Is prog opposed to the idea of hit songs?

moshkito wrote: Hit Songs, is what "progressive music" was against. What bothers me, is that a lot of the admins that run this place are not even smart enough to stand up for that idea and concept and instead take on the populist role ... which they don't even believe in anyway ... to make sure they can say something stupid about Mosh ... Mosh is NOT the problem ... the lack of respect for a lot of the music that became "progressive" by many Admins, in lieu of their "favorite songs" is the problem ...  I am just disappointed that so many ADMIN's in this board have no idea what they are trying to support, and I think that they will kill it all because of this lack of knowledge and appreciation to the music ... they keep on trying to KILL PROGRESSIVE MUSIC, because they can only support hits! And almost NONE of them can stand up and say ... ohhh ... that was bad ... we need to improve on that ... and until the day that this happens, I'm not sure that the life of "Progressive Music" or "Prog" can survive long enough to get some respect ... it already doesn't here, because tomorrow it won't be a hit anymore! And too many of the folks here don't care and try to shoot blanks into a fart!

Having been around musicians since I was old enough to pick up a guitar and strum chords, I would suggest that no band purposely set out to be unknown and starving in a garret for their muse (that is usually an excuse for musicians who can't get a paying gig). The very nature of musicianship is to play to an audience.

I would suggest further that the uniqueness of progressive rock in the 1960s and 1970s is that it not only had an audience, but a vast worldwide following. Certainly, the music was more intricate, more dense, more obscure, and in many cases more intellectually twee; however, on a subliminal level, a connection existed between the burgeoning audience and the obscurant musicians where some artists in the movement actually had...GASP...hits. I suppose these instances may be cases where even blind squirrels find a nut, but really, it's perhaps more of a case where some of the progressive artists with the ability to compose sprawling progressive pieces also had an innate sense of songcraft above and beyond the musical wizardry (or at least competency) involved in the prog-rock milieu.

"Hits" in the sense of progressive rock bands who actually were able to sell their sound and their compositions on a wide scale is merely the ability of those particular artists to craft songs that appeal to not only the nerds who tend to gravitate to the form, but also to many listeners who otherwise blandly utter that they "like all music", when that is never the reality of their musical insipidity.

And the idea of "hits" in a genre of complex structures and great musicians is not merely a phenomena of prog-rock. Over the centuries, many great musicians and composers have fallen to the wayside because for all their complexity and abilities, they did not wholly connect, nor endure, with listeners. This film scene is, of course, completely fictitious, but it does mete out timeless truths about musicians and musicianship: