ask bands how they would be classified

I think most musicians are leery of the "progressive" label (labels in general), and would find it a tad pretentious.

Artists generally hate to be categorized, in my experience. They like to consider themselves as  unique.

Hmmmm... is there a lesson there?

utah_man wrote: overall, there are some very fine lines - in some cases - as to what to include and what NOT to include under the title "Progressive Rock", hense the debatable concepts "proto-prog" & "prog-related". perhaps this has already been dealt with...but, suggestion: what about somehow contacting members of these bands (if that is possible), and simply asking THEM something like this for example;         "How would you as a former musician with Deep Purple classify your music...is it Progressive Rock or Hard Rock, or...?" yea...  I know this would be an enormous, time consuming task. but wouldn't it be interesting just to see THEIR opinions on these debatable issues ? wouldn't it be a surprise if some of these band personnel were contacted and they replied, "No, we were NOT progressive rock...we felt that we were ______________ Rock at the time"

Why would we prioritize what the band thinks over what the forum thinks? Why should their opinion be given more weight and priority simply because they created the music? I would rather choose someone who has listened to a lot of prog rock, thought about it, read about it, experieced a lot of it, talked a lot about it, over someone who only creates music they are inspired to create.

Don't fall for the fallacy that the artist actually is the best critic of his/her work. Oftentimes they are the least able to really comprehend what they are doing (which is often why they are great artists).

I think that when ever a musician says we do "<insert name of the band> music" they are pretty full of sh*t. Just bands like The Mars Volta or Sigur ros can have that term...bands that realy, not only sound like any other but are something out of this world. The worst thing is when really crappy bands try to make theyr music sound interesting by changing the name of their genre. The best example are The backstreet boys (crap if there ever was) who said their latest album sounded much like "if you take the early rap of the ´80, mix it with some Peter Gabriel music (...) added some power ballads like bands like Mortley Crue and Poison, take the beatifull melodys from REM and sing it with some R&B atittud"...wow, thats a lot of words for "marketting pop"!!!

And I also dont understant why people get offended with the term prog...specilly because how vast prog really is!