Why isn't prog popular?

Stonebolt wrote: JS19 wrote: Isn't the whole point of music, the music, not just having the same skinny jeans that Billy Joe Armstrong has? I don't necessarily agree with this. All music to some degree merges with other art forms. With progressive rock, it's usually visual art, as characterized by the interesting album covers and the fact that it's often released on vinyl.With many genres, it's the art of characterization. For instance, Ziggy Stardust, Marylin Manson, Lady Gaga, are these real people? No. They're singers in costumes.Many genres are largely about dancing. Techno, house, and the like.A lot of music is fused with the art of storytelling. For instance, most country, many progressive rock concept albums (The Wall being the most obvious).The point is music is rarely only about the music. It's usually augmented with some other form of art or entertainment. There are different degrees to how much this is present, but it's rarely not there at all.

Excellent point- music is not separate from other art forms at all.
Joseph Conrad would famously write -

Fiction -- if it at all aspires to be art -- appeals to temperament. And in truth it must be, like painting, like music, like all art, the appeal of one temperament to all the other innumerable temperaments whose subtle and resistless power endows passing events with their true meaning, and creates the moral, the emotional atmosphere of the place and time. Such an appeal, to be effective, must be an impression conveyed through the senses; and, in fact, it cannot be made in any other way, because temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music -- which is the art of arts.

He looks at it from the perspective of fiction. But truth is, music form is not complete without reference to other art forms.

And maybe we don't always know how to take in the whole picture, because prog music tends to be very complete, very satisfying. Maybe it's lack of time, maybe it's clse-mindenenss or maybe it's just lack of awareness of what prog sounds entail Sometimes, however, prog is being lisntened to without being labelled. Sometimes the bands from 70s are too obscure- I believe someone was not entirely wrong when mentioned we just like to tune in to something which is currently bbeing aired. The problem is current mainstream msic is starting to resemble an artificial plastic creature, constructed by reality tv moguls such as simon cowell. And the problem is when people complain about the sameness but don't do anything to turn away from it. QWhy/ Because they like it. And of they do- that is their buisness. You cannot force anyone to convert to something they don't keep an open mind to perhaps. If they like it- this is their individuality. And converting may be forcing someone to something they don't like or may not be readily willing to get used to. Matybe out of intellectual laziness? Who knows? I do not think it is our position to judge.
Everyone should just follow their own individualities, in my very humble opinion.

I think what it boils down to is that people (including proggies) are exceptionally biased, whether they are aware of it or not. There are people out there right now debating "Why isn't band X popular? Converting people to band X"; you really can substitute anything and the formula is essentially the same. People who are dead-set biased for a particular thing (especially music) have one hell of a time allowing their ego to accept something different and unfamiliar. This shouldn't be taken in negative light, because we are all human and fall whim to our biological impulses.

Edited by AllP0werToSlaves - January 28 2011 at 11:56

Rush77 wrote: Also, the legions of stupid, stuck-up rock critics, who think their word is God, slamming it into the ground because 'It's not the same as everything else' don't help boost the popularity.... (A quote there from my most hated page on the entire internet; the review for Frances The Mute, which, a lot of people have differing opinions on, of course. However, this reviewer took it upon himself to have a good old rant on why any music with any substance should be burned at the stake, and we should all worship Kanye West or something.)

Edited by JS19 - January 28 2011 at 14:11

^ I found it particularly irritating when the author stated that the album was "Too melody-driven to be called prog"... I mean, come on, melody is one of the main reasons I love prog so much, prog actually bothers to create and develop melody, and give melody for a fair amount of time, instead of just getting some nice tune and repeat it for 3 minutes (5 at the most, and it's already a long pop song).

I like to treat Progressive Rock the same way I treat Classical Music. Prog is for the sophisticated modern music listener I feel. People who listen to prog are often intelligible about music (not saying people who don't listen aren't). Progressive Rock is directed towards "music listeners" and "lyric maniacs" who are glued to how awesome music is and the amazing things it's capable of. As a prog listener, I am less concerned with how popular the music is or what the scene is like, I just love the music. It is beautiful, Like artwork, yet colloquial and cool at the same time. 

AllP0werToSlaves wrote: SMSM wrote: There is a certain reverse racism and sexism in the mainstream media and educational system that probably plays a part in many a negative review or comment about a prog recording or the music its self.   Simply put, it is politically incorrect to like White Male dominated music played by such "historically advantaged" individuals, especially when much prog is symphonic and owes a lot of it's influence to politically incorrect dead European White Male classical composers, who probably oppressed women, non-christians and non-white persons because they were white men.   Sorry, but that is the attitude of many guilty white males in the mainstream media and educational system today. I would go so far as to say that any form of art or media that doesn't benefit the system in one way or another is looked down upon as frivolous. It's not so much racism as blatant prejudice against anything that doesn't generate revenue/make a small group of people wealthy at the expense of millions of others. Capitalism is a broken model for human beings to expect progress to emerge from. Ironically, the only true path to progress is to discard the old model and begin a new, much like progressive rock has done with Western rock music. If you can see how beautiful things can be with a little faith and positivity, there may be hope for humanity at large. This is not naiveté, as there will always be negative Nancy's trying to stranglehold all sorts of institutions, but the more aware the human race is, the better off we'll all be in the long run. The moral of the story is to not care what big brother or your government tells you is correct, beneficial, worthwhile etc. We live in a giant global ponzi scheme that's meant to keep the rich wealthy and everyone else just barely scraping by. Live your life, love your music, love each other and learn and grow.

I think he means that the same so called self indulgence that is condemned in prog is hailed in other, 'black' music like blues, funk.  I do agree, and that is just one example of that kind of discriminatory attitude. I do feel that the mainstream wants to intentionally begrudge credit to prog, whatever may be the reasons for that.

timburlane wrote: SMSM wrote: There is a certain reverse racism and sexism in the mainstream media and educational system that probably plays a part in many a negative review or comment about a prog recording or the music its self.   Simply put, it is politically incorrect to like White Male dominated music played by such "historically advantaged" individuals, especially when much prog is symphonic and owes a lot of it's influence to politically incorrect dead European White Male classical composers, who probably oppressed women, non-christians and non-white persons because they were white men.   Sorry, but that is the attitude of many guilty white males in the mainstream media and educational system today. My initial reaction to this post is "No it's not! this is is complete paranoid tosh!" but I guess I can see how you came to this point of view. There is a certain section of the music media who think like this but on the whole i don't believe their opinion counts for much. In the UK the Guardian - middle class, liberal newspaper - has a whole slew of "right-thinking" journalists whose opinions about music of any sort mean nothing to me or any other proper music fan because their they're not proper music journalists. merely mouthpieces for a non-existant middle-class liberal elite. Only people who have coffee table books pay any attention to knobends like this. Ultimately I don't read publications that I know, as a matter of policy, will not give rock music a fair shot

Unfortunately, the general public does sort of buy into this kind of thinking.  Prog is so "un cool", jazz is for sophisticated elite people, punk/metal is for "real men" or some such dumb stereotypification, who exactly is prog for?  Prog is so very musical that people who look for some sense of social association in the music form dismiss it. 

SMSM wrote: white men.

For what it's worth or not, I am "white" by which I mean my skin has no pigment other than freckles. 

SMSM wrote: There is a certain reverse racism and sexism in the mainstream media and educational system that probably plays a part in many a negative review or comment about a prog recording or the music its self.   Simply put, it is politically incorrect to like White Male dominated music played by such "historically advantaged" individuals, especially when much prog is symphonic and owes a lot of it's influence to politically incorrect dead European White Male classical composers, who probably oppressed women, non-christians and non-white persons because they were white men.   Sorry, but that is the attitude of many guilty white males in the mainstream media and educational system today.

As far as the rock periodicals that appeared in the UK between say 1976 and 1981 went (e.g. Sounds, Melody Maker and the NME) this was the agenda that was transparently pursued. However I stopped reading said publications after that so couldn't comment if this is still the case (I would like to think it's not). Similarly it's 30 years since I was in a place of learning but have to say I never found any evidence of so-called 'reverse snobbery' in the education sphere. We do have to tread warily here when the issue is something as sensitive and emotive as race but I have to agree with the poster that there was a school of white middle-class music journalists who dismissed anything that didn't draw it's inspiration from popular black american song styles. Artists who assimilated elements and structures from white European art music (like classical, opera etc) were routinely scorned as stiff, soulless elitists with intellectual delusions of grandeur. (The dog-eared stick that was used to beat Prog with) The carefully engineered inference from such writing was that these artists were unwittingly complicit in propping up the iniquities of racial discrimination. Somewhat ironically, the best example we have to date of this type of self righteous liberal hand wringing was coined by 'folky hippy' Roy Harper in his anthem for the terminally right-on: I Hate the White Man from 1970. Even Lester Bangs would have been reticent to embrace such a sentiment.




Edited by ExittheLemming - January 30 2011 at 17:43

Sorry folks. I don't think prog was HUGE in the seventies. I was just a little kid back then so I don't really know for sure but I really don't think it was. A few prog bands were but as an entire genre it was not super popular. In fact other than college kids and some high school kids probably most people didn't know about the lesser known prog bands even then.


Anyway, these days it's even less popular. The radio doesn't play it. You won't hear about it on tv or at school or see it mentioned in most magazines. You will see it mentioned sometimes in a few select music magazines but that's about it. Critics still haven't caught on to it and it's just not considered cool. It's still very much under the radar unfortunately. That said it still does have a pretty strong although relatively small cult following. A lot of this can be attributed to the power of the internet. Without the internet it wouldn't be much more popular now than it was in the 80's.