Why do Indie bands consider themselves pr

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Easy, Radiohead had huge success among Indie/alternative fans and Progheads (they have elements of both even when IMHO barely Prog), Coldplay (with less arguments) is considered Prog by some people, so why not follow a succesful formula and double your potential audience?   Iván

Since when were either of those bands considered indie, though? Radiohead is maybe close with their "alternative rock" label, but Coldplay is the very definition of a major label MTV radio-friendly pop-rock band.

I think the problem here is that "indie" is far too indescript a label, and is really not a genre. Actually, I'd be interested in hearing specific examples of the bands the original poster was talking about, just so we can all be on the same page here, because obviously many of us seem to have differing ideas of what this music is in the first place.

Still, I think most people here have the wrong idea. Many (if not most) of the bands who label themselves "Progressive" on Myspace haven't even heard of Prog Rock before, and in doing so have no intention of associating themselves (or attracting audiences from) a genre they don't even know exists. Rather, based on the genres available to bands on the site, it's a simple way of saying "We play a certain type of music, but we have other influences and try to do something different once in a while, too." Of course, in many cases, the bands STILL don't bring anything original, and the label is just there to make them look smart, but I want to stress that in most of those cases, it has nothing to do with trying to be "prog," per se.

On the other hand, I'd be happy to provide a list of "indie" bands who do exhibit progressive tendencies, many of whom could be included on this website, and many others who already are. People tend to be too black-and-white when it comes to genres; a bit of open-mindedness never hurt anybody, and those of you who bring such insight to this thread as "indie sucks" are surely missing out on a diverse range of great bands.

Ty1020 wrote: Since when were either of those bands considered indie, though? Radiohead is maybe close with their "alternative rock" label, but Coldplay is the very definition of a major label MTV radio-friendly pop-rock band.

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - August 10 2007 at 02:00

I don't know. Whenever I hear a band that is considered indie, it seems to have a very irritating simplicity and sound that I just can't see being called prog at all. The Arcade Fire, for example. When the same chords are being played throughout the whole song with no change... yeah.

Why can't indie, punk or emo bands be labeled prog? If some jazz rock artists, metal, folk, and electronic artists can be labeled prog, why can't they do the same? I've heard modern bands that sound like those 3 "genres" and still have prog rock qualities in their music.

Senseless generalization, that's all I see when reading the first post.

ProgBagel wrote: I know what you mean...there just bands that suck and just try to be different....plain and simple.

That's mean.

Equality 7-2521 wrote: The T wrote: And we'll help when we add some bands to these website.... as we're so respected in the prog realm, it will be easy for indie bands that sound barely similar to others lited here to say "hey! we sound somewhat like band X, they're in PA, hence we're true prog rockers!"   We already have Indie bands here. Fans of the genre will claim Sigur Ros and The Decemberists as their own. Indie is a vague genre with sort of the same Prog/progressive distinction that we have in ours. There's bands who are Indie in the sense of the sound and bands who are indie in the sense of being independent. Most progressive bands tend to be independent also and here's were the confusion comes in. Plus many Post-Rock bands draw influence from Sonic Youth which are gods amoung Indie fans creating further dispute.   We haven't added any Indie bands to the archives except arguably The Decemberists, but they certainly have their full blown prog songs so I don't think there's many worries.

The T wrote: Well... I said that indie=suck is not a rule... but when you mention The Icelandic Ros....   The Decemberists indie? Come on! Thay may HAVE BEEN indie, but since when is an band released by EMI/CAPITOL "indie"?    INDIE is NOT a genre.... it's just INDEPENDENT music, hence, unknown, unsigned music... The music industry tries to sell you the idea of "indie" music as a genre.. it's not genre, it has no specific format, musical elements, etc... It's indie because at some point it was underground and the music industry moguls want the people to associate that band with that time in the band's career to create an specific market, the "indie" market... But they've managed to create a music genre based more on economics and indutry reasons than on musical ones.....INDIE is just independent... If you take the bait and start categorizing music as "indie" as if it was a musical genre, OK, but it's not... it's more of an "attitude-releated movement by music bands" than a musical genre....   Man how do people destroy music when they create genres just based on popularity and being signed to a big record label....

Indeed , in a few years progressive has stopped being a dirty word and almost becoming a quality and is even being used by groups who wants to distnguish them from the masses of other by saying they're more worthy by going deeper!

Proletariat wrote: unicorn coffee wrote: The easy answer is that myspace's given genres dont give you many choices, and the ones they do, nobody uses-- so it's quite difficult to describe a post-rock band for instance, and the band may end up using the term "progressive" But post-rock is progressive, why not.

Yeah, I use experimental/ambient/progressive to describe a post-rock band on myspace.

Ghost Rider wrote: And then, don't forget that many people don't distinguish between 'progressive' and 'prog' as we tend to do here. Therefore, they  may think that, if their music contains elements that don't belong to the mainstream, they can be automatically called 'progressive'.

I've seen many homepages of those kind of bands and they usually rather call themselves "experimental" than "progressive" ... not even Coheed and Cambria try to "claim" their prog status.