About halfway finished reading Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's PLEASE KILL ME (1996), "the uncensored oral history of Punk" -- it's hilarious and horrifying, and there is some truly appalling behavior outlined in this book along with some great funny stories....
And a couple days ago it popped into my head that somebody should compile an oral history of progressive rock. There are several histories of prog out there, of various levels of reliability -- but no history yet from the people who made it happen.
Folks like Keith Emerson of ELP and Chris Squire of Yes have died, and most of the other big names are getting up there. Some of them have written autobiographies (Emerson, Bill Bruford and Rick Wakeman of Yes), but it seems like an oral history of prog is overdue. It would recount an era and would undoubtedly be useful and valuable as a document of How It Was.
I'm probably on the wrong side of the Atlantic to tackle this -- but SOMEBODY should do it. I'm surprised there wasn't a prog oral history out already. If I were still in the newspaper business and a subject like this smacked me upside the head I'd already be off and running with it. Hmmm....
Thursday, November 17, 2016
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