Tag Archive: Mike Barnes


Setting the records straight on Progressive Rock

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July 29, 2020

A NEW DAY YESTERDAY by Mike Barnes (Omnibus Press, 2020)

book cover

The decision to undertake a full survey of Progressive Rock music in the UK up to the mid-1970s is as bold and bonkers a project as a band embarking on a triple concept album. Yet, it works for me.

Progressive (Prog) Rock evolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of what Wiki defines as a “mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility”. 

Mike Barnes challenges the common prejudices surrounding this much maligned genre.

In setting the record straight, he immediately dispels the myth that Prog songs were mostly about wizards, elves and hobbits. He also shows that, contrary to common belief, bands were not universally trying to bridge the divide between classical music and rock. Rather, jazz, blues and psychedelia were key influences. Continue reading →

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CAPTAIN BEEFHEART: THE BIOGRAPHY

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May 17, 2011

When Don Van Vliet , aka Captain Beefheart, passed away last December, The Wire magazine ran a feature of personal tributes.

The one that most mirrored my own experiences was  by Mike Barnes who described his first encounter with the album Lick My Decals Off Baby. He recalled that his first reactions to this record were of confusion and even repulsion. At the same time there was something strangely fascinating about this music that drew him back and eventually this resulted in a kind of the epiphany : “the clouds suddenly parted and the sun streamed in, illuminating fantastic musical shapes I never thought could exist”.  Barnes ended the piece by saying that because of this revelatory experience “no music since has ever proved such an insurmountable obstacle”.

The first record I remember being repulsed/fascinated by was The Beatles’ I Am The Walrus, a song that now sounds relatively conventional.  However, this experience was nothing compared with the shock of first hearing what most (including me) regard as Beefheart’s masterpiece ‘Trout Mask Replica’. Like Barnes, the initial disorientation gradually gave way to a sense of  awe. Over four decades on it still sounds as radical as when it was released in 1969.

Barnes’ piece led me to his biography of Beefheart, a book I was vaguely aware of but had never seriously considered reading. I doubted that anyone could ‘explain’ what type of brain lay behind the music and I was right.

While Barnes book is a thoroughgoing, and occasionally illuminating, piece of journalism, the author himself is forced to admit that a work like Trout Mask  “resists demystification”. Continue reading →

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