Is prog dying out, or coming back?

 

Prog has been making a comeback ever since the birth of Neo-Prog in the early 1980's, and long may it continue. I mentioned some of my favourite Neo-Prog bands in another thread, so I won't annoy Cristi again by repeating them all here, but I forgot to mention the Scottish band, Pallas.

The music that we hear from all these newer artists to me is just that. Riverside, Haken, The Pineapple Thief and yes Steven Wilson....its not progressive rock music anymore, but merely has prog attributes.

The foresight (probably not, but would be cool if true) of M@x and other creators of this website to call it ProgArchives~Ultimate Prog Rock Resource, makes a lot of sense to me.....at least going forward now.

My issue is as others have noted the ease of recording now has made this genre and all its sub-genres almost impossible to listen to much of it without having that young persons ADD....after 15min I'm done and feel like I need to move on to the next. I don't get fully immersed into the music anymore, which is a necessity to understand some of our music.

If I look at my entire music collection....LPs, CDs, Digital misc stuff on cassettes and R2R....not sure I have enough time (years) to listen to it all.

Do I let my tried and true suffer or do I invest precious time in exploring new music?? 

Hi,

Agreed to an extent. When you see the requests for bands to be included in PA, it's pretty obvious that the abundance is quite large and the listing of requests is even larger.

The biggest issue I have with this, is a sad one ... I'm not sure that we are giving these a proper listen, and that makes it seem like they are less popular, and a result of a lot of DIY recordings, and then, the ability of that band to get any kind of public appreciation/knowledge is dependent on sites like PA to give them some credibility.

Honestly, I think this is the "stage 1" of the new process, and one of these days, one or two of these will click big, and then, no one will worry, or say a whole lot about the DIY process ... honestly, with the exception of a handful of folks in the old "studio" setup, very little of it was better than the band itself, and the ability of the music to last, was not exactly the studio's ability, but any band's ability!

I think that this is a time to "learn" and "feel" your way ... and the results will begin making themselves visible sooner or later. I don't see the point of trashing a DIY process, as it is a logical upgrade from the previous design, and in time, it should have a lot more INVENTIVENESS that most studios EVER had ... why? Easy ... more folks doing it and trying different things!

Prog will be fine, and get even better!

Catcher10 wrote: I just don't think there will be anymore progressive music made that we might compare to the glory days of 70/80s. Newer bands can record music that sounds like it but its not progressive anymore, it will only have prog attributes or tendencies, I don't want to call it copy cat recording. ...

This is our fault, more than it is the actual "music's" fault ... we were the ones that determined a particular number of bands for this or that, and then went out and said very stupid things about how they created the music ... and now we complaint about ... any new music being "copycat" ... it CAN ONLY BE SO IF IT IS DESIGNED LIKE ALL THE ONES WE MARKED SPECIAL.

It's just like ... CITY OF LOST CHILDREN ... we took away the DREAM ... by saying that it had to have this and this and this, and then a loud organ, and then a crazy bass player and then a nutz guitar, and so on ... and in the end, that is the stupidest definition of music that has EVER been defined. Not an inch of it, actually really defines what "progressive music" really was ... so ... AND IT'S TRUE HERE ... we look for a "sound like" ... or "sound alike" ... just look at the number of posts and how many folks, including the knowledgeable ones, making sure they participate ... are they improving "prog/progressive"? ... I, personally, have my doubts ... 

On top of it ... we even have the "instruments that created progressive music" ... when they were used all over the world, and other than the synthesizer, I am not convinced that they are the reason why the music was developed. Heck ... I don't see a whole lot of that in KC!

Read the GG sound like thread ... I'm not sure that people know what they would want from GG ... since they have so much to offer from so many different directions, and no two of them go to the same place! So the postings go every where, and makes it even harder to define and detail what/who might really be GG!

10,000!!! Are you whacked LOL... Based on some of the music sites I am on that people discuss collections, around 1000-2000 is about what is a lot for many or a higher end avg, and I'm talking LPs. CD I have read people might have 2-3,000 because used CDs are cheap now, nobody wants them they have no resale value.

But even still, do the math....say 3000 albums and you listen to 3 albums per day that's 1000 days needed or about 3yrs to listen to it all. Be realistic in how many FULL albums you listen to in a day or say a month......say 12 full albums in a month would take you 21yrs. With family, work, responsibilities closer to that than 3yrs.

The most I had was about 1200 LPs, over the past many years I sold, traded albums for other stuff and lost couple hundred in several house moves. I've got around 700 LPs now and that is very manageable, I could sell some still. But yea there are gobs of people who are true collectors of records and CDs that buy to have more.....They will never listen to it all