Was Hall of Fame - Now is Pretentious British Twit

I was going to talk about the Rock and Roll hall of fame, but as I came home a CD review on the BBC pushed my buttons, and so away we go.

I heard the last half of the review, but he was describing a band, talking with a female reviewer, and apparently this band was huge in former Soviet countries.  The female reviewer said this was because of their classical influence - apparently the band were big fans of Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich - and the male reviewer interrupted her to call this "pretentious."  She replied that the band enjoyed this music, and were having fun with strings sections, etc, when he said something to the effect of: "it's back to the seventies, with orchestras and strings - prog. rock.  And it's pretentious."

This in itself would have been enough, but the next album they talked about cemented it.  Again, didn't catch the name, but he described it as "Kate Bush meets Bat for Lashes - I really like it."

First off, in what universe is Kate Bush not pretentious? (Same for Bat for Lashes).  It's not that I don't like Kate Bush, but she has a song called "Wuthering Heights" - a song which is, let's face it, quite orchestral, and which was produced by Dave Gilmour, of prog band Pink Floyd.  Somehow, anything remotely adventurous musically has become "prog" and "prog" is a synonym for bloated pretentious bombastic whatever you want it to mean.

This pushes my buttons for a couple of reasons.  First is simply that I like prog music.  Hell, I like classical music, including Shostakovich, Mussorgsky, whatever.  But much more importantly, it gets back to this idea that has permeated the rock criticism paradigm that there is a right or wrong way to like rock music.  Anything that smacks of sophistication, of polish, of virtuosity - scratch that, of musical sophistication polish or virtuosity is bad.  Musical is important in there - Kate Bush is as pretentious as they come, but it's her lyrics, so it's fine.


Rock music started with the idea of the genius of the amateur - but amateur classical musicians, I think, are just as valid as amateur punks.  There's a lot of pretentious punk out there, but there are people who won't touch Aqualung because it's "prog rock."

This is kind of a mess of a post, and I'll probably try to polish it in the morning.  But seriously, how can you call something pretentious and in the same breath praise Kate Bush?