What’s the meaning of prog

artistically very ambitious music

Btw, very interesting topic. 

I have not listened to Unexpect so I can't comment on this particular case.

A matter of taste, and it's good with variety.

Hi,

I would say that the synthesizer helped, however, that might just be what I consider an "excuse" because in the late 60's there was a lot of music that is regarded as "progressive" that did not exactly employ a synthesizer in the way that we think ... King Crimson would be a great example.

That the musicians were educated, is something that is different everywhere. You can say that EASILY about Canterbury, for example, where so many of those folks ended up being instructors. I don't think that the American version of the early progressive, considered "psychedelic many times, is that educated, unless you separate The Doors from it ... they were at UCLA and a very high level of music, film and art studies, unlike most rock bands, that end up together because they want to play rock'n'roll. For example, even though they became very well versed in music, the SF scene had its roots in the street, not in schools. And NY is even worse, since a band that sold 10K albums in a city of 14+million people, would all of a sudden be the star, and pushed by a record company. In Chicago the band of the same name, makes it hard to not think that some of its members were no musically educated. The things they did in the first 4 or 5 albums, in many cases would be considered advanced music, and yet it was on a band that everyone considered pop music because of one song and hit.

Germany, was influenced by the music schools, specially in Berlin where a lot of the electronic music came from, and a lot of composers were around. Both Can, TD, and others have discussed this a lot. Can folks were highly educated musically, but AD2's folks were not quite so, and made their way via the commune thing and deciding to do something better than just a drum circle which was what AD1 was really about. However, Renate has said that they were thinking classical music and its flow for their early days, although after "Vive La Trance" I think it all became just a song, hoping to sell ... and the early days and improvisations were gone (Apocalyptic Bore lyrics).

France was probably following (sort of) the Jacques Brel thing and the Brecht/Weill school of things, if one looks at ANGE and how it ended up bringing a bunch of bands alive. However, its "laissez-faire" in the arts and music all of a sudden became something via Heldon, and even though Richard Pinhas discussed his thoughts and politics in EUROCK, in the end we ended up thinking it was just an individual thing. 

Italy was more classically influenced, and it showed in PFM with it doing bits and pieces of material here and there, but they also were good story tellers in the early days, something they forgot about later. Banco is highly "classical" in terms of composition itself, so it's very easy to say that at least a few members of the band were highly educated.

England, is difficult. I consider Rick Wakeman a school drop out, so to speak, since he can only copy the old styles and things, and when he created something new for TFTO which was demanded based on the design, lyrics and work, he promptly decided that it was crap, and his curry was better. Keith Emerson, I would say was probably the best educated of all the keyboard players, and seeing his work being done solo on piano (Rachel Flowers) immediately tells you how incredible of a composer he was ... and seeing the scores, via Daily Doug ... dude ... 9 out of 10 bands would not be able to EVER look at those scores ... maybe follow for 5 minutes, but playing them? Not likely!

It's interesting, but the definition, and meaning of progressive and prog, do not line up with music history and its evolution since so much of the comments ignore history altogether.

If you don't like Jazz-Rock, then maybe you haven't yet given an audience to the sound of Audience. 

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