Please help for my Prog Rock talk in Vietnam

Hello Everyone,

I was with Progarchives since 2004 (my previous username is Kashmir but I lost the account and email). I was not frequently accessing the site but I always keep in touch by reading Weekly PA feed. It's quite emotional to get back here after a while, I was here when i was a sophomore and now I have graduated and working for a year. I see many new members here, I remember 4 year ago maani, proglucky, goose, certified, dick health, normally around:d

I live in Singapore however my native country is in Vietnam. I will be back in Vietnam in January and I would love to organize a talk about Prog Rock back there, I realize there are a lot of rock fans in Vietnam but there isn't a case with Prog Rock. They're lack of information. I found a Progrockvn organization 2 years ago but then I was busy with school and job seeking and there're not much support and participations then it was dissolved. I think a talk about Prog Rock will help a lot in promoting Prog rock in generally and Progarchives especially.

So I would like to seek your help in suggesting:
- Ideas for the presentation, should it focus on Prog history or Prog categories, or choose a specific topic and go deeper in it, etc...
-  Which Prog Rock artists, bands, things, should I include in my talk (about 2 hour long, similar to talk in University with slide show, projector, lecture hall, screen). 
-  And if promoting for progarchives.com, then which necessary information should I use?.

Thank you in advance and looking for your supports. With love from Singapore and Vietnam.

---kashmir---

Well, perhaps I could make a start.

 

The first thing I would avoid is creating the impression that Prog is an art form of the past, something easily done if going back to the beginnings too fast.

 

I would start by describing Prog as being a music form that's alive and kicking.

 

As an introduction you could begin by introducing some typical bands that are fairly young and after that mention a few names from the late sixties, early seventies.

 

Then you should probably concentrate on old bands still active (or at least, active since recently), because still being around makes Prog relevant to the present.

 

Then you could go into the historic period, mentioning bands that are considered staples and forefathers of the genre, possibly introducing the ones relevant for certain Prog subgenres, symphonic, eclectic, prog-metal etc.

 

If you include samples, this should take you quite some way.

 

I would probably end the talk by first talking about musical the quality of Prog as apposed to Pop culture (should be easy) and ending by mentioning the active community here and on a few (not too many) other sites.

 

I won't make any suggestions band-wise, I take it you're well into the subject and are able to choose relevant tracks and artists for yourself, right?

 

Hope this is the sort of thing you're looking for, if you're interested in more input, please

let me know and I could get into some more structured details.

Edited by npjnpj - December 10 2008 at 08:51

thank you very much, any more advices are welcome

@npjnpj: yes i would love to have more input, thank you for taking time notes down your ideas, i am appreciated

@all: my invitation to all of you to visit Hanoi (Vietnam's capital) around 15/1/2009 to 30/1/2009. That's a lovely city.

^ Oh, you need sponsors.