1. Oingo Boingo

2. Tori Amos

3. Robert Plant

There's also Led Zeppelin, the Who and Black Sabbath and probably a few other classic kinds of bands but those are either proto prog or prog related so I won't count them. 

Also, this is not meant to criticize Progarchives way of doing things or their categorization. I just find it interesting that some bands are labelled that way here but typically not in other places. If anything it means that PA are in some ways more open minded than standard music sites. 

All three have featured in Prog magazine. I have seen videos from all three posted on various prog pages on FB.

Tori Amos for the longest time was described as “the Kate Bush of the US” which is pretty telling, as most people consider Kate Bush prog.

Not really sure where you’re going with this. As far as I’m aware one of the pre-requisites for being included on this site are being acknowledged/recognised as prog. But that’s not enough for inclusion here, which is why there are bands and artists widely acknowledged/recognised as prog, but who are not prog “enough” for PA.

(For example, Warmrain has been submitted for inclusion by someone recently, and I suspect they will be rejected as “not prog enough” - despite being featured a few times in Prog magazine, and playing the UK prog festival circuit.)

As for "where I'm gong with this" as I stated I wanted to see what other bands or artists people have noticed as being prog pretty much only on here. If you don't agree then that's fine. There are plenty of other threads to follow on here. 

 

That being said, there's a handful. Most notably, there's quite a few artists under either jazz fusion, post-rock/math rock, or post-metal that not many people outside PA would think of as prog, but are included here due to those genres being considered as extensions of progressive rock. Examples include:

It's worth noting that I also considered a lot of these artists prog; they just aren't usually thought of as such outside of PA.

They call Kate Bush progressive pop (among other genres).

https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/kate-bush

Whereas Tori Amos is called, variously, Art Rock, Piano Rock, Alternative Rock, Classical Crossover.

https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/tori_amos

I think this is in line with general perceptions of how her music should be classified.  I don't think Kate Bush fans in general would be surprised to know she has a home on PA but Tori Amos fans would be flummoxed to learn she is prog. I don't know what I am missing and I am a fan myself.

I think these two are those I was most surprised about. I'm not disputing their progressivity and quality, and neither do I personally have an issue with them to be here, but their general style in my view deviates strongly from what prog means to most people. NIN may have the odd album that can just about qualify, fair enough, but if they are here, Einstuerzende Neubauten should be here a hundred times. (I'm well aware that this kind of argument is forbidden, but still.) Steely Dan, honestly, to me seems to have been lobbied in by some passionate fans who they surely deserve, and well done to them, but if that's prog, the number of listed bands here would need to be multiplied by 2 at the very least.

My take on this is that there are some bands/artists that are "progressive in some sense, quite good, but not really prog" that are included on a random basis, with 5 kept out for each one that makes it in.

 

I don't think it should be, because "is proggier than" is a transitive relation.

 

 

 

 

it's comparative of superiority 

This pretty much.

This is why I don't understand why they will vehemently deny something like Boston (very similar to Asia) even as prog-related, but they will include as prog hundreds of artists who nobody would ever consider prog. Miles Davis, NiN, Steely Dan (?), Agalloch, Sigur Ros, etc. I think you can ask anyone about them and I'm pretty sure not one person will say "Oh, yes, that prog rock band"  as they would with Yes, ELP, Crimson, etc. 

Obviously, there will be older prog fans who are more accepting of bands like NIN and Sigur Rós being prog; and younger fans for whom this seems odd - but broadly speaking, and making the kind of generalisations that are bound to get me in trouble, I think the younger generations are able to recognise prog across a far wider spectrum than older fans who, if not stuck in the past, still stick to the more classic, symphonic sounds.

The Steely Dan addition was one of the nastiest episodes in the history of PA. The discussion descended into outright personal attacks, and I can tell you that Micky (who was on the receiving end of much of that nastiness) lost most of his motivation for working on behalf of the site after that.

That's also the reason why I tend to dislike such threads - no matter how well-intentioned they are. I believe most of us who have been PA members for years have had our suggestions shot down, and find it hard not to "compare and contrast" the bands/artists who are there and those who are not. Personally speaking, though I am more on the side of "older" than of "younger", I have a very broad view of what constitutes progressive music (I am not a fan of that "prog" word).

Also, Traffic are listed as eclectic prog on here. Sometimes they are considered prog by general music sources but not always especially not compared to KC, Yes, Genesis, etc. Frank Zappa is another one. 

I'm not really against NIN being considered prog(same thing with SR) but my main problem is this. If you have NIN as prog then it starts this whole big snowball thing where then you have to include Phish, Tool, Radiohead, Muse, Coheed and Cambria and on and on.Most of those bands are on here anyway actually. However, my point is you have to draw the line somewhere. IMO, NIN are more like industrial and not prog. However, I'm sure there's a good reason they are on here and not Skinny Puppy or Ministry and so I won't argue about it. It's just that based on what I've heard by them I wouldn't consider them prog. Maybe I need to hear more. Who knows.

Hard to agree or disagree with anything here.

Until the day that "progressive music" and then "prog music" get properly defined for the music ... NOT THE SOUND ... I'm not sure that every site out there will agree on anything, and some of them were probably created as a reaction to some other site.

My main concern is that the definitions out there (and here) are so out of touch with MUSIC itself, as to make things confusing and difficult. And when someone simply factors in a blue guitar or a swinging organ, and complete ignores the music that is played through those, I'm not sure that we can decide on anything except disagreement.

The main issue still will remain ... the fans and social media addicts thinking that they know it better than the actual musician that created and played the darn thing ... and as I said before that is a total disrespect for the artist, and the same goes for the soccer fans (from one country at least) booing and throwing debris at an opposing team, which is a gross disrespect for the game and how it was played!

What scares me the most is a society of those "who have it" and those "who don't", and of course, the ones that "don't" are the ones that pay large amounts of money to see a game, or a show somewhere. And they show their disagreement and voice their lack of judgement on the field with throwing debris, and then taking to social media to speak their views.

My only hope is that PA does not succumb to the "social media" frenzy. Already many folks here do not reply to the thread at all, and make personal comments. It's not quite water on the duck's back. For me it is more like Hemingway's line ... "dirt belongs under my feet." For this reason I do not reply to many of those comments and do not involve myself in the social media vacuum!

That tends to be the problem most of the time with most of the artists that people either complain about being here, or have no problem with them being here, but don’t understand why. It all boils down to not having heard what makes the artist prog. But at least you can admit that you are basing your opinion on what you’ve listened to, and that you may need to hear more.

NIN certainly began as a fairly generic industrial band that was so clearly influenced by Skinny Puppy they were criticised for being derivative. But album after album, Trent changed the sound of NIN to become increasingly more prog. His use of musicians such as Mike Garson and Adrian Belew added quite interesting elements to his music that weren’t normal for industrial. If you can talk about metal and prog metal, folk and prog folk, then you can talk about industrial and prog industrial. But Trent continued to evolve his sound, and there are NIN albums that many old school NIN fans hate, because they are so different from the original sound. There have now been six chapters of NIN’s ambient Ghosts series, and my personal favourite NIN release (Bad Witch) is all over the place, with some wonderful sax playing from Trent. The music is so much more than industrial now, and has been for years.

But, potentially, you might still not hear anything that you consider prog - and that’s fine, too. Everyone has their own definition and idea of what is prog and what is not. But NIN is pretty widely considered a prog band, and definitely beyond the confines of PA.

For the record, the only ones I own and have heard by NIN are downward spiral(which is ok) and Year Zero (which is pretty awful). I'm sure they are good at what they do but based on what I've heard I have to say I don't think NIN are for me. Also, keep in mind I'm not someone who thinks all music I like is prog and vice versa. If I like it then I like it regardless of the genre. I'm willing to give most stuff a fair chance but realistically we aren't going to like everything. Also, not every inventive or even progressive band can be considered prog rock or prog(since there's a difference between being progressive and being prog rock). If they follow the prog formula or structure on later albums then fine but I'm still skeptical about them being considered prog on here especially when collaborators have said that just having a few prog albums doesn't make someone a prog band. There's been debates about whether Muse are prog also and probably a bunch of other bands. Obviously we all have our own opinions and I'm sure there was much back and forth discussion(and arguments) before they decided to include NIN on here(much like with SD) . 

Amen to that. 

Logan wrote: ^ The only Miles Davis album I take issue with in the top 100 is Kind of Blue.  This is a problem with our complete policy as well that we label acts not albums.  I think Miles Davis better suited to our JRF category than Prog Related for the late 60s through mid-70s period that he was included in PA for.  Herbie Hancock has a similar case.

It would make sense that they were in prog related given that they were never prog artists and simply made some influential fusion albums which are well within the minority of their entire canons. 

Of course this could all be changed with the ability to label albums separately or multi-label.

I'm 29 and I don't see those bands as prog, NiN is industrial rock and Sigur Ros post rock. You can ask fans of those bands and they might not be into prog at all. And they will hardly mention prog if you ask the genre of music they make. I think stuff like Supertramp, Moody Blues, Radiohead, early Queen, etc, might be debated or fall into "crossover" prog, but those artists are simply a different genre.

Logan wrote: ^ The only Miles Davis album I take issue with in the top 100 is Kind of Blue.  This is an issue with our complete discography policy as well that we label acts not albums.

Hi,

I would prefer that each and every band was NOT judged by one album ... but the multitude of albums, instead.

We don't refine our definition of Picasso, simply because he has a blue period, a rose period and then a cubistic period. It is all a part of the artist, and the fan has no say in the matter. The same should be addressed about the music that a band makes, although some change from the start and end differently ... which can easily be solved as being a part of progressive, but going away from the mode as time went by in the biographical section.

The same thing happens with AD2 when in right into VIVE LA TRANCE they stopped the long cuts and instead made a bunch of songs, that presumably were designed to make fun of radio but they also ended up making the band "clever" and more fun to listen to, if not a bit strange and weird in their applications of their "humor". Essentially, the band that had improvised and created from improvised scenarios, all of a sudden could only do "songs" and the battles within their members became more and more acute as to which material showed up or not, ending in an album that JW called "b*****d" in an email discussion and their website STILL does not list that album, which shows you their respect for each other which probably has been there under the table for a while! The "progressive" aspect of the band was replaced by what I would consider poor choices of music other than a few things in between. The band had lost its "source" and "way" to even be considered progressive by that time. Genesis was the same thing. While I do not think of YES the same way, I find the older material not as valuable and important as the earlier material which to me also brings down the "progressive" value. 

It's a serious issue ... but I really don't want to define a "band" by one album, when the rest is crap! 

Logan wrote: ^ To me the JRF category is more descriptive of the electric Miles period than Prog Related is, which is one reason why I would not support the move into PR (I would consider it if a strong case was made and the JRF team unanimously supported it -- course the JRF team decided to add it to begin with).  One could say that lot of JRF is not Prog proper, and its here as part of the umbrella.  While I wouldn't say this is true (don't know), it has been said that the JRF category was basically created for Mahavishnu Orchestra (add Weather Report, I would think, and...).

How about a "mostly not prog but some real winners in there" category?

It's the same case with Chick, yet he remains absent. If we get stingy about jazz artists that only dabbled in fusion for a brief period in the 70s, then realistically, many of these artists should be gone (or relegated to Related if the standards for that grouping were to be expanded to include jazz musicians). And in Chick's case, he remained in a "progressive" realm (in the context of jazz AND jazz fusion) for a much larger portion of his discography than the aforementioned two giants. That being said, I realize this involves difficult discussions and debates, so I'm not really complaining. Just observing.

Don't you mean the Beatles? 

I totally agree with you in theory but like everything in this crazy world, nothing really works the way we want it to.

Firstly, the good news is that Chic is already here in a couple forms anyway, namely the Chic Corea Elektric Band as well as our beloved Return To Forever but he also had some fusion albums as a solo artist as well.

It took me a while to wrap my head around the jazz-fusion thing here but what it boils down to is that it is not an all encompassing addition process.

The category is reserved for only the most progressive of the lot as well as certain artists who were highly influential, so that explains why Davis and Hancock are here and others like Sun Ra and Freddie Hubbard are not.

Most of you have no idea how many fusion artists we turn down because they either aren't based in progressive rock or they had one fusion album out of dozens of jazz releases.

Therefore, jazz disco, jazz arabic folk etc doesn't fly here.

And yessir, there are always artists that remain here or remain absent that always make us go WTF

Yup.  I am 35 and have never thought of NiN as prog either. Likewise, I was a fan of Tori Amos long before she was added to progarchives.  I know a bunch of prog-listening friends all roughly in my age group and none of them would consider her prog.  It is what it is.

NIN has gone beyond industrial, they did ambient/electronic, atmospheric music, I don't mind them being here on PA.

As for Sigur Ros, post rock is a prog subgenre, isn't it? No problem for them being on PA or being considered a prog band. What am I missing here? 

Just the usual boring old argument about what is or isn’t prog. As usual people going for the anecdotal “no one I know” argument to “prove” something isn’t prog. Or the “most people that listen to it wouldn’t think it were prog” as “evidence” something isn’t prog. It’s all quite laughable. Not because people get so hung up on what they think is or isn’t prog, but because in this instance it is about something on PA not being prog.

As far as I’m aware, a band still has to be recognised and acknowledged as being prog outside PA for inclusion in the archives. Not only that, but they have to be “prog enough” to be included in the archives, which is why the opposite of the OP is the truth - there are many bands recognised as prog that are not in PA. I very much doubt there are any bands in PA that are NOT recognised as prog outside the archive - despite what any one individual thinks.

It’s irrelevant if a large chunk of their fans have never thought of the band or artist as prog. I as listening to prog music for years before knowing it was recognised as prog music. You most definitely don’t need to know something is prog to enjoy the music and be a fan.

But, and I will keep going back to NIN and Sigur Rós, because they keep getting brought up, it is easy to see that they are recognised as being prog. Both have featured in Prog magazine, and though someone earlier mentioned that being in Prog doesn’t mean they are prog, that’s splitting hairs. Prog magazine has always featured bands that are on the edges of prog, but has also always acknowledged that (“it’s prog, Jim, but not as we know it”, etc.), so the argument that just because NIN and Sigur Rós appear in prog doesn’t mean they are prog doesn’t hold much water - particularly when they have appeared in the magazine on more than one occasion (which is definitely not the norm for bands that are more “controversially” prog).

I get that a lot of people here don’t use FB, but there is a huge prog community on FB, and so, so, so, many prog pages and groups. Again, NIN and Sigur Rós appear frequently on prog pages and in prog groups. Their albums are reviewed by pages like The Prog Mind, Progressive Music Planet, and The Progressive Aspect, and their respective websites.

I have never, and would never, try and find something prog about everything I listen to. I don’t really care what is or is not prog when it comes to what I listen to. I never have. Again, I listened to a lot of prog for years, without even knowing it was prog. I really don’t understand why people get so hung up on the word. If something is in PA, then it has been recognised as prog outside PA, and recognised as prog by PA collaborators. Any argument that something is not prog within PA is therefore down to the individual making it. It’s actually quite offensive and insulting, if you think about it - because you are denigrating the work of volunteers who are working to make this site as inclusive as possible.

Over the years I have seen a lot of bands and artists I think are prog rejected, but I have never seen a band or artist accepted that isn’t recognised as prog outside PA. I definitely don’t agree with every rejection by collaborators, but it is far easier to be rejected than accepted into PA, so it’s incredibly short-sighted, and potentially downright right, to suggest that something has been accepted that shouldn’t have been. (And that has been my thought for years, while I have been a collaborator myself only for a couple of months.)

Depending on the individual the last album that was prog is anywhere from Lamb to the claim that there is not a single Genesis album that is not prog.

When it comes to albums described as prog before prog is widely recognised as being a thing, there will always be arguments, too. But assuming that prog means progressive (and on this forum that is a mighty big assumption, but let’s run with it), then A Kind of Blue is inarguably a prog album. It just doesn’t seem so by today’s standard. But at the time, it was revolutionary - and more so than a lot of prog albums. As much as people don’t like Pedro, he is correct when he bemoans people not understanding how a piece of music was received at the time.

It’s similar to the sort of arguments I used to hear at school, where people were trying to differentiate between metal and heavy metal, and saying that bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden were not heavy metal because there is nothing heavy about them. They were just metal, or maybe hard rock. To those people heavy metal was Metallica and Megadeth. But Black Sabbath at the time we’re probably just as heavy as Metallica were to those arguing in the schoolyard. One needs to take into account how something sounded contemporaneously.

Artik wrote: I'm a man of science and I like when words are ment to mean something. PA standards just dilute the water. If Swans, Tori Amos, Dead Can Dance, Nine Inch Nails are prog, then this word doesn't mean anything. And I say it as a great fan of most of the abovementioned. But, it's only my humble opinion and it doesn't spoil the enjoyment I take from visiting PA frequently.

Not an unreasonable point of view certainly but just in. Newsflash: music ain't a science

Psychedelic Paul wrote: I'm currently in the middle of adding Van Morrison to my fourth prog channel, so I can hardly complain about any non-prog artists who don't belong on ProgArchives.

If the music is good, does it really matter how we classify it?

No! 🤗

^On a related note, ask six progheads their opinion on a contentious prog related issue, and expect 6 different forthright discussions.

See also: Rush.

Exactly it's a theory for which everyone has their own opinion.  This is a great site and a great reference but I am pretty sure we all sort our collections to suit ourselves whether vinyl's, CDs or on an MP3 player.

When I first saw the Beatles here years ago I almost fell off my chair but got over it.  When I joined the Forum a few months ago I asked the same questions about why is this not included etc, not realizing that this question was asked probably a thousand times before by every new forum member.  And of course got jumped for it.  It took me a while to realize that at the end of the day it really does not matter what is thought of as prog here or anywhere else as regardless I or we as individuals will always form our own opinions.

Do you really think I would not sort and think of the Beatles under the same themes as the Kinks, Hollies, Stones etc in my British Pop collection and now think of them as something else because they have a listing here under Proto-Prog?

How confusing and gappy would it be if I did not have Miles, Coltrane, Monk etc sorted together under Jazz.

What about Folk do you really think I would sort Lindisfarne somewhere else or Dylan for that matter.  What would I do with all the great American bands and artists if I did not slot them next to their British friends.

So what I am trying to say is I really enjoy this site because overall it helps you find many new artists and it has a great amount of information in one place for all our convenience.  But it would be impossible for this site or any other site to adequately cover all our own opinions.

Lately when I post if I am curious about something I tend to just ask about "what do you think of this album or artist"  for opinions and thoughts on their music and that's it.

We sort artists by name without using any categories. For classical music we use the names of the composers. Thus Johann Sebastian Bach and his sons and other relatives reside peacefully between B For Bang and Baden-Powell.

And of course we have a great community here, and discussions and sharing recommendations helps not only the OP but others to explore new stuff (as for instance in my Female Prog topic).

[Yeah I might get a bit tetchy at times, but I'm just a grumpy old git these days.]

I tend to do similarly with my digital music collection - a main folder for genres (e.g. Prog, Classical, New Age, Rock, Folk etc etc), and everything relevant shoved in there, without fannying around making separate folders for sub-genres. Sometimes life is just too short.

Folders in my laptop are organized by genre - prog is organized in three folders - classic prog (late 60s to late 70s), prog & related (1980s to now) and progressive metal. 

Everything else is easy to classify (rock, pop, hard rock, blues, jazz, metal etc.)

My cds (300 or so) are on shelves more randomly if i may say so , favorites stick out somehow 

I don't agree about "easy to classify"; there is so much music that is a mix of several genres and just can't be classified. Just look at the discussions in this forum about "Is this artist prog"?

And why does it have to be classifiable at all? All that matters is that it is good music. So we avoid the problem completely and just sort by name. It also makes it much more interesting to see the reaction when first time visitors to our house take a look at our collection.

the alphabetic order does not work for me 

if i think an artist is progressive, it'll go in the prog folder, simple as that. 

The same with my CD collection - alphabetical by artist, and then albums ordered *chronologically for each artist.

*sticking to original release dates, regardless of whether it is a reissue.

Now that has been the most painful thing I have done in many years to RIP and catalog.  I sometimes wish I never started with it.  What's worse is you realize you have gaps that want completing and you start spending a bunch of money to close those gaps.  But heck music is an enjoyable hobby right?

Amen, sister!

well, obviously... 

Yes, but, language is one of my favorite tools to prove that I am human! At least, I think I'm human. Let me see, I'll have to consult my Descartes... 

Oops! Perhaps that's too big of a leap/extrapolation! 

...If I'm not human, then what am I? And why do have this capacity to express myself using linguistics and vocabularies?

We sort alphabetically within the artists too.

Yes that's the problem with collecting....you never stop!

Exactly, once the collecting bug bites you just want more and more, almost like an addiction.  What always intrigues me about collecting any artist is rooting out the 'rarities' which is not so difficult these days with such stuff often being thrown in as extras on modern CD reissues and compilations.

Yeah... but it's what you end up doing.  Why buy a box set when you have all the albums...but you buy it because of the previously unreleased otherwise you feel you are incomplete.  Crazy really right :)

The oldest trick in the book - get your devoted fans to purchase stuff they already own by chucking in a few rarities... or am I just being cynical?

No, you nailed it.

Post rock here features as a subgenre, but I don't think most people consider it so. I love Sigur Ros and GY!BE among others, but they're usually considered simply post rock. Not prog. Different is the case of, say, canterbury which is definitely a sub-genre or prog, or zehul too, or krautrock. So Caravan, Soft Machine, Magma, Neu, Can, Faust, etc. Most would agree they're prog bands. Post rock I think most people consider it a genre in its own right, in fact I was surprised when I saw it in the website first . Same with the black metal/post metal stuff like Agalloch. I don't mind these bands being here, I just find it odd that these bands are not only in the website, but they're also listed as prog bands, while many suggestions of bands to be included not even as prog, but as prog-related are constantly denied. I mean bands like Boston or Dire Straits for instance. I think Smashing Pumpkins and Wire were suggested too more than once. It seems that sometimes they're very liberal in the definition of prog and sometimes they're very strict in what even considers "prog-related", NOT even prog.

No, not really. I have Deacon Blue and Prefab Sprout lined up for Prog Britannia 5, simply because they both make good music. 

BTW,,,one wonders how many times this same question will be asked on PA in different ways....?

We all know that already.....

When post rock came up, I already was a prog fan. Post rock was a big discovery for me, love much of it and still can't get enough. When I joined PA, I didn't expect to find post rock here, insofar you are right. However, I was delighted to learn it's here. The musical connections, particularly if you look at subgenres such as Kraut and psychedelic, are obvious, and for me it's a perfect match. Obviously that shouldn't stop anyone to consider it a genre on its own, no contradiction there (and by the way, there's much post rock that is not here, too). I like PA being a broad umbrella, and while I expressed surprise about the presence of NIN and Steely Dan, I have no complaints against them being here. My far bigger complaint is that Irmin Schmidt is not here, and given that PA is such a  broad umbrella otherwise, that's really quite outrageous. (Did I already mention that? )

Progressive music is a whole different thing. The site has never decided whether its a homage to prog, a progressive music site or just a place to discuss a bunch of bands we like. I think its gone more to the latter as its expanded. I suppose I'm okay with that.

There are few bands here, not even in prog-related that make me scratch my head, more than Queen. 

Like Rhapsody (of Fire) or Nightwish (and I like their early work) or My Dying Bride (doom metal, death-doom band). And i could add some more if I look into it some more. 

yeah, those three are pretty lame additions, even if I lightly supported two of them's respective inclusions (never even realized until last year OB had been added on PA). 

I had originally supported Amos to be included in Prog-Related, but I'm still amazed (and irked) that she was added in a full-blow prog subgenre. Originally my support was due to Amos' main influence Kate Bush being on PA, but this backfired totally because the master (Kate) has been overpassed by the pupil (Tori) as "proggier" (which is IMHO total bullcrap). World upside down really 

I've no beef with Zep, Sab and Who being on here, though.

Yeah, that's the scandal here. Kate is a full-blown artistes with prog leanings whereas Tori is a brilliant piano-only singer-songwriter having learned much from Kate. This becomes clear enough when you see a live show from Amos. 

I would be much happier if Kate was full-blown prog genre and Tori as Prog-Related. 

IIRC in those days, prog metal was left all over to Mike (Progfreak) and a few other prog metal lovers who got, shall we say, ambitious with their definition of what could be prog metal for THIS website. FWIW even metalarchives doesn't think Nightwish is prog metal.  At that time (2007-08), the metalheads I knew all regarded them as symphonic power metal and I don't think their music has changed so much from their late 90s-early 00s template that they would have suddenly gone full prog. A cursory listen to their most recent album gave no such indication at any rate.

Anyway, I don't have an ISSUE with them or any other bands that are already on here.  It would be a waste of time deleting them from the database now.  But that doesn't make them or other such dubious additions prog either.

I've always wondered if there will ever be a purge of artists added that don't stand the test of time?

Like any large database that has been constantly added to over a long period of time, there is probably a fair bit of clutter here that probably seemed like a good idea at the time to include, but now is hardly relevant to the history and development of prog. I'm in no way advocating a massive purge tho.

Why not? There are many artists here that i love as artists but don't find them relevant for a prog site. Every artist you could ever dream of is on Rate Your Music but PA still  has many artists here that aren't there so if this is a niche site we don't really need to have some of the bands that don't pass modern scrutiny. I'd be for it. Sort of a like a constitutional convention for prog!

When I first explored the PA-database (even before I registered) I was regularly surprised to find certain artists on here in one of sub-genres and thus to be considered "prog rock". To me it is clear that the PA database is not created and filled by music professionals; there are too many artists on here that the music industry would never consider prog rock. The crossover sub-genre is an exemple of where bands/artists are put in that the outside world would not consider prog. Fine.

This kind of PA prog-imperialism can become rather ridiculous. I give the example of a recent addition: Penguin Café (added to the post/math rock sub genre). Now, if someone can explain to me what is "rock" about this group, that would be nice. I very much like their music and consider for example their The Imperfect Sea album as a masterpiece, but there is nothing "rock" about it, so how could it be prog rock? And to put it in the post/math rock sub-genre is even more ridiculous. For me it is contemporary chamber music but not rock at all...

Now, do I care? No. As said, it is clear that the PA database is not a professional one. So be it. It remains a very rich resource that can lead to surprising discoveries (also thanks to these "anomalies"). But I do think that some kind of purge might give some more credibility to PA and what is considered prog. And not be too afraid to move some artists to the prog-related category (I'm thinking of Björk, Kate Bush, but wouldn't mind either to find the Penguin Café there (or the PCO) - although I would still think of it as quite a stretch...

I can do nothing but completely agree with the bolded part as a once active member of Metalarchives.  Yes, Metalarchives used to be super-exclusive about whom they admitted and were quite particular about keeping nu metal/metalcore out. Problem solved, right?  Wrong.  Because when you draw a thick line, you also mould the expectations of the database participants in that way.  So...you had people saying Faith No More was only on metalarchives because site owner Morrigan liked the band (does that argument sound familiar? ).  I mean, a PA frequenting metalhead would think calling Faith No More metal is totally non controversial but that wasn't the case.  

So...yeah, there's no solution.  Because the root of the problem lies in the fact that genre classification is subjective.  Even if it is not as subjective as one's likes and dislikes, it is still subjective that people are going to disagree.  And I think that is a small problem in a time when people don't always agree even on the basic facts. 

Nicely summed up Richard. I agree, we've never been sure about the difference between Progressive Rock (aka "prog") and progressive music.

IF we were to do that, we'd have to do it behind the scenes and providing a list of obvious (and not-so obvious) candidates.

To the best of my knowledge, it's only been done once, because added without consulting anyone: it was some doom/death metal band with Latin (as in from Rome) lyrics 

HOWEVER, I understand that removing an entry once inside the DB is not only a time consuming affair but also tricky/dangerous.

And should not be handled lightly (touching the stability of the DB's structure).

There are many bands on here that many people don't pay attention to anyway and I bet there are a few hundred with 3 or less ratings and probably at least 50 with 0 ratings. If anything should be purged it would be the artists with zero ratings. 

So I guess maybe I'm not sure what is meant by the stand the test of time comment. If we mean popularity  even in the prog world that would mean having a lot fewer artists on here than there currently are. It could also mean that what is considered prog at one point might not be considered prog in the future. That's possible. There's a lot of bands considered prog now that probably wouldn't have been considered prog 20 to 30 years ago (or more). 

I think doing a purge without knowing how the database is being used by visitors is misguided at best. On top of that would be endless arguments and who and how they would be removed. Bickering on that scale would make me leave the site.

Did we forget what the purpose of an "archive" is? If the gray area is removed to leave the obvious artists, then why bother calling it an archive anymore? Context of how the genre exists and interacts through the gray area seems important to me.