Prog or not - a solution?

Jim Garten wrote: chopper wrote: I'll start on it immediately, although I may need a more thorough spec for the curious clothing modifier. Is this just for animal-related headgear or does it cover plants and strange bubbly creatures as well? Animal related headgear, plants, strange bubbly creatures... and Chris Squire:

Wow ... talking about being pretentious and self-indulgent. I guess this happens when you go from a to b to c ... eventually you don't even know where you started as an artist.

chopper wrote: I'll start on it immediately, although I may need a more thorough spec for the curious clothing modifier. Is this just for animal-related headgear or does it cover plants and strange bubbly creatures as well?

Animal related headgear, plants, strange bubbly creatures... and Chris Squire:

I'll start on it immediately, although I may need a more thorough spec for the curious clothing modifier. Is this just for animal-related headgear or does it cover plants and strange bubbly creatures as well?

mystic fred wrote: i remember many heated debates on this subject for the last 3 years, everything is not prog - an album is either prog or it isn't prog - Yes is 100% prog, Madonna isn't prog , not even .001%   when rating albums in reviews some wrongly give a prog related album 5 stars, "Essential: a masterpiece of progressive music ". surely it makes better sense to give Proto and Prog related a 4 star rating,  "Excellent addition to any prog music collection " or 3 stars "Good, but non-essential "....simple, innit?   there are far too many sub-genres  and pigeon-holes on this site as it is, any other system or "charts of progressiveness" (????) , "tags and algorithms"  (  )   would cause even more confusion   this always reminds me of that Robin Williams film "Dead Poets" where he is a  teacher, analysing pieces of prose to a degree where the magic has gone from it and you just end up with "excremental" analysis - relax, have fun, enjoy the music and STOP THINKING!!

Well put Mr Fred sir. I can just see the arguments now  -

"I think Tool/Dream Theater/Radiohead (delete where inapplicable) are 67.38 % prog"

"No they're not you . Everyone knows they're only 63.39 recurring% prog because their first album isn't very prog bla bla bla".

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^  I don't see any problem with your post ... I guess we'll all carry on with what we're doing. BTW: The list you mentioned in your previous post is essentially what I'm doing at my website with the progressive approach tag. I just haven't implemented a page yet which displays a chart which is sorted by progressiveness instead of rating, but I'll probably expand the chart page in the next few weeks so that you can select different ranking criteria. @Logan: I'm glad that you like what I'm doing at PF. But I'd like to point out that I did not intend for tags and algorithms become the only criterium for judging bands. I consider tagging to be a helpful tool ... not more, not less. I'm also not always thinking of tags when I listen to music ... rather the reverse (I'm not thinking of tags and numbers at all while listening). Only after I've listened to something, I'm adding the album to the playlist at PF and try to submit some tags that might serve to describe the music.

I think your tag system in PF took control in my reviews, as you can notice.....and made me a PR

King By-Tor wrote: Or we could just come up with teams of people who know their stuff and have them vote on each band that is considered for inclusion - reliable people who are known by the site and are consistently active and participative. Maybe have a few charts where we could track their decisions as to votes on the band and if the band should be moved from one subgenre to another. These people could also handle the artist additions, add the discographies and write the bios for the bands. How about that?

I like the way this guy thinks

Then again, if you guys find joy in this... Why should it bother me???   Carry on!    I did not mean to spoil your party but  felt compelled to chime in with my unsolicited opinion.

Earlier on a thread that disappeared quickly someone suggested that maybe the intelligencia of this site could put together a band by band list of what bands were really prog and what bands were not.  I suppose it would look something like this...

Mr ProgFreak wrote: This is what we do at Progfreak.com. All the users can submit genre and prog status information for the albums (level 0 to 10, which is the same as 0% to 100%). Albums with a level of 4 or 5 are labelled as "prog-related", anything below 4 is Non-Prog, anything with at least level 6 is labelled as "Prog". To make it a bit more interesting, we also offer two separate tags: progressive approach and prog by style, which you can use to show that something is progressive but not similar in style to the traditional prog bands (high progressive approach level, but low prog by style level) or that something is similar in style to the original prog bands, but not "truly" progressive (high prog by style level, but low progressive approach level). Sorry for plugging my website once more, but people keep asking about things that PF provides solutions for ...

That sounds exactly like what I had in mind, except much more fleshed out I will go check it out!

Good topic!  And Mike, it would be remiss not to mention what you do at your site.  I would've mentioned it if you hadn't.  That said, percentages are hard to quantify, but it's a worthy and useful ambition.

I know I'm moving from the scope/ aims of the topic somewhat, but I would say that all bands and musical artists/ composers are not so much Prog to an extent (which of course is short for Progressive Rock) since many are not at all rock, but that all are prog-related to some extent. So on a fundamental level not everything is Prog (progressive Rock) but all music is related to it to some extent (no matter how distant the relation).  For instance, to use a composer rather than a band, Vivaldi's music has inspired and been used by proggers, so one could try to work out how related to Prog he is by his influence/ compositional similarities.  A difficult task.  Not that someone would suggest Vivaldi for inclusion under the current categories (though if he we had a non-rock influential bands/artists category, then he would be suitable).

In regards to suggested bands for inclusion, I think the percentage idea is a neat way to think about it, but should be elaborated upon by determining specifics: what styles of progressive rock does it cross, which artists is it similar to... etc.  I think it could be a useful accessory for justifying inclusion.  People tend to think that way anyway in how we draw similarities even if percentages are not specified.  I think such polls would be a good idea as an additional means to judge artists, and I do like the thought of thinking of ways that will get the members more involved in the process of evaluation, but it's no substitute for detailed analysis/ argument.  And too often people vote without being familiar enough with the music, and it's important to have a very broad understanding and knowledge of progressive rock and music.

Let's try a little experiment: what percentage would be awarded to this group? http://www.myspace.com/gaebolg

EDITED for atrocious typos (I have type-O blood)


Edited by Logan - January 25 2009 at 13:17