Swans

Dean wrote: Einsetumadur wrote: Prog Related: 7) Common sense - Nitpicking over the above listed criteria is not necessarily the correct way to evaluate a band for prog-related. Sometimes you just have to use some common sense and look at the big picture. Exactly the kind of place where bands could go which clearly belong to this website, but which no-one really knows where to put, isn't it?   In my opinion these sentences are a perfect tool to solve problems such as these. Things would be so much easier if these categories were regarded as what they should be:  1. a means to split the admins'/collabs' maintenance work,   2. a way to simplify the band research for the PA readers. Imposing more meaning and relevance to these categories, frankly spoken, appears to me like futile pigeonholing. That is precisely NOT what Note 7 means, it clearly states that it refers to the previous six critera and no other. Prog Related is a specific category with a specific connotation, it is NOT a dumping ground for bands that "no-one really knows where to put" - it is certainly NOT a place to put our/your favourite non-Prog bands.

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid this is a definite misinterpretation of my posting.

Firstly, it is slightly polemic to state that my interpretation is (more or less) the opposite of the meaning of the guidelines. The claim that my posting is one of those attempts to sneak a favorite band into the PA simply isn't true. I know the special focussing of the PR category, and I am interested in supporting a valid opinion which doesn't only consider one particular case, but also those cases which are yet to come. I explicitly recognized the need of drawing the line between 'favourite bands' and 'prog bands' in my previous posting, quoting the heavily-discussed examples of Proto-Prog and Indie/Alternative-vs.-Prog.

Secondly, I mentioned clearly (maybe not clearly enough to have mentioned it explicitly) that the "no-one really knows where to put" point should suffice as the sole reason for neither a PR addition nor any other ProgArchives addition. If, however, the following three aspects apply to the situation at the very same time...


1. Recent magazines and notable reviews discuss the album/band in the context of progressive rock and acknowledge their prog content. (!)
2. The band has a considerable publicity.
3. The band is passed around from PA team to PA team for many months.


... I think that the PR category does fit very well.

Of course, one can argue that Swans aren't important enough to the Progressive Rock genre as a whole. That's a justifiable opinion, for sure. (No-one would like to see the PR category filled with small semi-pro bands without a clear musical direction, of course!)  And this is why I supported a more uncomplicated addition to the sub-teams in such a case. I just wouldn't appreciate the situation that a band which both experimented with a lot of genres and had a considerable prog output is rejected by the sub-teams due to 'genre discrepancies' and then rejected by the PR team due to 'lack of relevance for ProgRock as a whole'.  I see that the band is currently under evaluation in PostRock, but otherwise I think that the following procedure could be reasonable:

If there are doubts about the contribution of a band to 'prog rock history', if there's a consent about the prog content about a band, but a dissent about the exact genre, the band should be allowed to be added to any category which the serious music press attributes it to. (Swans are commonly attributed to post punk/post rock/noise/experimental/industrial/neo-folk -  hence, post rock would be the place to go.)

Passing a band from team evaluation to team evaluation because the genre names don't fit perfectly well appears to me like a fruitless and avoidable endeavour.


(Perhaps that's how things by now are already sorted out 'backstage', but that's what I thought up while reading this thread today. )

Bonnek wrote: Einsetumadur wrote: 3. The band is passed around from PA team to PA team for many months. Well that is not true. Swans were very quickly moved from the Post-Metal chart because - as I hope you will agree - there's not a scrap of metal in any of the two albums that might warrant them a place on the site (Soundtracks For The Blind and The Seer)

Of course, yes.

So in fact they've only been in the hands of the post-rock team and it's a tough one to decide there - as amply stated in this thread.

Well, and that's the point I disagree with. I don't see decisions such as these as tough ones.

The way I understand this thread there is a kind of dissent about where to put that band:   either into PostRock,  or into no category because there is none which matches the style of Swans.  I think that this is just another facet of the problem.  The more common case, of course, is the intersection area between post rock/metal/ambient/prog folk when bands fit into all of them/none of them.

My point is that work, trouble and discussion could be reduced by:

- generally regarding the categories less stiffly (as explained above)
- generally maintaining the strictness of the inclusion criteria (!)
- simply adding bands which 1. belong  to this site,   2. have a considerable popularity,  but which  3. no-one knows where to put    into one category which fits,  without thinking too much about the subjective question which genre the band identifies with most, which album is the most important one...etc.
- creating a nice rule how to treat bands who recorded many albums which don't completely belong here but a few albums which clearly and definitely belong here.

I don't think that such a procedure would result in the (of course, unfavorable(!)) situation that the PA are flooded with non-prog bands. It could, however, result in simpler solutions for the discussions about famous bands such as Motorpsycho/Trail of Dead/Swans etc. who 'converted' to progressive rock for some years, thus influencing the Prog genre due to the success/fame they established in earlier years.

(To clarify things:  I'm not informed about how the decisions are made here and watch the evaluation process from a certain 'distance'. As I said, it may be that some of the points I make describe the way how problems are already solved at the moment. Many of my aforementioned ideas may have proved senseless in the past. I've written them down nonetheless, just in order to use my 'neutral-bystander' point of view to write down some independent ideas, some of which might inspire someone to maybe reappraise certain routines - some of which might be useful, some of which might be improvable.)


Edited by Einsetumadur - August 09 2013 at 12:49

Thank you for the explanation. I didn't know about the "one prog album" rule - that's a fair and adequate assessment. 

^ It would also be so much easier if, when someone suggested a new band, we simply said ''add the band.''

Album tagging would not stop these type of suggestion threads nor would it stop arguments and disagreements. There are many suggested bands that would not get added even with album tagging. The "one album" rule should be enough - if there is doubt based upon that one album then album tagging would not save it. If Lonesome Crow is the indisputable Krautrock alum that some people say it is then they should be added regardless, however, it is not indisputable and that's where the problems start.

Edited by Dean - August 11 2013 at 13:58

Thanks, but the one clearly fitting metal album... how is that decision reached? Do teams vote, etc.?

lazland wrote: Of course, the real root of the trouble we have here is this silly and pedantic sub genre split we have, most of which bear no relation to reality whatsoever, except in our little world. I have, of course, gotten into more than a little trouble for pointing this out before

I'm gonna take this as a warning for myself.

pianoman wrote: Progressive music has grown beyond the current sub-categories that are set up on the site, and therefore some modern progressive bands are not included because they "don't belong" or don't fit into the neat categories as they are defined. In 50 years from now, the categories we have now may not describe 80% of the progressive music being created during that time. So are we always going to be denying the innovative music, or are we going to keep the site dedicated to progressive music only defined from a certain moment in time (the way it seems to work now, for the most part).

seventhsojourn wrote: lazland wrote: Dean is absolutely spot on when he says that album tagging will not stop debates or arguments about adding artists to the database. It would, however, stop the ridiculous situation we have that every single album by an added artist is de facto treated as a prog album. For no better example, I give you Miles Davis, who has 1940's albums available to review on a prog site, for heaven's sake. Of course, the real root of the trouble we have here is this silly and pedantic sub genre split we have, most of which bear no relation to reality whatsoever, except in our little world. I have, of course, gotten into more than a little trouble for pointing this out before   Steve, imo the real root of the problem is we are simply adding far too many artists. This is growing by the day. Soon we will need sub-subgenres. See also pianoman's post above.

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