Once again I never cease to be amazed at the number of “deep thinkers” out there. And I’m glad that some of them take the time to respond to my efforts in great detail. Readers like Dave Starns who recently responded to the most recent editorial. With his kind permission I’m going to share with you some relevant comments from Dave who raises some very good points on this issue.

I just discovered your column today (actually, I just discovered ghostland.com today!), so I haven't had the chance to read your "Mystery of Music Pt. I." I did read Jason Ewing's fine response, though ("Mystery of Music, Pt. II"), and I'd like to add one small point to what he said. I know this isn't central to his argument about repetition or interpretive abilities, but I think he makes an interesting point in dividing the music audience between melodic and harmonic listeners. I've felt this way for a long time, but would add a third category, "conceptual listeners."

Conceptual listeners would be those at the other end of the scale from harmonic listeners. Rather than reacting to the complex interactions between harmonic components (ala harmonic listeners) or to the simpler, melodic path of the lead vocals or instrument (melodic listeners), they react primarily to the presentation style, or "concept" of the music.

From a strictly "musical" standpoint, these kinds of listeners aren't all that concerned with what's going on. They're more likely to be captivated by the charisma of a performer, the depth of a lyric, the general mood of a piece, the overall attitude of a band, etc. The prevalence of this approach to music accounts for a lot of what we take for granted: the need to have a good-looking front man, the need to package the music with appealing graphics, stuff like that.

Unfortunately for the CD-buying public, this type of listener also crams the ranks of the music press. Most pop music critics are conceptual listeners. It's what explains the ubiquity of the Sex Pistols, the Stooges, the Smiths, or even Bob Dylan on critics' "Best Albums of All Time" lists (I have nothing against those artists, by the way; I enjoy their music, but primarily on a conceptual, rather than harmonic, level). Generally, critics are reacting to music from a social--not musical--standpoint. Open a copy of Rolling Stone, and you'll read about plenty of music that "melodic listeners" are buying in droves (Brittany, Justin, even Norah Jones), but you'll also read even more about music that isn't selling billions of copies, and I'm not talking about groundbreaking progressive rock. I'm talking about the neo-punk of The White Stripes, The Hives, The Donnas, The Vines, The Strokes, etc. Once again, I don't dislike those artists especially; I just don't find them at all interesting or compelling from a musical standpoint.

Isn't it odd that at a time when progressive music is thriving like never before, and groups like Spock's Beard, the Flower Kings, Echolyn, Enchant, Porcupine Tree, et all are making incredible new music, the only thing that gets mainstream music press attention is the resurgence of the sound and attitude of late 70's punk and new wave music?

I used to find it frustrating that the mainstream critical music press dismissed as "pretentious" most of the groups I found fascinating (Yes, UK, ELP, Utopia), while celebrating the genius of people who barely knew four chords, but then I realized that these people simply encounter music differently. They're conceptual listeners, using music as a social marker, a signifier of the zeitgeist. For those sorts of people, the cool thing about rock isn't that it can take you to magical places you've never been before, that it can feed the little beast inside you that hungers for complex interplay of tension and release, that it can surprise you with an unexpected twist or turn, or stun you virtuosity, or amaze you with sublime nuance. The thing that's cool for them is that it tells us what we are, at any given point, on a sociological level. It answers TOP's question, "what is hip?"

So I learned to cut conceptual listeners some slack. It isn't really that they have bad taste; it's that they don't taste what I taste at all. When I was a kid, my dad told me that cats couldn't taste "sweet," that if a cat bit into a piece of cake, he'd only taste the bread, eggs, etc., and would like or dislike the cake on totally different criteria from anything I'd take into account. I think the important thing to remember is that those of us who are harmonic listeners will always be in the minority. Every great once in awhile, a prog group might chance on a sociological moment in which they define an element of cool (i.e. when Yes released "Roundabout" as a single in 1972), but it won't last; critics bought "Fragile" and couldn't comprehend "South Side of the Sky" or "Heart of the Sunrise." Dave Matthews has been able to get away with a pretty fair amount of complicated stuff, but only by staying on the cusp of hipness. When he falls off, his audience size and critical reputation will crumble.

In the meantime, I just feel thankful that the Internet has enabled the creation of what couldn't really have been called a "community" before—the prog rock faithful. True harmonic listeners are so few and far between (and many of that small number have never really encountered prog in a positive setting, like Jason suggests--these folks have, as a result, gravitated towards feeding their needs with classical and jazz, both of which are great, too) that we were inevitably cut off from one another. I grew up in south Louisiana. I remember going to see Genesis and PFM and Todd Rundgren and Bruford, and always running into the same people, like it was a family reunion.

So be patient with conceptual listeners. Not only do they not hear what you can hear, they don't want to--they simply use their music for something totally different. --Dave Starns

As always I welcome feedback. Your comments are always appreciated.

About the Author:
Jerry Lucky is the author of the book The Progressive Rock Files, now entering its 5th edition. Please feel free to send feedback to Jerry at www.jerrylucky.com.