Why do we ask if it's prog or not? |
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AFlowerKingCrimson
Forum Senior Member Joined: October 02 2016 Location: Philly burbs Status: Offline Points: 16143 |
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Well, in that case we may as well just call everything prog.
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Catcher10
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Online Points: 17490 |
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I agree....better than calling it all disco
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AFlowerKingCrimson
Forum Senior Member Joined: October 02 2016 Location: Philly burbs Status: Offline Points: 16143 |
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Disco-prog. Is that a sub-genre? Maybe it should be.
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 04 2007 Location: Grok City Status: Online Points: 16146 |
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I agree to a point ... however, even the definition of "prog" or "progressive" anything is so far out of line with music (in general) that the distortion makes you/others think that there is something here when there really isn't. The main problem with this definition is that some folks are not "music listeners", as much as they are "sound listeners" and "fans", and that has never been a good definition of music in its history, although the last half of the 20th century changed in that sales numbers, all of a sudden became the norm for what is supposedly good/bad/stupid and number 1! The question, without a proper definition, is a bad question ... and the person asking is simply asking it because some friend, or publication, said it was progressive! Again, the person asking, is not even interested in a definition ... only checking if he is going to like this next group or not! I wouldn't want to blow the guy off the board, but I do believe that it would be a good idea for us to concern ourselves with making sure the guy knows and understands what "prog" or "progressive" really is, otherwise the question is silly!
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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miamiscot
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 23 2014 Location: Ohio Status: Offline Points: 3418 |
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When PA welcomes Talking Heads but not XTC it kinda makes the question completely meaningless, subjective and utterly arbitrary. So be it. I know what's PROG!!!
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tailings
Forum Newbie Joined: April 23 2019 Location: Earth Status: Offline Points: 26 |
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Labels are convenient, right up until that point when you've taken home a Heavy Metal album but then realize upon first listen that Winger >really< sucks.
Labels serve only as starting points to give a rough indication about what to expect. It's like saying Canada is north of Texas. Knowing that you won't end up in Peru, but it doesn't tell you Nebraska and Greenland are also north of TX, nor anything about Canada other than its approximate location. And so it is with music. I listen to a lot of drone music, a vague and ambiguous term if I ever there was. Troum is often labelled as drone, despite the fact that their take on ambience is often tribal and rhythmic. Not to my taste. And then there's a whole slew of Stoner Rock that is considered drone by many, despite the fact that it is anything but. Somewhere along the way distortion got mixed up with drone. I know well enough that just because someone has tagged a 'drone' label on it, doesn't mean I'm going to like it and it certainly doesn't mean it will actually drone. PA is proof enough of this concept. If I tell you it's prog, you can be reasonably confident you won't be hearing Garth Brooks or Witney Houston but that still leaves a pretty wide set of options.
Edited by tailings - April 29 2019 at 08:32 |
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AFlowerKingCrimson
Forum Senior Member Joined: October 02 2016 Location: Philly burbs Status: Offline Points: 16143 |
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The Talking Heads are here under prog related which might be(at least in part) because Adrian Belew played with them. XTC aren't in here but the Tubes aren't either and neither are the Grateful Dead or the Allman Brothers.
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dr wu23
Forum Senior Member Joined: August 22 2010 Location: Indiana Status: Offline Points: 20451 |
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Yep.....well said. But as to the OP topic....I just like prog rock the best...but I also like XTC, Beatles, Stones, Joni Mitchell, Humble Pie, BB King, Allman Bros, ...etc....
Edited by dr wu23 - April 29 2019 at 15:06 |
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
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uduwudu
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 17 2007 Status: Offline Points: 2601 |
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Best to keep it to the most likely and obvious idea of prog - symphonic rock. Or orchestral rock. Yes there are all sorts of off shoots but if you want to explain to a contemporary, rapidly disappearing attention span (of the ordinaries as opposed to we elites) keep it simple and straightforward. This is always good until you get to Progarchives where this tedious simplification can be dispensed with and true obfuscation may obscure the clouds...
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 04 2007 Location: Grok City Status: Online Points: 16146 |
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Except 2/3's of the metal that has been listed as prog! I would like to just unplug it so people can see that the musicianship behind it is ... probably very high school'ish! Specially the drumming! )... remember I'm a member of the tin drum syndromme ...I can't grow up past 5 years old ...(
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com |
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Erenan
Forum Senior Member Joined: September 12 2018 Location: San Diego, CA Status: Offline Points: 103 |
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I don't know much about the history of prog being called prog.
I seem to recall that there was some desire for exclusivity in the heavy metal fandom, like "no, this is not real metal" or "no, you are a fake, this is not metal" or "I don't like this, it doesn't correspond with sufficient closeness to my mental model of what qualifies as metal for me to be allowed to like it" and so on. Is/was there perhaps a thread of prog fandom which was motivated by something like "prog is better because it has more/different notes than your plain ol' boring music, and so I have to erect walls to clearly delineate what counts as 'inside' and 'outside' so that I can know which music to look down my nose at and which to nod and smile at"? (I'm not saying this is accurate or the right perspective)
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richardh
Prog Reviewer Joined: February 18 2004 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 26108 |
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'prog rock' is not a term of endearment and was coined as a put down anyway. I often joke about it with work colleagues but I'm not even sure what they think it is. As for what we listen to . Well at some point I'm willing to guess that everyone on here at some point just got fed up with popular driven music radio with its mass produced crap and wanted something different. I would also dispute that anyone is obsessed with what is prog or not. I like Enya and really don't care if that doesn't go down well because she isn't edgy. Just don't give a f**k really.
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Erenan
Forum Senior Member Joined: September 12 2018 Location: San Diego, CA Status: Offline Points: 103 |
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Yeah, Enya is probably the music with the fewest rough edges possible.
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iluvmarillion
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Personally I think Lindisfarne"s Dingly Dell is one of the greatest albums I've ever listened to. If I was to rate it against the top Prog Rock top 100 list I would place it somewhere in the teens. That's before we get to Beach Boys Pet Sounds and the Kink's Face to Face and The Rolling Stones, Aftermath. At the end of the day does it really matter? An album is a great album irrespective of how we classify it and if we go to extremes in trying to classify it we become musical snobs.
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The Anders
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 02 2019 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 3529 |
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Style definitions can be very useful in order to determine the difference between one kind of music and another. However they can never be precise, and for me as a listener it is not very significant what lable people choose to put on a certain piece of music. Most artists are mixing different style elements into their music anyway, which also changes (well, except it's AC/DC). This is also why I, as a relative newcomer here, find these subgenres rather unnecessary: symphonic prog, eclectic prog, folk prog etc. I don't quite understand the need to put everything in boxes. As for Pink Floyd f.e., they are labelled psychedelic/space rock, but that reall only makes sense to their 1960's work. Plus, I don't think I have ever heard terms like 'eclectic prog' anywhere else.
Edited by The Anders - May 24 2019 at 15:04 |
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kenethlevine
Special Collaborator Prog-Folk Team Joined: December 06 2006 Location: New England Status: Offline Points: 8851 |
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and the amazing thing with Dingly Dell is that it was regarded as a big disappointment at the time, and brought about the fall of Lindisfarne from which they never recovered. From the sensation of 1971 to also rans, just like that, and for no good reason I can think of. But no it's not prog...for the most part
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Logan
Forum & Site Admin Group Site Admin Joined: April 05 2006 Location: @ wicker man Status: Offline Points: 32601 |
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Labels are useful to me, but I want more of them, and I want each album to have not only its own labels, but multi-labels.
Edited by Logan - May 24 2019 at 18:57 |
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Just a fanboy passin' through.
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WeepingElf
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Because I feel that genre classifications are (or should be; they are not always) useful guidelines to finding music one would probably like. So if someone tells me that a band does prog, I conclude that it is worth giving a try (not that I'd automatically like it; there is some prog that I don't like much - prog can be bland and mediocre - and these days there is quite some music that is labelled "prog rock" but I don't get what is prog about it). Of course, there is music I like that isn't prog, but when I read that band XY does, for instance, blackened death metal (or gangsta rap or EBM), I know that I probably won't like their music, and can discard it beforehand.
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Jaketejas
Forum Senior Member Joined: March 27 2018 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 1968 |
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I remember the good old days when you turned on the radio and heard prog rock, rock, blues, pop, synthpop, soul, new wave and disco all on the same station. It helped develop musical sensibilities. Now everything seems a bit pigeonholed. In some ways, it's great to be able to find music related to certain genres. In other ways, it's tough on musicians because you might get voted out of PA simply for deciding to record that one synthpop song. Suddenly, despite having 2/3 of your repertoire being prog, you're worried that you might be kicked out for "straying outside the limits." At least the Eclectic Prog category helps mitigate this a bit. But, where do you draw the line? Then, you have some folks who think true prog ended sometime in the 1970s with the onset of punk. Not me. I think prog lives on, but not necessarily in the same form as before. I think it is important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out. I love the fierce debate about Gary Numan and Devo. Geddy Lee wore a Devo button and talked about how fresh Talking Heads were back in the day. I won't tell you if they are prog or not. If you like Tales From Topographic Oceans, you'll probably say no. If you like Vital Signs or Through the Camera Eye, you might say yes. Be nice, be respectful, and try to be fair in this balancing act.
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M27Barney
Forum Senior Member Joined: November 09 2006 Location: Swinton M27 Status: Offline Points: 3136 |
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If you can dance to it without looking like a lunatic scarecrow on columbian marching powder then its not prog...
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