Is Prog a Band or Songs?

Hi People,Just joined here, What a great site.
I have been browsing through the site and noticed a few things,Firstly i've noticed some bands that i would not call Prog bands,ie Queen,Beatles etc,but have had a few prog songs.So i was thinking being a huge Alice Cooper & Sensational Alex Harvey Band fan why these bands are not in here.
Halo of Flies,Killer,etc by Alice Cooper & Faith Healer by S.A.H.B. would have to be considered prog would'nt they??.
So is it the bands that are prog or just the songs.

Have Fun
  Combat Hamster

Many non-prog bands in the past made some prog songs/albums, (BLACK SABBATH's "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" for example), but they can be considered prog artists. Other examples:

• IRON MAIDEN - "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" (1988)
• JUDAS PRIEST - "Rocka Rolla" (1974) - a mediocre progressive rock album with some blues touches
• LED ZEPPELIN - "Houses Of The Holy" (1973)

 

MikeEnRegalia wrote: To answer your topic more precisely: IMO prog is neither band nor songs, but "album".

Just noticed this thread. Does it not hit upon a fundamental issue? Surely, the question is not "what is Prog - song, album, artist?" but "How does the database define what-is-Prog?".

What is the basic Entity in the database? From what I have seen it would appear to be 'Artist' - the database classifies the artist, and thus ALL their material is also thus classified. For example, The Moody Blues are on this DB as Proto-Prog, but this actually only applies to one or two of their albums at most - the rest of the time they are, well, something else.

So surely this is a basic flaw in the structure of the DB, or at least in the method with which you evaluate something new to be added? At present, once an artist has been accepted, then all their albums are 'in', even if most of them are not relevant. So, you have nearly 40 years worth of Moody Blues releases just for the sake of saying that those one or two early ones were in some way proto-Prog.

I must say that I disagree with adding all-and-sundry to ProgArchives on the basis of minor connections. Led Zeppelin were not Prog, they were hard rock but clearly had some proggish elements from time to time. The Beatles were not Prog, but they had some relevance to its gestation. The Rolling Stones ....... no!

In my opinion, you need to give some serious thought to the possibility of having simplified, or cut-down, entries for these kinds of artists.