PA does harm to music history!

You are right Bob, wrong title and I notice only more "where opposites meet", in fact I should have done what I did last year: no more discussions about categories so I stop posting and reading, to me it's OK to close this thread.

And, of course (to use a gemstone metaphor), one man's "flaw" is another's "facet."

Pafnutij wrote: That's the argument I made when I first joined, while the site was adding Deep Purple and bands like that. Those bands were never considered a part of the prog genre, so yes, Prog Archives is rewriting music history, and personally I don't like that. My reason is that the supposed "innovations" of these Prog-Related, etc bands are mightily overrated: they were great rock bands, little more.

If you dont think that Deep Purple have any relation to Prog then you need to do a lot more research. As Proto-Prog Deep Purple are a shoe-in even the most basic knowledge of rock history would point to this. These arguments are bizarre,because they betray the initiators complete lack of knowledge,yet these people post as of they have some special wisdom.

All those who are speaking blatantly against Deep Purple (as for their progressiveness... whether they appreciate DP as an ordinary "rock band" or not...) are missing a point: DP might have been widely recognised a "heavy rock" band for a certain period of time, but this heaviness still included obvious "progressive" elements. And I'm not talking about Mark I period or the highly controversial Concerto here. I'm not talking about introducing heaviness to rock (a fact which artists like Jimi Hendrix done a couple of years ago anyway!) as a progressive characteristic, either! People are so overwhelmed by the popularity of tracks like Smoke on the Water & Child in time etc., that they easily overlook obviously progressive tracks such as "Fools" (from Fireball) or "Burn". Listen to Lazy (from Machine Head) with attention, for heaven's sake! And these are not just oddities in DP's overall style, or just a cream on the top of the cake: their entire seventies period is dominated by this kind of progressiveness, mainly thanks to their "classically trained" keyboardist Jon Lord. Well, not just him, as far as I know both Gillan and Blackmore have some classical connections (for instance, look at both men's first 3 or 4 post-DP albums!), which eventually gave Deep Purple a blend of classical music & rock (which became "heavy" in our example), a prominent characteristic of progressive music itself!!!

Pafnutij wrote:   It isn't : the small classical interludes they did were brilliant, but were just little ornamental devices to "spice up" the music. They were fitted on top of songs with abasic pop structure driven by blues-rock riffs; the songs were never based around them. They were not that common either - in fact, I wished they would've done more of that stuff! But a few minutes total of classically-influenced music from otherwise pure hard rock  just doesn't cut it in terms of progressiveness.

These were the formative years of Prog, and rock with "knobs on" was basically where it was at. Where Yes and Genesis moved on from their early album toe-in-the-water attempts at moving the rock genre forward, Purple settled for hard rock. Doesnt make their Proto-Prog status any less valid though.

erik neuteboom wrote: You are right Bob, wrong title and I notice only more "where opposites meet", in fact I should have done what I did last year: no more discussions about categories so I stop posting and reading, to me it's OK to close this thread.

Philéas wrote: Art Rock is synonymous with Prog Rock. Listing it as a sub-genre here made no sense at all.

Correct. It was daft. Just the same as entertaining Prog Rock and Progressive Rock as different genres....but the kids dont understand this!

Any thoughts on an alternate title Erik?

Just a correction: currently, Heavy Prog, Crossover Prog and Eclectic Prog are clearly a sub-genre of Progressive Rock, not of Art Rock.

The way it was all envisioned - as I understand it - was that the three new sub-genres, were to be a sub-genre of Art Rock.  This is currently not the case.  Will this be sorted out?  This is quite a big ambiguity, as the Art Rock team are saying they're sub-genres of Art Rock, when the site clearly shows they're not.

True, but nevertheless, it's a tad ambiguous to newcomers to the site.  I'm sure there's a way of indicating that all three sub-genres are a branch off of Art Rock (even if it's not an active hyperlink).