Should AOR bands be listed PA's discography?

it's been told repeatedly that prog-related is not prog. Nobody is saying that these three bands are progressive rock bands. 

Edited by Cristi - September 13 2017 at 16:25

All bands that are on Progarchives are AOR bands, except for the jazz-acts.
AOR is a radio-format.

Well that's what happens to terms.

I don't know. I could see all three of them in Crossover too. There is a gray area between Crossover and Prog Related, as there are between a lot of other subgenres. I lean more towards inclusive rather than exclusive.

If you ask me progressive rock ended around 1974-78 if you want to stretch it. Mr Fripp's timing was spot on. There's a lot of music outside the realm of progressive rock that I like including Journey and Styx. I woukl say that a good 75% of the bands listed here don't even fit remotely into the mold of progressive rock. It belonged to an era. This site is very misleading with all the entries in the database. Best site I came across back in the early days of the internet was Vintage Prog Dot Com. Although now no longer maintained the creator of the site has left it up. It encompasses what progressive rock was all about. 

Edited by Kepler62 - September 13 2017 at 06:19

Cristi wrote: ^ Journey started as progressive rock band, their music with Rollie on vocals was a mix of hard rock, fusion and blues.  Styx had hints of prog all throughout the 70s. Asia came very close with Aura.

Clearly they shouldn't be. 

I think that Cristi has covered the important bases.

I don't know any of them that well; I tend to steer clear of bands commonly classified as AOR (i.e. melodic/ arena rock).

That said, the musical relation to Prog tends to be more important to me than the musicians' band relation in Prog Related. But the more PR criteria a band/ musician fits the easier it is to make a case to get into the category, and that includes having a history working with acts deemed Prog.

Incidentally, to my ears, there is Prog in the Prog-Related category, and it is not really a non-Prog category to me so much as a less prog, or less proggy, category. I know some hate it, but I love that word proggy, by the way.

We tend to judge by the album, and if a band generally recognised as AOR made a Prog or semi-Prog album then that's the album we judge the most.

Prog Related is a very mixed bag, and having been in Prog bands is not enough to get you in (at least not these days -- in the early days bands were included that would probably not pass muster now, and other ones didn't pass muster that did later since we expanded the parameters). There's a reason why, say, Phil Collins is not in Prog Related and that has to do with the music he has created.

So to answer the question more directly, I think that absolutely AOR bands should be listed in PA provided that they made music/ albums that is/ are deemed appropriate for the category. And that doesn't mean that the majority of their music needs to be appropriate either (I rather wish that we didn't have the complete discography policy, although I see its benefits).

Edited by Logan - September 13 2017 at 14:31

And perhaps Afrofuturism should be made a subgenre too, and we can finally add Sun Ra, Funkadelic, Rammellzee, Lee Scratch Perry, et blimmin' cetera.

AOR for me always meant easy to listen to hit records that were not pop specifically maybe because they were longer than a perfect 3 min hit song ----like Dancing in the streets---I want to know were love is ---is an example---Don't stop Believing---Rosanna ---another one---my little sisters liked this kind of music lol---this is not Revealing science of god----which I liked---whatever your definition I know it when I hear it and can take it or leave it