When was the game up for prog rock?

^ If that was the case, prog would have been still born...

I got into prog when neo-prog was starting, so for me it has never been over. I had heard Pink Floyd, some Genesis, Kayak, Focus, Ekseption a.o. before but wasn't aware at that time of the "progressive" label (and then, if I remember well, "symphonic rock" was a more generally used label in the record stores - in the Netherlands).

But, if there is one major sign of the waning of the first prog wave, it must be that ELP album cover...

Okay I love Genesis' pop stuff but that's still hilarious! 

Punk did not kill prog, I don't see how it could have. 

It was the lack of support from labels, ridicule from the media of the time, a lot of bands honoring contracts and delivering whatever (Love Beach is such an example, also Tormato), bands asked to make their sound more accessible (Gentle Giant, ELO, Yes), some bands going on hiatus or disbanding, bands tired of their former sound (Genesis, or at least Mike Rutherford said so), musicians tired of touring needing a break.

Not that black and white...

Bingo!  I was JUST going to say "disco!"  

Why would anyone possibly think the game is up?

In case you haven't realized, once a genre is created it NEVER dies!

Yes, they still make classical music, jazz, Indian ragas!

And people make $$$ at it!

There are more prog bands in existence now than all of the 70s i would guess.

Why do so many wanna play the PROG DIED game? LOL

I think the reason punk got pitted against prog (aside from having basically the opposite musical stereotype: shorter and simpler is better!) is because 1. prog was kind of the status quo of "serious rock music" and had been for some years, and 2. punk's ethos is all about aggressively denouncing the status quo, whatever that may be. It was more timing than anything. If The Clash had somehow popped up in 1967 they would've been anti-Beatles and hippies of any sort, and if The Sex Pistols had somehow occurred in 1987 they would have been anti-Guns N Roses and anti-Bon Jovi. Prog and disco just happened to be the targets of the day when those bands hit the scene.

Hi,

I was thinking just similarly ... we've CREATED a past, by making sure that the "top five" belong to an era that is long gone, and then we seem to complain that no one has been able to break that as well since.

The whole thing has been about "changes" in the music scene, however, the one thing I would accept is that beyond the 70's the corporate control of music was much stronger than the effort of the huge bands that we love, and the result was ... that the great movement that gave us outstanding music, slowly disappeared into the past.

Today, the corporate control is not as big, but somehow, the music business and the quality of the music is still somewhat towards the ability of the corporate control material ... that were the music "scenes" that helped seem like "prog" and "progressive" died. The music, today, is too much ... the same ... and there are not a lot of great new things being shown and played. Heck, I can easily point to Space Pirate Radio compared to other "progressive" music shows, who continually play the same thing over and over again, as examples of "progressive" instead of helping show the future in music.

In this sense, a lot of the music has died since the FM stations (in America) were bought out and taken down for (supposedly) popular (crap) music!