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A New Day Yesterday

UK Progressive Rock & the 1970s

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A New Day Yesterday

By: Mike Barnes
Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
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About this listen

Music journalist Mike Barnes (MOJO, The Wire, Prog, and author of the acclaimed biography Captain Beefheart) goes back to the birth of progressive rock and surveys the cultural conditions and attitudes that fed into, and were in turn affected by, this remarkable musical phenomenon. He examines the myths and misconceptions that have grown up around progressive rock and paints a vivid, colorful picture of the '70s based on hundreds of hours of his own interviews with musicians, music business insiders, journalists, and DJs, and from the personal testimonies of those who were fans of the music in that extraordinary decade.

©2020 Omnibus Press (P)2022 Tantor Music Guitar

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All stars
Most relevant
The final section from the chapter on punk onwards tended to drag with a loss of focus. Unsure as to why some groups here were given undue importance such as Wire.The performance was fine but with some group names mispronounced. Overall an informative and well-researched listen, overlong with some weaknesses in the reading.

Overlong

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I own the book as well as the audible version. The book's great and the audible version is really good as well. The narrator is fine but, for some reason, every time he's delivering a quote from one of the protagonists, the tone he adopts is invariably fit to one (or all!) of the dispositions I've listed in my headline! The cummulative affect of this eventually gives rise to the feeling that the attitudes the individuals have in regards to their past, is something akin to the attitude Jeremy Clarkson would embody if being forced to express an opinion on neuro diversity!!

Disgruntled, bemused, irritated or annoyed!

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The author casts a very wide net which might confound those of us who associate Prog more narrowly with bands such as ELP, Yes and Genesis. But this only serves to increase the appeal, since it encompasses many bands which one remembers with fondness and affection from the late 60s and early 70s. Inevitably, there will be some who mean little or nothing to you, but these can be skipped.
Interviews and quotes from band members provide excellent insights, while the descriptions of individual albums are concise, measured and both sympathetic and accurate without being fawning.
However, the narrator is just awful. I almost abandoned the book because of him, but decided to grit my teeth and persevere. He is one of those narrators who thinks that, even in a work of non-fiction, he needs to perform. So, instead of sitting quietly and professionally in the background and simply presenting the book’s contents as they appear on the page, he proceeds as if he is a stage actor, providing drama and emotion, hammy emphatic stress, hushed tones followed by declamatory statements, mixed with sudden pitch-changes, slow delivery followed by speeding up, and so on. A narrator who wants to be the centre of attention. Cringeworthy. He fares rather better when reading lengthy quotations from band members.
You might want to try the Kindle version instead – the AI reader is probably less grating.

Very good book, dreadful narrator

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I kept listening for 27 hours about a music I did not particularly like. Quite an achievement by the writer.

interesting

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Painstakingly researched and exploring the offshoots of the difficult to categorise prog rock! The only real omission was the late flowering of excellent prog in the band UK.

A Must for Anyone who Prog Rock and cultural history

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