ED MACAN considers whether progressive rock is inextricably linked to a specific political ideology. Progressive rock emerged out of the late sixties British hippie movement. Its politics, though influenced by the left, were never monolithic. Using the late nineteenth-century philosophical/cultural phenomenon of "Wagnerism" as a point of reference, Macan demonstrates that progressive rock's impact was primarily a result not of its nebulous political ideology, but of its aesthetic stance, which stresses individualism, idealism, authenticity, and art-as-transcendence. In keeping with its Romantic (...) ethos of transcendence and a utopian politics, progressive rock subjected philosophical, cultural, and social opposites to a Hegelian synthesis. (shrink)