ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the post-progressive styles, and suggests that one of the beneficial effects of punk was that it revealed, for the illusion it was, the notion that rock styles succeed each other in a linear fashion. It identifies and demonstrates the internal consistencies of styles and focuses on individual examples, but the implication that one leads directly to another, in any sort of parent-offspring relationship, must be resisted. The chapter tends to honour their chronologically ordered origins, but will have occasion to identify other pertinent relationships between them. Stylistic echoes of both progressive and punk styles come together in what Chambers has identified as 'the true centre or "mainstream" of recent rock culture'. Since the 1970s, there has arisen a new set of styles that are, at least tangentially, associated with rock, styles that are frequently subsumed under the headings 'roots' music or 'world' music.
