Prog Returning to the Pop Charts

The whole entire promotion of sex today is just completely stupied. You're no longer watching natural beauty in a woman. Natural beauty within Clare Danes, Meg Tilly, or even Kim Basinger who was set up to be a beauty queen , but didn't need a "make up" job to look beautiful. It's a ridiculous notion when there is a whole other world of beautiful women out there who are not only superior in intelligence, multi-talented..but strikingly beautiful and with just one look, your entire mind is under a spell causing you to walk around for days thinking and dreaming about her beauty. It's romantic to feel that way and why be ignorant and focus only on your manhood or private parts? Who became God and decided that woman are little toys to play with? That they must be put on display? Could you imagine how Linda McCartney must have felt when she was asked why she did not shave her legs? That's nothing but an ignorant commercialized American attitude. Every European female musician I've worked with NEVER, EVER shaved their legs and they informed me that the men in European countries do not mind it. The mind set is different, the concept, and placing women on display for profit is disgraceful. I know this is going off thread, but I've never felt that women have been accepted as people. I mention this because I've worked with over loads of female artists in the last 40 years and they have all confessed the pressures of the male ego to present them on stage as something insulting to their gender, when honestly?..they are very sincere women who are serious to their art and feel that this often requested act is hurtful and difficult to live with.  

Edited by TODDLER - January 26 2015 at 12:31

A prog band can't even be successful in the prog community.  People's tastes here are so divers even within the genre.  For a prog band to be successful, they have to somehow attract normal music listeners, just like they did in the past.

People used to listen to albums front to back, but now with music listening being programmed into smart phones, it's just a track here and a track there, so the concept album is really in the dumps.  Even a non concept album from the past usually had a specific order to the songs on an album.  It was a very important part of the presentation. 

The same person who fragments their music on the smart phone, will rant about the presentation of their food at some trendy restaurant downtown, and get into a hissy fit on YELP about how the garnishing clashed with the potato swirl that shouldn't have touched the asparagus.  But they won't listen to an album like DSOTM in it's entirety unless it's cued up with two joints and The Wizard of Oz.

richardh wrote: I was never a fan of the concept album and if anything that is something would have driven me away from the genre. It was a picture of gun toting armadillo that got me interested in prog. So much for being an 'intellectual' ( and also I do like looking at naked pictures of attractive women , sorry Toddler!!). People don't connect that easily with prog and its not that surprising really when you listen to people like Steven Wilson talking. He is so far up his own **** its ridiculous. I like his music though.

Skullhead wrote: A prog band can't even be successful in the prog community.  People's tastes here are so divers even within the genre.  For a prog band to be successful, they have to somehow attract normal music listeners, just like they did in the past. People used to listen to albums front to back, but now with music listening being programmed into smart phones, it's just a track here and a track there, so the concept album is really in the dumps.  Even a non concept album from the past usually had a specific order to the songs on an album.  It was a very important part of the presentation.  The same person who fragments their music on the smart phone, will rant about the presentation of their food at some trendy restaurant downtown, and get into a hissy fit on YELP about how the garnishing clashed with the potato swirl that shouldn't have touched the asparagus.  But they won't listen to an album like DSOTM in it's entirety unless it's cued up with two joints and The Wizard of Oz.

I'd further like to state that the importance of listening to the album as a whole rather than discrete tracks gets a bit overstated on here.  I get the idea in principle and have followed it for most if not all of my favourite albums.  But come on, not every album needs THAT much attention from me.  If halfway through I don't feel sufficiently engaged, I am absolutely entitled to get into 'glance' mode and start speed-listening the album, akin to speed-reading.  And if an album I have assimilated already is kind of uneven and inconsistent, why should I not selectively listen to those tracks that I prefer?  It makes no sense to have to listen to the full album every time, all the time.  That is a treat I would reserve for a select few albums which reward that approach to listening the most.  Most Pink Floyd albums need to be listened to in toto.  Most Gentle Giant albums, not so much.  And it's not even that I like PF all that much more than GG.  They just approach the album format in very different ways.  GG tracks tend to stand alone.  Huge swathes of The Wall don't.  It is a bit indiscriminate to make up a generalised rule for all prog albums by all bands when they don't even necessarily utilise the album format in the same way.

Smurph wrote: ^And the 13 year old Chinese kids making the devices under horrible working conditions

That goes for every electronic device, even His Holyness Turnable Record Player

it ain't never goin' to happen man..

prog can never compare to this man..  I had never heard this song till yesterday.  My friend and I were warming up after working outside and he whips out his smartphone (which I seem to be the ONLY one alive well Raff and I that is.. who doesn't have one) and tells me this will warm me up.  And you know.. after a few minutes.. I was shakin' my ass... and admiring the ..umm.. scenery.  It did the trick.. it sure did warm me up!!

poor Raff... I just heard a groan from the other side of the table hahaha

Guldbamsen wrote: Walton Street wrote: I listen to music at work all day on an ipod - on shuffle.   there's only a few albums I feel I have to listen to as a whole (Misplaced Childhood is one for sure) a few others ..   but for the most part I like the variety.

WeepingElf wrote: I have noticed how every rock avant-garde is considered cool these days - except one.  The Velvet Underground: cool.  The Grateful Dead: cool.  Frank Zappa: cool.  Krautrock: cool.  Industrial: cool.  Post-rock: cool.  Tool: cool.  But progressive rock is considered stuff for nerds - uncool. Apparently, blowing up the radio single format is cool - as long as it is simply inflated.  But once you take changeful dramturgy to it and make multimovement suites, the coolness evaporates like snow on a red-hot boilerplate.

Edited by Pastmaster - January 29 2015 at 11:15

WeepingElf wrote: Tool certainly aren't prog metal in the sense Dream Theater or Queensrÿche are prog metal.  True, it is called prog metal, but it's a different meaning of the term.