Hostile?
Review: I have very mixed feelings about this book. Stump has written a well crafted history of the Progressive Rock movement (a daunting task) but has managed to insult most of the movers and shakers. He qualifies his name-droppings with some very nasty adjectives which tended to make me quite angry at times. Very few performers escaped this fate (Fripp and Bruford are the two that come to mind). I grew to question whether he liked the genre at all. His eye is very critical, very very critical.

Nevertheless, the book is an excellent chronological history of the Prog. movement and the fact that he succeeds is commendable.
For me, I am glad that I read it but I prefer Macan's book, in all truth.

Rating:
Summary: English View of Prog and Why It Failed
Review: Paul Stump's book is a great treat to anyone interested in what Prog rock was really about. In the US, the Prog rock bands that we saw or heard about came to us after being fully formed, after years of practice, after they moved out of the club and university circuit. What Stump's history does well is to show the roots, the trials, and the missteps of various bands coming to terms with both a new type of music and the end of the era that created it. While not an unabashed fan of everything Prog, Stump's taste is excellent and his knowledge of the arcana of the British music scene is impressive. Stump's writing is excellent, sometimes too good. His analyses are dead on, and he takes into account the financial, political, and social explanations of why Prog took off, made millions, and flared out.

Of all the Prog books out there now, this is by far the best and most useful in understanding the music. Those who dislike this book because Stump is honest in his evaluations ought to consider that someone who hated Prog would not have spent so much time and effort writing a book like this.

Rating:
Summary: The least essential Prog book I've read
Review: Stump's The Music Is All That Matters, attempts to describe exactly how Progressive rock in England evolved from its psychadelic beginnings in the late 1960's to its current cult-like status. While highly opinionated, it mostly succeeds in this effort. However, I find it to be the least essential of the books on Progressive Rock that I have read. This is because Stump's writing style is somewhat taxing, and I don't find myself gaining a deeper understanding of the music, or discovering new bands to listen too.

I wanted to briefly address some of the comments made by some of the other insightful reviewers.

1-I do believe that Stump thoroughly enjoys progressive rock. He just likes Robert Wyatt, (he sounds like the only person I have ever heard that has actually listened to EVERY Soft Machine album), Henry Cow and The Enid more than Yes, Pink Floyd and ELP. He does present with the bias that somehow if you became popular the music was no longer valid. Now this did happen to the most popular progressive bands as the 70's wore on, but he is also highly critical of the most successful progressive bands better work as well. However, I take his criticism to be that of an insider, one of us. It is like family making fun of each other, its ok when it is with each other. With that said, I question does he really think ELP covered Pictures at an Exhibition because they thought it would make them international pop stars? It was about the music baby (at least in the beginning and I think among the current prog groups). I found myself wanting to apologize to Bradley Smith (Billboard's Guide to Progressive Music) for saying in an Amazon Review that his writing was preachy, cause by comparison, Stump is MUCH more highly opinionated, and much more direct in his presentation that HE knows what is the really good and essential music. (Hey, Ant Phillips seems like a great guy, and Trespass is my favorite Genesis album, but a whole section devoted to him? Some of those Private Parts albums are about as exciting as listening to someone tune their guitar!! That said, go buy Phillip's The Geese and the Ghost- it is a fantastic, sensitive progressive work).

2. Stump's writing is, as other's have pointed out, often difficult. (Who were you trying to impress Stumpy?). I mean, progsters are often educated folk, but only a few of us are actually Professors of literature. It is interesting that Stump has also written a book on Roxy Music because a friend of mine used to say that Brian Ferry sounded like he was singing to hear himself sing/amuse himself. Sometimes I felt like this book was written solely to amuse the author. I found myself comparing the writing to music and coming up with the two following analogies.
1-At times the writing is like those dissonant bits in Henry Cow, you know the ones where you know it has some significance, but you really just keep listening to see if you are strong enough to take it.
2-The best album I could think of to compare the writing to was ELP's Works. Self-indulgent (nothing wrong with some self-indulgence on occassion), bombastic and "clodhopping" in its attempt to be more than it is. Also, so obvious in its attempt to be clever that it at times becomes self-parody. None the less, it is still something I drag out on occassion and thoroughly enjoy bits of.

And that is what I thought of this book. It was often too much work. While there are some amusing thoughts on prog and some prog albums, (some of his criticism of the most popular progressive rock albums is actually fairly humoruous) overall, it isn't an essential read on the subject. But, most progster like to collect things, so you are probably going to buy this anyways. I did.

Rating:
Summary: More interesting than a bee's nest
Review: The book is for very sophisticated readers that have a vast vocabulary, it is definately not for most readers. It gives lots of information on most (if not all) prog rock bands from Europe. Like any other book about music it is biased towards some bands but in general the author seems honest. I personally was looking for a book which incorporated prog bands from all around the world not just Europe. Also it leaves gaping holes in its chronolgy it appears that nothing happened with prog in the late 80s and 90s. The author mentions that the music wasn't that popular at the time but sill i had hoped for more.

Rating:
Summary: Don't know much about air keyboards?
Review: This is my vote for the best survey of the music industry side of prog. Stump's book is particulary good at describing early English prog roots and how the music fit with the larger music scene. Don't read this expecting the musical analyses of Macan's ROCKING THE CLASSICS. Stump is more like a writer from Rolling Stone doing a book. As a reporter, he doesn't write from a fan's perspective - the main criticism leveled at Bill Martin's two intense prog books. Stump is more cynical (others call it hostile). His scene descriptions are great. Like at The Blue Boar, a service station on the M1 motorway where the bands like the Strawbs and Jethro Tull used to cross paths while touring the Midlands in the early 70's. Or the Heavy Metal disco in Queensbury where, in 1978, Thursday night was acid rock night. Air keyboards vs air guitars! This book is essential for all prog completists.

Rating:
Summary: The Book Progressive Rock Thinks It Deserves
Review: Though often lapsing into verbosity, Stump's book is an intelligent, non-embarrassing look at the much-maligned genre of Progressive Rock. Prog fans often pride themselves on the intelligence required to create and appreciate their music. However, most books on prog betray their authors' simplistic understanding of the music and the events surrounding it. The authors come off as fanboys, insulting the reader with their poorly supported arguments and sweeping generalizations. Paul Stump goes a long way to correct this trend in prog rock books . He writes well and has done much of his homework. Despite other Amazon reviewers' comments to the contrary, Stump's passion for the music is infectious. He is opinionated, though, so Marillion fans should take note. I really appreciated the attention he gave to the more experimental or avant-garde bands. The likes of Henry Cow, The Soft Machine and Barrett-era Pink Floyd get plenty of copy alongside the more mainstream Yes and Genesis. Stump is no snob, (despite writing for The Wire) which would be a dubious position anyway for a fan of a genre now reviled by snobs everywhere. A few caveats: this should really be called "A History of ENGLISH Progressive Rock" but Stump tells you as much in the introduction. Also, as a non-Englishman, I ran across quite a few words I have never seen before or since. The Music's All That Matters has been very helpful in pointing me towards some terrific bands and understanding some of the ideas behind their music. Now I need to find some Magma albums! Ignore the cheesy title and you'll enjoy it!

Rating:
Summary: Is the music all that matters?
Review: To have a better understanding of this book one must take into account its author's ideology. As pointed out by Edward Macan (whose musicological and sociological analysis is much more superior to Stump's), the ranks of music critics were dominated by neo-Marxists. That explains Stump's preferences and prejudices. Henry Cow and Soft Machine get his praise because of their ideological beliefs rather than their artistic merits (in the long list of acknowledgments, he thanks Chris Cutler for "intellectual inspiration"). Accordingly, Stump's sarcasm towards Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull, etc., is focused mainly on their decadence, not their music. But Stump's objectivity in his venom distribution is skewed too - for example, his bourgeois ways notwithstanding, Bill Bruford (as well as all Stump's interviewees) gets a much better treatment than other members of Yes. Kind of a payback.
Writing a history of progressive rock is quite an ambitious undertaking, and it's hard to expect one person to know everything about the multitude of bands and musicians. Claiming encyclopedic knowledge, Stump can't leave out less-popular-yet-major players. Here Stump's pretense is apparent, as his familiarity with those bands is rather minimal in many instances. Take Gentle Giant. Stump's upcoming book implies that he must be a great scholar of their work, but his overview of the group looks more like a compilation of opinions. At the very first mention, he defines them as a part of "by far the more commercially successful form of Progressive rock" (page 97). This statement should not even be contested because of its obvious fallacy. The fact alone that one of their best records, In a Glass House, had never been released in the U.S. as too "uncommercial" leaves no uncertainty about their moneymaking success. Their statement about "blatant commercialism", ridiculed by Stump, really reflects their approach towards music. Stump repeats every silly epithet used by critics (except for "pretentious") and then refers to Jan-Paul van Spaendonck whose opinion he evidently respects and whose high praise is in total contradiction with Stump's pearls. This dualism reveals his total lack of knowledge of the subject. He is tempted to side with the majority, but few respected voices confuse him. So it came out pretty confusing and quite pathetic too.
Stump's interpretation and philosophizing of the social side of the movement is rooted in his ideology. It's full of customary Marxist truisms, and is pretty shallow and weak.
On a minor note, Stump's universally praised vocabulary is an intellectual show-off, a sign of self-infatuation, typical for unrecognized self-achievers. A standout evidence of that is his comparison between prog "big guns" and "ascetic and virtuous Stakhanovites" (page 12). For the record, the Stakhanovites were super-productive workers during the industrial build-up in the Soviet Union in the '30s. These people were neither ascetic nor virtuous. Their only virtue was their productivity. Otherwise, they were quite arrogant because they were well-paid (i.e. rich) and famous. Stump's desire to impress results in his attempts for neologisms and improper use of words ("atavism" and "lumpen" come to mind) as he tries to impose his "intellectual superiority".
All in all, ignore Stump's ideological assault and don't succumb to his pseudo-intellectual pressure, and you have a good historical overview of progressive rock although his pretentious style really spoils it.