Fanboyism in progressive rock

Nuke wrote: Hmm, my cliche is that I always disagree with the golden mean, and I must do so again. It isn't a balancing act. We have the inclusive snob and the exclusive snob, but one can be far more openminded than the most inclusive snob and still not be one.

Yeah, I think that I oversimplified it by using the term "balancing act" and the best way to sum it up is that there's a difference between openmindedness and "openmindedness". Like that humorous list I linked to shows, a lot of the people I called inclusive snobs have surprisingly formulaic taste. (probably the same people who in the 1980s sneered at anyone who didn't care about reggae!)

SonicDeath10 wrote: Everything you said took the words right out of my mouth. I hate how so many prog fans are like "Oh, this is JUST pop, it's stupid" as if it was really easy to write a compact, catchy melody with memorable riffs and strong playing. It isn't a sin to play pop: in fact, I think Rush was at their best when incorporating huge elements of pop into their music, and anybody that thinks that Yes doesn't have huge pop influences is a fool. Pop is just as vital and important a form of music as progressive, and probably even more important culturally.   I listen to a lot of prog because it's fun but some of the worst bands I've personally heard were prog. Dream Theater for example. I can't stomach that bloated bullsh*t. Same with Queensryche. Give me Renaissance any time. At least they had a good singer. sh*t, give me ABBA. They had two great singers.   The important criteria for any music should be whether it's GOOD not whether it has fifteen complex movements with seventeen keyboard solos and one hundred and fifty six instruments playing counter melodies at all time. That can be good. But it can also be really bad. Behold the Arctopus bad.

I agree with you completely. In this view there is something that i myself think is extremely beautiful, and which i think many prog listeners share. Dream Theater is a good example. I haven't really seen a five or even a four star rating on a Dream Theater album for a while, and this is because they just lack that what good pop actually has, i call it "catchiness". This should be a lesson to all prog bands, not to forget that while the music can be complex and skillfully hard it should still appeal to the ear in the way that you want to listen to it over and over again. I'm sorry DT fans, but i know only a few of DT songs that i have wanted to listen twice in a row. If we compare most of DT:s work with poppish prog songs like Rush Limelight or Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here, DT fails to deliver in the way these two songs do, even if they are simple and easy. What i earlier regarded as beautiful is, that i think most prog listeners see this point. This is in my opinion a very wide and objective view, and i cannot really see how one could be more objective.

Nuke wrote: I think you are on to something, but maybe you take it too far. Cachiness is not required to make good music by any means. I love lots of avant garde music that is not catcy at all. The problem with a lot of dream theater is that they are writing as if their music was meant to be catchy. I mean, their music is very strongly melodic, sung with classic rock falsetto vocals, played completely cleam and at a good tempo for pop music. Basically, my point is that Dream Theater have a lot of the stylings of pop music, but they don't write good pop music, so those stylings just go to waste and oftimes make the music more tedious.

My point exactly. But i would have to disagree slightly on the topic of lack of catchiness in "hard" music as avant garde. Gentle Giant for me was a good example. I started understanding their music at the same moment as i found something "catchy" in them(The chorus of Knots for example). What i'm now realising is that "catchiness" is for me the same as just music that i like, how about that!. Well this could go into semantics, but i agree with your point on DT.

^^ I'm from NZ and yes, there are some New Zealand prog bands... but not many.

Oh, and I don't listen to Hip Hop or Reggae.

Welcome to the Archives, good to have another Kiwi onboard.

Nuke wrote: Paragraph7, even though gentle giant is possibly "catchy," consider one of the soundscapes by robert fripp (gates of paradise, the outer darkness, for example), or modern classical works like Schoenberg's violin concerto. There is no catchiness to those songs, yet I consider them to be utterly fantastic.

I hear you. It is very likely that i just haven't stumbled across music that i like which wouldn't be catchy. But could there on the other hand be a possibility that because of those works of Fripp etc. do not show clear catchiness, the catchiness is "found" when one just likes them as a whole? My point is, it's maybe just a matter of how we ourselves have defined what is catchy and what is good music. To me there's not much of a difference.

Deathrabbit wrote: I think prog actually lacks fanboys in comparison to other genres. Doesn't make it less annoying when you come across a die-hard in the prog realm, but if anything we are way too apologist for liking what we like. It's like some people seem ashamed of prog and  feel the need to bring up all the stuff outside the genre that they listen to (that's happened several times in this thread already, btw.) Even with prog artists, I see this. They will predominately list influences coming from other genres in album sleeves, but refuse to name those that are obviously closer to home. I think in the end it's because prog is a really, really small niche genre so three main things happen 1) The progger gets an intense persecution complex and responds by attacking all other genres. 2) The progger starts trying to branch out to other genres in order to be able to relate to a lot more music enthusiasts. 3) The progger realizes music is just a hobby and therefore learns not to sweat where his tastes place him in the music community. As always, the above 3 choices are abstractions and most of us are fractional compositions thereof. I'd say I'm about equal parts of all 3. Seriously, though, never ever have been on online web community where there has been so much infighting over trying to have a rosier outlook towards other communities. Edit: I will say this, I do think there's some music with an indefensible lack of substance and quality. It's a minority, but unfortunately very well publicized one. If this statements makes you mad, then boo hoo, so what? I have an opinion, it happens.

Fanboyism as described by the OP is a natural phase for a lot of people. A lot of people care so much about this thing called progressive rock that they blind sight a lot of music around them. I used to be this way.  I remember when I first started listening to progressive rock, I started with listening to Dream Theater in 2000 and I was obsessed with them for about 2-3 years.  I collected their discography over the course of that time and became familiar with all of their material. I'd also defend them every time they were mentioned negatively.  I wanted to spread the Dream Theater gospel as I call it now :P. Which is what it becomes for some people, not just Dream Theater of course but anything that you listen to that you can't immediately find fault with.

The cool thing about Dream Theater wasn't their music, but their musical connections.  From DT I was able to listen to bands like, Transatlantic, Flower Kings and Spock's Beard. Their influences led me to King Crimson, Genesis, Yes, ELP, JT etc... The more bands I found the less interested I became with Dream Theater. I found that they were the tip of the ice burg.  The thing I found at the base of the ice burg surprised me. Contemperary Classical music, a whole lot of jazz, afro-cuban music, Indian/raga music.  Instead of progressive rock being the home, it became the vehicle to these different, yet deep avenues of music.  Something that pop music doesn't do at all.

Fanboyism in music is a part of an adolescent phase in developing a healthy and mature passion for music.  I've listened to a lot of music since I first started listening to Dream Theater.  My approach to other people's taste in music has changed a lot since then and instead of having to defend the bands I listen to I can be satisfied in the fact that I found music that I'm passionate about.  Then I can let the music "speak for itself" on it's own marits.  Artists and bands that are currently in heavy rotation are Devin Townsend (my new DT :P), Mum,  The Decemberists, maudlin of the Well and Carl King (Sir Millard Mulch, Dr. Zoltan).

jimbrown87 wrote: Fanboyism as described by the OP is a natural phase for a lot of people. A lot of people care so much about this thing called progressive rock that they blind sight a lot of music around them. I used to be this way.  I remember when I first started listening to progressive rock, I started with listening to Dream Theater in 2000 and I was obsessed with them for about 2-3 years.  I collected their discography over the course of that time and became familiar with all of their material. I'd also defend them every time they were mentioned negatively.  I wanted to spread the Dream Theater gospel as I call it now :P. Which is what it becomes for some people, not just Dream Theater of course but anything that you listen to that you can't immediately find fault with. The cool thing about Dream Theater wasn't their music, but their musical connections.  From DT I was able to listen to bands like, Transatlantic, Flower Kings and Spock's Beard. Their influences led me to King Crimson, Genesis, Yes, ELP, JT etc... The more bands I found the less interested I became with Dream Theater. I found that they were the tip of the ice burg.  The thing I found at the base of the ice burg surprised me. Contemperary Classical music, a whole lot of jazz, afro-cuban music, Indian/raga music.  Instead of progressive rock being the home, it became the vehicle to these different, yet deep avenues of music.  Something that pop music doesn't do at all. Fanboyism in music is a part of an adolescent phase in developing a healthy and mature passion for music.  I've listened to a lot of music since I first started listening to Dream Theater.  My approach to other people's taste in music has changed a lot since then and instead of having to defend the bands I listen to I can be satisfied in the fact that I found music that I'm passionate about.  Then I can let the music "speak for itself" on it's own marits.  Artists and bands that are currently in heavy rotation are Devin Townsend (my new DT :P), Mum,  The Decemberists, maudlin of the Well and Carl King (Sir Millard Mulch, Dr. Zoltan).

That is an interesting perspective, and backed up by my observation about how I used to be like that but grew out of it at some point.

Then again, I've had friends whom I listened to lots of music with who never really were like that either even when I was... maybe it's more of a personality type thing? I've changed a lot over the last couple of years at a quicker pace than ever, same thing with my taste in music. You could suggest that introverted people have very strictly defined tastes and extroverted people have wider tastes, that would certainly be consistent with how I've changed but on the other hand I've met enough exceptions to that pseudo-thesis to say that would be an extremely hasty generalization.

A better explanation could be that the way you listen to music usually changes fundamentally as you get older, even though it's the same music you like there are more things you begin paying attention to.

For example, I no longer really like anything completely uncritically but at the same time I'm wary of having a completely academically detached attitude to music because I went through that kind of phase too and that was not much fun at all. This isn't really a balancing act since reducing it to the golden mean would be simplifying it into polar opposites... sometimes you need more to start again from scratch with only some really basic principles of aesthetics.

You could also synthesize the best lessons to be drawn from the various perspectives upon music with the "glue" holding it together being the principle that it's the context (personal, historical, subcultural/genre-related) that really matters. Right now that's more or less the opinion I have.

Good post, Toaster Mantis!  The link cracked me up, as I move in social circles that could be described as hipster-y, and yes, that was pretty spot-on.  I think I have an entire post or blog entry about this in me that I'll have to write down at some point. 

I agree this is usually a symptom of youth.  I think for many (I know it was for me) music was/is a big part of the development of identity, and sometimes that becomes conflated.  People "defend" their music in ways that seem incredibly personal, and that's because it is.  Often, when I was in school, if a person had a major change of aesthetic it was directly related to the associated music.   Going back to school in September was always interesting for me, to see who had become a punk, goth, metalhead, etc., over the summer.  So I think in that context it makes more sense when people react emotionally to someone saying "That band is crap!", because they are probably hearing on some level, "You are crap!"

Okay, developmental psychology aside, I think genres which exist outside of mainstream acceptance tend to have more of this fanboy syndrome (FBS?) because the genre is to some degree marginalized.  Punk, metal, prog, while all of these forms have had moments of mainstream commercial success by and large they tend to exist apart from it.  Comparatively, something like jazz (which has many similar thematic and conceptual approaches to some prog) has a degree of cultural acceptance and even approval, so while jazz fans might experience similar marginalizing of their genre, it is still paid lip service as a valuable pursuit.  Say you like jazz to a non-jazz fan and chances are they'll nod solemnly, as opposed to saying you like prog.  If the person even knows what that means they'll be more likely to go "I HATE that stuff."  That can lead to defensiveness, for sure.

It is interesting, though, how genres tend to evolve into more conservative forms of themselves.  With the development of any new music, almost immediately people begin to codify and describe it.  This is human nature and how we tend to relate to ideas.  Ironically, while this gives a sense of cohesiveness to a general artistic approach like punk, metal, prog, it does then limit what can (easily) be accomplished within that framework.  A friend of mine was in a fairly influential independent punk band in the 90's, and they were told by the premiere punk review publication at the time that their album wouldn't be reviewed because it had a cello on it, and was therefore not punk.  This obviously was based in a very essentialist idea of what punk music was, and of the same cloth as the kinds of prog fanboy behaviour listed in the OP.

I think, with time, you can develop a more sophisticated appreciation for the music you associate your likes with, and that allows you much more opportunity to discover new things you might enjoy.  Part of this comes with having a sense of humour about yourself, which then removes the need to defend or codify things quite so vigorously. 

I've come to this far too late, but I'd like to throw my two cents in - seen as this is one of the most interesting, stimulating threads I've seen in a long time. Kudos to TM for starting it.

First of all, I don't know if (personally speaking, of course) I would use the word 'fanboy' to define the attitudes you listed in your initial post - though I'd definitely employ the 'fan' part of it, as a short form of 'fanatic'. More than simple fanboyism, which is usually manifested in the ways you mentioned (completionism and so on), I'd say it is an extreme form of elitism, or even 'superiority complex'. Other groups require their members  to 'pledge their allegiance'  by wearing a sort of uniform to signal their identity as a member of the group (see the 'are we a subculture?' thread for more on this subject). Prog goes about it in different ways, more subtle perhaps, as you pointed out in your list.

Now for my comments:

People insisting that other sub-genres of rock'n'roll don't have proficient musicianship or ambitious concepts at all.

Very common on this forum, much less so on other discussion boards I know. I don't want to sound ageist, but generally this attitude is typical of younger prog fans. Those of my generation or older generally show a much broader outlook, having been exposed to a lot of different music genres in their lifetime.

Treating progressiveness or stylistic complexity as something that's good in itself rather than as a means to an end.

Same as above. There are prog albums which are next to unlistenable just because the musicians think changing time signature every five seconds is the best thing since sliced bread - instead of realising that the end product sounds like a shapeless, directionless mess.

Endless nitpicking over what's "really" progressive and what isn't, which starts to look like an excuse to dismiss artists and albums out of hand if they don't live up to some arbitrary and possibly revisionistic standard of what progression really is.

This site is living proof of that, with some members displaying positively Taleban-like attitudes to everything that does not conform to their idea of prog - no matter how authentically progressive it may be.

Whenever someone doesn't like progressive rock, it's treated as a sign of either some malicious conspiracy or stupidity on part of whatever group of people that's perceived as not appreciating progressive rock enough.

See the plethora of threads about how everyone else hates prog - as if people lost sleep in trying to devise ways to put prog down. The truth is, most people will choose the path of least resistance when it comes to music, books, or movies - which means, they will go for stuff that does not tax the brain too much. If things were different, Hollywood would have gone bust long since.

Only really liking music from other genres (e. g. jazz, metal) on the condition of how much it resembles (or is influential to) progressive rock.

See those who state that they don't like Band X because they are not prog enough, or those who have to insert the word 'proggy'  when discussing a non-prog band or artist in the General Music section. And then, of course, how to forget those who see prog in every band or artist they like, and therefore call for their addition to the database?

In general having a very "sacred cow" attitude to artists and albums that are seen as classics of the genre.

This is not always true, as proved by the numerous ELP bashers, or by the 'modern vs classic prog' diatribe that is alive and well on this and other site.

Thanks again for the great topic! We need more of the same sort.


Edited by Raff - September 04 2009 at 07:33