Wider and narrower senses of "progressive rock"
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Topic: Wider and narrower senses of "progressive rock"
Posted By: WeepingElf
Subject: Wider and narrower senses of "progressive rock"
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 09:58
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As this matter has surfaced in the "Why so few American prog bands?" thread, I shall start a new thread for it here. There is some controversy about what is prog and what is not. Progressive rock, as I understand it, is a particular stream of tradition within rock music that started in late 1960s England, and is characterized by: 1. Musical complexity, often but not always manifesting in long, multi-part pieces which are more composed than improvised, often but not always using form models from the "classical" music tradition such as the fugue, the rondo or the sonata form. This is the first dimension of "progressive": Progressive rock is musically progressive. 2. Ample use of electric and electronic keyboard instruments, such as Hammond organ, Mellotron and various types of synthesizers. Also, use of state-of-the-art studio and stage technology (or when it is not used, there is an idea behind that, such as evoking images of unspoilt nature by means of unadulterated acoustic instruments or a cappella singing). This is the second dimension of "progressive": Progressive rock is technologically progressive. 3. Sophisticated lyrics about a wide range of topics, including fantasy and science fiction, and often involving progressive ("leftist") social commentary. This is the third dimension of "progressive"; Progressive rock is culturally progressive. Now, there is controversy about the boundaries. There is a lot of music that is often considered "prog", though they do not stand in the tradition of late 60s English classical progressive rock, and often lack one, two or all three of the characteristic properties of progressive rock I have listed above. There is, for instance, disagreement about when Pink Floyd were a prog band and when they were not, and whether artists such as Zappa, Cpt. Beefheart, the Grateful Dead or even the Velvet Underground can be considered prog bands. Today, the alternative music press (at least here in Germany, I don't know about other countries) often features and reviews "prog rock" of which I just don't see what it has to do with classical prog, and how it shows the characteristics of prog. Examples of this kind of "prog rock" include Tool, Oceansize and similar bands. I also don't think that "progressive" extreme metal is prog, as it often reduces the notion of musical complexity to show-offy instrumental acrobatics, and the cultural progressivity is absent - it basically shares the negative, cynical to reactionary ideology of extreme metal in general. One could speak of progressive rock in a narrower and in a wider sense. I tend to use the term "progressive rock" in the narrower sense, using something like "experimental rock" or "advanced rock" for the wider category. One could do otherwise, though. I once read a scholarly thesis by a German student, Andreas Hinners, how used "progressive rock" in the "wide" sense, and referred to what I called here "narrow sense", "art rock", distinguishing it from "jazz rock" and "avant-garde rock" as other kinds of "progressive rock". And of course, the boundaries are always blurry. What do you think? ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Replies:
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 12:03
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I think most members would see the four letter word Prog as a musical style with distinct characteristics, in the same way that AOR is more or less a defined, if unofficial, musical style. So there's not much experimental music in a genre that is formulated. Progressive rock would be what, I think, what most members would define as experimental or avant garde, as this genre does not fit any particular formula. So basically, we have Prog rock as a defined musical style, and Progressive Rock as an experimental or avant garde music genre. Any questions about this will without doubt by addressed by micky later in the day.
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Posted By: Skalla-Grim
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 13:18
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I hope it's OK if I include the "retro prog" subject because it's important if you want to define prog these days. Some people would define Progressive Rock as any kind of rock music which turns the genre into something else, using exotic instruments, electronic sound effects or whatever. It just has to be NEW, whether it simplifies the genre or makes it more complex. Based on that notion these people dismiss every band which, in their opinion, sounds too much like the bands in the seventies did, blaming them for not being progressive. I have a very different opinion. In the 60s, Rock was a very simple kind of music, which allowed only traditional meters like 4/4 and 3/4. Also the choice of harmonies (e. g. A-D-E or A minor-F-G) and scales (major, minor, or pentatonic, with very few additional notes) was very limited. The 70s prog bands extended those narrow possibilities, adding meters like 5/4, 7/8 and more. There were also more original harmonic developments (exploring the relationships based on the third step of a Major scale, I have a hard time expressing that in English) and scales (for example, the Phrygian mode - don't ask me for examples, but I'll try and think of it ... the Phrygian scale is like a minor scale but doesn't begin with a, b, c, but with a, b flat, c.) I must admit that there were some composers in pop music who used advanced harmonies in the 60s, like the Beatles. After the seventies (and many people seem not to be aware of that), the common musical structures of rock music were narrowed down to what they used to be in the 60s. Basically, that is still the case. As far as musical structures are concerned, pop and rock music is stuck in the 60s. So are the traditional prog bands of today, who try to keep the achievements of 70s prog bands alive, "progressive"? Yes, they are! Because mainstream pop and rock music is still stuck in the 60s. There was no "progression" from the 70s to the 80s, there was a step back to the 60s. You can talk about sound, visuals, or whatever. These (more or less) superficial values may change between decades and rock subgenres, but the relationship between today's mainstream and today's prog (traditional or avant-garde) is still like the relationship between the 60s' mainstream and the 70s' prog. It is simply unfair to call some bands who play a wide variety of meters, harmonies and scales, "not progressive" because the remind you of the 70s (because they have a mellotron or whatever), and call other bands "truly progressive" because they use some sounds and effects which didn't exist in the 70s, though they stick to the narrow structural elements which were mainstream in the 60s, as they are today. |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 16:37
Right. Rock in the early 60s was simple and formulaic, adding little to the mid-20th-century rhythm & blues. The main innovation was that the musicians wrote their own songs. In the 50s, they didn't.
Sure. Some rock artists began to experiment with things beyond the "blues orthodoxy" in the mid-60s, and the Beatles were among them. From this, progressive rock was born.
Quite so, though it is a bit of a simplification. But at the core you are right. Both punk and heavy metal (not to speak of roots rock, which is obvious) were backward-oriented movements which aimed at restoring the "true rock'n'roll" of the early 60s by eliminating everything that prog rock had added to the framework. No keyboards. No weird time signatures. No multi-movement suites. Etc. Punk more so than heavy metal, though. After all, heavy metal "fell guilty" of admitting some features of prog rock, though only in limited amounts, thereby paving the road for ... progressive metal (i.e. prog rock in metal attire; many metal aficionados maintain that progressive metal is not really metal).
Spot on. Mainstream rock indeed did not progress, and that is probably the reason it died in the 90s. There was not only no progression, the existence of a progression is denied by the people involved with non-prog rock! Just have a look at britpop. They openly said they were reviving the 60s.
Yep. Of course, mainstream rock as well as alternative rock and heavy metal, have seen styles come and go. One year, wah-wah is all the rage. The next year, snare drums have to sound as if there was an ocean of sweat on the drumhead. Or bass players have to sound like Bill Wyman. That has nothing to do with the structure of the music. Those are fashions that come and go. They become outdated within a few years. And all the while, rock songs are three minutes long, consist of intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-verse-chorus-outro on three or four basic chords, and are about teenage love, as they have always been. No progress anywhere.
I never doubted that "retro-prog" is prog, of course! Even if one has to admit that bands such as Wobbler or the Flower Kings add little new to the formula of classic prog, and I prefer more modern forms of prog, they are certainly prog in the sense that they stand in the tradition of the classical prog of the early 70s, and as you have pointed out quite well, they are still ahead of mainstream rock, which has fettered itself to the stage of development of the early 60s, give or take some superficial embellishments, which are subject to fashions and just won't last. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Skalla-Grim wrote:Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 17:03
Yes, this hits the nail on the head, or at least close to. It is a "blackbird problem": the blackbird is called blackbird because it is a black bird, but not all black birds are blackbirds. Likewise, progressive rock (the genre, what you call prog rock) is named thus because it is a genre of rock music which is progressive (as I wrote in my opening post, in three different but interrelated ways), but there is rock music which in some ways progressive but does not fall into the genre. The question is, which usage of "prog(ressive) rock" is right? Words always mean what the community of speakers use them for, but early usages usually take precedence. The term "progressive rock" was coined around 1970 for a particular genre of music, for the reasons I laid out in my opening post. Hence it means that. Later it was shortened to "prog rock", AFAIK in part by detractors who claimed that it wasn't actually progressive (most of those detractors said that punk rock was the true progressive movement in rock, but as I stated in my reply to Skalla-Grim's post, punk rock was a restaurative rather than a progressive movement), and subsequently, "progressive" became a cuss-word in rock discourse. Since about 20 years ago, however, there has been a new usage of "prog(ressive) rock" in the alternative rock scene, starting with bands such as Tool (who AFAIK were the first to whom this new usage was applied). So we now have two conventional meanings of "prog(ressive) rock", one in the field of classic rock, one in the field of alternative rock. Things like that may be confusing, but they happen. For instance, the word protolanguage is used in different meanings in the fields of historical linguistics and language origins studies. In historical linguistics, a "protolanguage" is the latest common ancestor of a given family of languages. Like Latin being the protolanguage of the Romance family. In language origins studies, a "protolanguage" is a hypothetical system of communication structurally intermediate between the kind of calls apes use, and full-fledged human language. Such systems would have been used by creatures such as Homo erectus. A "protolanguage" in the sense of historical linguistics is not a "protolanguage" in the sense of language origins studies, but in the popular press, both concepts are sometimes confused, leading to all sorts of funny (and sometimes not so funny) misconceptions about languages of the distant part. So what do the two kinds of "progressive rock" have in common that they share the same name? There are some superficial similarities. Both often use oddball time signatures; both frequently have pieces longer than the usual radio-edit single format. But there the similarity ends. Some people claim that Tool were influenced by King Crimson, but they have actually as much in common as a skinhead and a Rastafarian (who at least have in common that they are into Jamaican offshots of rhythm & blues, but there it ends). I once maintained the idea that the label "progressive" for the music called "progressive rock" in alternative rock has nothing to do with the usage in the field of classic rock, but comes from a clearly unrelated usage of "progressive" in electronic dance music (progressive house, progressive trance, etc.), which refers to a gradual buildup of texture in the tracks - something that is clearly heard in Tool, and in many other "progressive" alternative rock pieces. But that raised a sh*tstorm in a German progressive rock mailing list, and I now have grown some doubt against this connection. The two genres may share the gradual buildup of texture, but are otherwise not very similar. It may be of interest how one of the leading progressive (classic) rock labels, InsideOut Music, dealt with this "problem". They set up a sublabel, Superball Music, for "progressive" alternative rock. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 17:22
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I originally used the descriptor 'Progressive Rock' for the style of music you described, basically Symph Prog, perhaps plus Canterbury bands (but I'm not certain of that). The problems are: 1) The style is celebratory of things that are not exclusive to it in the narrow sense the OP described. In other words, it follows the banner of certain artistic concepts that can't be pinned down to any one style/genre. 2) The style the OP described leaks. Crimson, for instance, were well known for their improvisation. Jethro Tull, Focus, and Jade Warrior were not keyboard heavy. Even Genesis had a lot of Hackett deceptively sounding like a keyboard. VDGG had no regular guitarist, but I always found the sax(es) more front and center, though I don't often listen to them. I don't see anything wrong with referring to the style as a style as long as it's clear which usage is intended, but, as Steve G pointed out, most on the site use Prog for the style and Progressive Rock for the concept. Sometimes it's handled a bit loosely and ambiguity sets in, and then people on the forum start talking past each other. No, yeah really. It happens. |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 17:47
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Posted By: LearsFool
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 18:14
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I think that this is a good time to put out there a little linguistic hypothesis I've become convinced is absolutely true: people have forgotten the etymology of the genre name. Standard thinking is obviously that progressive rock was named because it was a forward thinking genre, and that the calcification of a specific set of stylistic choices in what we call symphonic prog led to a corruption of the label both musically and linguistically, so that eventually web users here today on PAs sometimes think of symph and that modern rock that is a direct descendant of that school is best referred to as simply "prog", and use the original label to refer to forward thinking contemporary bands only loosely connected to the likes of Yes. I believe that the reality is that progressive rock was named for the genre's progressions, in the sense within music theory; chord progressions that were unique and rooted in irregular if not irrational time signatures, long form songs that string together various unique portions like a suite rather than a medley, and other similar compositional choices that cover all four bases. The calcification did not represent an affront to the genre name, only to fans' expectations that rock bands that use unique progressions would be forward thinking. This also means that it is possible to be a prog band without taking any influence from a '70's band. Certainly this would clear up many debates around here. But at the least, this is my interpretation, and I only use prog as shorthand for progressive rock, which does include the likes of The Flower Kings, even if they are stuck in ruts. -------------  
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Posted By: micky
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 22:34
nah... I think you are making too much of it man. Most listeners know jack sh*t about music theory..fewer still even CARE about the details of what the artists are doing. all they know or care about is what they hear. Is it interesting..fresh, exciting it is diffferent. Thus.. easy enough to call it progressive. thus the common, simplistic but IMO accurate definitiion of 70's progressive rock..the adding elements of jazz, classical and avant-grade, all easily recognizable to most any music listener, to rock music to come up with something new and original. It was easy enough to hear the elements for the press to describe and market this new music as .. progressive. I hear all the time those BBC dudes calling this not progressive music.. but calling them.. progressive artists.. ------------- The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip |
Posted By: LearsFool
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 22:51
I do in fact overthink things sometimes.  I guess you'd say that I'm trying to apply logic to a genre and motley bunch of fans that defy logic and that probably should remain free of logic. You're probably right. I guess I can let my post be left to the philosophers. Except I kinda am a philosopher.  -------------
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Posted By: micky
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 23:02
nothing wrong with that man!  Sure there are some eggheads who care about that stuff.. but music is music. Music is for the heart and soul.. not an intellectual exercise. One reason prog has such a bad name, or rep, it isn't the music. As an old friend of mine once said here at PA's.. there is nothing better than great prog.. and nothing worse than bad prog. When prog can fall off the cliff of good tastes with most people (excepting as always miltant prog fan) is the lyrical side. While most people don't know or care the theory of what the musicians were trying to do... lyrics .. any knuckle head can hear and understand that. The more serious and arty one gets.. the more chance you come off sounding like a complete moron.. or even worse.. a preachy moron. Goes back to what I believe.. people just want to hear good music.. the more enlightened like to hear new things be challenged even. That is progressive music, thus the irony with much of prog rock.. being as progressive as my big toe. recycled sounds and ideas. Playing to a style (prog rock) rather than an ethos.. progressive rock. ------------- The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 23:16
That was me------------- "Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy |
Posted By: micky
Date Posted: July 21 2015 at 23:19
Damn right it was.... hahahha  For some reason that always stuck with me. I think I really did spit my beer all over the monitor that time you wrote that. ------------- The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 01:21
Yeah, and that's wrong. First, Symph (and related stuff, as e.g. a bit more eclectic 70s prog with a 'tron & Hammond and / or synth as well, also was tagged as *symphonic rock* back in the day) as a sub-genre of Progressive rock (or "progressive music" - the term that was very often used in 70s) has long had its own name for its distinctive sound, and add to Symph another name as "Prog Rock", that could only to create further confusion and yet it's hardly to see what there should be some significant gains from this campaign. Second, that abbreviation "prog" never was a tag for something different than progressive rock and never will be. Actually, for that "prog" abbreviation, we should thank to the pre-internet
records dealers because their sales lists, made at A4-sized papers with a
paper clips, were first written on a typewriter, and then photo-copied
in a number of copies; as the records dealers were often tedious to type again and again (no copy/paste at that time) on the proper lists
that full term *progressive rock*, they were type simply "prog" as
shorthand as well, and that everyone understood that's some progressive rock album(s) on the list(s), among the albums of other genres. |
Posted By: Rosscoe
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 02:23
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I think the term 'advanced rock' sums up what I think of as prog. It is not necessary, for me, for bands to be constantly innovating. Rather, I like it when bands go beyond the conventional. There are only so many workable time signatures out there. Just because 7/8 has been done a million times doesn't stop me liking it - it still non-standard, or advanced, or progressive. If you keep stretching the boundaries of 'rock' music you end up with total weirdness, so it is hard to expect bands to constantly innovate and yet not sound similar to so,ething that has been done before.
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Posted By: TeleStrat
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 02:44
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I started buying records before the British Invasion so I've been listening to music longer than some people on here have been alive. In all that time I have never had the desire to analyze, dissect or take music apart layer by layer to come to some conclusion. I guess that means I am not one of "the more enlightened" ones. Since being here I have read several threads like this one and can honestly say that I know less now about what is and is not prog than I did before I joined PA. I seriously doubt that those who take this approach enjoy their music more than I enjoy mine. |
Posted By: terramystic
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 07:27
That's exactly how I've always understood the term "progressive" in progressive rock (prog is only an abbreviation). It means artistic/expanded/advanced musical language e.g. Piazzola's nuevo tango is progressive tango. However a lot of people here think progressive means constantly changing. I think it's unfair to accuse a retro band of being unprog or bad prog. A grand classical composer was creating 30 or more years in the same style but music is still considered creative and genius. I prefere the term "art rock", which is less confusing, but prog is a more common word. |
Posted By: terramystic
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 07:34
No problem. both is progressive and both is rock --> both is progressive rock. That's why we have all the subgenres. |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 09:00
Yes - "symph" is a subset of "prog" - a style within the genre of prog. It is also called "classic prog", at least here in Germany, the latter is the more common term. Music in that style from later ages is called "retro-prog". Symphonic prog was the main current within prog in the early 70s, but even then, there had been Canterbury besides it, and a few artists who are hard to classify. And later, other styles, such as neo-prog and prog metal, evolved from symphonic prog.
People tend to shorten words they use frequently. First, a descriptive term is coined. When the concept becomes more common, a shorter word is coined. So, a "carriage propelled by an engine built into it" became first an "automobile" and later a "car". Likewise, "progressive rock", which is quite a mouthful and often used by people concerned with rock music in the early 70s, was shortened to the more convenient "prog rock". This is the usual way languages work. (If you ask me whether I am a linguist: I am not a professional linguist, and never had linguistics classes in university. But I am an amateur linguist, especially interested in language history, and have read a handful of textbooks, and thus I think I know how languages work.) Of course, the genre usually called "prog" has no monopoly on innovation within rock music, and prog did not really come up with much that hasn't existed in any kind of music before. It just applied things from other music genres (such as classical compositional forms) to rock. (This doesn't mean that the innovativeness of prog is irrelevant. George Stephenson merely put two things together - the steam engine and the rail carriage - that had existed before his time, yet thus he created the railroad and revolutionized land transportation, and is therefore considered one of the great inventory. Likewise, prog musicians created a new kind of music from existing parts that had previously not been connected with each other.) There certainly is no fixed boundary between "prog" and "non-prog". There are intermediates. Are Supertramp and the Alan Parsons Project sophisticated enough to count as prog? They certainly stand in the tradition of Pink Floyd, Genesis and similar bands, yet their music is simpler and more conventional. What about Zappa and Captain Beefheart, who did some things similar to the English prog bands, yet do not really belong to the latter tradition? Bill Martin, author of Listening to the Future, does not consider Zappa prog because he wasted his musical skills on what he calls "junior high school jokes", and indeed, there is a looong way from the sexual allusions and cynicism of Zappa & Beefheart to, say, the spirituality of Yes. After all, the Velvet Underground also pushed the boundaries of rock, yet few would call them a prog band. (And I think that Tool sounds more like an updated version of VU than like any prog band I know of.) I understand the late 60s counterculture as an attempt at bringing forth a freer, more equitable and spiritually richer society of the future, and the idea behind prog was to create the art music of this future society, much the same way as baroque music was the art music of the absolutist royal courts of Versailles, Sanssouci etc., and romantic music was the art music of the grand-bourgeois salons of the 19th century. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 09:04
There we are at the "blackbird problem" again. Prog is named progressive rock because it is progressive and it is rock, but there may be things that are progressive and are rock, but aren't prog. A good example of this is perhaps the Velvet Underground. (And I think that progressive alternative rock owes more to the Velvet Underground than to classic prog.) ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Skalla-Grim
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 09:30
I think there are two questions. 1. Should everything in "prog" be rated on the basis of the term "Progressive Rock"? After all it's only a label made by music journalists, record companies, whatever. Call it art rock, complex rock, advanced rock, whatever. The bands which you are criticizing did not make up that term. It is just used to promote their music. 2. But even if "progressive" was the one and only criterion to judge that music, is it really a commitment to develop new styles and subgenres ceaselessly? Keith Emerson supposedly said: "It is music that does progress. It takes an idea and developes it, rather than just repeat it. Pop songs are about repetition and riffs and simplicity. Progressive music takes a riff, turns it inside out, plays it upside down and the other way around, and explores its potential." In that sense, "progressive" is a description of how you work with melodies, and it has nothing to do with re-inventing your genre permanently. I also don't agree with the anti-intellectualism. I don't think Robert Fripp or Keith Emerson just met their buddies, drank a few beers and then played what their "hearts" told them. It affords hard intellectual work, theoretical knowledge and lots of practice to compose and play that music. And regarding the lyrics ... when I hear some lyrics which make no sense to me, I would assume that I don't understand the lyricist rather than calling him a moron. |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 10:19
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 11:58
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 12:04
Indeed. |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 12:28
| Usually in old-timey traditional logic-based semantics, there is the intension which contains all the essential truth values (i.e. all the essential characteristics of 'progressive rock'). Then there's any number of extensions, which refers to the token members of the category (i.e. the individual progressive rock bands). The intension is taken as the definition of the term. The extension is always regarded as simply the result of what happens when the intension is correctly applied. Whether this is the correct way to do semantics is a long debated theoretical issue. In practice, it is difficult to apply as we tend to take the tokens (e.g. Genesis, Yes, King Crimson...) and derive a definition consistent with that extensional set. Which way better describes human cognition will not get decided here. Which way is better for a given forum discussion depends on the nature of the discussion. |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 14:17
Right - the term was coined by music journalists and record company marketing people to put a convenient label on the music. Some prog musicians, such as Robert Fripp, were uneasy with it. A common synonym in that time was art rock, which is still often heard these days - and has somewhat different connotations, even if both imply sophistication to some degree (art is not always progressive, and not everything progressive is art). There were other synonyms which are now dead, such as techno rock, or used only by detractors, such as pomp rock. One needs to keep music and etymology apart. Once you do that and realize that prog(ressive) rock is just a conventional designation of a music genre, there is little point in arguing on the lines of "this band just does what Yes and Genesis did 40 years ago, so they are not progressive and thus not really prog", or, conversely, "this band sounds nothing like classic prog, but they are a rock band and they progress, so they are prog, like it or not". You will realize that retro-prog is prog, and that some rock bands that are literally progressive are not prog. So Wobbler is a prog band, but the Velvet Underground was not, even if one can say that the VU "progressed" more than Wobbler. (A completely different question, of course, is that of relevance to the history of rock as a whole. Certainly, the Velvet Underground wrote "more" rock history than Wobbler ...)
Fair - permanently re-inventing the genre is besides the point. We can leave that to the academic avant-garde. Genres of course develop and change over time. While I feel that a prog band that develops a new and unique style is - ceteris paribus, of course - better and more to the "progressive spirit" of the genre than one that toes the stylistic lines of this or that classic prog band, the latter is a valid way of doing prog - even today that the classic era is four decades behind. Emerson's supposed saying tells much about what prog is about.
Amen! Doing prog is an intellectual exercise, and listening to it is to some degree too, and the anti-intellectualists (who are so fashionable these days - you are expected to go to the gym after work, not to the library!) will never get what prog is about ... ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 14:23
However, in above mentioned cases these changes were, let's say, "organic"; that change can not be done by some group of old fans who are writing a lot at internet and who want only to hijack that *prog rock* abbreviation and to use it for that ancient symphonic prog, and for contemporary prog in that retro style but mostly, of course, for the music by the bands that they like to listen to, and to manipulate with that, e.g. "this music is progressive rock, not prog rock" or vica verse; in other words, to turn the term *progressive rock* into something that would mean closer to "prog related" i.e. not prog.
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Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 14:41
Of course. And rock and roll originally was an ambiguous expression from mid-20th-century Afro-American slang, which meant 'dance' but also 'sexual intercourse'. But now, it just refers to a collection of interrelated music genres that originate in mid-20th-century rhythm and blues. And we now have hipsters which have very little in common with mid-20th-century hipsters ...
Again, correct. The usage of prog(ressive) rock as a designation of a certain music genre is well-established. And I don't restrict it to classic prog and retro-prog, to the contrary! Prog has many faces these days - neo-prog (one could speak of "neo-neo-prog" since the "original" neo-prog of the 80s is now history, too), prog metal, what I call "millennium prog" for lack of an established term for a recent current in prog, most prominently represented by Steven Wilson, that combines prog with an alternative rock influence), and various others. What I object to is a manipulation of the kind you mention but to another direction, namely (1) to the exlcusion of retro-prog, and (2) to the inclusion of rock acts such as Tool and the many bands that followed that may be literally "progressive" but not or only marginally connected to the genre conventionally called "prog". ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 15:16
I saw Tool live here in Belgrade in September 2007. They were advert here as a prog act as well and, I'm an eyewitness, they played damn great prog in Belgrade that night. Actually, Tool are prog in a similar (but modern) way as Rush were prog in 70s. And I said this as an old fan (only fan, I never even held an el. guitar in my life, so I was not some good-for-nothing musician who is jealous now on young bands, lol) who started to listening to prog in 1975 and who saw a lot of bigs at stage.
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Posted By: Rednight
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 16:12
Steve, do you remember that scene in Blazing Saddles when Howard Johnson says, "Y'know, Nietzsche says, 'Out of chaos comes order'"? ------------- "It just has none of the qualities of your work that I find interesting. Abandon [?] it." - Eno |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 16:47
Am I really the only one who doubts that Tool are prog? Everybody everywhere says that they are, but I simply can't get why. There is nothing of the changeful dramaturgy which seems to characteristic of prog to me, just a progressive buildup of texture, similar to the way texture builds up in progressive house and progressive trance. The difference between Tool on one hand and classic prog bands such as Yes, or modern prog bands such as Dream Theater, could hardly be greater. But that is just my subjective opinion. (Another case of this kind are the "progressive" extreme metal bands.) ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 17:12
Steve, do you remember that scene in Blazing Saddles when Howard Johnson says, "Y'know, Nietzsche says, 'Out of chaos comes order'"? [/QUOTE] 
No. The only Nietzsche I listen to is from this guy. A genius.
"Time is a flat circle."
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Posted By: Rednight
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 17:25
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Well then, do all you can to acquire a viewing of 'Saddles at the next opportune moment just for that scene. ------------- "It just has none of the qualities of your work that I find interesting. Abandon [?] it." - Eno |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 17:28
| ^Not a problem, being that time repeats, I'll see it eventually. |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 18:51
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Posted By: Man With Hat
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 18:58
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It seems to be fairly accepted that there are two 'strains' of progressive rock. The style (somehow being rooted in the 70s) and the spirit (the theoretical boundary pushing type of rock). Generally the former is abbreviated to prog and the latter is spelled out as progressive rock. Obviously, nebulous points still abound but this seems to be the easiest (and most accepted way, if that's important to anything) way to splice it up. ------------- Dig me...But don't...Bury me I'm running still, I shall until, one day, I hope that I'll arrive Warning: Listening to jazz excessively can cause a laxative effect. |
Posted By: TGM: Orb
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 19:30
Well, prog seems to me to be kind of a shorthand for a few different approaches to what was decidedly rock music springing largely from a mix of of the British blues boom of the 60s, The Beatles, psychedelia, the lyrical ambition of The Who and Bob Dylan. This got thrown in with bits of jazz or classical. Improvisation was completely key to huge amounts of early prog (Colosseum, Floyd, ELP, King Crimson). Technological innovation was important initially then kind of petered out as bands started aping other bands' sounds. I mean, half the Italian scene is based on what keyboards England was using three years earlier. I kind of disagree that the lyrics were inherently progressive and compared to the sort of stuff being attempted in the folk scene at the time they're pretty tame on social stuff (give a listen to Roy Harper's Stormcock album for instance) but the nature of doing 20 minute songs with a range of moods was that they required ambitious lyrics. |
Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: July 22 2015 at 22:02
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Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 23 2015 at 09:45
Coheed and Cambria are IMHO prog, though I can understand prog fans not liking them much. But Tool is much less prog than C&C. They are hard to classify; one can say that Maynard James Keenan invented his own style. The German Wikipedia mentions Meshuggah (a technical extreme metal band) besides KC, PF and Led Zeppelin as sources of influence, but I cannot really follow that. The English Wikipedia mentions the Melvins (a noise/doom/stoner band, themselves not easy to classify) as the main influence, which makes much more sense. The music of Tool is very dark and brooding, rather slow but with a stomping beat, a prominent bass guitar, little or no keyboards, and a gradual buildup of texture. The only things it shares with prog is the length of the tracks and the use of complex time signatures. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: July 23 2015 at 09:50
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Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 23 2015 at 09:55
Yes. Prog evolved from the late Beatles mixed with psychedelic rock and ambitious lyrics in the Dylan vein, with jazz and classical added. That describes the mixture quite well.
Certainly, improvisation was important in early prog, but the classic prog bands soon moved to more composed pieces. That doesn't necessarily mean that they wrote scores like classical composers do, but there definitely is composition in pieces like Close to the Edge.
Indeed, prog lyrics are usually not as openly political as some singer/songwriters or the West German Politrock bands of the early 70s, or the Fugs. But many address social problems, some (especially classic Yes) were outright visionary, and most (in the classic era, at least) reflect a progressive countercultural spirit. At least, despite much research, I could not find any true right-wing commentary in a prog song. Neal Morse writes Christian lyrics, but that doesn't make him a rightist. Rush lyrics espouse a sort of radical individualism and are influenced by thinking about the ideas of Ayn Rand, but while Ayn Rand can be called a rightist (though an idiosyncratic one), Neal Peart is much less so. However, some "New Right" neofolk and industrial bands sometimes sound much like Tool, but that IMHO isn't prog. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 23 2015 at 10:11
Well, if it is just for being hard to classify, they could be anything ... but I can see how they could get labelled "progressive": there is this progressive buildup of texture (as in progressive house etc.; has of course nothing to do with prog); there are the length of the pieces and the complex time signatures (which are reminiscent of prog). But perhaps whoever first called Tool "progressive" did not even have prog in mind; when this happened (in the early 90s), prog was so out that you could be an "expert" in current rock music without knowing that the thing even existed. Those were times when people wrote big books about rock history without even mentioning prog! But AFAIK, "progressive" was then a hot thing in electronic dance music, and the hipsters must have known. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: July 23 2015 at 10:13
| ^But it's not anything. They are considerd prog. |
Posted By: dr wu23
Date Posted: July 23 2015 at 10:23
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Yet another thread essentially about what is ....'progressive rock'. ------------- One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Haquin |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: July 23 2015 at 10:33
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Yes, the three essential questions for man: 1) Is there a god? 2) what happens after death? and 3) What is progressive rock?
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Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: July 23 2015 at 11:32
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^You forgot about the eternal dilemma ie 'what do women want'. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: July 23 2015 at 14:34
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David, my three question might have an answer, yours, never.
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Posted By: terramystic
Date Posted: July 25 2015 at 07:48
That's very narrow - meaning almost only symphonic prog and some neo. This leaves out: space, avant, post ... |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 27 2015 at 11:35
| Some band like Yes, although great, is not and never will be, nor some other Symph band, a reference point for valuation of prog by e.g. Tool, or Telepathy - that's a new and great and prog band who released their magnificent debut http://telepathyband.bandcamp.com/album/12-areas" rel="nofollow - 12 Areas in 2014. Insist on 1970s Symph rock that to be a reference point for contemporary prog expressions, actually is pure mental masturbation. |
Posted By: The Dark Elf
Date Posted: July 27 2015 at 12:11
Wouldn't it be more correct to say metal masturbation? In any case, referring to current prog bands in contrast with previous prog bands is part of a historically contextual discussion. I don't think one can divorce such context when defining bands in a specific genre, or if indeed they are even in the same genre. ------------- ...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology... |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 27 2015 at 12:18
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Posted By: The Dark Elf
Date Posted: July 27 2015 at 12:26
No, what I said is far cleverer. ------------- ...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology... |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 27 2015 at 12:46
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Posted By: The Dark Elf
Date Posted: July 27 2015 at 13:35
Fortunately, the blues is easier to quantify than prog, which seemingly has as many definitions of "what it is" as there are fans, or at least posters on this site. ------------- ...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology... |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 27 2015 at 14:22
It depends, again, on how you define prog! If you, as I do, understand prog as a label for a particular current of tradition within the realm of rock music, then the classic symphonic prog bands (all of them combined, not a single band, however) are a valid reference point for what constitutes prog. And that is IMHO not "pure mental masturbation". And then, I feel, Tool fall by the wayside (I don't know Telepathy, so I say nothing on that matter). Of course, Tool are progressive in their own ways, and there certainly is some relationship to prog of the classic tradition, and finally, they are widely held to be a "prog" band, and words always mean what people use it for. But it is a different kind of "prog". ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 27 2015 at 15:07
Oh and there is no different kinds of prog as you might fantasize. There's just one prog as an umbrella for many different bands, styles and sub-genres as well; Symphonic rock, although the most popular sub-genre mainly due to pop elements, is just one of Prog' sub-genres.
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Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 10:17
Well, the term prog(ressive) rock was originally established to mean the kind of music we now call "classic prog" or "symphonic prog" to distinguish it from later styles that emerged from it; and thus, 70s symphonic prog is still relevant as a reference point not only to retro-prog but to prog in general. It is relevant to neo-prog bands such as Marillion; it is relevant to prog metal bands such as Dream Theater; it is relevant to nu prog artists such as Steven Wilson. All these stand in the tradition of classic prog, but use more modern sound dress, and can be understood under the critical framework established for classic prog; hence, they are prog. Of course, not all parameters of classic prog are equally relevant. For instance, it doesn't really matter much whether a band uses a Mellotron (or at least, Mellotron sounds from a sound library, or whatever) or not. That is a rather superficial parameter, part of what I call "sound dress", and even among classic prog bands, there were quite a few who did not use a Mellotron (the staple keyboard instrument of classic prog was not the Mellotron, also not the synthesizer, but the Hammond organ). But what regards musical structure, modern prog can be aptly compared to classic prog, even if the sound dress is very different (as with, for instance, Dream Theater vs. Pink Floyd). With bands such as Tool, or most djent and tech metal bands, it is not just the sound dress that is different. The whole structure is not meaningfully comparable to classic prog; the defining features of the genre, as I outlined them in my opening post, or can be found on the Wikipedia entry for "progressive rock" and in various books on the matter, just aren't there. Hence, it is not prog.
I feel a contradiction between your claim that classic prog does not matter for modern prog except retro-prog, and your claim that there is "just one prog". If classic prog is not relevant to moderrn prog as a reference point, what then is the reference point? What holds that "just one prog" together if not the structural parameters that were historically established by classic prog? I feel that you are trying to get things under one umbrella because they are named the same, despite not having much more in common than the name. By saying that classic prog is irrelevant as a reference point for artists such as Tool, you implicitly admit that there is no strong connection between the former and the latter, and that is exactly my point why I don't think Tool is a prog band in the sense bands such as Yes, IQ or Dream Theater are. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 10:32
 ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: The Dark Elf
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 10:49
If Keith Emerson's theory is true then anything Greg Lake wrote for ELP was definitely not progressive. Lucky Man, Still You Turn Me On, Benny the Bouncer, C'est La Vie, etc. All standard pop in my book. ------------- ...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology... |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 11:00
Our acceptance actually holds prog together. Because the prog is what "we" (a majority of prog fans since 60s 'til now) accepted as such.
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Posted By: Skalla-Grim
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 12:12
I didn't quote Emerson's statement to exclude any bands from being "progressive", I just wanted to show there's a different (and, in my opinion, more relevant) meaning of "progressive", than to change your style forever and ever, or play in a style no-one has played before. And, yes - Lake's songs like "Lucky Man" are not progressive in that way. |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 14:06
Which is a highly subjective notion. But OK, prog is what people use the word for. That's the way language works. Hence, I say "prog in the classic tradition", if necessary, when I refer to the kind of music that descends from classic prog and is what I am chiefly interested in. There are indeed other kinds of music people call "prog" which are IMHO not part of this. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 14:51
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Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 15:25
I mention Tool so often because they seem to be the ones with whom this "prog vs. prog" business got started, and there is no generally accepted term for this kind of music (they are often held to be the point of origin of post-metal, though). There are of course others, but Tool is the best-known. So I say "Tool" when I mean "the kind of music represented by Tool". To which degree are the people who accept Tool as prog the same people as those who are into classic prog, neo-prog, prog metal (of the Dream Theater/Queensr˙che kind) or retro-prog? Judging from the people I know, these are two different (if overlapping) audiences. I don't know many people who are into "both kinds of prog", but those I know maintain that these are two different things. The track you posted is quite typical of Tool, and highlights why I don't think this has much to do with the music of bands such as Yes, Pink Floyd, Rush, Marillion, Dream Theater, Spock's Beard or Porcupine Tree. There is just an endlessly repeated riff onto which more and more layers of sound are added. That IMHO is very different from prog in the classic tradition. That people call it prog means that ... people call it prog. I wouldn't say that this kind of music is utterly unrelated to classic prog, though. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 15:41
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 15:44
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Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 16:42
My God no wonder his heart stopped. ------------- "Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 16:45
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I thought something similar when I first came across that gif He looked good back then though. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 16:46
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Sure, he was a serious dancer, they rarely get sick. ------------- "Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: July 28 2015 at 16:52
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Not exactly what I was thinking of, but you're right. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 29 2015 at 10:12
No. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: terramystic
Date Posted: July 29 2015 at 16:04
Early prog bands were very versatile. KC and Canterbury bands did a lot of impro and jazzy stuff but also Yes did some jamming in the gigs (Howe was very good at this). Another example of versatility is Close to the Edge - avant, symphonic and space in one epic song! |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: July 29 2015 at 16:12
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Of course prog bands improvised, both in studio and live. The reason a band may opt to not play spontaneous music is because, unless that's the idea going in (like with jazz), it makes it much harder to play a coherent show. You can't just decide "Now we're going to improvise; now we're not", it has to be understood and, yes, even practiced. This is harder than it sounds, and few non-jazz players were prepared for it. Zeppelin did it with remarkable alacrity, and so did Floyd to an extent pre-'75. But they were exceptions. Performing is kinda like taking a test-- you better be prepared, even for the unexpected, or you'll go down sure as a gassed canary. ------------- "Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy |
Posted By: Smurph
Date Posted: July 29 2015 at 17:01
uhhh... Neurosis - Through Silver and Blood woooooo ------------- http://pseudosentai.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow - http://pseudosentai.bandcamp.com/ wtf |
Posted By: LearsFool
Date Posted: July 29 2015 at 17:06
True dat. -------------
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Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 09:01
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Let me try to restate my problem with what could broadly be called "tech metal". Sure, words mean what they are used for, so when it is widely accepted that tech metal is prog, it is prog. But then, the question arises as to which degree this music fulfils the "quality criteria" for prog. Like, if someone offers me a contraption as a "chair", and it collapses as I try sitting in it, it is either a bad chair - or no chair at all. I expect from prog that it fulfils some criteria, which are the reasons why I like prog. The key criteria are: a complex and changeful musical dramaturgy; a rich, quasi-symphonic or organ-like sound texture involving electric/electronic keyboards in the context of a rock band line-up; sophisticated lyrics about relevant subject matters approached from a progressive standpoint. All three criteria are abstracted from classic prog. If these are not fulfilled, the music is IMHO either bad prog or no prog at all. Lastly, I think of music genres as diachronic units - units based on common sources, as in biological or linguistic taxonomy. Prog, under this angle, is a particular subgenre of rock music that emerged in late 60s England, and is characterized by the "quality criteria" given above. That means that classic prog, the subgenre with which prog started, is still relevant to the critical evaluation of all prog today. If tech metal descends from classic prog (and that is what IMHO the statement "tech metal is prog" means), then it is legitimate to draw comparisons to classic prog, and to gauge to which degree the defining characteristics of prog are fulfilled. It would arguably be meaningless to apply these criteria to, say, Skrewdriver, or to a gangsta rap crew, as nobody claims them to be prog. But if a band such as Mastodon, Meshuggah or Tool is characterized as "prog", it is IMHO legitimate to ask how it compares to classic prog and to which degree the characteristic features of prog are realized. If you say, "No, classic prog is not relevant to the evaluation of this kind of music", you must admit the question "But is it prog then?". ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 11:36
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Posted By: LearsFool
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 11:56
I'm going to have to stop you there. Think about this for a minute: does the entire breadth and width of the classic '70's prog bands necessarily use orchestral derived forms, organs, and keys? The answer is a resounding NO. Now I see why you bang on and on about so much of modern prog not being prog, and I can also see that your reasoning is, frankly, stupid. -------------
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Posted By: Rednight
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 12:09
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^ Eeegad! But how do you really feel (and this time, lower the gloves)? ------------- "It just has none of the qualities of your work that I find interesting. Abandon [?] it." - Eno |
Posted By: LearsFool
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 12:30
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^ No problem, and at this point I'd like to apologise in advance to Elf. So prog started off as being based around a good amount of certain compositional choices, and kept in the vast majority of cases a certain forward thinking and experimental edge. What this quickly resulted in was a diversification of sound that was used within the idiom. The symphonic line obeys what Elf likes in prog, but there were, even from before Crimson first codified a few sonic tricks of the classic prog trade on their debut, bands using prog composition on wildly different sounds. We have come to define whole strains of prog that existed even then that disobeyed the all important second rule; prog folk, krautrock, avant-prog. And even within strains otherwise closely associated with symph, bands sometimes disregarded the prevailing English trend at will. So the problem with Elf's argument is that he presumes that classic prog is always dependent on symphonic stylistic choices, and that ergo most modern prog bands can't be prog. This also represents a way of dividing prog from non-prog along lines of "What I Like" and "What I Don't Like". -------------
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Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 12:39
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Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 13:46
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By "classic prog" I mean symphonic prog of the early to middle 70s. The boundaries are of course fuzzy, but this is what I perceive to have defined what prog is. How do you define "prog"? You tell me that I am a jerk and misdefine "prog" all the time, yet I haven't seen any definition from yours. How can we continue with our discussion when you withhold your position from me? ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: LearsFool
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 14:03
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It is dependent on the compositional choices you mention as your first criterion, though not necessarily limited by connections to orchestral forms you mistakenly claim as vital with your second. The genre is defined by these choices rather than sonic choices; that instead results in sub-genres of prog. I did mention something along these lines back when I explained why Tool is prog on the Top 50 thread, and as well on the first page of this thread in relation to the etymology of the genre name. -------------
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Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 14:06
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I'm not sure one needs a definition to hear that Jethro Tull's A Passion Play, King Crimson's Red, Floyd's Ummagumma, Frank Zappa's Hot Rats, Amon Düül ll's Yeti, Comus' First Utterance, Gong's You, Caravan's In the Land of Grey & Pink, Area's Arbeit Macht Frei and Can's Tago Mago never had anything to do with symph prog. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 14:12
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Once you arrive at a definition of prog you'll automatically be faced with hundreds of albums that don't fit in.....which is why we've never been able to establish one. There are about as many views on what constitutes prog as there are PA members, and in the end that is part of it's charm imho. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 15:15
"Why this music is prog?" - who knows how many times we heard the same question! Prog is the process of overcoming the resistance of the audience that has to accept some new, "crazy", "haunting", "strange" or "boring" music that has not resulted by skills and crafts needed for merge Classical Music and Rock (as you mistakenly think) but flashes of unbridled imagination of various bands and solo artists. The audience was / is always free to accept or reject those unbridled flashes of imagination and what the majority of audience accepts, it is Prog. In short, Prog is a matter of acceptance. |
Posted By: Skalla-Grim
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 16:36
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In other words, everything new in rock music is prog?? If that were correct, metal, punk rock, gothic rock etc. would also be prog. That's why it doesn't make sense to cling to the term "progressive", especially when "progressive" is shortened to the formula "It must be NEW". Many people around here try to define "progressive rock" based only on the name of the genre, as if that would work with other genres of rock music. You can't explain "punk" or "metal" as music genres just based on the meaning of the names of the genres. |
Posted By: miamiscot
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 17:30
| What is Prog? I dunno but I sure do like it. |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: July 30 2015 at 17:42
Quite. ------------- "Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 02:00
Via Obscura was a gothic rock project that I was suggested for Prog Archives and it was accepted as prog by very strictly Prog Archives' Symph team. It was accepted as prog and Via Obscura' Traum the album is highly regarded prog album now. As I said, prog is what the audience accepted as such; prog is not some disembodied entity that floats and wandering around and then went into an artist or another. In most cases, the acts that were accepted by audience as prog were new at the time of acceptance, with honorable exceptions such as e.g. Pink Floyd, the band which back in the day was not regarded by majority of audience as anything other than (great) psychedelic rock.
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Posted By: Disparate Times
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 02:25
| So prog is consensus based, that makes sense for PA. Consensus once claimed that our world was flat, centuries later we still use consensus but it's important to understand that sometimes it can be wrong and not everyone will always agree with it. Without an absolute definition I think that the idea of audience acceptance may be the best option we have. If a punk band does something new that doesn't mean that they are prog, it will take an audience to make it so. It would have to be rather extreme for me to jump on board. |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 02:31
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^ In other words, prog's just awesome. ------------- "Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 05:46
As for example Yugoslav band Igra Staklenih Perli which is now and out of region probably the most popular of all Yugoslav prog bands, actually was started as a punk rock band and played punk in Belgrade's venues before 1978 when they went to the studio to record their debut album where they were changed the music direction into space rock; but, at that time, they labeled their new stuff as "stream of consciousness music". They didn't said "we are prog" nor "we are space rock"; the audience actually said that after their https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0Lmu_Q0eq0" rel="nofollow - debut album from 1978. This is a live version of one of their punk songs that never were officially released, but they were continued to play them live for encore set. |
Posted By: zravkapt
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 05:53
Prog is musical pornography: no one can define it but they know it when they hear it. ------------- Magma America Great Make Again |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 08:06
Yes. What is prog is a matter of conensus, and there is a fuzzy consensus on this site, and who am I to question it? As the thread title implies, I feel that there are wider and narrower concepts of "prog", and the consensus here is favouring a wider definition, and so be it. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Svetonio
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 08:14
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Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 08:20
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PA has and will always be defined by the teams of the day, which means that what earlier incarnations of teams thought of as being prog may not be the same as the current one. Btw Weeping Elf: don't you consider the aforementioned albums to be prog (You, In the Land of Grey & Pink etc etc), and if so, where is the symphonic touch? I am not out to get you or win a discussion - I am merely trying to understand your reasoning I am sort lf playing devil's advocating here, because I don't consider a large part of what's included in Krautrock, prog folk, avant, electronic and space to be prog - yet I understand the ties to our much beloved genre and furthermore get why they belong on PA. The same goes for a lot of the new metal stuff actually. Again, searching for an all-embracing definition of prog is a rather futile undertaking if you ask me. Mostly because it is so difficult to pinpoint just exactly what makes a prog album/band. In my own case it's as simple as: I know it when I hear it. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 08:38
I don't know many of them, so I cannot say anything on those. A Passion Play and Red are IMHO "prog in the classic tradition", even if they are somewhat on the margins, and they are admittedly not very "symphonic", rather folky (Tull) and jazzy (KC), respectively. Ummagumma not really, it is one disc of live recordings of psychedelic music, and one disc of mostly experimental pieces from individual band members; the band became a classic prog band only later, with Atom Heart Mother. Tago Mago is IMHO not in the classic tradition.
Fair, then we agree broadly. Also, I wouldn't say that things such as Krautrock, avant-rock or tech metal have nothing to do with "prog in the classic tradition" - they are at least related. Hence, my idea of distinguishing between a "wider" and a "narrower" sense of "prog", as in the thread title.
Certainly! Prog is a fuzzy concept with wide borderlands in which one cannot really say whether it is prog or not. Classic-era Yes? Certainly prog. The Rolling Stones? Certainly not prog. But Frank Zappa? Hard to say, the opinions differ. Indeed, I would agree with you in that I know it when we hear it. And I hear it in Yes, Pink Floyd, Rush, Marillion, Dream Theater, Spock's Beard, Porcupine Tree, etc., but not in Can, Mastodon, Meshuggah or Tool. But your mileage may vary. You may hear it in places where I don't, and may not hear it in places where I do. It is subjective. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 08:48
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Alright, thanks for your explanation. I suspect most members on here disagree with at least a couple of additions. I updated my previous posts with mine. Nope I didn't - must've forgotten to update at the end. Anyway, personally I don't agree with the inclusion of Björk, Nightwish or Tori Amos......but that's ok with me. All that means is that I've got a different set of ears. Edit: I actually think we are quite conservative in our inclusion process compared to most other prog sites. Man the things I've seen elsewhere U2, System Of A Down, Rage Against The Machine, Cream, Grateful Dead, Limp Bizkit, Korn, The Tubes, Pere Ubu and so forth  ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Formentera Lady
Date Posted: July 31 2015 at 09:59
With interest I have read this thread, because I also think I have a "narrower sense" of progressive rock. In one of the countless other threads in this forum on the infamous What-is-prog-or-not topic I have posted my own definition along these lines:
I feel a similarity to the original post's definition. Interesting in your definition, Elf, is the mention of the social background as being "leftist". I also thought about that, that the hippie/peace/anti-establishment movement of the late 60's prepared somewhat the soil on which Progressive Rock could evolve and prosper (not that all hippies listen to prog rock, only that the hippies were a kind of pre-condition). That said, if this site had a narrower sense of prog rock, it would not be that big and would not contain so many artists as it contains now. And even if I do not agree with every addition to the site, on the other hand the variety is so big, that there are a lot of opportunities to discover interesting artists you have never heard of before, which makes exploration of this site much more exciting than of any other site ------------- http://theprogressiveweb.blogspot.de" rel="nofollow - Visit me in Second Life to talk about music. |