Misinterpreting the term "prog"

The Mystical wrote: I'm not really bothered by the label of 'Progressive Rock". I just love most of the music under this umbrella.

There are only a few real progressive rock bands anyway. It was really a phenomenom that died out around '74 or '75. By this time it had really more or less runit's course. The rest was rehash or something else. I heard an interview with Fish on a Montréal FM station back in '82 or '83 when they played here for the first time and he downplayed this progressive rock thing. He was actually saying that the band owed a lot to punk. I was at the show and it was like seeing Rush. There were tons of Rush heads there.

So, I guess like a lot of bands that fall under this unfortunate and inaccurate label. There was an article about the latest inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ( shame? ) and the journalist listed some bands who should never be inducted and referred to "progressive" rock as niether. I think he hit the nail on the head sort of unintentionally. It's just mish mash music. Let's just bolt anything regarless of style, rhythm, time signature, tempo and then put it to confusing lyrics and then the kids will go for it. That was the axiom back in the seventies. I guess it helped that guys like Emerson, the Shulman Brothers and others were learned musicians with at least some formal training.

Of all the prog bands I think Focus was just about the only one or one of the few  who really nailed the concept. They even mocked themselves with the novelty track Hocus Pocus. It was a fool around track that started with the drummer Pierre van der Linden smashing around on the kit with  Jan Akkerman throwing in a riff and then Van Leer adding some bizarre yodelling. Just read that this weekend in a book I found in my library that had an interview with TvL from the early seventies.

I guess the database would lose 3/4 of its bands if it were to bother with prog rock bands only.

axeman wrote: Does. not. follow, ...other than trivially.  All terms worthy of the name, exclude things. But as a marker , it excludes nothing definitively. You understand what a "definition" is don't you. It means it has limits(fine). That we must talk in words and words must have landing points called definitions, never implies that things aren't in many cases, continuous and fluid.  That's one of the hard part about critical discussion, for emphasis and control of scope we must chop things up smaller than they might otherwise be construed to be. You can put one thing in a separate bulletpoint, but it doesn't mean it's totally unrelated to the other bulletpoints.  Mainly, the thing that "prog" excludes is some sort of claim that this body of music is "progressive" by whatever critical standards of "progress". It's not meant to exclude music, but the unnecessary claim that each person who enjoys prog is a fan of whatever is deemed to be "progressive" at the time.  But let's take your inanity on its face. You must mean certain things and not others when you say "progressive rock" because otherwise you wouldn't take Opeth or Dream Theater to be more indicative of progressive rock/music then say, The Fixx. Because if you exclude The Fixx then you "have chosen to exclude some music as not befitting the term for whatever reasons." It's a bad start when you say that excluding something from a category for some unspecified reason is questionable.  But, if that makes me bad, then it make you bad. If it makes me exclusive, then it makes you exclusive. If you can't exclude any band or music from the term "progressive", then DT and Opeth aren't particular examples of "progressive rock", because all exclusion can be called into question to be in the same "judgmental" vein that you are implying.  Now, I have no doubts that you can misconstrue a beaut out of that, since almost everything you have read into what I have written has been your own invention.

No, and that is the whole point, there is no hard and fast definition of prog rock.  You cannot come up with a suitable one to encompass all the prog rock of the 70s, let alone prog rock of today (but I'd like to see you try, nevertheless).   So either we can have a situation where some people of similar persuasion as yours make a definition and force it down everybody's throats or to work with a general idea of what could be prog.  

Please don't tell me that your attempts to make a prog rock definition that excludes are based purely on empirical considerations.  No, they are simply based on your impressions of 70s prog (and those impressions themselves may be too heavily influenced by that 70s prog which you liked and not all 70s prog) and you look for other music that seems to share its characteristics.   So on PA too people go by their gut feeling but without trying to limit what prog rock could be.   It is not a "thing", it is a genre of music and you will not convince me that it is dead or has stopped evolving.  That being the case, it would be a terrible thing to freeze what all can be understood to be prog because music subsequently released might contradict such a definition.  Also, anything that is based on gut feelings cannot be imposed.  It is only prog because the respective sub genre teams in PA say so, I absolutely don't have to agree with it.   But enough people agree in any case because not all bands are outliers and life goes on.

Furthermore, prog rock is not just a style, it's an approach  (else, please demonstrate to me the common stylistic aspects of Kraftwerk, Magma and Camel).  So it's not as if prog to include Opeth would have to exclude Fixx.  I don't even know who the latter are but if they release an album later on that has some of the attributes of prog rock, one would have to revise their position on Fixx.   So it's not fixed (!); as the genre keeps changing, so too our understanding of it evolves.   Freezing the term so that it no longer keeps pace with the changing hues of prog is not a good solution.  Rather, it is like imposing a definition for the sake of it. 


Edited by rogerthat - April 15 2013 at 19:42

 Too many bands here. People get confused by this site all the time. I mean what does The Mahavishnu Orchestra have to do with Split Enz 

I'm a musician, and have been playing prog for over 40 years.  Prog is an attitude, a frame of mind.  

Vibrationbaby wrote:  Too many bands here. People get confused by this site all the time. I mean what does The Mahavishnu Orchestra have to do with Split Enz

 Ah -- the old PA argument that is never resolved, never goes away, is extremely subjective ("prog" or "progressive rock" having about as many interpretations as this forum has members), and is thus not worth arguing about.

Edited by Peter - April 16 2013 at 23:49

Peter wrote:  Ah -- the old PA argument that is never resolved, never goes away, is extremely subjective ("prog" or "progressive rock" having about as many interpretations as this forum has members), and is thus not worth arguing about. I've said it often here before: it's a lousy way to categorize music for anything other than personal use. The so-called "category" (it's not a specific genre) is so diverse/inclusive/amorphous/subjective as to be near meaningless. It meant something which was almost defined once upon a time, but these days (for those who claim to like it) I think it basically equates to "better" -- a subjective (if not arrogant) delineation if ever there was one. For those who deride it, it seems to equate to "weird," "overblown," "pretentious" "overly complex" -- and as those are also subjective concepts, perhaps those interpretations are as good as any. I use the term, but I know what I mean when I say it.  In essence, "prog" is what you decide it is when you make prog playlists for yourself on your Ipod.

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say but we all know that Prog is like Porn i.e. no-one can define it but everyone claims to know it when they see/hear it. Yes, some of us know what me mean when we say Prog, but I suspect that body of (cough) older people might reluctantly agree (like Vibrationbaby) that Prog, albeit  in a much narrower exclusive sense than that currently espoused on PA, was practically over as a cutting edge musical development by circa 1979. Don't mean to come across as negative but for me, I kinda agree with Peter that this acceptance or denial of the 'end of Prog' is the kernel at the heart of most debates round these parts y'all.

ExittheLemming wrote: ... I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say but we all know that Prog is like Porn i.e. no-one can define it but everyone claims to know it when they see/hear it. Yes, some of us know what me mean when we say Prog, but I suspect that body of (cough) older people might reluctantly agree (like Vibrationbaby) that Prog, albeit  in a much narrower exclusive sense than that currently espoused on PA, was practically over as a cutting edge musical development by circa 1979. Don't mean to come across as negative but for me, I kinda agree with Peter that this acceptance or denial of the 'end of Prog' is the kernel at the heart of most debates round these parts y'all.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and think that "Progressive" is a very subjective term.