The evolution of prog rock in the modern era

I concur with you that prog has to some degree entered a stage of stagnation - but this is a general problem of popular music today (not to speak of classical music which is clinically dead). Many prog artists have lost sight of the ideals of classic prog bands, whose objective was to expand rock music into the art music of a kinder gentler society. Since then, this countercultural vision of a new society has fallen pretty much by the wayside, though many prog artists still maintain left-wing positions (and right-wing prog seems to be non-existent).

But prog has never been the most avant-gardist, radical music at any point in its history. The German Krautrock bands were much more out in the field than the English classic prog artists, even King Crimson or Gentle Giant sound tame and conventional in comparison to Can, Faust or Neu!. The Velvet Underground also were more radical than any kind of prog. And just about anything prog or avant-rock artists may have tried out had happened earlier in the academic avant-garde from Schoenberg to Stockhausen or elsewhere far beyond the confines of rock, however advanced by adventurous rock artists.

However, is more radical always better? Nope. Let's try a simile from politics. Are equal rights and equal opportunities a good thing? Certainly. Was communism a good idea? Certainly not. Stockhausen made music that sounded like nothing done before - but almost nobody would actually listen to it. Contemporary classical music not only sits in an ivory tower, but has hauled in the drawbridge and posted snipers in every window. I think prog has found a good balance between musical sophistication and accessibility.



Edited by WeepingElf - September 30 2016 at 14:37

It is a matter of definition whether one considers Krautrock as a part of prog or as a genre related to prog. I prefer the latter. Surely, Krautrock and prog have a lot of things in common: they both expanded rock beyond the radio-single format, and the musicians had pretty much the same kind of background. But Krautrock's aesthetics were much more radical than those of classic English prog. Prog was into composing long, structured pieces, while Krautrock was into soundscapes and group improvisation, often noodling on a single chord for a quarter of an hour.

But well ... as I have said, it is a matter of definition.

Well said, Dean!

^ Hi there Brian, long time no see - how's life treating you these days? Flood-free I hope! I agree with you, Prog has never really stagnated, it's all a matter of perception and expectation, However, I would go further and posit that the music subgenre of Progressive Rock has never evolved either. 

Edited by Dean - October 01 2016 at 07:52

^ hope you feel better soon, take care of yourself dude. 

I realise this is a sidetrack to the main topic, but bear with me, all will come clear (I hope).

In an earlier post I blamed "us" and that is one of the flaws with Prog (in the modern era), as the self-appointed arbiters of Prog we (the listener) fashion what Prog is, so Prog becomes what we say it is and not what the Artists decree it to be. [Steven Wilson said "I'm not Prog" and we replied "Oh, yes you are"...]. In the past the media (in collusion with the record labels) would have assumed this role, they would dictate to us and we would lap it up. In the deep analysis it could be argued that Krautrock is only regard as being part of the Prog Rock canon because Virgin Records and the NME decided it was. But now the listeners are in control. The Rock media and the record labels (e.g. K-Scope.. and I'm a big fan of the label so this is not a criticism) can try to force their Prog du jour upon us but if we're not buying into it then they are wasting their time - for years they have been attempting to foist "New Prog" on us and we simply ignored them, preferring to cherry-pick those artists we believed were Prog and discarding those we didn't - which is as it should be, it's our dollar after all. 

I have made no secret of the fact that I firmly believe that the PA represents the listeners: we are not here to promote artists or further the cause of Progressive Rock; this is a review site for listeners, not a free promotional tool for the artists. The collaborators (of which I am one, albeit now a passive but still vocal one) are here to serve the listeners which is why we are selected (appointed/volunteered) from the membership and have no ownership here, are not employees of the site owner and have no affiliations with the industry (and by that I mean artists, record labels, distributors, suppliers, sellers, promoters and the media - basically anyone who is trying to get you the listener to listen to the music) - we aren't elected representatives but we are selected to be representative of a knowledgeable sample of listeners. At times we may forget this salient point but on the whole we regard ourselves as listeners of Prog, fans of certain Prog bands and  champions of specific Prog subgenres. With this comes a level of responsibility that what we do will shape what Prog is and will become.

In the past there were two schools of thought at play here: the inclusivity camp and the exclusivity camp - both firmly believed they are using their new-found responsibility as (appointed) Prog arbiters to protect what Prog Rock is all about, one through a conservative approach where purity is paramount and the other through a more liberal viewpoint where diversity is key. Both believed that evolution and progress could be achieved within their philosophical ideology yet both result in condition that from one angle looks like growth and from another looks like stagnation. Some would argue that bands like Flowerkings and Slyvan, or albums like Heritage and Hand Cannot Erase are an evolution within the traditional concept of Prog whereas others take the opposite view; and conversely some regard modern Rock bands like The Mars Volta and The Dear Hunter as a progression of the Prog ideal whereas others take the opposite view.

In this listener-representative collaborator role I used to be an inclusive guy whose philosophy was 'if someone thinks a band is Prog then add them and let the reviews decide the prog quotient'. Of course there was a measure of control involved there otherwise it would be a recipe for chaos, the additions team would have to agree that there was some degree of Progginess present but as this is a subjective assessment the act of being suggested would add weight to that by default (not all addition teams and not all team members took this view btw).

However, done correctly inclusivity is a self-levelling system, bands that are barely prog at all get low ratings and that discourages other similar bands from using the Prog tag as a means of promoting themselves and it means we don't accidentally miss that hidden gem. Now, obviously that is an inherently flawed approach because the reviews and ratings assess quality plus prog-quotient or just quality but not purely prog-quotient, however for addition purposes we only evaluate their suitability as a Prog band, we don't make subjective judgement of quality: a good band can be rejected for not being Prog and a poor band accepted because they are (and I suspect that all the teams have added some right stinkers before now just because they fit the brief). But in the inclusive philosophy that's not so much of an issue because all the good prog albums rise to the top along with all the good nearly-prog albums and all the bad non-prog albums sink to the bottom with all the Prog lemons. 

Dean, 31st July 2010 wrote: In my time on the addition team I've never felt the need to defend any single addition or rejection, I never saw that as part of my job function since in this corner of the Prog genre there will always be someone who disagrees with an addition or rejection. Defend the team and the artist/album can look after itself has always been my approach, and I think time has born that out as being a truism. That's not to say I haven't fought some fierce battles over additions, it's just that I've not defended the addition itself, but the rational behind the addition.

Three things changed my view of this: the evolution though addition effect; ratings abuse; and the 'Bandcamp' phenomenon. 

But all that aside, none of that has any bearing on why the 'Bandcamp' phenomenon has changed my view of inclusivity and why it troubles me from the perspective of the PA and the evolution of Prog Rock in the modern era. The problem comes back to one of us the listeners, and here the maths just does not add up - sure the  'Bandcamp' phenomenon has been great in allowing us access to (literally) millions of new artists that hitherto would have been unknown to anyone except themselves, their immediate friends and their pet dog, and with that (literally) hundreds of hitherto unknown Prog bands and (literally) thousands of hitherto unknown bands who believe themselves to be progressive (without the capital 'P' of a Proper Noun) - it hasn't resulted in a proportional change in the number of listeners or had any measurable effect on the relative growth/stagnation of the Progressive Rock subgenre (or any other music genre come to that). 

Across the board (whether self-released or on a label) supply has outpaced demand by a ferocious distance - while Bandcamp obfuscate their stats to make analysis difficult, the published results of Soundcloud suggest there are only ten times more listeners than artists on their rosta (and I have good reason to believe that Bandcamp is far worse than this). And that's nowhere near enough when you consider that 90% of those listeners will be listening to the top 10% of the artists (if you take the time to analyse what scant sales data exists it's actually closer to 98% buying to the top 2% - which is exactly the same ratio that record labels have worked with since Edison invented the phonograph). What that means to the PA is we add an artist who has no listeners - which is fine if our role was to promote the artists, but it isn't - as I said, we are here to enable the listeners to rate and review the artist's album, the best we can hope for here is maybe one or two of our members will take a listen and maybe they'll rate the album, but this rarely happens. While the latest release by Kansas or Opeth will attract dozens of reviews and ratings before the album is even released, an unknown self-release album will get none. That album could be the most important development in Progressive Rock since the release of ITCOTCK but unless it actually has an effect on the genre then it might just as well be wrapped in tin-foil and buried in the back yard for all it is worth. As Brian rightly pointed out: "Prog has only entered a period of stagnation if you aren't exploring."

That does not mean it doesn't change anything because each addition to the Prog Rock canon, even those that go unnoticed, results in an incremental change in the entry criteria without actually changing (née evolving) what it is to be Prog. The influx of self-release artists (that I enabled) has broadened the view without making it any deeper.

Nice post, Dean. A lot of things to think about. What regards myself, I feel that recently (since about the turn of the century), much stuff is touted as "prog" in the mainstream and "alternative" music press (at least here in Germany) which is IMHO only marginally related to prog (such as all that technical extreme metal and what I call "proggy alternative rock" such as Tool), while what I consider actual prog still tends to get ignored. Things are of course different in the classic rock press, where prog gets its fair share of attention as part of the wider genre of classic rock.

So there is "hipster prog" which gets good press but is only as much prog as English is a Romance language, and there is actual prog which tends to be ignored, though things are gradually improving (Visions, a German alternative rock magazine, carried a special about prog a few months ago which was not really good but at least a good start, and I have recently seen two reviews of prog albums in the German Rolling Stone). The same time, I feel that actual prog is not progressing much anymore - the prog we have now is not much different from the prog we had ten years ago. This, I think, is just part of the retro-mania that has befallen popular music as a whole around the year 2000 (I see little change in "hipster prog", either). Is there a real difference in meaning of the term "prog" in classic rock vs. alternative rock, or am I just an old fart who simply doesn't cope with the recent evolution of prog?