What do the people you know think of prog?

Same thing they think of me. Most average humans (especially in the West, and even more so here in the U.S.) are decidedly anti-intellectual. All complexity sounds oppressive and foreboding (like school) to the untrained ear, just like 'progressive politics' or any other 'progressive' discipline requires constant study and openness. Westerners HATE THAT.

noni wrote: I tell people Progressive music is like classical music with varied time signatures.  You either like it or hate it!!  I love it.  Most modern music bores me as it's so bland now!!

you really can't blame people for liking the bland tastless stuff...  for every SWilson out there putting out boring routine sh*t there is a hungry creative unknown artist/band tearing it up and giving it all they got.

You just have to dig deeper than the bandwagon popular stuff most people just seem to be into.

While Alice in Chains is by no means prog, this scene is the perfect representation of any attempt to expose the general population, my friends and coworkers included, to prog.

I had one friend in school who liked it, and his father introduced me to prog. most people dislike it. they do not have the attention span to listen to a song over three minutes long. I hear a lot of the usual nonsense that the music is pretentious, or too weird.    

Well, here's my story.
My father listens to 70s hard rock, disco, funk, new wave, etc. his favourite band is ELO, he used to listen to classical music during his time at university. My mother listens to top 40 music. I was in a waiting room, the radio was on a 80s music station, and the radio announcer said "now let's play Invisible Touch by Phil Collins", and i liked that song because it was catchy. I shazamed that song and my phone said it was a Genesis song. So I searched through Google and I found out that Phil Collins had a band. I listened to the Invisible touch album and i loved it. I thought that Genesis was a pop group. I wanted more Genesis. I clicked on a Peter Gabriel-era Genesis album video and it felt a bit boring. Months after that, i decided to buy Foxtrot (because people on the internet were claiming that Genesis was better during the 70s), I listened to the whole album and i loved it even more than Invisible Touch. I discovered that Genesis was more epic during the 70s than then 80s.

So in a trip I decided to put SEBTP, but my mother got bored and thought it was slow and boring. I had to change the album to music she likes. My father is OK with me listening to prog.
And when I decided to make my own prog album (sorry for self-promoting), both my father and mother listened to it. My mother said it was nice and futuristic, she liked it even if it was a 40-minute long song. My father liked it too. Maybe they liked it because I'm their son, parents are usually yessayers towards their sons.

My ex-english teacher from school loves prog. One day we decided to give alternative interpretations to songs. I picked a Mars Volta song, he asked me the name of the band. He listens to his favourite music on classes, I remember he listened to Kashmir by Led Zeppelin, Megadeth and Dream Theater. He's kinda into prog, he's around the prog spectre.

Some of my cousins listen to prog, they are excellent guitar players. They went to my birthday party and named bands such as Gojira, Animals as leaders, Opeth, ect.

I know very few people who have tastes similar to me, and usually a showcase of my musical tastes garners some raised eyebrows.

Magnum Vaeltaja wrote: So apparently prog isn't as inaccessible as its made out to be. At least, as long as you make sure not to hype it up excessively and say that "prog is the only true music" or some such thing before you put it on, I've noticed that most people tend to enjoy it.

This is also what I am thinking. Most people aren't into prog just because they have never heard of it, and many would appreciate it if they just knew that it exists. Of course, there are those stupid anti-rock prejudices so common among classical, avant-garde and jazz listeners (as well as among some listeners of electronic music or hip-hop) of that keep them from trying it out in the first place. Also, there are those rock journalists who either ignore it completely, or claim that it "had run its course" or was an "abomination mercifully ended by punk". But I feel that more people would be ready to listen to prog if they had an idea.

The last time I spoke to Neil Young he thought it was played out. David Crosby said never heard the term before. I'm not kidding. Prog is very misunderstood, even by old timers in rock.

^You would get the same response from your average King Crimson fan.

Prog is so much very diffrent music, making the question impossiable to answer.But in general most of people dont dislike melodic music with a vocals, prog or not prog.