Homegrown Prog

Trying to work myself into some lighter fare.  Having difficulty.  I can get to the point where I'm exploring weird little corners but actually explaining those corners is challenging.

Part of trying to cut back from old places that aren't working for me is trying to find new places.  There's a local radio station called XRAY here in Portland, sort of along the "freeform" way of doing things.  I got out of the habit of listening to the radio back when I lived in Indiana, but here there's radio that plays human-curated music of interest to me.

But since I am a digger, the other day I got around to digging.  What DJs are on the station?  What sort of music do they play?  What can I learn from it?

And honestly I learn a lot more by listening, and I'm starting to develop the patience for it again.  But the thing I found by digging that I don't think I would have come across if I didn't... DJ Cozmic Edward's radio show at 6 AM on Saturday morning.  He did a show a couple weeks back called "Homegrown Prog".

https://xray.fm/broadcasts/34337

This is the sort of thing that drives me to look for things.  I was previously vaguely aware of the existence of the sort of music on this broadcast.  Mainly I am aware of it through the writing of Ash Ra Tom, a '70s record obsessive with a particular interest in a nameless genre that he describes as "Midwestern Progressive Rock of the 1970s".  Here's his list, which I note that he just revised earlier this month so it's pretty up-to-date:

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/ashratom/usa-midwest-ontario-progressive-rock-1970s_early-80s/

The music DJ Cozmic Edward's radio show doesn't have the strict geographic demarcation of Tom's list, but from listening to the music I hear a distinct stylistic kinship to the bands on the list.  Not only is it good music, this is music that is more obscure than even groups like Random and Graced Lightning known only to a few obsessive freaks.

See, I've sort of evolved in my thinking about "lost media" from focusing on things that are already gone to things that might one day be gone.  All of the missing Doctor Who episodes were destroyed when I was an infant, long before I had even heard of the show.  It's great that so many have been recovered, but I can't help but think that it's easier to keep things from being lost in the first place than to recover them when they're gone.

And what is in danger of being lost?  Things nobody cares about.  Things so few people care about that nobody even remembers they exist.  Things with few copies of them made.  The radio station records of the 1970s and 1980s seem to me to be a textbook example of endangered media.

DJ Cozmic Edward credits the work of Tony Coulter for bringing the music to broader attention.  Coulter is an unbelievably knowledgable WFMU DJ who has brought uncountable numbers of recordings to wider prominence and I'm not surprised to hear of his involvement.  Oddly enough it seems much of the rediscovery of the 70s radio station recordings comes from a resurgence of interest in soft rock, rather than progressive rock.  Earlier waves of revivalism, such as Irwin Chusid's "outsider" movement, focused bizarre music, strange and odd music.  Music which is in some sense really the opposite of the soft rock here, which is smooth and professional.

This is something that Ash Ra Tom brings up in his list on Midwest Progressive Rock - the biggest-name examplar of this sort of music is Kansas.  America never really had a lot of homegrown progressive rock bands, and I'm starting to conclude that a lot of it was label gatekeeping.  American labels, it seems, were just not interested in signing or promoting the bands making music like Kansas, even in the days when Emerson, Lake, and Palmer could headline major music festivals and fill stadiums.

I can't say this is a great loss to posterity.  I'm not going to excoriate the evil labels for not spending enough time promoting the well-done but ultimately unexceptional work of privileged suburban white kids.  I am going to say that I do like a lot of this music and I'm glad to have a chance to hear it, glad that some of it at least has not ceased to exist, love that in 1978 a band called Trout Fishing in America recorded a prog tune called "High in the Highlands" for a record made by radio station KDKB in Arizona and that I can hear that song now.

I'm not a huge fan of the song, exactly - there's better songs in the hour.  But I am, of course, a Richard Brautigan fan.

I had to look and see if the record is even listed on Discogs.  It's not.  Discogs lists two bands called Trout Fishing in America.  One has no info on it at all except that they released a single called "Proto 1 / Bun Hugger Boy".  No label.  All I can find is that it was pressed by Wakefield Manufacturing, which was a defunct pressing plant in Phoenix.  Maybe it's them!  Hard to say:

https://www.discogs.com/label/367883-Wakefield-Manufacturing

The other are apparently much better known - they even have their own Wikipedia page!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trout_Fishing_in_America_(duo)

They mostly make children's music, it looks like, and were based in Houston during the time this record was made.  I guess they got played on Dr. Demento and NPR and are on one of those Putomayo comps as well.

Incidentally, best band name I found researching this list "Stickler of the Ultramundane".  They were apparently an Ohio-based Doors knockoff band who put out one EP.  Not on Discogs.  Googling it in quotes gives you one link to an Ebay auction that's ended.