Progarchives and the world of boxes

To me music has always been just subjective thing, also for the reason I have got little or at all education of it. So it´s just how I hear it, although practiced music hearing almost my whole life. Anyway I try to be "objective" when there is album that has commonly estimated great although I don´t understand it´s greatness. I don´t know is it just me, but I have paid attention there are people at least in forums who really try to put down some "canonized" albums, trying to prove them overrated etc. So I think they´re mixing their own taste and the greatness many other people´s have heard them. Of course also happen, that some albums been respected time they become but since forgotten (maybe for the reason) and that´s of course ok. But to me it seems it´s 2000`s phenomenon to put down really great albums of the 60`s & 70`s, it´s not long ago I read quite new edition of 1001 albums you must hear and there are most albums from every decade from nineties! Really many also from 2000`s and many great 60 albums missing. Again it´s just my subjective opinion, but I think Britney Spears album is not something I must hear before I die (there were also many other examples).

Thanks Iain, greatly appreciated

To be fair I do not pretend to fully understand the scope of this discussion, which was one of the main reasons I decided to make the thread.
A lot of what you write with regards to the human psyche and our passion for categorising is akin to what I see in some scientific fields of research, and that strikes a chord with me and possibly helps narrow down a thing or two for me in that I often come across discussion/heated arguments about music that treat the subject like science. I hate that. The whole subjectivity thang simply obliterates the scientific “approach” that all too often ends up as some warped take on values that were never set in the first place.
If folks want to infuse a little science into the mix then why not Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’?
Also science is rather rigid in some areas that I find truly perplexing. ‘Constants’ for once, but that’s for another topic altogether (Why wouldn’t scientists come together to study anomalies regarding fx how the speed of light somehow magically changes every time they try to measure it..and that which we officially end up with is actually a median of the measurements combined? Why not dive into the fluctuations of the raw data? Same goes for gravity. Maybe we can learn something new.).

Again it probably boils down to how we effectively brainwash ourselves into believing certain nonsense about the music we listen to, and that goes for how we form our opinions on politics, culture as well as everything else. We are after all flock animals. Once because our species’ survival heavily depended on it. Nowadays though we’re so many that we have started to create ‘flocks’ out of thin air and bewar each other because that’s what we do and have always done(?).
...and my favourite band is obviously and most scientifically better than your’s. Read the bloody sheetmusic why dotcha!!!

...and then we bemoan the perpetual horror of being all alone with our favourite music..when most of what we do actually purports an existence of us ‘sitting on our own little island with our highly unique tattoos and secret music that only we ourselves fully understand the true beauty of’. Oxymoronland beckons!
It’s basically like me trying to develop awareness of the beauty of plants by visiting steakhouses with great salads.

Edited by Guldbamsen - February 02 2020 at 15:35

Thanks for post Mårtte
It was actually the e-mails we interchanged that spurred me on to finally start this thread, so thanks man.

When I mentioned that all of this starts with ourselves and the way we communicate with each other, I genuinely mean that. All of this started out as soul searching on my behalf after having read some of my old posts and reviews and not really liking what I found. My initial thought was to go back and edit the stuff that I no longer agreed with or similarly came out rather offensively and sort of “whitewash” my own history in order to make me appear more ‘sympathetic’ and ‘worldly-wise’...but then realised that is exactly what’s wrong with just about every arena of the world that is based around information. I am very much a part of that and if I don’t own up to that fact and learn from (my own) history...well it all ends up being about the ego and how best to support it. Not exactly the finest soil for inspiration and new ideas...

It’s an ongoing struggle in me and I imagine it will continue to be so just because this way of treating music has been integral to western culture even before I was born...but I am trying to learn and change as I go along.
I used to do the same as most famous music critics would do and highlight certain albums by denigrating others...often artists that couldn’t be further from each other if they hired a space ship...yet through some weird and unholy concoction in my brain - possibly fueled by a then ongoing thread over PA about the same band where certain posts of nonsense got under my skin - I end up doing a sly fencing move back...ending up supporting the sports equation even further.

Heh..the older I get the more convinced I get of the old saying: ‘what goes around comes around’ which in effect just is a hip adaptation of Newton’s laws on physics.
Physics exist outside of objects though and react in much the same manner.

‘How in the blue feck did he arrive at that conclusion?!!!???? I mean 3 bloody stars for Foxtrot/Close To The Edge/etc???? Doesn’t he know this is a prog rock site!???’

Back when PA started to get a lot of metal reviews it also received it’s fair share of new members..often younger guys who came from a predominantly metal based upbringing though now enthralled with the progressive and more shapeshifting ways of the genre. Some of these guys though didn’t feel the same about the classics as the general bearded 60+ prog fans did....and we saw loads of threads and posts similar to the above, granted, faux quote.

This is merely a small fraction of the bigger picture and dilemma with a place like Progarchives or indeed any specialist internet music site. Music is inherantly appreciated on a deeply subjective level yet at the same time we’re trying to assign tags and boxes to the very same. In essence we do this because we need a language that will help us in better locating music that we will like. That is all and should be all.
But we tend to give the boxes a life of their own and start believing in them....even starting pseudo-feuds and wars between them simply because we don’t like what we’ve heard of X box.

Then again this sort of thing has been going on for a long time. Remember how punk (or disco depending on who you ask) killed prog? How these two styles of music supposedly were at war with each other? Or similarly how bands were pitted up against each other like fx The Beatles vs The Stones and later on Oasis vs Blur - hell I even got a whiff of that here in Denmark with Kashmir vs Psyched Up Janis which I never quite understood as I loved both bands....which of course wasn’t allowed because you either dug one or the other!!!
What has happened since with the internet is that we, the fans, continue this mentality ad nauseum. We see this every day here on this very forum where folks flip out in the polls instead of just thinking of them as a bit of fun and a silly platform to talk about music.
I believe this mentality mimics the one found in sport fans and more than anything it leads music to become something similar: a competition. A quest for gold medals, grammys, the top spot on PA’s list/poll and similar stuff that in the end doesn’t amount to anything other than a faux piedestal. Care about the way the music makes you feel...not about the made up contest over the internet that maybe 30 other folks worldwide are reading.

The boxes are alright if you see them for what they are and refrain from making sweeping generalisations about the ones you only know on a superficial level. Use them as tools to better locate the stuff you’re into and in order to better communicate with folks on the forum..and you’re good to go. If you don’t understand them and feel they end up confusing you, then scrap em altogether! You’re probably better off in the long run and most likely have other ways of talking about music that people understand.
Whatever you do though never ever buy into the boxes! Never treat them as real things. That is what is currently killing the music and has done so for so long..yet we keep perpetuating this evil and wholly anodyne way of treating an artform that is supposed to be about more...something that jolts the spirit and ignites the spark in us....Right?
We should be building bridges instead of burning them and it all starts in ourselves and the way we communicate with each other.

I’m not sure if this makes perfect sense to everyone out there and I don’t expect it to either, but I feel that this is an important subject to address if we’re ever going to get music, not only prog rock, back to where it belongs..and not just some arbitrary form of expression we enroll in our daily “fencing matches”.
Remember the old Python sketch?
‘Ah, I’d like to have an argument please’

I’d personally like to have less around topics that conflate music with sports.