progressive rock in crisis

There are > 10,000 artists listed on PA > 55,000 albums and > 1.5 million reviews of same. That strikes me as rather a scatter-gun approach to adopt by a volunteer organization that you claim is attempting to prejudice opinion in favour of just a few select artists. Newsflash: Popular artists sell more records than less popular artists - look up stratification if yer stuck. (If no-one orders the buffalo wings, they eventually get taken off the menu ya dig?) The 'overlord poison' (in your parlance) is transparently a pejorative equivalent for a marketplace neither of us can do squat about. If you honestly believe that the members of PA equate popularity with artistic merit or substance there is nothing that anyone here, or in the mental health profession can do to help you. The whole raison d'etre of PA is that it provides a portal for those whose evaluation of musical merit is NOT reflected in the extant marketplace. Yes, there is contemporary Prog that merely apes the ideas and textures of yesteryear but there is also a burgeoning amount of new progressive music in the electronic, rio-avant and post-rock fields that indicates innovation does not discriminate in favour of genre. BTW This World Over is maybe by fave XTC song ever.

I disagree. I simply think that the "admins" and folks that know music a bit more and have listened a bit more, should be more "integrated" to what is this music, and how much we like it. Instead, we get folks that are selected because their top 5 is the same as the top 5 of someone else, and they do not have any idea of what "progressive" is, but love their "prog metal".

Volunteer, does not mean that the folks have to be peons and grunts! In fact, I am positive that they aren't, but the posting of many of them is just so ... personal ... and not even about the whole thing, but a one line comment that hurts the thread more than it helps. 

It's OK for you to disagree with my comments, but not OK to make a personal statement, unless you want to do it privately.

ExittheLemming wrote: ...  Newsflash: Popular artists sell more records than less popular artists - look up stratification if yer stuck. (If no-one orders the buffalo wings, they eventually get taken off the menu ya dig?)  ...

You have no basis for that statement, because the "numbers" that sell individually/directly from an artist are not included, and there is no way to find how many of those there are. These numbers are "slanted" to one segment of players only, and the rest are ignored.

I seriously doubt that "progressive" and "prog" would have survived, if all we paid attention to were these "numbers" that you mention. You can't. You have to stick to your own music and vision ... it's the source of your inner self and idea. You can not make music for the numbers, since they all like different things. 

ExittheLemming wrote: ... The whole raison d'etre of PA is that it provides a portal for those whose evaluation of musical merit is NOT reflected in the extant marketplace. Yes, there is contemporary Prog that merely apes the ideas and textures of yesteryear but there is also a burgeoning amount of new progressive music in the electronic, rio-avant and post-rock fields that indicates innovation does not discriminate in favour of genre. ...

Look at music history ... what you are saying about music, and it aping ideas and textures of yesteryear, is not new ... it's like saying that Beethoven did not hear/know Mozart, and that Tchaikovsky copied Beethoven, and then that many folks copied others later, and that everyone copied Miles in jazz, and then everyone copied ... you can't help that ... the music is THERE.

Any innovation will ALWAYS be there, regardless. The problem is, as has been the case for many years, that the folks on that same day, do not have the ear for the music, and generally do not like it, and even think that said person is anti-social and bad and the ugly duckling. AND, that is a social conditioning, the same that the Overlords used (Childhood's End, btw), and the media is using now ... and like it or not, PA is just like the "media" out there giving a voice to folks, many of which do not really understand/know the very music they like, and many of which are still young and simply like the song, but (possibly) may not understand the album.

As I said before, if ITCOTCK came out today, every one would think it is awful, and full of cacophony of nothing and stupid, and immediately rank it as a terribly uneven album ... and its contents, is just as valuable and important today as it was in the day that the album was born ... but we don't care ... we take the soul out of the music and then think that Mosh is being an ash-holy lonely guru on top of the mountain of nowhere.

Think about this ... when someone is posting some of the stuff here, and these "admins" are not helping the level of understanding and experiencing the music. I am NOT putting it down. I am, and doing so, fighting for its life with every breath I take and know ... and all you fudgers can do is think I am being angry and against everything.

How can you be so incorrect and wrong? This is all about the beauty of the inner self in music ... not your idea or mine. We may have different views of the same tree, but in the end, we are looking at the same thing ... and we need to help make it better, not worse, and take the point of some guy like the next post that is unfair, and chickenpoop and the worst choice of comments, within this thread. It's not even about the music anymore ... it's another punk wannabe somebody singing "The Queen is Dead -- long live the lorry!"

ExittheLemming wrote: ...  BTW This World Over is maybe by fave XTC song ever.

It ranks as one of my favorite playing songs of all time. I can never get tired of its content and wonderful lyrical statements. The music itself is beautifully designed to lift the lyrics, and I'm not sure that one can do much better than that in any art out there. There are other songs, like the box of paints one, and such ... all too lovely!