In the 90's especially it's pretty obvious that although it was growing prog was very much an underground genre much the same way it was in the 80's (especially in the US). In fact as far as the over all general music climate is concerned there is no significant difference in popularity between prog in the eighties and prog in the nineties despite what some prog fans will have you believe. Sure, prog was growing in the nineties in no small part because of the internet but it was still largely(if not entirely) an underground genre with no mainstream exposure and no albums universally labelled prog(other than the seventies icons)to release albums to make the music charts.

In the mid 2000's(around 2005)all of a sudden you had albums by Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta making the charts as well as fringe bands such as Muse gaining popularity. This along with other factors such as some exposure outside of prog circles led to the an increase in prog's visibility and inevitably it's over all popularity as well. This brings us to where we are now. So because of the many prog fans that now identify themselves as such online(not just on this site but also facebook and other social media sites such as reddit)can we still call prog an underground genre? 

My answer is yes I believe it still is. However, it's not nearly as underground as it was 15,20 or even just ten years ago. It has grown a lot and would not be where it is today if not for the internet and the various enclaves within it. Sure, artists like Steven Wilson or Opeth will ocassionallly pop into the charts and attract a wider audience but for the most part prog is still mostly unknown by the larger music audience. Those really into music and investigate it beyond the well known will inevitably at least know about prog but they do not represent the average music listener. So yes it's still underground but no longer deep underground.

It's a good question, probably the most interesting topic we've had around here in a while.  

Because of technology and the cultural shifts that have occurred over the past twenty years or so, nothing is really 'underground' anymore to the extent that everything is accessible and available to anyone who cares.   If enough people decide they like something, it becomes...'popular'(?).   But even the unpopular things can still have a voice and a space, so the context surrounding what is underground vs. overground is less discernible.   Which is a good thing, I think.   In other words, no one really cares anymore what the person next to them enjoys, and that's the way it should be.  

As for prog--  yeah, I can't seeing it being any more overground than it currently is, which is to say demographically it is no more or less underground than it has ever been.

In that time period you also had major rock bands who weren't necessarily into "prog" by definition playing decidedly prog compositions: Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen and Santana, as well as jazz taking a decided rock sound with the fusion movement led by Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Jeff Beck, Pat Metheny and Billy Cobham.

Even second-tier bands like Camel, Caravan, PFM, Renaissance, Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso, Strawbs, Nektar, Amon Duul II, Van der Graaf Generator and a long list of Canterbury collectives had decent careers during that era. Not to mention Can, Tangerine Dream, Gong, Faust, Kraftwerk and the Krautrock crowd.

If anything, the golden age passed and the genre has regressed into the back alley. Marillion had platinum albums in Britain during the 80s, Yes and Rush continued to sell well, Tull had a couple gold albums in the 80s, and a couple Dream Theater and Mars Volta albums went gold in the 1990s and early 2000s. Steven Wilson isn't really even a big selling performer in relation to the folks he emulated in the 1970s.

It's a fringe niche now, really. Rock in general is fading from the market.

Just look at Rate Your Music's top 5000 list. Just in the top 100 are 16 albums that are considered prog on PA. This is a site that rates ALL music. True the classics are still the most popular but they are more popular than EVER! So NOOOOOOO prog is mainstream.

https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/all-time" rel="nofollow - Top Albums of All-time - Rate Your Music

The original poster was referring to "prog" as an underground genre. I was pointing out that, at least in the 1970s, prog was not an underground style of music; on the contrary, many bands were major arena/stadium draws and sold gold and platinum albums on both sides of the pond.

The "second tier" designation refers to the simple fact that the bands referenced sold more albums to relatives (likely out of parental or filial guilt) than to the record-buying public. Even so, the bands had nice careers in that time period, even if they often appeared as second on the bill. I should also note that I referred to the krautrock scene in a separate sentence, noting the popularity of different styles of alleged prog.

I would argue that it was even mostly underground in the seventies aside from a few bands(Yes, ELP, JT, Pink Floyd and possibly Genesis(who really weren't that big until the eighties). So even if prog was mainstream from say 71-77, it seems to me that after 78 or so prog became underground and it stayed there for a while. THe million dollar question is is it still underground? 

I rattled off numerous prog bands that had gold and platinum albums in the 70s (and everything Genesis released went gold in the States from Selling England by the Pound onward, and their first platinum was And Then There Were Three -- it's not like they were "underground" in Britain, France or the States from '74 onward), and I also indicated several non-prog bands like The Who and Zeppelin suddenly started coming out with very prog songs. Even Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath got proggy for a minute.

Prog was an actual "thing" at the time, and the difficulty of the songs, requiring elite instrumental mastery, lengthy compositions and at least a passing knowledge of classical or jazz music led to the inevitable backlash of the devolved and simplistic Punk movement by the mid 70s (helped along by the music industry and NY and London t**t critics). But it's not like Prog suddenly disappeared. I went to numerous sold out prog concerts at major venues in the late 70s (Floyd, Tull, Genesis and Yes).

P.S. I guess what I am saying is that "prog" was an acceptable part of the average rock fans diet in the 70s. Experimentation, as evidenced by the rise and popularity of jazz-fusion or the Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead playing 10 or 20 minute long improvisations was part of the listening process. 

It's the reason why a Yes album with 3 songs goes multi-platinum, or Tull's Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play can go to #1 in the States, or that Queen can release the 6 minute long "Bohemian Rhapsody" and sell a million singles, or Led Zeppelin had fans drooling over the 7 minute long "No Quarter" or the 8:37 long "Kashmir". Hell, even "Stairway to Heaven" was over 8 minutes long and you'd hear it on the radio nearly every day. I remember even a 12 minute long song like Traffic's "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" got enough airplay to be voted to a Top 100 songs list by listeners for several years on FM Stations in Detroit.

In Finland there was a period from 1995-2002 when prog was more popular than in Finland at the seventies. Some progalbums of made then were in the Finnish charts. But at the moment, in Finland and in the world I think prog is underground. No progalbums has been in the charts in many years as far as I know, really you can´t hear any prog in the radios (except this day when I am going to play it into my show).

RYM is much larger. Just look at the numbers. 

PA's #1 is Close To The Edge with 4104 ratings.

RYM has 13,286 ratings for it. RYM is much more popular and if you scan the entire charts and count the number of prog albums, it's quite large.

Prog is mainstream. Everyone has heard of the biggest bands within it. Have you ever met one person who hasn't heard of Crimson, Floyd, Tull, Yes, etc? I haven't.

All I'll add is that if teenagers in suburban Detroit were buying The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and Trick of the Tail as soon as they were released, it's likely they were no longer a cult band.

From my experience, Pink Floyd is a household name, as is Genesis. KC, Yes, ELP and Tull are known by people who are properly interested in music, which is a minority. Probably not even by all those.

But then I have no idea what constitutes "Underground"; this may not be that helpful a category. Despite what I just wrote, there are loads of complete genres that are even less well known than any of the prog "big 6".

In 2016 Sigur Ros headlined the Citadel festival in London. This was acknowledged as a bold choice, and the festival isn't the biggest there is, but still.

Then I don't even think that the whole of what we call "Prog" qualifies as a single genre, but that's another issue.

I have no idea.

By the way, why is it that threads come up in this forum so often in a random place? How on earth is this a "blog"? Why on the other hand do bands that nobody knows regularly announce their new music in the Lounge, which I'd have thought is for general topics? Etc.

Underground? No, it's rather a "niche", just like goth rock, abstract hip-hop or cumbia outside of South America.

The fact that some bands as Porcupine Tree or Mars Volta (not forgetting about Muse or Radiohead) are somewhat big sellers don't mean that a large audience cares about the classics (except for Genesis or Pink Floyd) or the Neo Prog (except Marillion, which still can fill some middlesized venues in Paris - not Lyon, not Marseille) or even newer bands.

Oh, and let me tell you: among most of musical circles I could make my way through (Jazz, Alt/Indie Pop Rock, so-called experimental rock), Prog is NOT seen as "cool", "fresh" or even acceptable.

I even heard a friend of mine calling the music of Flying Luttenbachers as "fascist" (I'm still trying to understand...) or my brother warning me that "there's no turning back after starting listening to Robert Wyatt"!

Hi,

In my experience, in Santa Barbara with Space Pirate Radio and Guy Guden, there was no such thing as "underground", and he played anything from here to Pluto and back, that would make PA look silly, and picky!

The issue, in my book, is that folks think that the only "validity" there is to ANY MUSIC out there is that it "sells", and that "my friend has it". And that is a very poor look at the album, the music and the artist, and it makes for a sad representation of the music. AND, to think that those folks are the ones that created the "perception" of the definition of "progressive" (and later "prog"), and decided that one set of bands were top tier and the others were bottom tier.

In my book, and experience, when you do that, you have, in effect, shut down a lot of your ability to listen to VASTLY different things, and you end up (later) comparing everything to thosse favorites, and thus making it very difficult to find, appreciate, and even listen to, anything new and interesting ... because it sounds the same as it employs a Farfisa organ, and too many bands already did that, or a Mellotron and many bands already did that!

There were at the time, and even today on the radio FM dial, a few college stations that are a bit way out there in playing this or that, and some have hard core rap, or hard core progressive, and hard core this or that, a lot of which we do not listen to or discuss. I mean, I first heard BENT KNEE on one of these places, not even on PA!

Music is everywhere, and there are all kinds. The only "underground" is what our MIND decides, since you are not in another city or area to even know that such a band was actually known in their area, and sold well. 

It's never what we think ... but we like to use that as an excuse for the truth. And I hate the thought that NY and Tokyo will always sell more than anyone else, and therefore everyone else from a small town can not possibly be progressive or play prog, because no one is listening to them ... it's just a horrible way to look at music, and we, specially here on PA, should not be doing that!

We need to respect the music better. The only underground is in our minds. Why would we even mention the bands, otherwise?

NP: XTC - Wake Up!