Defining "Prog" ... a practical solution

^ I agree with your usage of "prog" and "progressive", but of course it's difficult to distinguish them since "prog" is also the contraction of "progressive".

I'm preparing two tags on my website:

"progressive approach"
"prog by style"

I will attempt to assign these two tags to all the albums of my collection ... when I'm done I'll try to make the result available as a chart. I'm not sure if that chart will be useful or not, but I'm willing to try this experiment.

Certif1ed wrote: and because not once did Czukay stand on one leg...

well then you'd really have something 

From A to Z baby.

Well, I've said that before and I'll say it again. The problem in defining what is prog or not is that Progressive Rock was a label to a musical movement that took place mainly in the late sixties and in the seventies, the thing we call today Classic Prog. There were other musical movements that had some elements in common with Progressive Rock and later were put in the same umbrella.

Then came many other movements influenced by Progressive Rock (and other movements/genres as well)  that are somewhat different to prog rock, but were also put under the same umbrella and this keeps on growing so much that nowadays we don't talk about Prog Rock anymore. And a more hazardous move that has being done is to use the elements that are present in the new movements put under Prog umbrella to rewrite the past story and to "discover" old prog bands that were not labeled as so.

When a person says he likes prog, the person hardly mean to say that he likes blues, jazz, avant-garde, heavy metal, nu-metal, black/death metal, synth rock, post punk, folk, psychedelic, electronic music, indian music among others. People hardly like every genre (here called subgenre) labeled as prog  that's why there will never be "union among the progressive ranks".

So, in my opinion, is useless to discuss "pratical solutions" for defining prog because every "solution" will not be pratical and will not help. Take as example the first trial of using the pratical solution given. The first reply was a disagreement that Metallica was not "non-prog". This is a sign that what people in the site call "Prog" will never have a efficient way to define, because it is too much to be defined.

Kestrel wrote: I think the problem is that we're trying to come up with a somewhat detailed definition of several somewhat unrelated genres of music. I don't consider "prog" a real genre. I don't see a whole lot of Krautrock influence on Symphonic prog and vice versa. They are two separate genres that have one thing in common: they pushed the boundaries of what rock is (to varying degrees). I believe that to be the definition of "progressive rock" and then we can begin to define what symphonic prog is, what krautrock is, what RIO is, and so on since the bands in those categories have a lot more in common. We can discuss how they pushed the boundaries, how they relate to another, etc.  When we choose Genesis, Yes, ELP and King Crimson as what we define the progressive style to be, we're discluding tons of other bands that don't fit into the "English symphonic" style. They are only markers of a specific subset of what progressive rock is. I wouldn't put Can into the same genre as Genesis; they're completely different from each other. Like I said, I don't think prog is a genre of music, just like classic rock (which I guess is a whole other argument). All it is is a term that we apply to certain kinds of music that we think others will enjoy just because they push the boundaries of rock music.

I understand you completely. However, you're missing the point of what I'm trying to do. Remember the basic scenario that I described earlier:

Imagine you're an expert of prog music (which most of us are). A total newbie - a person who hasn't heard anything we call prog - and asks you "What is Prog? Please don't give me a long description, just name  2-3 albums.".

Would you tell him to listen to Mekanik Destruktiv Kommandoh, Inner Mounting Flame or Still Life (VdGG)? I wouldn't. I would tell him to listen to Foxtrot, Close to the Edge and - well, maybe not necessarily ELP, but maybe ItCotCK or Thick as a Brick. I simply think that these albums are closer to representing the essence of what "Prog" stood for in the 1970s. Of course I would mention to the newbie that Prog actually encompasses a huge variety of styles ... but none of them are (or were) as iconic and revered as those key albums I named.


What you need to understand is that by naming a "nucleus" of albums I'm not excluding all the other genres. I'm merely saying that they were offshoots of the main classic prog movement - which is indeed synonymous with "Classic British Symphonic Prog Rock" - or parallel movements (like Krautrock or Canterbury/Prog Fusion) which were also regarded as being "Prog", but were probably seen as second tier developments by most people (I'm saying "probably" because I wasn't there myself, so I can't know for sure). Note also that as I said before, some of these bands may actually be more progressive than the other, more iconic bands.

I think the problem is that we're trying to come up with a somewhat detailed definition of several somewhat unrelated genres of music. I don't consider "prog" a real genre. I don't see a whole lot of Krautrock influence on Symphonic prog and vice versa. They are two separate genres that have one thing in common: they pushed the boundaries of what rock is (to varying degrees). I believe that to be the definition of "progressive rock" and then we can begin to define what symphonic prog is, what krautrock is, what RIO is, and so on since the bands in those categories have a lot more in common. We can discuss how they pushed the boundaries, how they relate to another, etc. 

When we choose Genesis, Yes, ELP and King Crimson as what we define the progressive style to be, we're discluding tons of other bands that don't fit into the "English symphonic" style. They are only markers of a specific subset of what progressive rock is. I wouldn't put Can into the same genre as Genesis; they're completely different from each other.

Like I said, I don't think prog is a genre of music, just like classic rock (which I guess is a whole other argument). All it is is a term that we apply to certain kinds of music that we think others will enjoy just because they push the boundaries of rock music. 

Edited by Kestrel - July 03 2008 at 03:34

I have two problems with this.

"B) Something is truly progressive, but doesn't sound like typical "Prog" music"

Although I know next to nothing about the genre, I'm sure there are several rap artists who are progressive thinking, and they certainly sound nothing like the "typical prog music", so wouldn't they fall into this category? 

But on the other hand a band like Magma made music that we would certainly consider to be progressive, and it doesn't sound like "typical prog music", which leads me to the second problem I have:  At what point does untypical prog music become typical?  Magma's music was certainly atypical when it was first made because there wasn't much like it before (or at least not to my knowledge).  But after a couple of albums would it then be typical enough for any Magma "clones" to be considered prog under criterion C?  And if so then wouldn't Magma's "typical" music classify them under criterion A, or are we only considering where they would fall at the conception of their "truly progressive" music?  If it's the latter, then how could anybody fall under criterion A?  How can a band be truly progressive while still sounding typical?

I think you might need to define what you mean by "truly progressive" and "typical", but wouldn't that just bring you back to the original question that you were trying to solve?

Somehow we allways find that popularity is a main issue. This is why people in the streets would name Yes or Genesis as defining prog and not VDGG, Magma or Gentle giant as Mike said earlier.

^ it is related and I don't mind you posting it here, but it looks like it has the potential of spawning several pages of discussion, so it deserves its own thread.

Since this is an entirely different topic, I would recommend that you start a separate thread ... but nicely done diagram!