Misinterpreting the term "prog"

To a musician with years of experience, progression is the growth of your abilities and talents like a fine wine. Progressive is to play "Progressive" which would suggest many aspects to the expanding growth of a  musician that is schooled. After expanding into ethnic styles, Classical music, traditional Folk and Jazz ..it is now up to you to expand yourself. You are schooled and can play many complex pieces, but how will you add the music to your own vocabulary. What is your version/concept of expression through the styles of music mentioned above? This is the most important developmental stage of a musician and the meaning or purpose is to be progressive. The reason Punk doesn't get tagged/mentioned in the same breath as Prog is directly to blame on the old school complexity of musicianship. I don't believe the Punk society was completely anti-prog. They seemed to follow the ENID around in the early days when the band engaged in strictly instrumental Classical Rock. According to history within the music industry..Punk closed the doors on Prog. Prog was huge in the media for years , but Punk changed the attitudes of the youth. Just as the attitudes of the youth changed during the "Glam Rock" period with Bowie, T.Rex, Roxy Music and even prior to that with Velvet Underground. Syd Barrett was influential to Punk Rock..although he often slammed the door when the Punks hunted him down. I believe the hard feelings musicians had for Punk revolved around the loss of freedom to play progressive along with having radio airplay, record contract, and massive touring. Every progressive outstanding musician I knew from 1974 to 1980 was livid about it. This was a real scene and not something you read in a book where I've found mistakes and mis-quotes because the person writing the book did not grow up in that period , misunderstands concepts or a certain ideology and it's impossible for them to grab a true "hands on" experience and so their book is fringe play.  

Edited by TODDLER - April 09 2013 at 09:47

Blacksword wrote: chopper wrote: chamberry wrote: Wasn't punk a progress from the stagnant waters of the highly elitist music journalism and prog dinosaurs of the 70's?   In what way was punk a musical progression from prog? Punk was 'Reg Rock' 'Regressive Rock'

Agreed. It wasn't even novel or innovative, just a rehash of late 60s MC5 and The Stooges.

I believe many genres are formed out of innovative thinking, and new technology, so it's an initial progressive step. But once the genre has been formed and defined, it doesn't continue to evolve and change character. Punk became stagnant very quickly. But it redefined the rules of pop and rock music. The problem with the word genre is that by defining something you define limits. Progressiveness is supposed to be limitless, and in many ways it was/is/can be. All those artists wasn't moving in the same direction, they were moving in different directions. They wanted to expand the definition of rock/pop, not create one new genre. So if you want to define prog rock as a genre , it will naturally be difficult. But that's the point, that's why it is progressive.

Making music "in the style of prog", emulating some band/s, must be called prog, but it doesn't represent the nature of what prog originally was.  I believe it is to try to be forward-looking, even if it can be hard in these days, and explore sounds, making use of influences without trying to sound like them, and creating something fairly original. I believe classical training or other advanced musical fields can be a great influence or tool to fuse with pop/rock elements.

Edited by wilmon91 - April 09 2013 at 18:05

Look, its "Prog" not "Progressive". in the 90s, we froze the term. Bunch of us wanted to talk about our favorite, long-abused bands from the 70s on usenet. We had style-prudes coming in all the time saying that alt.music.progressive really should change its name since musical tastes stuck back in the 70s wasn't all that "progressive". (Argument by Equivocation, beautiful!)

Stop being a prog denier. Lol. Prog rock is the apple jacks of music man. It doesn't taste like apples. Everyone has their own means of defining what is and what isn't prog rock, but Punk is certainly a regressive rock. There is nothing progressive about; "Beat on the brat! Beat on the brat! Beat on the brat with a baseball bat! Oh-yeah!" Although there might indeed be something progressive in; "This is a public service announcement.... WITH GUITAR!" Just like Primus, long as I've denied it, is certainly a prog rock band. Let'e face it. The influence of bands like Rush is obvious with other influences like the Residents and Peter Gabriel. Well more than Peter Gabriel I think it was the Tony Levin influence, who of course was a memeber of King Crimson during Discipline (undoubtedly a huge influence on the Primus sound, not to discount The Talking Drum from Lark's Tongue In Aspic) and played bass for Peter Gabriel. Alot of people deny what can be considered as modern prog by calling it something different. Go listen to the Flaming Lips, then hate yourself because it's prog as hell. At least my favorite albums The Soft Bulletin (which can actually crush a fragile and drug induced mind as it is a beautiful comment on life and death) or Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots ( my favorite tracks being Approaching Pavonis mons By Balloon and One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21 (which, by my own conclusion, may be about a vibrator)).

rogerthat wrote: I wonder who's the 'we' in axeman's rants.  Certainly not me, by the looks of it.  Exclusion continues to be very attractive more than 40 years since John Lennon wrote Imagine, it seems.

That's funny. You're pretty oblivious to your own exclusionary behavior, then. Because most people you can think of are somehow not part of my "we". You probably can't recognize the irony of excluding people like me from whatever you consider your group of non-exclusives.The whole purpose of that statement is to say that I'm not part of your little group of respectables, because I said something you can't identify with. 

ProgressiveMike wrote: Go listen to the Flaming Lips, then hate yourself because it's prog as hell.

I like the Flaming Lips. And as much as I enjoy Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the Lips still seem mainly pop--innovative pop perhaps, interesting pop, definitely. 

axeman wrote: rogerthat wrote: I wonder who's the 'we' in axeman's rants.  Certainly not me, by the looks of it.  Exclusion continues to be very attractive more than 40 years since John Lennon wrote Imagine, it seems.   That's funny. You're pretty oblivious to your own exclusionary behavior, then. Because most people you can think of are somehow not part of my "we". You probably can't recognize the irony of excluding people like me from whatever you consider your group of non-exclusives.The whole purpose of that statement is to say that I'm not part of your little group of respectables, because I said something you can't identify with.  We can probably agree on some music though, because music is reactive and doesn't take a coherent position or consistent logical application.  "We" the people who shortened the name to "prog" because we didn't want to get into the "that's not as progressive as music that I pride myself in liking" argument, and just wanted to talk about a style of music.  I mean do you realize how often conversations about our favorite bands, and what other bands we might like to try, were broken up by the "why do you listen to that music" kind of guys? Guys who would come into a usenet newsgroup and argue about whether or not you should call it that--like the founders of the news group had stolen their name or something. Like they had just awoke to find squatters on their property. Like you had to pass their muster to call your music, something that it had previously been known by.  Of course, it probably escapes you how exclusionary all that more-progressive-than-thou crap is.  I will reiterate it's "prog" not "progressive" because it's ground that some of us (happy?) gave up years ago, because we were more interested in talking about music we liked than fighting over a disputed territory or a coveted term for our music. I'm pretty sure that's why people with this interest use that four-letter word a lot more than they do "progressive". "prog" is a type of music, "progressive" is an assertion about an effect of the music.  If you guys want to fight this war all over again, in a place called "ProgArchives" (a place where people talk about music they like--just like ProgRock radio was a place that people listened to music they liked.) I guess that's your preference. Sure a couple of people can tell you "'Prog" is different from 'progressive'", but I don't see that they  elaborate that difference. I did.

I was interested in the tone of your original comment.  Once again, who's the we here?  There are plenty of prog rock fans across the world and you are attempting to decide on their behalf what it should be called.  I have the option not to agree with you and I choose not to.  I was first introduced to the term progressive rock and not prog rock and, no, I didn't grow up in the 70s.  Forums like these are probably the only places where the abbreviation prog has come to mean something else...er, 'we' don't even know what it really means because 'we' insist it doesn't expand to progressive.  If you had read my earlier comments, you'd have known that I do not insist on only music that progresses as being recognized as prog rock.  But I have to point out that the term itself creates these expectations so to later on insist that prog has nothing to do with progressive is a contradiction.   It is not for 'we' to insist what this music should be called.  People can call it what they want, yes, they can. 

axeman wrote: Fine, but I'm not likely to listen to 20 minutes of cat-screeching because it's hipper than "stale" notes and not that many people do it.

It's not about your likes or dislikes.  If 'we' try to bend the name of a genre to suit our likes and dislikes, it would be utter chaos.  A widely used genre term doesn't HAVE to conform to your personal understanding of it.  I am sure you'd easily find 70s prog rock bands that you don't like, so likes and dislikes are irrelevant.   It may be that what you dub cat screeching actually has musical qualities shared with 70s prog but your tastes bias you against recognizing this, so that's dangerously unreliable.

rogerthat wrote: I was interested in the tone of your original comment.  Once again, who's the we here?  There are plenty of prog rock fans across the world and you are attempting to decide on their behalf what it should be called.

I think you have it precisely backward. I'm giving perspective of my understanding of why it's called "prog". Where exactly do I say what you have to call it? 

Edited by axeman - April 13 2013 at 03:18