Why is it called progressive rock?

At the risk of sounding annoying:

 

It is possible to prove stuff without evidence, with a thing called logic or reasoning. Philosophers are probably the best example. But I'm very aware that there are none of those on this site!  ......

 

Agreed, and thank you ... and I                       ... standing ovation!

 

Sometimes I find the academic aproach scary ... you create a concept, and automatically associate the world with that concept and you don't exist as an individual, but you are a part of a "society" and here are the 3 norms that this society lives by ... I call it the Sociology 101 syndrome for undergraduates.  And the same thing with music history.

 

What is scary, is that a lot of these people are not studying the time and place and trying to find out what was in the artist's minds when this stuff was created .. SpECIALLY WHEN THESE ARTISTS ARE ALIVE ... and instead are trying to define their music by their own ideas -- not the creator's ... which is totally bizarre!!!!! .... I have written 400 poems, 3 screenplays, 4 plays, 475 foreign film reviews, 100 rock/import music reviews over 30 years ... and I have yet to find a "concept" that I can follow ... there isn't one, and in talking to many of these artists that we discuss, I have found a nice communication point ... and it has nothing to do with "musical concepts" or "poetical concepts" or "political concepts" ... it has to do with life and how you express that life and how that life lives through you and how these things wash by you ... and yes, there might be a lilttle thing or other that is visible in that person's work, like for me it would be how I don't use rhymes and how I make use of the "stage presence" or "silences" ... as a thought pause. But if all someone can do, is analyse those "presences" and "silences", I guarantee you that they are not listening or reading it ... otherwise they would know exactly how I feel and ... above all ... how I said it!  ... One other thought, the scary one for me, is me hearing people discuss some of my own work ... I get so embarassed I wanna hide ... you should have seen a class break down a portion of a screen play I wrote straight from my dreams ... they weren't even close ... but in the class in those days, and taught by Paul Lazarus (wrote for Stanley Kramer and father of the Westworld writer) ... the idealism was Hollywood color sets and pictures ... but my screenplay was not about that ... or Judy Garland -- and that is what I was being compared to!

 

Art history, music history, literature, all have been for hundreds of years, nothing but a reaction to not being able to do what a person wanted to do ... and sometimes, trying to compare that to what was before is gooing to get you crazy ... you can't compare Stravinsky to Tchaikovsky ... just like you can't compare Picasso to Degas ... the way the work was done, was even different ... and the conception was probably even more different ... you can not conceive a Guernica ... all you can do is ... just paint it and let your hand/hate for the war outside live through you  ... and Picasso did, just like Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali also did ...

 

Sometimes I wonder why colleges and universities are even out there ... is anyone out there? ... even care? We're people, too, you know!

 

I kinda think that something like this would work IF the structure is written out, academic style and such and then performed likewise.

 

However, a lot of the work that became known as "progressive" this was not the case at all ... since a lot of these things came from experimentations and improvisations and various moments were taken and made better, or simply rehearsed a little more until such a moment as the rough edges fall off ... which is the case with King Crimson's first album.

 

Not all work and material out there is "songs" ... and the compositional aspects might differ ... I suppose that we can call all the pieces that Stravinsky did "songs" since we're too lazy to consider him a composer, and we're not giving a "band" the same latitude ... to compose and know enough about what they do.

 

Somewhere along the line, the mind "drops off" and you do what feels right ... and the work follows and stays with it ... and is one of the greatest things that "rock music" and "jazz music" brought to music history in the 20th century. Music history was (and is!) boring ... and we can joke that most people here are never going to even check any of it out ... see?

 

I am thinking that if you apply what you said and start with any composer ... you are going to find the same thing over and over again ... since most of them always tend to follow a concept that is similar to the history of Western Music for the last 500 years ... now, you might consider studying other music's that are not mandated or related to the 12 harmony melodies, and you might find ... wow ... there is something else here in these things ... and the "format" for ragas, for example, is called ... no format at all, btw! You just start and go, and you don't know where it is going to take you ... and basically, what you are stating, would not allow the free form works from expanding and bringing about and helping define ... that which became known as "progressive" ... what you are doing is the opposite of the non-process that was used, and I am not sure you can measure something from a different world with the same tools from this world.

 

Separating the music from it's time and place is not a good idea. As an example, using your ideas, Picasso's Guernica, would tell you absolutely nothing about the war in Spain ... see the difference now? No one, is immune to their time and place and people around them ... and the majority of the music is a consequence of the time and place ... and folks like Stravinsky come off as different and weird, but one could say that they had the imagination to hear something else in their minds and bring it to the score ... that most people didn't when all they could do was count beats on a DAW these days.

 

Hope this helps ... people have the ability and the beauty inside ... you just have to play and not be afraid or ... your ideas or mine ... you have to learn from within what you feel is right for what you want to say ... or you are just another pop icon ... gratifying the fans! And progressive was not about that at all -- unlike a lot of ideas in this board.

 

I argue that LOGIC and EMOTIONS don't mix well...when reviewing.

 

Well I still feel like you are confusing yourself.....over analyzing something you obviously like...regardless of logic or emotion.

I prefer a review based on emotion, music is art....2+2 doesn't equal 4 in music.