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How should I rate "non-prog" albums of prog bands?
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Lewian View Drop Down
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Points: 15149 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Lewian Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 12 2021 at 10:48
Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

Originally posted by Lewian Lewian wrote:

Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

Originally posted by Lewian Lewian wrote:

Originally posted by thief thief wrote:

 
I believe albums here should be rated for their "quality" alone, not "quality + narrowly understood progginess". 


It may well be that most people who rate only are with you on that one. Except they don't like the stuff they're rating lowly that you think should be rated highly. "Quality" is nothing objective. If a prog fan hates a certain non prog album they can give it one star according to their opinion of its quality. If this is an album you think should have five, tough luck.

I wrote earlier that I may give an album four stars in case I personally rate it five but I understand why it doesn't qualify as a "masterpiece of prog". Yet I'm doing this only when I write a review as well where I can explain it. I don't run around slapping non prog albums I don't care about with low ratings for not being prog. Why would I?


To quote another post modern casualty Cathy Newman: so what you're saying is that you would rate a 5 star Non Prog album for being Non Prog by awarding it 4 stars but you don't lower your ratings for albums that are Non Prog? Blow it out your backside maaaanLOL

Not sure whether you read all that I wrote... I don't do ratings only anymore, surely not for non-prog (there's nothing to "lower" then). Also a non-prog album that I personally would rate 5 is not a five stars album according to the descriptors here. There's no objective star rating somewhere out there that makes an album a five star album regardless of the rating system. I may like it for 5 but taking into account the descriptors here it's 4. Not that difficult to understand.



We all get the anomaly post modern hippy but if you think that the limitations of a star rating system undermines your written review then you either suck at articulating your own ideas or think the PA membership are gullible enough to believe art appreciation uses a golf handicap system. That said, now that I think about it, some are and both of know who they areConfused Objective star ratings, like gender, facts and reality are just social constructs maaan.

I don't really understand why you get so worked up about this but nice that we could talk about it... Tongue
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Lewa View Drop Down
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Points: 105 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (2) Thanks(2)   Quote Lewa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 12 2021 at 14:09
Hi thief,

this is a very good and thought provoking question, thank you.

I don't think I have done a review of a non-prog album on PA yet and generally I only lurk.

You got me thinking though. Personally, I like that we have a prog scale here and I think in the prog categories we should rate according to progness. 

Why? Because n the prog scale is what makes PA such a valuable ressource compared to other (general music) websites. At least, this is how I use PA. 

I mean, "rate your music" (RYM) is pretty good for getting a general rating of an album or for getting to know a band/subgenre from a general music standpoint. We probably won't ever match the number of ratings and opinions  here ever. So I actually use RYM for such things. It is pretty good for finding the best/most influential death metal albums. I can even use it to get a basic introduction to prog, as that is a subgenre there.

But sometimes I do not want to find the best/influential death metal album by a certain band. Sometimes I want to know which album by this band is the most progressive. The rating of such an album might be middling on RYM and I would need to read a lot of reviews to get an idea. But this is where PA comes in - if an album is rated highly here and not so high on RYM that is probably a very progressive album by the band. 

Seriously, I think this ability to specifically find proggy albums here is incredibly useful and our niche. Imo it should stay that way. If we flood the charts or the discussions with the general music it will become harder to find the prog. 

A lot of people on here like all kinds of music. In a lot of discussion here, we see statements like "don't be a snob", "all music is good music", "most albums I got this year are non-prog albums" - and I totally agree. I listen to a lot of very different kinds of music myself.

But, I still think PA (or metal sites or jazz sides) should kind of "stick" to what we are best at. Because we don't really need 10 websites that all try to be RYM. But we need special interest sites, where we can find obscure (prog) albums that would never get any traction on a general music site.

I found so many gems here, I would not have heard of otherwise. Mostly because of pretty high ratings, especially in RPI, Indo-Prog and also the metal subcategories. I would not want to miss the prog rating scale of this site. 

Using the prog rating scale does not have to mean any disrespect for an album or band and I don't think most reviewers here mean it that way. It is just such a useful thing to have because there are already enough general music ratings across the internet.

On this note: A big thank you to anyone who rates and discusses (prog) music on here!


Edited by Lewa - March 12 2021 at 14:29
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Spaciousmind View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Lewa Lewa wrote:

Using the prog rating scale does not have to mean any disrespect for an album or band and I don't think most reviewers here mean it that way. It is just such a useful thing to have because there are already enough general music ratings across the internet.

That is really not the case.  If you search for example "Moody Blues discography" Prog Archives pops up on page 1 of the search engine.  So the first ratings since Wiki don't show ratings a young person would likely see is with Prog Archives a complete discography with nice pictures and their reviewer ratings.  In the case of Moody Blues not so bad (his grandad had told him Moody Blues were great and he wants to check out who and what they are).

Anyway not so bad the first Album is rated at 2.3 (46%=A Grade F in his mind).  But the next one is a B Minus so he might check into that one.  The rest maybe not since they are at best a C and drop down to F's.

This kid is already brainwashed that these albums all must most likely suck to his 21st century mind based on what he is seeing on the archives.  The experts (you and I) are telling him that.  It is also unlikely that he would search the forums and read to get to understand peoples logic around some of these ratings.

Now that is Moody Blues who do have some pretty good Prog Archives ratings close to 4.00.  How about if this brainwashing were to be the Beatles?  One B+ a couple of B/B- and bunches of F's.

There has to be a way to be able to show people both a proginess rating and also a true enjoyment rating regardless of Prog Power?

It's fine if this were an island but its not the truth is Prog Archives pops up more often then not on page one of a search engine.

Nick


Edited by Spaciousmind - March 12 2021 at 17:03
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nick_h_nz View Drop Down
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Points: 6737 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote nick_h_nz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2021 at 01:41
Originally posted by Spaciousmind Spaciousmind wrote:

Originally posted by Lewa Lewa wrote:

Using the prog rating scale does not have to mean any disrespect for an album or band and I don't think most reviewers here mean it that way. It is just such a useful thing to have because there are already enough general music ratings across the internet.

That is really not the case.  If you search for example "Moody Blues discography" Prog Archives pops up on page 1 of the search engine.  So the first ratings since Wiki don't show ratings a young person would likely see is with Prog Archives a complete discography with nice pictures and their reviewer ratings.  In the case of Moody Blues not so bad (his grandad had told him Moody Blues were great and he wants to check out who and what they are).

Anyway not so bad the first Album is rated at 2.3 (46%=A Grade F in his mind).  But the next one is a B Minus so he might check into that one.  The rest maybe not since they are at best a C and drop down to F's.

This kid is already brainwashed that these albums all must most likely suck to his 21st century mind based on what he is seeing on the archives.  The experts (you and I) are telling him that.  It is also unlikely that he would search the forums and read to get to understand peoples logic around some of these ratings.

Now that is Moody Blues who do have some pretty good Prog Archives ratings close to 4.00.  How about if this brainwashing were to be the Beatles?  One B+ a couple of B/B- and bunches of F's.

There has to be a way to be able to show people both a proginess rating and also a true enjoyment rating regardless of Prog Power?

It's fine if this were an island but its not the truth is Prog Archives pops up more often then not on page one of a search engine.

Nick

But most people looking to find out about music, particularly the younger ones you mention, won’t be using a search engine, so it’s irrelevant where PA comes up. The point made was that there are numerous sites out there, of which RYM is probably the biggie. If the youth of today is interested enough in music to be searching out music of the past like The Moody Blues, they’ll be searching for it on a site like RYM, not using Google.

At this point, it is particularly useful for PA to be rating albums by their prog. So, you might find quite different ratings for the same album on Metal Archives and Prog Archives, or on Jazz Archives and Prog Archives. That’s a really good thing, and a really useful thing.

While I don’t particularly care how anyone rates here, because I pay no real attention to the ratings, and I have no problem with anyone rating albums however they like; I think it is an interesting point raised here, and one I’d never considered. (Probably because I never pay attention to ratings.)
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Lewa View Drop Down
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Points: 105 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Lewa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2021 at 02:24
Hi nick_h_nz,

thank you  for condensing the point so well. Clap

That is indeed what I meant. I was just very longwinded and am not a native speaker.
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Matti View Drop Down
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I enjoy writing reviews of whatever kind of music I happen to like. The question of "how prog it is" is not significant for me personally. If the artist is included in ProgArchives, to me it primarily means that I CAN review their releases here.

The music I'm reviewing may not be progressive rock to start with, ie. the band or artist is NOT labelled as prog. A good example is the Fairport Convention 7" review I just wrote. The main theme in that review turned out to be the singer-songwriter Sandy Denny (whose solo output I naturally can't review here). It would be pointless to evaluate the prog aspect if the artist is not exactly prog.


Naturally I do deal with the prog factor if the artist IS primarily a prog artist, but is it the lack of prog PER SE, on the release in question, that affects to my rating, or is it just (my own view of) the level of artistic quality? Often they go hand in hand: less proggy albums tend to be weaker and less interesting. I believe many of you agree, consciously or not.

As a basic rule, I base my ratings on how I like the music, prog or not.
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nick_h_nz View Drop Down
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Points: 6737 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote nick_h_nz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2021 at 03:35
Originally posted by Matti Matti wrote:

I enjoy writing reviews of whatever kind of music I happen to like. The question of "how prog it is" is not significant for me personally. If the artist is included in ProgArchives, to me it primarily means that I CAN review their releases here.

The music I'm reviewing may not be progressive rock to start with, ie. the band or artist is NOT labelled as prog. A good example is the Fairport Convention 7" review I just wrote. The main theme in that review turned out to be the singer-songwriter Sandy Denny (whose solo output I naturally can't review here). It would be pointless to evaluate the prog aspect if the artist is not exactly prog.


Naturally I do deal with the prog factor if the artist IS primarily a prog artist, but is it the lack of prog PER SE, on the release in question, that affects to my rating, or is it just (my own view of) the level of artistic quality? Often they go hand in hand: less proggy albums tend to be weaker and less interesting. I believe many of you agree, consciously or not.

As a basic rule, I base my ratings on how I like the music, prog or not.

For me, the simplest way around it is to not rate albums without reviewing them. I base my rating based on how I like the music, prog or not, too. And my review will make it clear if I think something is or is not particularly prog. Though, generally I don’t even touch on that, unless it is something I really thinks merits discussing.

All of my reviews here, thus far, have originally been published at TPA. They needed to be deemed prog enough to be reviewed there, and they needed to be deemed prog enough to appear in PA - so for me, how prog or not they might be is by the by. The rating is how I feel about the album, and merely reflects the words I have written about the album.

In fact, I only rate an album at all, because I need to in order to have the review published. I’ve never been a great fan of ratings, and if this site did away with them entirely, it wouldn’t bother me at all. 🤷🏻‍♂️
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omphaloskepsis View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Hrychu Hrychu wrote:

I'm gonna say this. You should rate the albums, not their level of prog-ness. :) That's not how "reviewing" works.

This ^
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