Most Overrated Prog Bands Of All Time Poll

I'm sure he has his own labours to deal with...

Edited by Replayer - March 09 2017 at 21:48

Blacksword wrote: I have never heard Egg! Oh well... Nothing on that list is any more pretentious than any othjer prog, and I don't have a problem with pretentiousness in music. If every artist "kept it real" every band would be like the f***ing Housemartins.... Gentle Giant springs to mind, not as necessarily being pretentious but certainly quite contrived and annoying, at least for my ears. Like a mob of music professors making 'clever' music to prove they can. Very little entertainment value for me.

Gentle Giant; very little entertainment value for me either.

Anyone who was a teenager in the late 70s will know how much prog was despised.  I read somewhere how Anthony Phillips met a fan who had to pretend he didn't like 'Geese and the Ghost'. We gotta stick together!  I personally can't stand Rush or Dream Theater but I 'get' why some people like them in the same way as Dolly Parton or Justin Bieber.  Each to their own.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Damnant quod non intellegunt (They condemn what they do not understand).

Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree are extremely overrated, IMO.

ELP is the most underrated prog band ever. Hated even inside these circles for being ...well.... very, very prog.
Dream Theater is underrated nowadays for whatever reason I fail to comprehend, since people hate DT for its fans, but I haven't seen a really annoying DT fan since 2006 or so.

Upbeat Tango Monday wrote: ELP is the most underrated prog band ever. Hated even inside these circles for being ...well.... very, very prog.

dr wu23 wrote: Blacksword wrote: .....  Gentle Giant springs to mind, not as necessarily being pretentious but certainly quite contrived and annoying, at least for my ears. Like a mob of music professors making 'clever' music to prove they can. Very little entertainment value for me. I have to agree with you.....I have always thought the same thing about GG.

iluvmarillion wrote: What you don't have any right to do, particularly if you don't play a musical instrument, is to criticise the artist's playing of their instrument.

I've mentioned this in an earlier post in this thread, but I disagree with this position.

Just to be clear, I am not claiming that everyone is an expert at reviewing musicians' skills or that a musician will not be able to provide more insightful reviews, but simply that even non-musicians can use their previous exposure to music in order to compare a musician' performance to that of others or even other performances by the same musician.

I'm going to try to prove my point using a video of a Marillion concert, where all the music has been overdubbed with deliberately bad playing (there's an entire category of "Guitarist X Shreds" videos available on YouTube).



I don't have to be a guitarist (which I am not) to find humor in the noodling.

The Portsmouth Sinfonia is another example of poorly played instruments. It was an orchestra where all the players did not know how to play their own instruments.



You may dismiss these examples as trivial, but you made a very broad statement and I wanted to demonstrate that even someone with no musical training can recognize the musicians' performances as being substandard.

Prog is a genre that places emphasis on instrumental virtuosity and band can record multiple takes in the studio, so any professional recording will at least sound competent. However, even professional musicians can have an off night or there may be cases where line-up changes affect a band's sound, positively or negatively.

To offer a concrete example, I've read multiple reviews that preferred Glenn Cornick or John Glasscock's bass playing in Jethro Tull to Jeffrey Hammond's and that Anderson had to teach Hammond the basslines.

iluvmarillion wrote: Manuel wrote: The "Overrated" title seems a bit radical to me, since most people don't even have a clue on how to play an instrument, what to speak of writing a song, and yet, decide that somebody's music is good or bad, pretentious or overrated etc, based on our personal taste and opinions, which are as faulty, if not more, than the people who wrote the music we criticize. Based on personal taste you have every right to criticise an album if you don't like it. What you don't have any right to do, particularly if you don't play a musical instrument, is to criticise the artist's playing of their instrument. Based on the list I don't happen to like Egg or Riverside, based on my own personal taste, but I'm open minded enough to listen to their next albums and change my mind if the music suddenly appeals to me.