Prog = Literature

moshkito wrote: ... And this is exactly what makes it hard for "modern" people to listen the, from pop-culture's angle, ancient rock music of Genesis, Jethro Tull and Yes. They are not connected in either way with the background, it is unusual for them, and for some unusual equals crap. Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare were all part of popular culture (at least of those who could afford it) in their times. Progressive rock today is about as old-fashioned as medieval music in the 19th century. In other words, it is too old to be modern, in other words, it is unusual and therefore not considered part of popular culture....   Agreed ...   Heartily agreed ...

moshkito wrote: ... Originally posted by Luke. J (face it, proggers, progressive rock's classics aren't modern anymore )   Geee .. neither is Beethoven, and Mozart ... gee ... did I forget anyone else? With all this top ten stuff I've heard it so much I can't stand it anymore! Ohh heck, Shakespeare is not classic and the Bible is definitly old ... do we need to go further back to illustrate?   It's the same thing with all the arts ... today we might think that that Picasso is passe and boring ... but all that means is that you are not taking the element of time and place in consideration ... and how things developed and came to pass and be ... and got to where they are now.   You need to take the essence of it all ... or the whole thing is as meaningless as your life ...

And this is exactly what makes it hard for "modern" people to listen the, from pop-culture's angle, ancient rock music of Genesis, Jethro Tull and Yes. They are not connected in either way with the background, it is unusual for them, and for some unusual equals crap. Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare were all part of popular culture (at least of those who could afford it) in their times. Progressive rock today is about as old-fashioned as medieval music in the 19th century. In other words, it is too old to be modern, in other words, it is unusual and therefore not considered part of popular culture.

Maybe the quote could be misunderstood to "man, get outta ya time machine and arrive in 21st century", but this was not intended. Just that classics will not arrive in modern age because of their style, but only if because of their context. People just cannot relate to Yes or Genesis these days..

No i didnt know that,

I belive You, it is hard to write good POP songs, especialy if you want to make  not only POP music, but HITS.

Edited by tamijo - October 17 2009 at 03:52

If music producers and those talented song writers they have on their payrolls are the ones behind those disposable pop songs (whose lasting musical quality is usually only in their lyrics and sometimes in the quality of the vocals) then I call on all progressive rock bands to fight against that.

MaxerJ wrote: Nuke - Let me start by saying it was never my intention to completely write off 'inferior' music. We all like a bit of raw, quick, dispensable music. I couldn't live without my extensive Tom Morello collection. Now, i'll highlight things that are important so you can skip my digressions.... You've got a couple of problems. First off, the whole 'quality' thing. Did we say anything about quality? Let me see... ctrl+f.... okay, everyone who has mentioned quality has stated that it is impossible to define... What I am trying to say is that 'we' - the collective being ProgArchives users - shouldn't bother arguing over 'x is better than x' in terms of 'proggyness' or 'quality'... instead, let's take a page out of the Lit criticism book and work on defining music - not just prog though - as 'literary'. Sure, you could say 'art' - it's the same thing, different schools of thought. Art students like to think of it as art, Lit students like to think of it as literature. What's important is what it signifies. You yourself said that people understand literary books to be better because 'the smart people told them so'. To millions of educated - and i use the term to talk about people with more than five years in school - western teaching has emphasised certain books and authors over others... We haven't denigrated the books that were 'not literary', we have just said, 'Well, that's a good read!/That's a bad read!' But when people read the books seen as canonical 'literature', they talk about how it changed their lives... admit it, as much as mainstream music is fun, bopping, and consistent, it won't have the same effect (on me at least) as VDGG's 'Lighthouse Keepers'. I'm going to shrug that music off the same as i shrug off David Eddings books -they're entertaining books, but i don't feel any different after reading them... This is another bad example and i have digressed quite a bit. Let's just remember that no one has said anything about 'quality' apart from your infatuation with it... I think it's time for the Formalist speech. Right. Once, there were these cats called the Formalists. They came from Russia. They thought that books could be 'rated' (for lack of a better term) by their own merits, discarding the author, or what the reader thought. They measured off originality, style, flair, poetic-ness, and loads of other things... They were shut down by Structualists, but that's irrelevant. If you want to do this, lets do it. Let's be music Formalists. I would like that. But don't pay out others because they are more extreme Formalists than you. We're all in the same boat, otherwise you wouldn't be on this forum. As for classical music... i don't know about you but I listen to equal shares classical and progressive. The point is that we are still searching for something else - 'leaving home' as moshkito put it... We just get there in different ways... but it's still better than not leaving at all. There's always speculation as to what Beethoven would do if he were alive today, but you must realize that cultural and economic settings are completely different. Have you ever read anything from Elizabethan/Victorian era? Austen, maybe? Books from that era show how their entire days consisted of walking around, watching the servants do all the work. Beethoven probably had so much time on his hands that Anderson and Howe in similar circumstances would write CttE five times over.... Seriously, people in 1700/1800's didn't do anything all day... And finally, Nuke wrote: If you don't want to be a proper elitist, then perhaps you should look a bit more carefully at pop music, because pop music is actually one of the most meticulously constructed music forms. Many of the best and brightest in the music industry are working on this type of music. It's easy to make fun of Britney Spears, but there is a reason she constantly tops the charts, it's because of the really talented songwriters supporting her underneath.  Yes there is a meticulously constructed form... it was made twenty years ago and has been rinsed and repeated ever since. Fantastic. Many of the best and brightest are working there either because their fantastic Kraut rock band couldn't sell albums or because they actually enjoy their work. (Examples of these people you talk about please.) The reason Britney tops the charts is because the charts are made for Britney. That's like asking why Mugabe is still the president of Zimbabwe. You must realise ALL IS INTERTEXTUAL. Then we can work out how to unplug the stereo.

Good post, I wasn't able to reply right away because I was busy and I knew this post didn't merit a reply that took 5 minutes to write. To start with though, this quality thing had me worried a bit that I'd set up a straw man, but it's not true. You guys either explicitly stated it (using terms like "good" and "bad" which means the same thing as "quality" in this context) or implied it with talk of distinctions between literary work and entertainment. Now I see you want to use the term "literary" instead of "quality," which is a point I admittedly missed the importance of the first time through (the discussion didn't end up focusing on this distinction.) But what does that boil down to? It's dressing the distinction between good and bad in different terms. The distinction between literary and entertainment, in my eyes, is just as bogus as the distinction between quality and non-quality. The difference is that it is much more vague and thus more difficult to challenge. Just because VDGG's "lighthouse keepers" had a stronger effect on you than Lady Gaga's "the fame" doesn't mean it won't go the other way with other people (and it does). Besides, a yardstick of how much effect something has on you is unfair to the many examples of brilliant music that is meant for fun. Mozart often wrote fun songs that wouldn't change anyone's life, but to claim it is less "literary" than the many more serious works out there seems silly to me. If you were to claim that and the majority were to agree, then I would argue that the term "literary" means nothing.

My point as it relates to the formalists would be actually against the formalist position. I'm not terribly familiar with Lit Crit but I think my arguments would be more understood in the post structuralist sense, where the work must be interpreted in the cultural and societal context of both the author and the reader.  In other words, overarching judgements like "this is literary, this is not" reek of formalism, wheras the post structuralist view would be that "whether or not something is literary is subjective and depends on socio-cultural context." If I'm completely misunderstanding Lit Crit, feel free to correct me. 

Personally, I don't listen to too much classical music these days. I really appreciate the music, as a member of my college wind ensemble and choir I play it all the time, however modern music is more my comfort zone since I can relate to it so strongly. Not to say I don't challenge myself, because I do, but I also like to enjoy myself so more often I listen to prog rock, heavy metal, pop music, basically stuff written in my musical language. I find myself challenging myself more often by listening to the experimental wings of those genres than by listening to classical music, although I certainly have to spin at least 1 classical album a month. That's completely irrelevant though, so sorry, and I'll get back to the point. I agree that "leaving home" is an important experience and that most music appreciators should try this. I just don't think this implies anything about literaryness.

As for an example of these people that work underneath pop stars, consider Max Martin. He's the one who wrote "Hit me baby one more time." Here is his production and songwriting discography. I don't know how old you are, but if you grew up at the same time I did, you'd realize that he's probably responsible for more top hits than the Beatles and Elvis combined. Now that takes serious talent!

MaxerJ wrote: Exactly. There is no formula for literature - people just seem to know. But we are brought up to believe that we should treat all forms of music as equal... when we should treat it like books.

My last word on this topic:

The only way that ANYTHING can every be intrinsically more worthy than anything else (notice I didn't say BETTER, because it still doesn't make it BETTER!) would be because of its cultural impact. That is to say: You can not claim that In the Court of the Crimson King is in any way better than random pop album A. You can say you prefer it though. You can also say that it has more inherent worth because it made an impact on music by helping shape a genre. It is not however, a better album if you're talking about taste. It can be better put together artistically, but still it doesn't make it a better piece of music, only a more important piece.

Speaking literately, the only reason why Lord of the Rings is (and should be) more celebrated as a work of literature than Harry Potter is because of its impact on fantasy literature. Is it better written than HP? Well, that's to the reader to decide. HP isn't poorly written, it's actually more entertaining than LOTR in my opinion of course, but either way, one can't be better than the other intrinsically. LOTR is currently more important since it started a lot of fantasy literature, but at the same time HP helped a lot of children read, which is also important.

Comparisons serve to destroy or enlighten. Enlighten in the case of helping readers or listeners find new and "better" (relatively speaking that is) literature or music; or destroy in the case of being a critic and saying band A is better than band B or classic era writer A is better than modern day writer B.

More specifically talking about you guys now: Lots of people say that a certain band is better music because it is either more complex or more groundbreaking than another piece of music. There's nothing wrong with that until you get into destructive terms, such as genre bashing. This is one of the simplest yet most destructive things. First of all, there is NO way that progressive rock is better than thrash metal or grunge or indie or post rock. The reason why everyone is on this forum is because you all PREFER progressive rock to those other genres. you prefer it because it is either more complex, supposedly more groundbreaking, or because you grew up in the 60s and discovered that Barclay James Harvest was something you identified with more than with Led Zeppelin. And that's all fine, it depends on what you prefer in your music. Any groundbreaking activity 90% of the time in progressive rock only served to further the ambitions of progressive rock, the same as in any other genre. Of course, there's the 10% that was later picked up by metal (which birthed prog metal) or by indie (which produced a weird sort of 21st century art rock), but that happens in any genre.

Does this make sense? The reason why genre A is considered better than genre B is because a fan of genre A is going to compare Genre B by genre A's standards. Less philosophically: You like progressive rock and you judge rap by the standards of PR (complex instrumentals, vocal harmonies, and song structure)....well DUH obviously rap doesn't have those things! And rap fans won't like PR for the most part because it doesn't have meaningful or insigntful lyrics powerfully delivered or a strong beat or even a catchy melody. And those are ALL legit concerns because everyone prefers a slightly different musical style to suit their tastes.

God damn, this post covers everything I think I deserve "clappies" and stars. Either this post gets stickied or I'm copy pasting this whenever there's a dumb discussion on why Muse is disappointing because on their newest album they went more alt rock than proggy.

I'm out.

PS: Let's not get started on radio though.

My original intention was to go through this and individually respond to each post I disagree with. I then realized there were far too many disagreeable posts and far too many tangential-at-best posts so I'll just say my piece.


There are a lot more great pieces of music out there than almost anyone thinks. Realizing what the music is great at is where the hang-ups occur. Great tech metal is great because it's great at being technical. Great pop music is great because it's great at being catchy and/or reaching a large audience and/or being relatable  and/or bringing in money and/or a few other things I can't think of. This type of thinking can be done to pretty much anything. As long as it's considered great within the sphere of it's audience it is great. The inverse and reverse of this statement aren't necessarily true.

Nuke - Let me start by saying it was never my intention to completely write off 'inferior' music. We all like a bit of raw, quick, dispensable music. I couldn't live without my extensive Tom Morello collection.

Now, i'll highlight things that are important so you can skip my digressions....

You've got a couple of problems. First off, the whole 'quality' thing. Did we say anything about quality? Let me see... ctrl+f.... okay, everyone who has mentioned quality has stated that it is impossible to define...
What I am trying to say is that 'we' - the collective being ProgArchives users - shouldn't bother arguing over 'x is better than x' in terms of 'proggyness' or 'quality'... instead, let's take a page out of the Lit criticism book and work on defining music - not just prog though - as 'literary'.
Sure, you could say 'art' - it's the same thing, different schools of thought. Art students like to think of it as art, Lit students like to think of it as literature. What's important is what it signifies. You yourself said that people understand literary books to be better because 'the smart people told them so'. To millions of educated - and i use the term to talk about people with more than five years in school - western teaching has emphasised certain books and authors over others... We haven't denigrated the books that were 'not literary', we have just said, 'Well, that's a good read!/That's a bad read!' But when people read the books seen as canonical 'literature', they talk about how it changed their lives... admit it, as much as mainstream music is fun, bopping, and consistent, it won't have the same effect (on me at least) as VDGG's 'Lighthouse Keepers'. I'm going to shrug that music off the same as i shrug off David Eddings books -they're entertaining books, but i don't feel any different after reading them...

This is another bad example and i have digressed quite a bit. Let's just remember that no one has said anything about 'quality' apart from your infatuation with it...

I think it's time for the Formalist speech. Right. Once, there were these cats called the Formalists. They came from Russia. They thought that books could be 'rated' (for lack of a better term) by their own merits, discarding the author, or what the reader thought. They measured off originality, style, flair, poetic-ness, and loads of other things... They were shut down by Structualists, but that's irrelevant. If you want to do this, lets do it. Let's be music Formalists. I would like that. But don't pay out others because they are more extreme Formalists than you. We're all in the same boat, otherwise you wouldn't be on this forum.

As for classical music... i don't know about you but I listen to equal shares classical and progressive. The point is that we are still searching for something else - 'leaving home' as moshkito put it... We just get there in different ways... but it's still better than not leaving at all. There's always speculation as to what Beethoven would do if he were alive today, but you must realize that cultural and economic settings are completely different. Have you ever read anything from Elizabethan/Victorian era? Austen, maybe? Books from that era show how their entire days consisted of walking around, watching the servants do all the work. Beethoven probably had so much time on his hands that Anderson and Howe in similar circumstances would write CttE five times over.... Seriously, people in 1700/1800's didn't do anything all day...

And finally,

Nuke wrote: If you don't want to be a proper elitist, then perhaps you should look a bit more carefully at pop music, because pop music is actually one of the most meticulously constructed music forms. Many of the best and brightest in the music industry are working on this type of music. It's easy to make fun of Britney Spears, but there is a reason she constantly tops the charts, it's because of the really talented songwriters supporting her underneath.

Yes there is a meticulously constructed form... it was made twenty years ago and has been rinsed and repeated ever since. Fantastic. Many of the best and brightest are working there either because their fantastic Kraut rock band couldn't sell albums or because they actually enjoy their work. (Examples of these people you talk about please.)
The reason Britney tops the charts is because the charts are made for Britney. That's like asking why Mugabe is still the president of Zimbabwe.

You must realise ALL IS INTERTEXTUAL.
Then we can work out how to unplug the stereo.

Well, this is a good discussion and I'm happy to see that at least a few people are also taking my side now. Kudos to Pangaea, it must take serious effort to make such a mammoth post. However, please no one else quote the entire post, it makes it hard to look through the page. What I'm seeing in these arguments is a disturbing degree of snobiness. Like I said earlier, we can't even agree on what quality is, so how can we claim to make such assessments of quality? Why do you have to elevate your music on this mystical scale that trumps all others? Why can't you just talk about what you know, like originality, emotional resonance, complexity, technical difficulty, aesthetics, or depth? All those things seem very related to quality, but at least you can talk about them in a somewhat more objective fashion. 

I think there is often a degree of laziness to those writing off music as inferior to other music. Threads of this sort always seem to degenerate into mindless pop music bashing. The posh music-litarati types will exclaim "Oh, but that is just music for the masses, whereas I listen to the obviously superior music made for thinking folk like me!" First off, if you are listening to prog rock, that's not the "thinking man's" music. That music is classical music. You talk about how pop music doesn't last 40 years, but forget that prog music doesn't last 400 years. I shouldn't be giving advice on how to be a proper elitist, but there it is, go listen to Beethoven's 3rd, not Yes's Close to the Edge. If you don't want to be a proper elitist, then perhaps you should look a bit more carefully at pop music, because pop music is actually one of the most meticulously constructed music forms. Many of the best and brightest in the music industry are working on this type of music. It's easy to make fun of Britney Spears, but there is a reason she constantly tops the charts, it's because of the really talented songwriters supporting her underneath.