How difficult for the oldies to get into new prog?

I'm 51.  I'm just looking for something like "positive soul" with my new prog.

This is something similar about the "generation gaps in the progressive music scene" I started a while ago.

Animals as Leaders is an example of what some people can do when there isn't this

Neu!mann wrote: Speaking as someone who under the terms above certainly qualifies as an Oldie (but hardly feels like one), I'd say that a restless curiosity for new music helps keep us young. I've been (happily) introduced to a lot of bands - new and vintage - since discovering these Archives, often from suggestions by kindred reviewers and collaborators. Difficult? It's just the opposite, and the more challenging the music the more I'll try to embrace it. I think The Mars Volta, all by themselves, shaved a full decade off my age...

What do you like about MV? 
I've listened to quite a bit of it, and it sounds like a really good drummer playing over noise tracks.

Do they ever do anything that has more melodic sensibility?

At 35 in manhood. I didn't grow up with prog/art rock. My first step in prog was in my early 20's when I started to listen to Dream Theater and guitar virtuosos like Steve Vai. Latter followed Angra (Matos era), Shadow Gallery, Pain of Salvation ... First I fell in love with prog metal. A few years latter I discovered 70's prog and all subgenres. I liked it even more.

With age my musical taste leaned toward less heavy music, more positive vibe, melodic sensibility, touching moods. My problem with most modern prog is lack of this things. It sounds so depressing! I also miss more combination or contrast between acoustic and electronic sound. Ofcourse there are some positive exceptions e.g. Neal Morse.

I'm 60 and I guess I don't hang around at PA because I like Pink Floyd.
Must be all the new stuff I find here.

I don't want to come across as a party pooper, but, whenever I think of bands that are moving prog into the future, names like Wobbler and Glass Hammer are definitely not the first that pop into my mind. While I liked Wobbler's first two albums, I thought Rites at Dawn was borderline plagiarism. However, I am also aware that mine is a minority opinion, and that a large part of the prog fandom wants old wine in new bottles, so to speak.

Raff wrote: I don't want to come across as a party pooper, but, whenever I think of bands that are moving prog into the future, names like Wobbler and Glass Hammer are definitely not the first that pop into my mind. While I liked Wobbler's first two albums, I thought Rites at Dawn was borderline plagiarism. However, I am also aware that mine is a minority opinion, and that a large part of the prog fandom wants old wine in new bottles, so to speak.

terramystic wrote: At 35 in manhood. ... With age my musical taste leaned toward less heavy music, more positive vibe, melodic sensibility, touching moods. My problem with most modern prog is lack of this things. It sounds so depressing! ... I also miss more combination or contrast between acoustic and electronic sound.

For me, it has been the opposite. I started with classical music, and the Beethoven's, Mozart's and the like were the first I remember, but the ones that got me, was a bit later with Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky and Leonard Bernstein in the famous recordings. Right after that I took to rock music, and my favorite part was not the Beatles and the singles and the radio, but the odd stuff behind it. I still like "Revolution #9" better than anything in the White Album ... and no one can relate with me that if there is one piece of REALITY in the whole album ... the one that does not have you in the way of the image in the mirror ... there real person behind it all, is almost a non-entity, and yet ... you can hear and see them in your head, but will never acknowledge because you think it has to be a song and nhave lyrics to guide your hand and feet since you lack the intelligence to see it all! You got to be kidding me, right?

The odd ball stuff, that is 100% anti-composition and anti-western music concepts (as the folks in Berlin used to say), is what I am attracted to even more than ever at 64!!! To hear the melodic same thing from TER is something I heard 40 years ago, and does not give me an erection anymore!

Today's music is no different than yesterdays!

However, just like the moronic and de-sensitized commercial and popular appeal, as is the case in a board like this, you will find that the top ten is right and the rest is sh*t!

Thus, getting an understanding of something totally different will be difficult ... because you are not good at being different from your friends, and they won't like you kind of thing, and on top of it, they think your music tastes are crap because you don't like the top ten in PA, or care to give a damn about it!

Thus, it would seem that it is all driven by the commercial content, and it will make it way harder for you and most of us to make a solid, AND CLEAR, determination about music and learning to listen to it and its many variations. HOWEVER, if you think it was any different in 1968, you are incorrect ... but I can tell you that it was against this "establishment" that many of the rock bands, and "Woodstock" were fighting against, and this was, in many ways, the start of the "progressive" movement, along with some idealisms relating to other social issues at the time!

I'm 46 and have never found it easier to get into new music. With resources like PA, Metal Archives, Spotify, Soundcloud, Youtube (etc, etc, etc) it is so much easier to discover new stuff now than when I was a kid in the eighties that it's laughable. And with Amazon, eBay, Discogs and specialist retailers like Wayside, not to mention buying direct from artists and labels on Bandcamp and their own web sites, it's so much easier to buy what I want. 

Edited by Mascodagama - December 29 2014 at 12:51