What do the people you know think of prog?

Your family, friends, anyone. Do they like it, dislike it, or just don't care about it? I played my sister a Genesis song once and she hated it, my mom and dad like some of it and dislike some too. Most of my friends refuse to give it a chance after I tell them the average length is 7 - 10 minutes. What about you?

Some are turned off by the length, but I've managed to make some people listen to ELP, Genesis, Yes etc. without complaining.

But the most outrageous comment came from my mother who said it was all the same thing, the rhythm doesn't change, it's a sequence that never changes. To which I was perplexed at how she could come to that conclusion but oh well.

My nine year old daughter loves Prog and says it is the only music that matters. My wife has no choice but to listen while in the car and likes a good bit. My friends...I think they believe I must possess some cool intelligence to follow and talk of it as much as I do. Hell, I shall take that compliment. They can't understand how can listen to such long songs without losing focus and becoming bored. Not difficult at all really.

Mostly I would say people don't care. The best aproach I have found is, when I put music in the car, mainly if I get to give somone a ride, I ask what to put on, usully people will say whatever. Then I say weird stuff may come out of my random IPod, or heavy, or just difficult and they will go whatever. Then not so easily will they complain.

A little while ago some friend in FB shared an acoustic song from Aerosmith... I said it was nice, but I still liked better the original. So came the thing that it was rock and it was suposed to have a punch that was lost in the acoustic treatment. So I sugested I knew some bands that really could rock without electric guitar... to which she said it would be interesting to hear some. I sugested Led Zeppelin's "Babe, I'm gonna leave you"; Apocalyptica (which she said she already knew, and I guess liked to some extent); Corvus Corax (which was new to her and said she liked)... and from there I jumped to Van Der Graaf Generator (even though they are not really acoustic, they hardly have an electric guitar, and they rock with the sax)... the thing is she said she really liked it (I shared "The Sleepwalkers")... and said she found it kind of soft... I'm not really sure if she really heard it all or if she will ever listen to more of them, though. Still, it's fun how I went from an acoustic Aerosmith song to suggesting VDGG and not being told I was crazy.

It's always the length which makes it boring. But if you go back to the time when you got into prog, wasn't that exactly the thing you didn't really like? It took me quite some time to appreciate epics in full.
And well, there are shorter prog songs, but they tend to be less proggy.

Edited by DDPascalDD - June 11 2016 at 04:52

People are conditioned to strict formats, recall 10 seconds removed from a Heep guitar to ensure a song gets played on the radio. Odd really, first rock and pop songs are truncated then we get the notion of extended (or more accurately the original unedited version) of something.

Reminds me of a most amusing moment ages ago when in a car with a new soon to be ex a while back. Shine On was played on "classic rock" radio. Good stuff. Part 1 only. ... Literally part 1. 1.30 seconds worth. Parts 2 - 5 (expected) were omitted.

Some people like records that are the same old thing over and over (ACDC) but hearing music that is supposed to be rock that does not conform to expectations makes people react negatively. It's not surprising as most folks like the safe and familiar. Actually I'm not too different from that mind set.

As for Genesis sounding the same all the time... Eh what? Actually I doubt many people know too much about harmony (look at the Latest Zeppelin law suit for a good laugh - it used to be a net joke on Metallica riffs years ago now its a reality.

People are defined by associated culture rather than music. Once, a long, long time ago for one weekend (this was really amazing and never replicated) I managed to whistle the instrumental break in One For The Vine all the time for that one weekend. A female flat mate remarked that was a nice bit of music. Well, very true although my whistling hardly does that diamond of a piece of music justice. Nonetheless I told her the origins and upon hearing whose music it was she said it was actually dreadful. Seriously.

Trouble is prog rock does not have a pop culture identity though associated acts do e.g. metal with a prog orientation - people will think metal - not prog rock. It was always a hard sell as the record companies knew. They had to rely on people listening to music on it's own. Appalling idea. No fashion, dance or even associated drugs by which to infer some street cred type thing. Sure some associate and indulge the usual illegal tobacco but you can get that idea with anything. Worse than punk as it meant music critics might have to know something.

Which reminds me. Why the negative reviews? The press had deadlines and had to absorb content, objectively analyze, disseminate etc. Faced with Lamb Tales, APP, BSS etc It may have meant not getting to the pub and a free round in time. Going to make Yes, Genesis ELP et al pay for that one!

Prog rock is for the classical rock outliers not pop culture identifiers.

Although my wife owned a few prog records (ELP, Marillion, Yes) even before I met her she is not a big fan of it. She bought above mentioned artists because of a specific song on the album, eg. ELP - Take a pebble. She has a much more mainstream taste than I do.
My brother is a even bigger prog fan than I am and listens to stuff that is too much for me, like Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum, for example.  My kids liked it when they where younger, but now they find it old fashioned.
I played Devin Townsend in the car to a (female) work colleague and she loved it; but then she is also not that much into mainstream. She is mainly a goth fan. Another collegue once said my music reminds her of musicals. That made me truely worried

I've always been very surprised by how receptive people have been to the prog I play for them. Maybe it's because most of my friends have some sort of musical training. The strangest reaction I've ever had to playing prog for someone was one of my friends back in the day, who was a girl who had basically only listened to top 40 hits. Her first exposure to prog was Tales From Topographic Oceans. Oddly enough, she loved it instantly.

My friends still love it, although most of us are enjoying many other kinds of music as well. 

The younger set in the extended family doesn't pay it much attention.  Music doesn't seem as important to them as it was to me, but the amount of young people I know is not a huge sample. 

My sister likes some of it, Rush and Floyd I know she has albums of but for my tastes, recently she said she thought Genesis was fine, but Yes and Renaissance were weird. She'd probably hate Caravan, The Enid, or wow, she'd probably hate any neo prog. My friend who essentially only listens to hip hop always says when I tell him I'm not interested in that kind of music "but all you listen to is prog!" and I'm thinking to myself you're the one who's heard Abacab and assumes that's what prog is. Heh. And I've got a friend into prog, he likes a lot of the metal stuff but he digs Genesis and Renaissance and a lot of stuff like that. We share really obscure bands a lot.

Edited by fudgenuts64 - June 11 2016 at 12:18