Worst prog remarks from friends

I had bunch of friends at my place last weekend and one of them told me:  "the only thing which sucks in spending the evening here is that we have to listen to your music".


What really bugs me, is that most people almost like the music until a certain part of a song starts which they do not like immediately and then tell me that the band is crap


Once I decided to build a playlist of songs from most of the bands I have in my IPod, some which I knew my friends liked. It was something like 60 songs and contained bands from sixties to modern, from really mellow to the heviest (Death, Meshuggah, Strapping Young Lad) and from most styles of "prog".... Later in the evening my friends (almost collectively) started complaining that I should change the music and stop playing the same sounding crap . From that point onwards I stopped ignoring their comments about music in general

Friend of mine who's a drummer:

Yes's Close To The Edge Organ Solo:"Wtf is this??"

The drums right after the organ part: "Why is he drumming so fast, he could use 8's instead of 16's"

Friend of mine who doesn't listen to music anyway:

Focus' Hocus Pocus: "Wtf is he yodeling?"

To anything that has a man with a high voice: "Is he gay or something?"

Usually I just get "this sucks" or "it's repietitve"


A lot of my "friends" say they dislike commercial music. They listen to, amongst others:
Greenday, HIM and Blink 182.

My father dislikes King Crimson, he thinks the music's too "nervous".


Edited by Rosescar

Often when I put on a CD, peole read the song list and they say someting like :
Hey I don't know any of these songs. Why did you say it was good?

That's frustrating! They don't even give the music a chance.

my brother always says "you cannot play something like real music?"

Manunkind wrote: A very intelligent (no irony intended) friend of mine about any kind of more avant-garde music (a lot of prog included) and art in general - "I call stuff like this sh*t sculptures".

She likes some prog, though, and she isn't the only of one my friends who do - and those who don't like prog in general are still quite respectful towards it.

Two of my best friends had very similar tastes to me in regular rock (Led Zeppelin, Queen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica).
I decided to push them a little further, and started talking about Gentle Giant and how they squeezed a xylophone solo in Knots. After making them listen to it (twice!) I got (aprox. translation):

"Seriously, you've gone mad."
"I'm pretty sure this is the worst song I've heard in all my life. I don't know how they had the nerve to release it"

I realised then my proggin' would be more lonely than I hoped.

"do i have to be patient to like this?"

"It's so depressing and it all sounds the same"
"It's nothing but noise!"
"It's nothing but sound effects!"
"Why can't they keep it under three minutes?"
"If they can't do it in three minutes, then it's not worth listening to."
"It sounds like druggie music."
"That's weird!"
"I'm not sure where you're going with this."
"Makes me want to jump off a bridge."

Of course, watching people with their mouthes wide open unable to make a comment is amusing to me.

Ugh...

My one friend only listens to music that "rocks" which means (for him) Korn, System of a Down, Linkin Park and other terrible new bands that can only play semi-heavy crappy halfway metal rap.  He asked me one time if I ever wanted to kill myself because the music I listened to was so bad. 

Another time he said some RHCP song was good.  I said it probably wasn't as good as A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers, which I heard for the first time the day before.  He said that if it was by one of my "60 minute song bands" it probably sucked.

He also says that the only good bands are the ones on the radio, because they are the only ones that people like, therefore they are the only good ones.  WRONG.

Let's see.

Another friend of mine claims to like prog, but he only listens to Pink Floyd and even then its only Dark Side, WYWH and the Wall, which are their most commercial releases.

He also said that Peter Gabriel sounds exactly like Phil Collins.  Like their solo music.  He said that they both play poppy crap, which is true as far as Phil goes.  However, as poppy as Gabriel gets, he is nowhere near as poppy as Phil is... at his least poppy.

Another time before school I was passing the headphones around which were blaring out A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers, and one said, "How can you like this?" and I said "You just don't like it because it's not commercial and innaccessible."  Another friend said, "No, it's probably just because it's crappy." 

I have another friend who claims to be open minded, because he listens to like every genre (Rap, rock, metal, punk, blues, reggae, jazz, etc)  However, I told him that with all of those, you know what you're getting and it's more or less accessible.  (The deepest he will wade into prog is some Rush, PF, Schizoid Man, and some Tull.)  He said that he hated Storm by GY!BE as soon as he heard it, and as far as post rock goes, that's one of the most likeable and accessible songs. 

Another one- I was playing Gates of Delirium as part of some in class project, and one kid said that we couldn't listen to metal for 20 minutes straight.  That was dumb.

My friends are morons when it comes to music, especially since they have a gnat's attention span and expect the goodness of songs to be present from the first second you here it.  Luckily I have one friend who likes prog, he comes to this site.  Posts here too, I think.

Edited by Flying Dutchman

Church Organ solo during CTTE - My mom askes, "Did somebody die?"