It has ' A Day in the Life' on it. I don't care if it's prog.

It is a question of how you define "prog". It is most definitely an important album for the development of prog and a turning point in rock music.

You could ask the same question about the Beatles' "White Album". If pushed to say which one of the two mentioned albums is prog I would choose this double album, but both are reasonable candidates.

It does in my opinion not make sense to ask the question "What was the first prog album"? It was a gradual development, and any choice is absolutely arbitrary (though I know that many, if not most, would say it is ITCOTCK).

The.Crimson.King wrote: Peter wrote: The.Crimson.King wrote: Peter wrote: Do you WANT it to be prog? Then it is, when you listen to it. This is the single best definition of prog I've ever heard.  Listen to the music, if you want it to prog, then it is for you and that's all that counts Yes, the perception/reception and fine classification of art (treating it like science, math, or sport--bleah!) is SO subjective. Unless one is tasked with confining artists and albums (songs and maybe song sections too!) into various blurry, overlapping and multiplying boxes and straitjackets here, then who gives a flying FECK how someone who is not you and can't affect what you hear or feel categorizes it? If you think A Day in the Life dovetails nicely with Supper's Ready, which seques superbly into Strawberry Letter 23, then make your danged playlist and ENJOY, man!! Don't overthink it and pull the butterfly's wings off--you'll kill it! You are the boss of your own stereo, ears, and opinions. You colour, bend, and group it all in your own way as it comes in, anyway! JEEEEEZUS!!!! If you thought that was good, o Crimson King, I also have a perfect, one-size-fits-all record review that no one can object to: "Good, if you like it." Well played   What I find disturbing about the obsessive need to classify and bucket-ize prog (and really all music these days) into all these subgenres and arguments over who fits where, is that it leads people who dislike a sub-genre to never even try a band because they've been lumped into Indo-Neo-Eclectic-Post-Math-Folk-Fusion-Prog.  How much great music never reaches our ears because of arbitrary classifications that we pay attention to rather than the actual music itself?  There are many bands on PA who could have been equally at home in at least 3 sub-genres; yet because of the bucket they were put in are likely not exposed to anyone not into that particular bucket.  After a couple of years debate, my band Mutiny in Jonestown finally was approved in Neo, though it was suggested along the way that it could fit in Space/Psych, Heavy, Crossover and Eclectic as well.  From reading the forums, I know there are many people who won't touch Neo with a long stick, and since that's where my band ended up, well those people likely will never give it a listen and judge it on it's merits rather than the bucket it finally landed in and that's sad. And speaking of "Mr. One Size Fits All", I think this FZ quote applies to enjoyment of not only prog, but all music as well: “The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's sh*tty."

Hold on there, little doggies! I believe that any mature person will listen to what ever moves them, regardless of genre as we all grow out of  the high school mentality. (Well, most of us! )

Peter wrote: But I want to know why others' labels of THE classic Beatles album matters to a guy sitting at home with it. And simply "prog" is almost as broad a label as "rock." It doesn't t tell you much.

And strangely, I'd like to know why some guy's opinion, whose sitting at home, matters to you.

^  Dave is right , no point in these discussions...lets close down the board and go home and listen to the music.

Well, I suppose I'm half right, as Dr Wu says. ;-) 

Yes, the board is here to discuss prog rock, but I just find myself looking at some of these "is this prog" posts and being reminded of "Solve if u r genius" posts on Facebook et al. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, but some posts seem to be put up just for the sake of putting a post up. 

Is Sergeant Pepper prog ? Well. I'm really not bothered, but it was a groundbreaking and stunningly good album, in it's day. I give it a spin every now and again and enjoy it. I'm not really worried if it's prog, progressive pop, psychedelia or whatever, to be honest. Music is art, people interpret art in different ways. One man's prog is another man's psychedelic pop. 

I compose music, and I hardly ever think "I know, I'll sit down and write dark ambient" or whatever. It's just a label. I dislike labels, I tend to think labels are invented by record companies to shift product. I suppose I'm in the Frank Zappa camp there. If you want to musically dissect Sergeant Peppers and apply music theory to it to determine what it is or isn't, fine, but to do that with any credence you have to be a musician with vast experience of the genre. It's the usual Internet thing of someone having an opinion and voicing it without the background technical knowledge to back it up. 

And it's art. You shouldn't define art by the means of science. 

So, sorry, posts like this just irritate me. You've probably noticed: I am ancient and decrepit and curmudgeonly. That's my $0.02, but probably voiced in a more constructive manner than the post above, for which apologies. 

Davesax1965 wrote: Well, I suppose I'm half right, as Dr Wu says. ;-)  Yes, the board is here to discuss prog rock, but I just find myself looking at some of these "is this prog" posts and being reminded of "Solve if u r genius" posts on Facebook et al. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, but some posts seem to be put up just for the sake of putting a post up.

Well. Perhaps I like prog rock, Steve. ;-)

Whatever that is, to be honest. It's a broad church, so I tend to listen to krautrock, space rock, psychedelia, "progressive" music. Without labelling it too much or getting all bothered about if what I'm listening to is considered "prog rock" by the masses. 

I don't, to be honest, sit there wondering whether or not I should listen to something I've not heard before, as I can just spend five seconds dipping into it, and if I like it, I like it. If I don't, five seconds wasted. 

If I do, I don't like it "because it's prog rock" or because "everyone else thinks it's prog rock" or it has a particular label on it. Music is art, art is personal preference. 

I'd like to think most people here subscribe to the same opinion, to be honest. 

To be frank, what I'm going on about is the utter banality of the question, Steve. 

^ Well that was rather harsh of me, so to make it up I'll sing you a bit of Tull that's floating around in my head:

Edited by SteveG - January 26 2018 at 11:16