What upset you today?

Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic

 SteveG wrote:

Why don't we just include all rock bands in PA as prog related (progressive rock is related to rock, is it not?) and end these endless prog related/not prog related discussions. It's a damn silly genre anyway and I would love to know what the person was smoking when he/she thought it up. 
 Btw, that's what upset me today.
Well. My stock answer is: because we aren't RYM.

Without changing the entry criteria (as listed on the PR category page) Prog Related has the potential of being the largest single category here and if we included all rock bands it would eclipse all the other categories added together, it would dominate the site and detract from the core activity of reviewing Prog albums by Prog bands.

A history...

Prog Related is a compromise. Between 2004 and 2006ish (before the genre teams were created and before the categories of Prog Related and Proto Prog existed) a band could be added into the archive by any Special Collaborator without discussion or evaluation. This resulted in a number of essentially non-Prog bands being added for a variety of perfectly valid reasons, such as non-Prog solo outings by members of established Prog bands, non-Prog Art Rock bands, and bands that were either influential on or influenced by Prog Rock or Prog bands in some way or other, or simply because the person adding them believed they were Prog at the time.

When it was deemed that a clean-up was necessary the Admins and Collabs had to decide what to do with these artists. Basically we had a whole bunch of artists that didn't fit in with what most people would regard as Prog Rock and in a perfect world we would have just deleted them. However, Max has a policy of not deleting bands once they have been added, so the ability to delete artists is unavailable to the Admin team, therefore the compromise solution was to create a couple of non-Prog categories for them. So in June of 2006 Brian (Garion86) wrote a brief description for a newly created Prog Related category:

 Prog Related definitionRock and Pop Bands and Artists after 1970 who were not truly “prog” (as that term is generally and broadly defined, even by the site), but who were clearly not “mainstream” or simply “rock” bands.
A wide subgenre that encompasses two kinds of bands/artist, that either consist of progressive artist that strayed away from their progressive roots into mainstream rock or were influenced by progressive rock.
Even though the music by these artists is sometimes unrelated it had things in common with prog music in that it was very structured and even adventurous, sometimes hard or heavy, sometimes mellow, strong melodies, good hooks are an integral part of most of the material. Sometimes these artists pioneered other rock genres. 
Though most of these artist can't really be considered progressive themselves, their relation to progressive music is not to be underestimated.

And the majority of artist that now reside in that category were moved over to it. Also at that time the subgenre of Art Rock was re-evaluated and, (rightly or wrongly), we ditched the term "Art Rock" completely which resulted in a few non-Prog Art Rock bands being moved into Prog Related. 

However, this appeared to give licence to continue adding those kinds of bands, so to limit the number of non-Prog suggestions (which detracts from our main task of evaluating and adding actual Prog bands) in 2007 Iván refined that definition:

 Prog Related definitionProgressive rock is not a separate universe in music, it’s a genre among many others, a voice in the chorus and as part of a biggest scenario has points of contact with other musical genres.
Prog Related is the category that groups bands and artists that:
- Without being 100% Prog, received clear MUSICAL influence of this genre, OR
- Are widely accepted as MUSICALLY influential to the development of Progressive Rock by the community, OR
- Blend characteristics of Progressive Rock with mainstream elements creating a final product that despite not being part of the genre is evident that are close to Prog.
We specify the word MUSICAL because simple performance of a determined instrument in a Prog or mainstream band is not justification enough to include an artist, no matter how virtuoso he/she may be, Prog Archives has to evaluate their compositional work because the music is what determines the characteristics of a band or an artist.
Prog Related bands are not considered part of the genre but they have contributed in some form in the development of Progressive Rock, the inclusion of a band is exceptional and only after verifying that it’s a contribution for the better understanding of Prog among the members and visitors instead of a source of confusion for the community.

But still we were inundated with suggestions for Prog Related because clearly Iván's revised definition didn't fit all the bands that we already had listed as Prog Related, so somewhen around 2010 John (easy money) refined that further into what we have today.

The number of artists that have been added into Prog Related since 2006 is surprisingly very small. In reality it is around one or two per year, (the last was I believe Buckethead back in April), and smaller number of those additions (Iron Maiden, Metallica, Hendrix) were highly controversial and strongly contested at the time. It is a silly category and it's one we are not keen to expand, so the entry criteria and the suggestion policy are strictly enforced by the Admin team.

Prog Related is like an appendix - no one really understands what it does and it has a tendency to get inflamed for no apparent reason.