How to define and classify "Progressive Rock"?

And to justify that comment you could say that Calling All Stations & We Can't Dance aren't Symphonic Prog. End of debate!

Concerning the two previous ways, this is what I've written about them in this thread before (p.16):

"I can tell that by now I'm in doubt about what to find being the best use of the term Progressive Rock, and I may become 

in favour of the double way you use, but which would be though:

1. A less including one, much similar to RYM's, which I guess is best corresponding to the historically and today mostly used one, 

so it can be called "Progressive Rock proper".

as a meta-genre."

And besides using "Progressive Rock" as a label, RYM employs sub-genres

Avant-Prog, incl. RIO and Zeuhl

Brutal Prog

Canterbury Scene

Neo-Prog

Symphonic Prog

While in the second case, I guess the name "Prog" will be most appropriate.

I think that the more various styles you put under the "Prog Rock umbrella", the less credible the whole construction becomes. 

Therefore and for other reasons, I find it more constructive at some point of time to talk about "Progressive Music", and that is 

also how I view ProgArchives today - as mostly a site for Progressive Music.

After second thought, it's not quite so, as I think my OP approach also can be applied when considering PR as a sum of some movements.

enigmatic wrote: ... I never understood merging different subgenres of rock and call it Progressive Rock. There is only one progressive rock aka prog-rock. 7-8 original, successful  UK prog-rock bands and their followers. Krautrock is NOT a progressive rock. Krautrock is developed by bunch of German bands and their idea was to develop the music that is different than British rock. Zeuhl is not a progressive rock, it's simply Zeuhl. Jazz-rock/fusion is not a progressive rock. Electronic prog doesn't exist. It's simply called electronic music. Psychedelic rock bands probably influenced/helped develop progressive rock, but they should not be included in progressive rock genre. Proto-prog yes, but definitely not in progressive rock.

Hi,

I tend to agree with most of this. Krautrock is not progressive rock, however, it is AN ART SCENE, and this is the part that is difficult to work on. Is there a difference between Damo and Kinski? Or AD2 (early days)? NO. And the comments that Holger (CAN) made about making music that was not Westernized, or al least influenced by what became, for the most part, commercial music. (To me this is more or less defined by a riff and/or a format!) And we know, at least, that some of the folks in CAN were quite advanced music students!

I agree with the idea of Electronic Prog not existing, and it should be merely called "Electronic Music".

"Psychedelic Rock" was much like what Krautrock was doing. You just do whatever and you don't worry about the contents or the results and in that time and place "tripping" was way more important than a song, to get you stuck in one moment instead of enjoying the whole evening ... it was, let's say ... timeless ... and many folks ventured into it, and one has to give the Fillmore and Bill Graham some credit here ... he just wanted the far out stuff, not necessarily the hit. And later in NY he wanted the Allman Brothers Band, even though they were not exactly well known, except  in one area ... and their forte? Extending the piece of music they had just as well as the West Coast folks did. However, ABB was already not quite the experimental styled band that we had heard in the West Coast, and in other places across America.

This reminds me of an article I read about the beginnings of electronic music in the very early days and how the West Coast style was VERY DIFFERENT than the East Coast style ... still very electronic, but the West Coast style was more towards the free form and tripping style than the East Coast that was thought to be more on par with a lot of academic studies. Still electronic, and progressive? YES for the time it came about, however, by the time it started simply cleaning up the sounds towards more recognizable moments and ideas, then it ended up becoming a replacement for many instruments, at which point it is hardly progressive.

The one knock on the psychedelic era, and Europe also had it -- no mistake about it!, was that the dope eventually was not given its due respect and many folks never really admitted they were ripped ... but then you hear TAGO MAGO and those folks might have had a drink, but I seriously doubted they were stoned, although Damo these days admits to toking at the time, though in that series, I am not sure he was ripped up. It tends to distort the content of the work a lot ... and then, us trying to determine it as "progressive" or not, is a serious issue ... I, personally, through improvisation, have learned that the drugs are not necessary and you can accomplish just about the same thing ... perhaps with a better focus since the drugs tend to disperse the focus for the most part, and make it difficult to keep consistent.

I have to admit, this is not an easy topic anyway we look at it. And there are a lot of comments that are neat ... I just wish we could come up with some sort of "theory of relativity" to (hopefully) be able to integrate these things better ... but have you tried "Romanticism"? ... same issue ... divided in many forms! And the only thing that is concurrent in all of them? THEY TOOK PLACE IN A SPECIFIC TIME PERIOD, and this is the case with Progressive, and tomorrow it will be something else.

I'd like to tell you, Greg, that I've been not so little inspired by your approach of using different Progressive Rock definitions

depending on the context.