In the old days there seemed to be a pretty big gap between so called regular rock and progressive rock. Sure, there were art rock bands and some other bands who had some prog rockish songs at times(Roxy Music and Styx come to mind)but most of them weren't typically considered prog at the time or even part of prog. Back then you had albums like Jethro Tull's "thick as a brick" that took up a whole album and "Tales from topographic oceans" by Yes which made up four 20 minute tracks over the course of two vinyl discs. That's only four songs to listen to in over an hour. Those make up probably the most extreme examples of prog's so called "excess" from the glory days but of course there are other less extreme examples. Even Yes themselves had other side long tracks but they weren't the only ones. ELP and Pink Floyd also had side long tracks and King Crimson came close at least one time and so did Genesis(with "Supper's Ready" which just missed out on being a side long track). Back in those days shorter songs by those bands(as well as others)tended to be the exception rather than the rule. Think of "a venture" off the Yes album or "I know what I like" from Selling England by the Pound or even the old timey ELP songs that seemed to show the "fun side" of the band. The majority of these bands seemed to focus on the longer tracks though and I think that's one thing that tended to separate prog from other genres. Genres such as psychedelia(prog's older brother if you will)often included longer songs but they were the exception rather than the rule. Take the "In a Gadda Da Vida" album by Iron Butterfly for example. Although you could argue it is a proto prog album there is no mistaking it's psychedelic flavor. To illustrate my point here side two consists of the famous side long title track while all the other songs on the album(those that made up the first side)were shorter tracks. I believe that was the case with most other psychedelic bands as well. Seventies prog seems to be unique in that there seemed to be a deliberate effort to make several (if not most)of the songs as long as possible. 

All of this seemed to be done in the name of musical adventurousness and exploration and while there are still many prog bands making longer songs many of them aren't. I sometimes get the feeling that if many of these newer crossover bands(crossover seems to be the prog sub-genre with the most shorter and most accessible songs)were making this music in the 70's then they would not be labelled prog(or at least not as much). The one band on here from the old days who are labelled as crossover prog that stands out(for me at least)is the Moody Blues. I'll be honest I typically haven't really considered the Moody Blues to be a true prog band in the past simply because the vast majority of their songs were short and simple and didn't really stretch out that much like the other prog bands did. I suppose there's other reasons why the Moodies were considered prog(lyrical themes and heavy use of the mellotron for example)but maybe I'm guilty of prog snobbery in the sense that because they didn't have the complexity or song length of Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, ELP, etc I didn't think of them as prog. Even Pink Floyd seemed way more prog to me. I still liked the Moodies but I had a hard time(and to some degree still do)considering them a "full blown prog band." 

This takes me to how I feel about these modern bands. Being how this site seems to insist that these more song oriented bands are indeed prog and "crossover prog" is in fact still one hundred percent progressive rock, it has me reconsidering everything I thought I knew about prog. I now think that maybe a band doesn't have to be super complex or have the musicianship even of King Crimson or Mahavishnu Orchestra or Yes to be considered prog rock. As far as song length goes that is up to the bands discretion also and they don't have to do all(or even mostly) long songs to be prog. There can be other elements that still make it prog. This of course leads to the age old debate of "what is prog" and while there will probably be no end to that discussion among fans anytime soon at least we can all find music that is still adventurous in it's own way even if there aren't a million time changes or super long synthesizer instrumentals in them. As long as at least one person in the band has a copy of "close to the edge" or "tarkus" in their collection that just might be good enough for me. 

Prog rock is very niche market oriented now; bands with longer songs know who their audience are. The shorter songs still have complexity just epics in 5 minutes (Owner for example has 5 rhythm changes and still gets dismissed as a "pop" song).

Times change. Rush were a good barometer of how to parallel the changes of prog rock.

But it was the ground zero nature of rock - rock acts who think they have invented music (thinking of Spirti's Taurus here) - and they haven't bothered to find out. But worse was punk rock where everyone (Iron Maiden especially) had to be seen in the light of punk -as if that was some sort of barometer. So rock was dumbed down and seen in the light of corporate pop culture and prog had to change - the bands made interesting songs but were over so quick the die hards hadn't even time to roll one before a new track was going.

Prog was the embodiment of actual rock music development and because the record companies had little control of how to market it (look at the mess Geffen made of Asia) it was left to their media to persuade the public. And as it's easier to digest / write about  a few songs rather than Brick or Tales people did as the corporate media instructed. Until the next fashion.

But I know what you mean, if you look at most bands promoted by Prog magazine, you'll get that impression.

Especially if you go by their sampler discs which are made up mostly of shorter songs(maybe so they can fit more in).  

My whole point of this blog was that it seems to me that the definition of what is now accepted as prog has changed and I used bands who do mostly shorter songs as an example of that. There still has to be something to make it prog but I think maybe art rock is a better more accurate term and one that is not exactly new anyway. I remember reading somewhere on this site not too long ago where someone suggested that crossover prog is really progarchive's version of art rock which might be true to some degree even though some bands maybe don't fit either description perfectly. The bottom line is there may be a loosening of what is considered prog these days and I think younger people are less likely to accept the "it has to be super complex and super long" definition of prog especially when a lot of(if not most)of the bands playing the shorter songs are the younger musicians as opposed to ones who were fans in the seventies. 

A few days ago I stumbled across an old thread in which the term art rock was discussed. Apparently at some point it was used almost synonymously to prog by many. Progarchives had an art rock genre, and Crossover is one of the products of splitting it up (another is Eclectic). So art rock was always at home here. (I may make a fool of myself by explaining a forum past of which I wasn't part but some others who are still around... anyway this is what I gathered from what I read.)

Progarchives have Sparks and Steely Dan and others (many others under Prog Related such as Bowie, 10cc,...) who have always done mostly shorter songs.

By the way there's no problem doing complex and even crazily complex in 2 and a half minute. With many of the more complex newer (and some older) prog bands that do longer songs I sometimes think one could split these up into more shorter songs anyway as they start somewhere and end up in a completely different place.

What can hardly be done in a short song is patient development, meditative atmosphere etc.

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: "A venture,""more fool me,""long distance runaround"(without the fish)"I know what I like," "book of saturday" and "wonderous stories" are all songs that don't sound particularly complex to me so if there were a whole album of songs like those would it still be prog? I suppose that's what I'm wondering. I would say at least art rock which many(jury is still out for me though since I kind of go back and forth on it)consider prog anyway. I think lyou have the strict definition of prog(the one where Pink Floyd isn't prog)and then the more all encompassing "prog family" kind of prog where there's enough room for everyone. I hope that makes at least some sense.

I think you have already recognised there's the spirit of the law (Floyd, Moodies) and the letter of the law (Crimson, Gentle Giant) at play here. That's maybe the least expedient way of dispensing with 'complexity' as an evaluation criteria for Prog. Supper's Ready (which I adore) is for me, a medley of short song based fragments ingeniously segued together into a pseudo 'suite' and none the poorer for that. BTW Bach's fugues and etudes are considerably shorter and considerably more complex than many of his concertos etc. There are very few Prog bands who have the compositional rigour, sophistication and reach with which to realise larger scale writing that surmounts the enduring popular song structures that underpin the majority of their output. ELP and The Enid are the two most notable exceptions to this I can think of from memory e.g. Karn Evil 9 obeys the sort of thematic development and exposition to which classical orchestral composers treat their melodic and harmonic materials. I think the genre definition for Crossover Prog provided by Mickey & Chus is damn near flawless. That said, I too struggle to think of the Moody Blues and Floyd as bona fide Prog but the one thing we all might agree on is that Prog is not dissimilar to Porn: no-one can define it but everyone swears they knows it when they see it

Interesting discussion.  

Would anyone consider 1970s Barclay James Harvest to be a prog band...?   I ask because that band springs to mind given the criteria in the original post.  None of their songs were complex and many of them were quite short, neither was any of the musicianship particularly outstanding, but the quality of songwriting for the most part was superb. Their 1974 live album is still one of my favourites from that time and I would consider it to be classic prog. 

How about electronica like Tangerine dream or Jean Michel Jarre..?   Both have some superb albums tucked under their belts with long tracks being their speciality, but personally I wouldn't call them prog artists although some others might.  

Maybe as Exitthelemming states above and with complexity and track length notwithstanding there exists a largely undefinable quality which makes a band a prog band.  Personal opinion of the listener obviously plays a large part in it and one mans prog might easily be another mans classic rock or hard rock,  for example  Wishbone Ash : to my ear they're much more of a classic rock band, but they did have their proggier moments, and as with 'BJH Live' above, 'Live Dates'  is still one of my favourite albums from the era and in my own opinion one of the definitive live albums of the early 70s, but is it prog...?

Good points...Since I was around in the day, I tend to think of the Moodys as "classical rock," which was what they were called at first (although originally, they were considered a "British Invasion," act) before it was termed "art rock," and about the same time, "progressive rock" (at least in the US, and, at least, as I recall), and Pink Floyd as "psychedelic rock," since that is how they pretty much began. Just how things developed from their various inceptions.

I very much agree with you on the less-common emergence of a more classical approach from such as ELP and The Enid, perhaps just from their backgrounds (at least on Emerson's part in ELP) of having been classically trained.   

I agree with these as well...and Zappa also...It seems he was just going off of the top of his head and those two came to mind first...There are not a preponderance of them, though.  

Well, if that's the case then wouldn't "prog related" or even "art rock" be a better description?

In retrospect, you are probably right on your reasoning of why you wouldn't think of the Moodys as "classical rock," however, I was making the statement that at the time of their emergence (in the US), that is how they were described, as were Procol Harum, and ELO's progenitor and The Move, at that point in time...The "progressive, or "art rock," terms were used later, as when King Crimson, ELP, etc., emerged a teensy bit later and then these bands (and others) were seen to have been the precursors.  

I agree that both Crimson and Gentle Giant have often dispensed entirely with song based musical structures in their output but I would still maintain that Yes, for all their ingenuous arrangements and virtuosity, like the vast majority of their Prog brethren, are at heart a rock/pop band with a song based core. (TFTO might be the exception to this but I'm lukewarm as to its merits alas) For me,Thick as a Brick belongs to the same school of short song based fragments segued together into a pseudo suite as that of Suppers Ready.

That's an observation not a criticism.

As Snicolette points out, Zappa certainly does have the requisite breadth and technical reach to supplant traditional popular song forms but (here's the funny thing) I never think of Frank as being a prime exponent of Prog. Perhaps that says more about my narrow view of what constitutes Progressive Rock than it does about a vast and eclectic output which encompasses every conceivable genre and a few of his own devising....

Well, I disagree about Yes being song based(with some exceptions of course) but not GG. GG were just very quirky and complex. Octopus for example is all shorter song based songs but very quirky ones with complexity. Same thing with half of Starless and Bible black, the vocal songs on ltia and much of lizard. I think all the major prog bands did some shorter simple songs. I don't see how Heart of the Sunrise or starship trooper are song based but some of those KC and GG songs aren't. I guess that's what I'm getting at. I think at their heart Yes were definitely prog and so were Genesis(who I have heard people say what you just said about Yes even in the PG days). I suppose you are breaking it down in a different way than I would. 

No-one in their right mind would disagree with that. Shorter song based compositions are a feature of Prog (not a bug)

Vomiting up 10 or 20 minute long songs on every album because you're eternally defined as "prog" always seemed as silly a definer for the genre as the specious "wizards and dragons" tag prog was labeled with by certain Luddite critics. 

I understand that but what I'm getting at is can they be the rule and not the exception in prog? 

I would say broadly speaking yes, song based compositions are the predominant norm in all popular music not just Prog (notwithstanding the pseudo suites I alluded to earlier re Thick as a Brick and Suppers Ready) I'm starting to suspect that you might consider short simple catchy songs as inimical to Prog?

Inimical? Really? Well, at least I get to learn a new word.  I think maybe you mean antithetical? :P 

Anyway, in a way yes. If all bands did nothing but short songs how would that differentiate themselves from all the other rock bands? The only difference would be a few keyboard solos here and there and maybe some strings or something. Baroque pop was already doing that and so was psych. I would say full blown prog needs something to differentiate itself from the norm and just having the "window dressing" wouldn't be enough. This is just my opinion though and I admit this may be a strict definition but I suppose others feel the same way. Also, that being said like I implied this strict definition may be loosening in recent years.

Hi,

I think that this is more the influence of commercial music and the "top ten" thing than it is anything else ... it seems like ... it SEEMS like ... the majority of the bands that come out these days, all have a touch of the top ten, and their material, with a few notable exceptions, is pretty much styled to a "song" format.

This is not to say that a short song can not be "prog/progressive", however, for many of us old folks, it was the longer cut that brought us to this music ... because ... as it was for me ... this was the classical music of my generation and how we interpreted it.

Sometimes I feel that we are not capable of defining music, from a song to something more classical. However, this distinction has come into a bad spot, with things like jazz and other types of music.

I've come to feel that we're afraid to TRIP ... regardless of how this is done.

A perfect example is a new user posting asking about this style or that ... when he/she could easily do a search in this website, and find out, and then be able to listen to a couple of things on the Internet and then go ahead and post some questions. The "lazyness" within this context is a problem ... many of those people are stuck in the "feed me" process of commercialism, and as such, their ability, and sometimes desire, to find out something new, is probably limited.

If I compare a few postings to what we would ask way back when, the first thing in my mind is ... are you really interested in a new "art", or just want to get a Wiki/CliffNotes version of it? (BTW, this was a problem during the drug/psych days ... many folks only wanted to get stoned and laid and didn't give a crap about the music!)

I get the feeling that "progressive music" would not have come alive if this were the case, besides the fact that most of it was a natural reaction to the commercialism on radio at the time.

We still don't see that, and I think the day we do, we will find a lot of new things and a new scene.

Post 'em here!

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=118118" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=118118

I really did mean inimical to Prog (tending to obstruct or harm) although antithetical works also

This was a joke ... not serious.

Otherwise his own work with KING CRIMSON, was full of noodling ... not to mention some other stuff in the early days of FAMILY when he was all over the place.

The real story, is that a song format would give his lyrics a better forum, than what happened in KING CRIMSON, where the lyrics would be considered ... just another instrument in the musical piece. AND, for someone that was acquiring a large/big status, of course he would say that his lyrics were more important ... that is ... his songs, and not the noodling! That's what happens here, too! But I seriously doubt that he would criticize any of that material ... specially him, that had one of the strongest lists of anyone around!