What would be the best way to sum up prog music in an MP3 and one or two sentences? Music from this site would be preferable.

Cheers!

I guess the best way will be: fusion of exquisite symphoart sensibilities of the Age of Enlightenment, projected on the jazz-rock vibe, pumped with psychodelic rock and played (virtuoso, at that) with use of the most strange music instruments

I guess Mechanical Bride from Steve Hackett's latest masterpiece To Watch The Storms could serve as an example. This download is on the main site--who needs it--I have full album

Prog music defies simple definition, as common elements are not shared by all prog bands. It can be said to be music that communicates to the mind and soul rather than to the feet - but some prog defies even that description!

In a nutshell, prog is music that goes beyond popular music in that it breaks boundaries and takes risks in order to convey the artists' intentions as accurately as possible. Art music, in other words.

A single mp3?

"Firth of Fifth" by Genesis from "Selling England By The Pound".

Dick Heath wrote: Dietcokeman wrote: What would be the best way to sum up prog music in an MP3 and one or two sentences? Music from this site would be preferable.   Cheers! It is impossible - but it is music that has the majority of rock/pop critics writing crap in an attempt to denigate it - or worse when these critics are asked to be   pundits on TV documentaries, talking crap.

And there is a very rational explanation for that!!! Prog (which is a mainstream--at least was throughout 60-70-80s) is a music which, by definition, could be played only by people with intellectual and musical abilities which exceed by far anything found in a bulvar yellow world of pop. It requires taste and complexity and abstract thinking from listener (that means basic classic culture-eduction)--precise qualities, which are despised by the very nature of the so called entertainment--because it is not instantly gratifying and playing prog leaves no time to pump silicon in to one's buttocks and other body parts, as well as for any other weird tabloid behaviour, which are the soul and body of novadays "journalism". And most importantly--prog IS created by TALENT (if not genius alltogether) and because of that long ago evolved into completely separate from mainstream pop-culture world and exists on its own terms--and good for us!!! and for prog!!!

In The Circus Of Becoming

It All Starts With A Spark

Once Below A Time

Set Fire To The Stars

Steve Hackett from "Circus Of Becoming" (To Watch The Storms, 2003)

It is impossible - but it is music that has the majority of rock/pop critics writing crap in an attempt to denigate it - or worse when these critics are asked to be   pundits on TV documentaries, talking crap.
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But in conlusion--the best work in progrock had a very spiritual, philosophical and profound political impetus behind it. Not genitalia-driven (almost Freudian) rationale, which is the reason for pop-culture. Once it's not genitalia-connected--it is all crap for media and provides no interest, so they trash it.  If it would be otherwise: we all would be listening today to Vivaldi and King Crimson on FM radios.

James Lee wrote: From what I hear, Greg Lake was pretty genitalia-driven.

Very possible!!! Aren't we all to some degree? Yet, Lake's music speaks for itself and quite loud at that--never met in his music f..c, gangsta bitch or suck my d...k. We are talking here about two different things....let's discriminate art and not-art 

how about: "prog = psychedelia plus discipline".