The Flaming Lips - Filter system of PA

Hello! 

Any idea why? Is there any technicalities that must be taken in consideration for a band to get included?

Thank you for the filter tip, I was assuming "0" would give unlimited results!

The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev are closely related, sharing some of the same band members and the same producer, so I'm rather surprised that Mercury Rev made the grade for inclusion in ProgArchives, but not The Flaming Lips, even though they both sound very similar in style.

Yes and no, or maybe that's a yes (it depends on when it happened to a large extent). This site has been around since 2002, and it does not operate like it used to. The expectations have changed, the way thing operate have changed. Mercury Rev is a pretty early addition to the site, and it stated off with just the old site owner adding things, I believe (Proglucky) and then I think most anybody could add things, and then genre teams were set up. Back then Flaming Lips might well have ben added to PA, it is a kind of luck of the draw in that sense, and in the sense that a potential addition is well prepared and argued for, it has the right support, and that the teams thinks it fits the vision and scope. Also various acts were moved to Prog Related from Prog categories.

It's interesting to use the WayBackMachine to look through snapshots of site history: https://web.archive.org/web/*/progarchives.com It give a favour at least, but that doesn't make the site as it was of the day very searchable.

There won't be a lot of consistency in large part due to how much things have changed. I don't know the history of Mercury Rev in PA, other than its been here since at least 2005, and things have changed a lot since then, and things changed a lot between 2002 and 2005.

It still might seem rather random even with ones over the past decade. To get into PR we now require that Special Collab propose it, and Admin have based that to a large extent on the arguments and the support. The criteria changed many years ago for that too, so it should be considered important to and an influence on Prog as well as influenced by Prog. Everything is done on a case-by-case basis, but at the same time of course we make associations and consider precedents (especially those after Prog Related was set up -- categories used to be quite different). And different individuals on teams will have different perspectives and the teams change. There's a lot from the early days that might well have been better left out (or at least would not pass muster now).

It is all very complicated. Maybe we could write a history of this stuff at some time so that more understand the ways things have changed over time and why there is less consistency than one might expect.

Edited by Logan - February 19 2021 at 12:27

Quite frankly, I love them both whether they are here or not.  I wanted to suggest TFL a few years back, so I'm all for it.  They push the boundaries of all rock genres.  I mean, who else releases a 24-hour album on a pocket drive shaped like a skull or a 6-hour track on an EP?  But what Logan says pretty much sums it up though.  

Hahaha. I understand the importance of having guidelines in terms of what is included and what not which prevent the website to become a total mess. Defining music genres is already pretty subjective, we need a way to structure the different sections.