Is anyone else getting kind of sick of Pink Floyd?

Hi,

Edited by moshkito - January 01 2010 at 18:39

classicprogsovereign wrote: I've got a little story to share.  Alright, I make a lot of lists; many of which are dedicated to progressive rock. In fact, I was making one of this exact kind the other night. I kind of hit that point where I couldn't think of ANY more songs to place on the list, so I foolishly went onto the Rock and Pop section of Yahoo! Answers to find some suggestions. Every...single...answer...said 'you need more Pink Floyd', when they had at least 14 songs ranked already. One of the answerers complained about the absence of "Another Brick in the Wall Part II"! I didn't get any suggestions for the other great bands on the list, no Kansas, King Crimson, or Genesis recommendations! And this isn't only on Yahoo! Answers...what is the progressive band that gets tons of airplay on the radio? Pink Floyd. Which progressive rock band has sold millions upon millions of records over their contemporaries, who are arguably better? Pink Floyd. Which band receives almost universal acclaim for a style of music that other bands did just as well, if not better? PINK FLOYD.  Trust me, you can ask any classic rock junky about Pink Floyd, and they'd claim to be all-knowing in the realm of progressive rock music. I dare you, ask them about Van der Graaf Generator or Family, and they'd be totally lost. This is what I mean. Pink Floyd is a great band, sure, and one of the best prog bands, without a doubt, but, I mean, COME ON. What did they ever do that makes them so much better and so much more popular than Tull, Yes, and ELP?

The reason people say Pink Floyd so much is because of their commercially successful albums. People see my PF t shirt and ask me what my favorite album is, and I mention an early PF album, and I get this funny look, as if I'm making it up.

Jeez, I've created a monster.

classicprogsovereign wrote: Jeez, I've created a monster. I'll remember from here on out not to post anything controversial like this. Sorry if I got anybody angry.

Don't worry about it
I'm not angry, and most threads end up like this anyway. Also, don't apologize for having an opinion about something.

moshkito wrote:   You do not listen to music because it is "prog" .. you listen to it because you love it, and it drives you ... I'm sure of it!

Touche, and

/thread.

Floyd are 2nd or 3rd tier prog to me. They were limited to mellow prog because they didn't have the composition capabilities or musical talent to produce jazzed up prog. There's probably a dozen prog bands in the 70s with a better discography full of clever prog tunes. They are probably level with Led Zeppelin as prog related bands with similar amount of quality tunes although they are different styles of music, but both would be rated among the top 20 bands in history in my books

classicprogsovereign wrote: Catchiness really isn't a big concern when it comes to progressive rock music, however, am I correct? But I suppose that's why they receive so much airplay, huh?

Is it strange I find a lot of progressive rock to be extremely catchy despite this apparent lack of concern for catchyness by the song writers?

I don't totally buy that idea that it isn't a big concern.
Maybe not the more avant garde/more out there stuff, but plenty of bands in progressive rock are still very much full of catchy moments.
Dream Theater, Pink Floyd, Yes, Meshuggah, Between the Buried and Me, as different as these bands are, I can easily find something extremely catchy in many of their songs.

I agree Logan, the lines

They gut huts with gusto
Pillage villages with verve
War does what she has to
People get what they deserve

are really catchy.

And just for fun, here is the catchiest thing ever done by an extreme experimental avant raga-jazz noise band:

I agree with just about every word in Sean Trane's post.  Saucerful of secrets, Echoes, Dogs, Us and Them, A Pillow of winds...this band has everything, a song for every mood, flavour, season and so on and so forth.  It's quite possible that one would overplay them till the point where one cannot listen to their songs anymore due to saturation but that's no fault of the band or of people who aren't tired of listening to them.   Personally, Pink Floyd 's music was one of the first things I heard in my rock days and after years of mellow and placid Indian music, it broadened my horizons of what is possible in music hundredfold and they are one of the very few well known rock bands - not just prog - who can do that to you because they tried to find a musical context for every plausible sound known to man. There's darkness, sorrow, anger, beauty, hope, bitterness, desolation all in judicious doses in their songs.  I really don't know what more a band is supposed to do to impress people.   And speaking of other prog vocalists, while it's true that the general public doesn't like harsh, quirky tendencies in singing, isn't it equally true that many in the prog crowd are so hung up on inaccessibility and weirdness that they can't tell the sublime from the sappy and blindly dismiss both alike?  I like Gilmour's singing way, way more than Jon Anderson's, sorry....in fact, I don't even know what's so quirky about Jon compared to say Hammil...he's just boring, that's all...IMO!