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Posted: December 11 2016 at 23:21
This thread went south very quickly.
Rather than bicker about the same old same old (The Almond Bros and OFU again? Really?) why not suggest artists that people haven't considered before so they can perhaps listen to them with a different perspective. Of course there is the rub, because I've probably suggested all that I think fit the brief at some point over the past nine years... and when you multiply that by the average number of forum posters then it's a pretty fair bet that any band anyone can think of has already been suggested at least once.
This should not be that surprising to anyone since we've spent the past 13 years building this database of 9,740 bands and artists by trawling through thousands of albums released since the mid-60s so all the prominent, well known and even less well known artists from the "golden age" not included have been weighed, have been measured, and have absolutely been found wanting. This therefore means that those that would probably never fit the somewhat fluid definition of Prog that the Genre teams use here but you personally feel are "a bit prog" is probably drawn from a far smaller pool than you'd imagine.
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 04:14
lazland wrote:
Regardless of the virtues and merits for inclusion of those artists you think should be included (and I do not agree with any of them), I find it utterly staggering that you do not regard three of the finest proponents of the genre in Marillion, Tull, and Rush as not belonging here.
Seriously?
Here, here. These bands have all made milestone prog albums, even if they ventured into more straight up rock on occasions. Prog would be sorely lacking if albums like Brave, TAAB and Hemispheres were never produced.
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 04:35
lazland wrote:
Magnum Vaeltaja wrote:
I agree with that UFO album. I'm not sure why they haven't been picked up for the psychedelic/space rock category. As far as some of my own examples of artists that I wholeheartedly believe are prog or prog-related artists that aren't included on the site, you've got:
Allman Brothers Band
Marshall Tucker Band
Grateful Dead
Joe Satriani (half of the guitarists in neo just copy his style anyway )
Steve Vai (in prog related, but I feel he should be in one of the "pure prog" categories)
And as far as bands that are in the archives of which I regularly think "THEY'RE NOT PRAAAAWWWWWG!!!!", there's:
Jethro Tull
Marillion
Rush
Do I ever expect these artists to get added/removed from the database as I'd like? Not really, and I can generally accept the rationale behind their inclusions and exclusions. And this handful of artists aside, I think that all of the past and present collaborators have done (and continue to do) a phenomenal job at categorizing the database.
Regardless of the virtues and merits for inclusion of those artists you think should be included (and I do not agree with any of them), I find it utterly staggering that you do not regard three of the finest proponents of the genre in Marillion, Tull, and Rush as not belonging here.
Seriously?
You are a voice of reason in an otherwise slightly mad site. Anyone who does not think that these three are prog (and amongst its greatest exponents) is singing from a different song sheet to me.
I would add a few bands/artists that, whilst not prog, have clear prog tendencies:
Big Country - their dual lead guitar style is unusual in that it often imitates bagpipes, they were amongst the first to use the e-bow, they wrote some extended songs with esoteric subject material and they did two concept albums. (And they were f*****g brilliant).
Wolfstone: Scottish Celtic folk-rock band who bear some resemblance to Steeleye Span, but harder and more Scottish. Unleashed is one of the best albums ever recorded, but they were also just generally f*****g brilliant.
Gerry Rafferty: Forget the commercial stuff - his album Sleepwalking is more progressive than most stuff on here and one of the few albums I'd rate as almost flawless.
Dire Straits: From Making Movies to Brothers in Arms, there is clear evidence of them entering prog territory, particularly on Love Over Gold.
I am NOT, however, arguing in any way for their inclusion.
Joined: July 23 2016
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 06:33
My opinion is a bit different in both my formal definition (I actually have an essay-like definition of prog) and in some of the stuff I consider prog. And it's different from not only the general public--I'd expect that most prog fans definitions of prog are different than the definitions of the general public--but it's a bit different than most prog fans I've encountered, too.
Re stuff being listed in the database, part of the issue seems to be that because we list an artist's entire discography if they're added to the database, artists who do not have at least a significant prog/fusion period tend to not be listed. So for example, although those first couple UFO albums are clearly prog (of the psychedelic/space rock variety), and while they have some notable prog influences of the "crossover"/AORish variety at other times, not enough of their output counts as prog to list their entire discography in the database.
On the other hand, there are artists such as the Grateful Dead where I personally believe that the bulk of their output is prog yet they're not listed in the database. But my opinion on them is one example where my view seems to be unusual even relative to other prog fans.
Edited by Terrapin Station - December 12 2016 at 06:33
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 06:43
Magnum Vaeltaja wrote:
And as far as bands that are in the archives of which I regularly think "THEY'RE NOT PRAAAAWWWWWG!!!!", there's:
Jethro Tull
Marillion
Rush
With Rush, I'd agree that the majority of their output at this point isn't progressive rock, but I'd still say they should qualify as they did have a progressive period, even if it was only from 1975-1981, seven or so albums.
With Jethro Tull, you must have a quite different definition of prog than I do if they don't count for you. I'd agree they've had some albums that wouldn't count as prog in isolation, but those albums are a significant minority of their discography. I also wouldn't say that the pre-Aqualung albums aren't prog.
Re Marillion, I'm just not familiar enough with them to say. The Marillion I heard never did much for me, so I never bothered with them.
Magnum Vaeltaja wrote:
As far as their prog period between Caress of Steel and Moving Pictures,
they have individual tracks (even epics) that are definitely prog
pieces, but they didn't release a single album of pure prog
content.
In my opinion, that strategy doesn't really work, as there's actually a huge percentage of progressive rock albums that have tracks that wouldn't strike anyone as progressive rock in isolation. I've always seen whether something is progressive rock as more of a "forest-level" (rather than "tree-level") consideration, though. The issue is whether overall, a piece, or album (or for inclusion on the site, a period of someone's work) is progressive, not whether individual parts (of a piece, or an album, etc.) are progressive in isolation. After all, a lot of longer prog pieces are suites of what are more or less separate tunes sewn together, and often those tunes, by themselves, wouldn't be very prog.
For example, think of the "Nous sommes du soleil" section of "Ritual" from Yes' Tales from Topographic Oceans. That's essentially a separate song (that I'd bet anything was written as such by Jon Anderson on his own) that's simply sewn into the overall fabric of "Ritual", and it's not very progressive on its own. It's just a folky pop tune.
Well, I see separate tracks on prog albums in the same way--I tend to see the whole album as one big suite, and a song on the album that's not itself prog functions just like "Nous sommes du soleil" in the context of "Ritual". Think of "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" from Genesis' Selling England by the Pound. I see "I Know What I Like" more as a section of the overall "suite" that is Selling England by the Pound. What makes it work that way is that overall, the album is progressive. It doesn't really matter just how they decided to divide up the track titles--after all, "Nous sommes du soleil" could have been considered a separate track by Yes, and it was sometimes performed that way.
Edited by Terrapin Station - December 12 2016 at 07:12
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 07:18
BaldJean wrote:
you should definitely give that Grace Slick album a listen. the title track (the second on the album) is a 16 minute epic full of surprises
If it were up to me, Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship would both be on ProgArchives. Of course, I consider psychedelic rock progressive rock in general. That's all that prog as it's usually thought of is in my opinion--just continued growth of ideas developed during the psychedelic era.
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 08:34
Magnum Vaeltaja wrote:
I agree with that UFO album. I'm not sure why they haven't been picked up for the psychedelic/space rock category. As far as some of my own examples of artists that I wholeheartedly believe are prog or prog-related artists that aren't included on the site, you've got:
Allman Brothers Band
Marshall Tucker Band
Grateful Dead
Joe Satriani (half of the guitarists in neo just copy his style anyway )
Steve Vai (in prog related, but I feel he should be in one of the "pure prog" categories)
And as far as bands that are in the archives of which I regularly think "THEY'RE NOT PRAAAAWWWWWG!!!!",* there's:
Jethro Tull
Marillion
Rush
Do I ever expect these artists to get added/removed from the database as I'd like? Not really, and I can generally accept the rationale behind their inclusions and exclusions. And this handful of artists aside, I think that all of the past and present collaborators have done (and continue to do) a phenomenal job at categorizing the database.
* Disclaimer: When I say that these bands aren't praaaaawwwwg, I do concede to the fact that they have released prog material throughout their careers. All I mean is that I feel that their stature and reputation as prog bands is generally overstated. I don't think they should be stripped from the database and their fans banned from the site, just that they're less proggy than their typically made out to be.
Huh ??
ABB and MTB....Simply thinking of those bands in the whole context of this website make almost no sense to me and clearly why they are not listed here. ABB playing 20 min songs is probably the only progressive attribute they have going, I mean their lyrics are clearly not prog.
Prog Related is a cop-out......."Everyone" is prog related.
Although I do agree with UFO, but if we are going down the road of looking at a few albums in an entire catalog then Scorpions should be listed for their first 3 albums and then the next several that still had some of that krautrock/psych/space rock with Uli, even after Uli left songs like The Zoo and Animal Magnetism can be argued. To my knowledge Thundertree (1970) psych/space/progressive, is not listed here, so my list would include:
Scorpions
Parliament
Funkadelic
Earth Wind & Fire
Thundertree
Heart
So essentially a lot of what I think too would be of a different opinion than the general opinion here.......Good topic BaldJean
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 08:46
Dean wrote:
This thread went south very quickly.
Rather than bicker about the same old same old (The Almond Bros and OFU again? Really?) why not suggest artists that people haven't considered before so they can perhaps listen to them with a different perspective. Of course there is the rub, because I've probably suggested all that I think fit the brief at some point over the past nine years... and when you multiply that by the average number of forum posters then it's a pretty fair bet that any band anyone can think of has already been suggested at least once.
This should not be that surprising to anyone since we've spent the past 13 years building this database of 9,740 bands and artists by trawling through thousands of albums released since the mid-60s so all the prominent, well known and even less well known artists from the "golden age" not included have been weighed, have been measured, and have absolutely been found wanting. This therefore means that those that would probably never fit the somewhat fluid definition of Prog that the Genre teams use here but you personally feel are "a bit prog" is probably drawn from a far smaller pool than you'd imagine.
Yeah, at this point maybe Max should just start up Southern Rock Archives to satisfy my ilk...
As far as other non-PA bands that are at least vaguely proggy, I've always thought of the bands Cactus and Road as being psychedelic/heavy prog-ish.
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 09:04
AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:
]A lot of stuff I see as being closer to art rock or maybe a band had a sound that never developed into full blown prog(Moody Blues, ELO, Pavlov's Dog, Family, Ambrosia, Crack the Sky, City Boy, Supertramp, Roxy Music etc). There are a lot of examples of bands that I would say are "almost prog." These days I don't care that much about labels and if people want to call these bands prog I'm ok with that.
I guess my thought is that prog often integrates numerous styles (people often talk about how bands may bring in classical, folk, or jazz aspects for example), and so incorporating pop or blues is equally valid. In a sense, sometimes it is the sheer variety of these influences that helps make it prog for me. (Early Ambrosia, definitely full prog to me.)
So bringing that back to the earlier comment about early Tull, I would say Stand Up is a prog album... even though many of the songs *individually* could be put into some other category, the mix of influences as a whole doesn't permit the album to fall into any of those other categories, and there is "a sound" and "a style" that permeates the album, regardless of the underlying genre they may be incorporating into a particular song.
So then getting back to the OP, many groups had prog songs even if they weren't prog groups (teh aforementioned Funeral for a Friend for example); but I would consider them a prog group if they had entire albums that could be seen as prog overall.
paganinio wrote:
Ok, so my opinion of what prog is vs. the standard definition of prog.
They're very different. My vision of progressive rock always has a metal-influenced sound. Pain of Salvation is the best example of what I consider prog. Even when I listen to non-metal albums, such as Animals, Wish You Were Here, I will always find the same electric guitar sound in it. If I can't, it's not prog in my opinion.
Well, metal-influenced is one sub-genre of prog, but I can't see looking at that as defining prog overall. By your definition, ELP is not prog, as there's almost no guitar at all. I don't see Steve Hackett or Steve Howe as generally sounding very metal-ish either... So if these aren't "prog" as you see it, what would you call these?
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 11:33
I'm not a musician, nor do I play on on the internets, but my collection of music includes a lot of what passes for progressive from the 1960's and 1970's; and, I can tell good musicianship when I hear it. Not only are Jethro Tull, Marillion and Rush exceptional in that category, but all contributed quite a bit to the category of "progressive rock" in terms of unique musical identity and originality.
None of this can be denied once you've listened to Passion Play (Tull) , Clutching At Straws (Marillion), or either 2112 or Permanent Waves (Rush).
End light rant.
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Posted: December 12 2016 at 19:41
paganinio wrote:
well reading the OP again, I apparently misunderstood the thread.
Ok, so my opinion of what prog is vs. the standard definition of prog.
They're very different. My vision of progressive rock always has a metal-influenced sound. Pain of Salvation is the best example of what I consider prog. Even when I listen to non-metal albums, such as Animals, Wish You Were Here, I will always find the same electric guitar sound in it. If I can't, it's not prog in my opinion.
So you wouldn't consider ELP, Rick Wakeman, and Van Der Graaf Generator prog? Now, that's sort of prog blasphemy.
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Posted: December 13 2016 at 02:27
Last year I made a request for Martin Turner (former bass player with Wishbone Ash, now he has his own band which plays WA material plus new songs in the same style) to be included in prog-related. After all, Wishbone Ash are on this site (even though most of their albums aren't progressive), as is their former guitarist Ted Turner, who has only made one solo album. Some of Martin Turner's albums are included (wrongly) under the Wishbone Ash entry, whilst his last two - a live album and a studio release, aren't on this site. The studio release, Written In the Stars, is quite a progressive album IMO.
Unfortunately it isn't easy to add an artist as prog-related, as their are no dedicated admins for that category.
One requirement for symphonic (aka prog rock) is that it must have dispensed with roots music especially the blues. So, no Allmans. Fantastic band, wonderful music and at times (two keyboard and single guitar line up) as prog related as they'll get but yes, the prog related does allow a back door for otherwise sophisticated rock acts to get a mention.
Jethro Tull not progressive? First album, blues, then incorporated jazz on a folk base with flute. Grated folk is roots music but they had a lot of rock and advanced arrangements. Both Stand Up and Benefit have unique sounds that give the albums their own identity. I know that is a bit ephemeral as definitions go but maybe production is a key factor in album unity and identity.
One thing - IMHO (just in case some thinks something I say is not an opinion - dunno what it is then)... prog rock is not limited to numbers that are 20 minutes or so. You get symphonies (Brahms) that are miniatures compared to Ludo's same with prog rock. Many times music features all the exquisite instrumentation inside a more standard song format.
It's kind of regressive to limit progressive.
Marillion not a prog rock band? Well I've not heard much of the Hogarth era (not a fan, sorry) but it seems they are a very prog type band. The Fish era for starters with all sorts of adventurous numbers.
Rush. A band that put prog rock in the mainstream and made a mainstream rock sound adventurous and fun. The concept albums (I regard G.U.P and Signals as concept albums, same with Counterparts and Clockwork Angels) as they seem based on certain aspects of the world according to Neil. Permanent Waves is not a concept album but it is a prog rock album. Rush like Genesis, Yes, Asia and some others managed to make highly sophisticated and exquisitely arranged numbers accessible to many. Tales won't but I could not say inaccessibility is a key ingredient to prog rock. Gates is quite clear I really had to follow the words in writing for Tales...
Nous Sommes du Soleil is a quiet part of the suite and only very infrequently isolated as it's own number. I'm just surprised the Relayer song on side 2 wasn't the hit single off this top 10 pop album... great tune. I think Tales should have been indexed as Dark Side was and then the songs would be evident on first observation rather than having people go oh they're paying side three of the album...
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Posted: December 13 2016 at 03:49
I don't agree with characterizing prog as "symphonic rock"--that's just a subset of prog, and I don't agree with saying that it must dispense with roots music, including the blues.
In my view one of the characteristics (just one, not the only characteristic) of prog is that it merges influences from various genres in an overarching rock context, but the genres merged can be ANY genres.
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This thread went south very quickly.
lazland wrote:
These bands have all made milestone prog albums, even if they ventured into more straight up rock on occasions. Prog would be sorely lacking if albums like Brave, TAAB and Hemispheres were never produced.
)
