Prog-Related, Proto-Prog rating criteria

I know I've talked about this at great length before, but I don't understand the rationale for the descriptions.  The progressive part was removed, as I recall, but the rock requirement still remains. Does this mean that the rock quotient is considered more important to PA than the progressive quotient?

Essential: a masterpiece of rock music(50%) Excellent addition to any rock music collection(26%) Good, but non-essential (16%) Collectors/fans only (3%) Poor. Only for completionists (5%)


I suggest that these be changed since it seems silly to rate non-rock albums in these categories lower (they may be incredibly progressive), and it all implies that these are good for rock collections.  As I said before, why does non-progressive music get better treatment in this than non-rock music that may be very progressive?

I would totally change the descriptions as I find it all a bit silly, but could you at least get of the rock criteria?  Why did you include that part anyway instead of just saying music?


Edited by Logan - August 05 2010 at 17:08

For consistency, I think it would be good if we did have ratings criteria that people would feel inclined to follow. Of course value judgments are subjective anyway.

I like something like:

Yowza! Sublime, mind-blowing, revelatory...  Boner-fied sizzlin!
Good. Not that good, but not that bad either.
Bogus! Horrible.

^ Indeed. 

Anyway, seems like I'm the only who cares about this issue, which makes it a non-issue I guess. Colour me perplexed.

To my understanding these are not full fledged prog subgenres thus IMO its not fair to rate them on a progressive scale. Personally, I don't mind rating according to the system in place (meaning that for any of the prog categories rating a 5 star as essential to a prog collection as opposed to any other collection). While it may lower the overall score of an album, I think people shouldn't expect an album like Kind Of Blue to be rated 4.93 on a PROG-ROCK site. Then theres that whlie thing about reviews being more important than ratings and blah blah.

I think I misunderstood. I thought you wanted them to replace the progressive in front of the rock. So are you saying you would prefer it to be 'essential in a music collection'?

J-Man wrote: I completely agree with Greg here. Even though I've kind of created my own guidelines for my reviews, many people take these descriptions quite literally, and we have to keep that in mind. There are some jazz and AOR albums in prog related that would not fit a "rock" description, thus, creating some confusion. Saying "music" in general would be the best solution here IMO.

Yep, thanks.  EDIT: Though I'm curious about the AOR albums that would not fit a rock description.  I guess this is because I use AOR to mean Album Oriented Rock (or synonymous with melodic rock), but I suppose that you mean non-rock Album Oriented Radio albums? I don't know AOR very well. I guess some are more popular pop than popular rock. I'm not really sure where rock starts and ends, if you know what I mean, which is another reason why I don't like rock in the description (like the word progressive, one can speak in terms of degree). Mike at progfreak has a progressiveness by degree feature, which I think is really neat, perhaps PA, if the rock quotient is REALLY important to consider when rating albums in Proto-Prog and Prog Related could have a rock by degree rating.  Funny thing is, progressive rock was, in part, a move away from rock standards (genre conventions).  There is music here that is recognised as so-called "Prog" by the system that could be called impure rock, or rock fusion, or rock infused, merely rock related, or "where's the rock?" It seems to me that rock-proper is more important to Prog Related than it is to various Prog categories. I think they'd be kinder on a non-progressive AOR or hard rock band than on truly progressive and experimental ones that defy easy genre classification (partially because of the focus on mainstream ones) as well as really innovative ones that had an impact on Prog categories (such as Electronic) while not turning rock per se. Nothing against AOR and hard rock, but I digress.

Man With Hat wrote: I think I misunderstood. I thought you wanted them to replace the progressive in front of the rock. So are you saying you would prefer it to be 'essential in a music collection'?   And to just explain my point...perhaps thing work differently, but I assumed to be on this site all music (or at least all artists had to have a period of) had to be progressive and rock, unless in was in the related/proto category where the main criteria was rock (with hopefully little bits of progginess). Obviously with larger discogs things can get complicated, especially if the artist does indeed have only one prog or rock album. But I would think that would be rare. I basically ignore these two categories so forgive me if this question is stupid ...but are there many bands that aren't rock but are progressive in another fashion?

Sorry, since I'd discussed it before in a few threads, I didn't go into great detail this time. I thought it clear enough with my last sentence. I want the word "rock" replaced with the word "music" (I'd like some other changes made to the descriptions too since I have more problems with the descriptions than that, but that could come later). There are many bands/artists that have made progressive music without dabbling in rock. And even as a genre, or subgenre term, Progressive Jazz existed before Progressive Rock (though it means something rather different).  Any genre, or genre mix can have progressive music. Progressive Rock and progressive music are not synonymous.  Not all Progressive Rock is really progressive, but it's come to denote a style more than an approach to expanding the lexicon, and possibilities, of rock, and innovation/ experimentation (and as I like to say, Progressive Rock -- capital P and R -- need not be synonymous with progressive rock -- small p and r).  A Proto-Prog album would be likely to be progressive because it is building the foundations of Progressive Rock (or could at least lay the foundations of the various categories here, I would think, within limits).  Any innovative music that moves music, or a genre, forward can be called progressive music. Miles Davis, to use a "prog" category example, was making progressive music before he made Jazz-Rock (or electric jazz).

All bands in Prog categories should have some relation to rock, but I would hardly say that all are rock bands, and many that dabbled in rock released non-rock works (be it folk, chamber music, academic music, non-rock experimental music, jazz whatever). The same could be said for Related and Proto-Prog.

Moving away from what I was suggesting here, but I have also suggested that Prog Related be opened up more to progressive music artists that have a minimal rock relation (possibly rock-related), but still have a relation to bands/artists included in the archives. I think they kept rock because they feared things getting out of hand.  For instance, Stockhausen is a progressive artist and was important to progressive electronic music, but he's not rock.  Could he be considerable for Proto-Prog for helping to lay any musical foundations.  Not really now since he did not make Progressive Rock in embryonic form.  I think he could go in Related.  But that's an aside, and is a can of worms issue, since where do you draw the line?

It is confusing with big discographies since you do find Prog albums in Prog Related and non-Prog albums in Prog categories.  It's one reason why I find it more useful to think of music itself (or albums) as Prog or Progressive than the artists or bands themselves.  Of course progressiveness, as well as so-called Prog (a term I commonly don't like since it describes such a wide variety of music here but I use for convenience) can be in the ear of the behearer. And while degrees of progressiveness are debatable, not everyone even agrees on the parameters of what rock music is. Of course a part of Prog was about progressing away from generic rock, or expanding on it by bringing in other types of music (fusion).

I'll try to find what I wrote in earlier topics since I fleshed it out much more then, but this really boils down to why is it thought necessary to keep rock in the ratings description instead of just saying music.  Though I've discussed it in years before, I'm still unclear on that. I have some guesses.


Edited by Logan - August 18 2010 at 23:28

Progressive Music Archives

I like it.