Why isn't prog as successful as metal as an indus

We do not have to dig the depths of history to answer rather mundane questions.  What some of the folks here have said about metal vis a vis prog is true.  It is a lifestyle.  No, every metalhead doesn't have to have long hair or wear denims but the fact is if you go to a metal gig (and I mean 'pure', 'tr00' metal like Slayer, not a band like Dream Theater where progheads might turn up), most of the audience would be in 'metal wear'.  Most will be headbanging, most will jump into the moshpit, etc.  Prog has never been about a lifestyle.  Some of the bands like ELP may have enjoyed a lavish lifestyle in the 70s but it didn't automatically imply that progheads needed to be flamboyant too.  Prog attire was and is either intentionally outrageous (as in Gabriel's costumes) or entirely non descript, sometimes even old fashioned.  The fact is since the birth of rock, the 15-24 thereabouts demographic has become very important for the music industry to ensure commercial success of their records.  Such thinking percolates to the underground too; it is not immune to it.  The fact is metal's lifestyle appeal draws in a lot of youngsters.  Not solely the lifestyle, sure, but many who are at first drawn to the music also buy into the lifestyle and the famous metal motto of "Stay metal" (alternatively, "Stay brutal").  One of my friends resisted cutting his hair to satisfy his corporate masters for a long time because he saw it as having to go against his metal ideology or what have you.  What was the scenario with regard to baroque is really not relevant here because you didn't have worldwide distribution of recorded music and you didn't have worldwide avenues of promotion like TV and internet.  Even if the music biz has always existed, it now operates more in the fashion of a transnational conglomerate and the music itself is not immune to the implications of that.  Music being regarded as 'hip' is important because whether the music is 'good' or not is surely not a question with a definite answer and varies too much from person to person.  Hipness on the other hand can be spread through aspiration and peer pressure.

It was very corporate on different scales and went skyrocketing in the 80's because the music dealt with the occult. If you watch the film "River's Edge"...you can gather some insight on the mentality of the youth and Metal music during the 80's regarding how a somewhat contrived "in scene" interest in Devil worship derived from the lyricism of Metal. Prog had a huge impact on the youth of the 70's, but the Metal youth of the late 70's and 80's were ready for some dark rebellious act to follow along with a style of music that had an underground scene which they were attracted to. Some of the bands were sincere, but I shake my head in disbelief when I recall record executives forcing my friends to follow the art department's example for an album cover. I had some good friends in Metal bands who were signed to major labels and they were futile over the record company not allowing them to have a normal picture/photograph of the band. Instead ...they were being forced to take on a cover created by the art department that displayed violence against children. A lot of it was sexual and not too distant from what the "Children Of God" would practice.


This social environment was not of the Prog world or the Prog community/movement in any sense. A few Prog bands of the early 70's crossed into Metal territory or in the premature sense of music development to Metal, but weren't going full scale as to promote the occult. Lucifer's Friend were Classically trained musicians with an English vocalist John Lawton. The idea then..was projecting what King Crimson had done in 1970 with a dark subject, yet the band was important to the underground Metal scene of the 80's because of how they formed different ideas in the area of playing, just as Ritchie Blackmore had produced on "In "Rock". Metal became a huge spectacular event through media coverage of the "Satanic Panic" era. That is a far cry from the reputation of Prog. This was more like a fad and getting the youth interested in bizarre, disturbing album covers and ultimately interested in worshipping the devil or practicing witchcraft. It was a fad. It was also brainwashing to the youth and today...that's evident to the kids who lived through it, made bad choices, and look back on it as negative, disturbing, and even moronic. This is a far cry from the crowd that Prog musicians played for.  

 

It was like opening up the essence of Devil worship with the nudity and a mixture of violence toward children as they were often presented as a sacrificial object. They just wanted to make the subject as open as they could to profit and that lacked interest to a degree because it was presenting product with an "in your face" approach and therefore it was insulting and rather annoying as opposed to feeling in a dark mood, playing some Art Zoyd and enjoying the mystery of life.   

 

But the interesting thing about Metal is that you have to develop technique to play it. I discovered long ago that a great deal of the repeated guitar lines derive from Paganini's 24 caprices. Many of us dislike the style and not consider that Metal music requires practice and especially on guitar. People often think that because they can separate different styles of Metal, that they can also separate the chemistry in the music and it is simply not true. Metal is a formula that is based around every different approach to the style itself. It expands from there and some of it is composed rather well, but it's so stylistically different from Prog because of it's driving force of heaviness in sound. It can be complex...but with emphasis placed more on volume.