prog bounds (some thought involved!)

CCVP wrote: Never heard of Pronk? Give the Cardiacs a try. Ok Shakespeare, ill explain to you how i cannot conceive progressive punk. The world is made of opposites, which are the exact opposite of each other (a and non-a) and fight to destroy each other and, at the same time, are dependent of each other to exist, like the positive need the negative to exist and light needs the darkness to exist.  This theory is called dialectic, and was conceived by the Greek philosopher Socrates (if  i am not mistaken) and used  during most of the western civilization as it was, but during the the XVII and XIX centuries it was "reborn" by Hegel's philosophy, its followers and Marx. Their theories are far too extensive and far to hard to be shorten in such a small space, but, according to the historical  materialism, this dialectic always happened and forever will in every level of the society, culture and system of beliefs (if you wish to know more, try reading Marx and TRY Hegel; i mean TRY Hegel because its theories are far to complex and obscure, being hard even to philosophers to really understand him). Knowing this, lets go to the facts: progressive music emerged during the XIX and the XX centuries due to musical conformity and homogeneity, basically. Same thing happened when progressive rock emerged, and it very fast became a mass culture thing (just see the top 10 list of the 70's: the top sellers where almost all prog or prog related and the repercussion of prog rock in popular culture: pink floyd's dark side of the moon and Mike Oldfield's tubular bells). However, prog rock had some problems: 1st a lot of bands with the exact same sound (just see how many yes-like / genesis-like / pink floyd-like / etc-like bands where); 2nd too many poor "prog" bands, like journey, styx, starcastle, etc made market get saturated with low quality "prog" 3rd some bands had a kind of music simply too avant-garde / complex / difficult to be listen, what, in the end, pushed away many people from prog 4th the change of the focus of the general culture on the late 70's, demanding some kind of music that where more "straight to the point" and spoke the language of the of the musically uneducated population (i don't mean here that people that listen to prog is "better" that everybody else, just that, to listen to some kinds of music you need to have some education, like classical music, progressive music, rock, etc, and  on early punk that education  was not needed, just like you don't need any kind of education to listen to 50 cent sing speak make sounds with his mouth about having sex with as many women as possible or getting rich or die trying) and talked about the urges of the new generation (like getting sedated, not going to school, wanting to get drunk and say f**k you to everybody: you, me, the Queen and God, just like the ramones and the sex pistols said, skilfully, on their songs). Because of that, prog rock slowly died a horrible and painful death into the 80's, to "reborn" only on the early 90's, but not as strong as it was, just like happened to punk and just like will happen to metal, etc. Conclusion: because of being the main actor on  the fall of prog and its awful music, i think that punk has nothing to do with progressive rock as both were opposites of a dialectic relation during the 70's (the prog and the non-prog[punk]). PS: before you guys crucify me, i must say that  prog rock never really, REALLY died, but that is a unique characteristic of our post-modern society: to keep "defeated" actors of the dialectic process alive, but that life is nothing more than an artificial life supported  by the unnatural demand of the people that participated of that movement. This is nothing more than a shallow and short explanation to the process that we live today on our post-modern world to keep things that we like "alive" artificially, just like a person that where on a coma and woke up: that person is alive, but will never be as strong, as intelligent nor as eager as it was before the coma (usually! every rule have its exception!).

try Inner City Unit (featuring Nik Turner of Hawkwind); they were progressive punk too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XdEW6tg2zg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCwcskLv2E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0qofsXXS90&feature=related (great video, by the way lol)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCRH7_nTVIk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO4ZjKNcutE&feature=related

Admin edit: fixed quoting errors.


Edited by Angelo - March 23 2008 at 05:22

(watch out with funeral doom - I was on a huge kick for that music about two years ago, and I found that most releases are, um, bedroom metal, often with ill-disguised midi parts. very few releases strike a balance between TOO lo-fi even for someone like me who doesn't care about production, and too slick to menace.)

CCVP wrote: Besides, i left a hint for the progressive electronic team i my 1st post. FOR GOD SAKE FOLKS FROM PROGRESSIVE ELECTRONIC TEAM, JUST TAKE A LOOK IN DAFT PUNK'S DISCOVERY AND HUMAN AFTER ALL ALBUMS!

No screaming in the blog section - all caps are impolite. Maybe you should PM one of the electronics team members or post the band in Suggest new bands. Those ways are more effective than this - you can't expect the team members to monitor every thread on the forum for suggestions, especially if they are as busy a you mentioned yourself.

Now carry on....

Laplace, some boundaries of progressive rock/metal are indeed not clear. Going back some post here, when i was talking about the dialectic process of development of the world, you can see why: music had always two tendencies, to be complex and to be simple. For this to be better understood, lets go back a few decades before the conception of progressive rock, but still on the trail of rock (here we can really go back to the birth of music itself, when mankind tried to reproduce the singing of the birds and used logs, rocks and everything else that was in it's reach to make some sound, but ill wont do that, because that would be useless to the explanation and would demand more research that this post needs), when jazzy big bands played endless nights on the 40's to the youngsters. During the 50's, rock music was born from the "black's" tones (blues and jazz) and translated to the hateful and racist white America as a "white" music, made by white musicians being everything "white and clean" (a period of rock that i hate because of the hypocrisy and the prejudice of other kind of music just because they were made by "blacks"; that really get my nerves ).

Anyway, here we can witness the 1st process of the complex music (jazz) loosing its space on the simpler music ( early rock and roll). after that we had a log period of simple music (almost all 50's and early 60's) and then, by the 2nd half of the 60's we see the mainstream music slowly getting more complex until we hit the jackpot with prog rock .
From the late 70's on we see another process, more abrupt and furious than the previous, that the complex music is substituted by the simpler music (mainstream media people! don't crucify me here).

After the shock cause by punk and its fierce opposition to it all, on the early 80's comes a process that makes music complex again just as abrupt and furious as punk made music simple; here we have the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands.


OK, knowing that metal is USUALLY (every rule have its exception, and metal we got a lot of exceptions on this case) a complex kind of music, just like progressive rock, and , with the mix of both genres at the late 80's and early 90's, creating progressive metal, we got a genre of extremely complex music.
 Well, you may be thinking here: WHAT THE HELL THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BOUNDARIES OF PROGRESSIVE ROCK / METAL? And i would say: calm down i am getting there !
Since we don't have a definition of what is exactly  prog and what is exactly metal, we usually guide ourselves with some general characteristics of the genre (here genres) and here the main characteristic  to identify what is prog metal and what  is not are 2:  to see the complexity/technicality of the music, but that alone is not essential, since we got technical heavy metal bands also and how close they sound to traditional bands / how well their music progresses, how well the music is developed. Since man is not a cold heartless machine, much of its judgment, no matter how impartial it may be, will always be guided by his beliefs and culture. If the people who choses which progressive metal band enters the web site and which does not, well, this is a problem that can never be solved and will only depend of who is in charge at the time being.

He he, Caio, you sure know how to manipulate people. However, I urge you to take care of this one yourself, if I had to fill in every request that I get similar to this one, I would not be able to moderate any more - or is that what your after?

I brought them up to the Electronic Prog team for you and they said flat out "no way." 

Sorry. 

Laplace, i have been thinking about these lens you mentioned, but i found the job too frustratingly endless, since i could not trace a clear line between anything.

However, i found a better way to do this: trace lines and then include bands. I have Came to 8 different ones:
1° Essentially progressive bands (RIO / Avant Garde)
2° Traditional / Milestones of progressive rock (Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Tangerine Dreams, Jethro Tull, etc)
3° Progressive bands (bands that reproduce traditional progressive bands today and neo-prog bands)
4° Highly influenced by prog (Dream Theater, Supertramp, Rush, Death, Opeth, Phideaux, etc)
5° Bands that were prog in some moment / bands that influenced prog
6° Bands that have some prog characteristic
7° Bands that remember prog
8° Bands that are not prog



PS: i had drawn a circle, but i could not upload it.

Pnoom! wrote: Err... Daft Punk, as awesome as they are, are in no way prog.  Not even remotely.

well, i disagree. I think that Daft Punk could be put in the level 6 or 7 of my classification, because i DO think that they had some kind of prog characteristic on Discovery, but i had come to the conclusion that that is something completely subjective and that i can't explain. Its just a feeling, a hint.

mithrandir wrote: its kind of silly to say that there isn't a Progressive nature in Punk music.... that would seem to come from someone who knows very little about the subject, I'll even say that Punk in its infancy started out with a restless spirit that didn't adhere to the norms, Pere Ubu, Television, Chrome, The Screamers, very different Punk bands there were creating something fresh and new, and like someone mentioned did we forget about all the great Post Punk bands? like Cabaret Voltaire, Wire, PiL, Family Fodder, Swell Maps etc....sure it isn't Progressive Rock, but experimental and pushing boundaries? of course...then you have your passage through Hardcore with key bands like Black Flag and the Minutemen all the way through the fusion of Metal and Hardcore which you get so many bands that are now here listed inthe Archives today, then again perhaps Ive missed the point on whats being discussed entirely here,

Daft Punk is a band and not some kind of Punk sub-genre. Guess we were not very clear sorry if the thread misguided man

laplace wrote: ignore CCVP o:)

damn, i feel so lonely now . . .