Classic Rock's "Prog Rock" Magazine

Tony R wrote: Apparently Classic Rock Presents...Prog regularly achieves sales of over 50,000 copies. That's quite an achievement for a Prog-based mag that costs a ridiculous £8 and isnt sold in supermarkets.

Does Progarchives often get a mention in it?

Tony R wrote: Apparently Classic Rock Presents...Prog regularly achieves sales of over 50,000 copies. That's quite an achievement for a Prog-based mag that costs a ridiculous £8 and isnt sold in supermarkets.

indeed... all in all it isn't that bad either.  Sure they could use a few SC's from here on staff who actually know the minutia of those groups... but for a bunch of corporate desk jockies.   Pretty good magazine

Sean Trane wrote: micky wrote: Tony R wrote: Apparently Classic Rock Presents...Prog regularly achieves sales of over 50,000 copies. That's quite an achievement for a Prog-based mag that costs a ridiculous £8 and isnt sold in supermarkets. indeed... all in all it isn't that bad either.  Sure they could use a few SC's from here on staff who actually know the minutia of those groups... but for a bunch of corporate desk jockies.   Pretty good magazine     Tony, On the continent, it costs 15.15€, which is almost the double.   I believe that the mag does a lot of international salers too.     But I don't appreciate issue #6. much (only leafed through it so far)...... It seems that the mag is getting ever and ever more liberal about what they call prog

Unfortunately, on the Continent the price of British magazines gets almost doubled by the dealers - even when the exchange rate is much more favourable to the Euro than it used to be. I know this because I used to buy other magazines (not dealing with music), and the story was always the same. Here it's 15 dollars, which - with the current Euro/dollar exchange rate - is less than the price in Euros.

I'm not too sure about that knowledge part actually. Many of those writers have been around since the early 80's, some longer than that.And while thay have been writing more on other topics over the years, metal and classic rock in particular, these are journalists who has been making a living writing about music for several decades.

That they choose to scrape the surface will most likely be due to the fact that they want the magazine to be read and to sell well - they are aiming for a wider audience than hardcore prog nerds after all ;-)

There was a time, many years ago, when I actually used to buy Q and Mojo here in the U.S.  Then one day, it hit me:  I could be buying a CD for the price I paid for the mag!  So that's when I quit buying them on any sort of regular basis.

if we love it, we try to afford it

What is interesting to note about that mag, is the fact that they are far more liberal than any fan site when it comes to describing what prog and prog-related is. A band like Manic Street Preachers for instance. Even among the liberal fans here few would describe them as having any prog relations whatsoever. And bands that barely made it into the database here are presented as full-fledged prog by this magazine.

It is fascinating to see the differences in opinion between people that have lived and breathed music for a living for many decades and fans when it comes to the perceptions of what can be described as prog music, that's for sure.

^ Well, exactly. But because of that, I think newcomers should be the ones buying it. Maybe there wouldn't be enough of them to support the mag, but it just seems kind of pointless for more seasoned Prog listeners to buy it. Especially when you take into consideration how 'out of sync' it tends to be with us at times. 

^ As I already said . . . . for newcomers, it's great. For already-existing fans, not really worth it. 

OK, yesterday I found the mag's latest issue (#6, if I'm not mistaken) at Borders in downtown DC. Since I had run out of reading material to keep me company during my commute back home, I bought it (and a cookbook I found for $4!), and started browsing through it when I sat down to have some tea before my lesson started.

Unfortunately, I have to say this time I was positively underwhelmed - even if the central feature on 'prog art' is not a bad idea at all. The usual suspects covered (i.e. Mostly Autumn, Marillion, DT, PT, yadda yadda), the usual bloopers (omitting Thursaflokkurinn from a feature on Icelandic prog was unforgivable, and the guy who reviewed Jakko M. Jakszyk's The Bruised Romantic Glee Club had clearly not read the liner notes), a slew of reviews of albums chosen with heaven knows what criteria - and plenty of condescension towards non-British bands. In particular, some of the remarks included in the reviews of Jacula and Il Bacio della Medusa were unpleasantly patronizing. I am really not sure I'm going to part with more of my hard-earned cash in the future to get something so biased.