Rolling Stone's"Best Prog-Rock Albums of All Time"

Originally posted by HarbouringTheSoul Originally posted by ExittheLemming I personally loathe Dream Theater heartily, but would never castigate the band for being anything remotely approaching intellectual. You can count to 5, 7 and 9 in sync with yer buddies? That's counting matey, not impenetrable complexity..... More to the point, complexity and intellectuality have nothing to do with each other.  Dream Theater's music is certainly complex, but it's hardly intellectual. Which is not a judgment of quality, you don't have to be intellectual or complex to be good.

There are works by DT that I have listened to countless times and am still trying to figure out the structures of.  So yes, it is a deeply intellectual experience for me.  Tell you what - why don't you tell me what YOU find intellectual and I will piss on it in turn and tell you it's not intellectual in any way.  Let's have a pissing contest, why don't we?

Silly prog snobs. 

Originally posted by thellama73 Originally posted by dtguitarfan Tell you what - why don't you tell me what YOU find intellectual and I will piss on it in turn and tell you it's not intellectual in any way.  Let's have a pissing contest, why don't we? That sounds like fun. I'll start. I find Bach intellectual (sometimes too much so.)

I'm sure he was looking for a prog band as an answer

Originally posted by dtguitarfan Hmph, Bach?  He's not intellectual!  Blah blah blah Mahler blah blah Shostakovich blah blah Rachmaninoff blah blah blah and therefore Bach sucks.

Your arguments are very compelling.

To me intellectual music is designed to appeal more to the intellect than the emotions.  It's more about thinking than feeling.  I would say that academic music generally is more intellecual than rock/metal forms of music, but of course a lot of Western art music (classical music to use the general term) does appeal to the emotions in very direct manner.  I love music that makes me feel emotional, but classical music can make me feel too emotional (Delibes' Lachme, Tallis, Schubert, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Rachmaninov. Miaskovsky etc. can bring tears to my eyes).

Speaking of a composer who has  a link to a school I have worked for, I think Murray Schafer's compositional apprach to music is more intellectual than Dream Theater's.  I think that "modern" composers such as Stockhausen, Xenakis, Penderecki, Berio and Ligeti are more intellectual in their approach (some might say that the music simply appeals more to pseudo-sophisticos than the genuinely sophisticated audience that Dream Theater has).

If talking Prog, well I just don't think Prog commonly intellectual, and I am a fairly visceral listener.  Intellectual also equals high-brow, and what is the most sophisticated and erudite music that Dream Theater has done?

Speaking PA materials, Aranis is not that structurally, harmonically or rhythmically complex , but this still sounds more sophisticated to me (partially due to the instrumentation and that it's more like western art music) than this Dream Theater track from the same year. More intellectual; that depends.  I don't consider either of these to be intellectual (chose an Aranis track that I would think some would find more easy-listening, though long).





Or, for fun, how about the openings of these compared since they are rather similar?








Edited by Logan - August 03 2012 at 14:47

Originally posted by KingCrInuYasha Not a knock against Dream Theater, since I've never heard any of their works, thus I can't make any judgment. How are they?

Edited by rogerthat - August 03 2012 at 21:31

Who gives a sh*t about The Rolling Stone anyway? I sure as hell don't. There isn't such a thing as a definitive progressive rock list because NOBODY will every agree on the same bands and recordings. Total waste of time and money. This is just another example of a magazine that's ran completely out of ideas.

Edited by Mirror Image - August 03 2012 at 22:52

Originally posted by The T I like DT a lot (I used to be a fanboy even) but intellectual? Really? Muscular, sometimes I would rather say.

^ Are we discussing Petrucci or DT, or are we talking about the RS list?

Edited by Dayvenkirq - August 04 2012 at 01:17

Originally posted by KingCrInuYasha   3. How did Selling England By The Pound and 2112 become nominees in the first place? Last time I read the New Rolling Stone Album Guide, those works weren't viewed too favorably.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - August 04 2012 at 01:36

Edited by Dayvenkirq - August 04 2012 at 02:59