COMA - American avant rock : A study of the music of avant rock bands Thinking Plague, Motor Totemist Guild, U Totem and 5UU's and their relationship with 1970's progressive rock

Abstract

This study is dedicated to four bands that relate to the style of avant rock, as well as the organization in which they all (to a greater or lesser degree) took part in the mid-80s to the early 90s – the California Outside Music Association (COMA).

The styles of these four groups – Thinking Plague, Motor Totemist Guild, U Totem and 5UU’s – are examined through analysis of musical scores and transcriptions, and also considered in the context of the COMA organization and its structure. In analyzing compositions from these different bands, I utilize categories and terms from Arnold Schoenberg and Allan Moore.

My starting hypothesis is that the COMA groups that are treated in this study in several ways are true successors to the 1970s’ much maligned progressive rock style and its exponents, such as Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, ELP and Henry Cow. I then try to establish this connection both in the realm of musical surface features and ‘signatures’, and also, most importantly, by trying to identify a common ideological and philosophical outlook between the aforementioned British 70s’ groups and my selected nexus of American avant rock artists.

Finally, in a discussion structured by a definition of progressive rock outlined by Bill Martin, Professor Of Philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, I try to forge links between the old and the new progressives with regards to issues such as visionary experimental approaches, ideological viewpoints, rock and popular music heritage, virtuosity and technique and the aiming for transcendence, as well as the notion of progressive rock as a both romantic and modernist project with uneasy and ambiguous affinities with the post-modern.