Is Prog Rock the New Folk?

Dean wrote: HackettFan wrote: Dean wrote: Manipulation that is unintentional is not manipulation, if you mean the unintentional change in people's taste then you cannot use the word "manipulation". Manipulation is a deliberate act, so in being deliberate it is therefore intentional. The dictionary definitions that I looked up use words such as shrewd, dishonest, deceiving, unscrupulous and unfairly ... all these denote intent. In the context we are using the word manipulation with regard to Pop music it can be nothing but intentional. I see that a lot is falling upon the meaning of 'manipulation'. I disagree wholeheartedly with your inclusion of intention as a necessary condition in the word's meaning. Intention is a pragmatic inference attached the word. I pulled the following instances of actual word usage off Google and Google Scholar. None of these instances involve intentionality, and each sounds fine to me: “All of this design information is necessary to translate Figure 1 into Figure 2, as the C ++program has the same general design, but makes explicit that the program is manipulating points, calculating distances, computing averages, and so on.” (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=%22is+manipulating%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,37) “Nanotechnology is manipulating matter at nanometer level and the application of the same to medicine is called nanomedicine.” (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22is+manipulating%22&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C37) “Otherwise, the MMP is manipulating a valid ACM message and must process its body one line at a time, beginning at decision block 610.” (http://www.google.com/patents/US6256666) Erm, we are actually discussing the noun 'manipulation', not the verb 'manipulating', however all of your examples the thing doing the manipulating is not doing it by accident or as a consequence or by-product, the intention of the [person who wrote, designed or invoked the] program/technonolgy/MMP is to handle, change and/or alter the data-points/matter/ACM message. These are not pragmatic inferences, they are semantic inferences.  When we have two or more possible meanings for a word we apply the meaning that is appropriate to the context in which it was used.

No this won't work at all. The person who designed any of these things is not the grammatical subject of the sentence. We also don't know that they were designed to do what they do, or if it simply a surprise discovery. Certain conclusions are probable, but this is by pragmatic inference (or, maybe in your case with respect to programming, actual background knowledge). Each one of these was a manipulation; a manipulation of matter at the nano level by nanotechnology, a manipulation of ACM messages by MMP, and so on. This is the meaning I intended. (I actually doubt that there are two meanings from a cognitive standpoint, irrespective of dictionary definitions, but that's a theoretical discussion outside the bounds of this thread.)

Here is one of my favorites, and there is no designer to read into it:
"They will not roll and pitch to the same extent as the Langley, a vessel about one-third their tonnage, but roll and pitch they will when real weather is manipulating the waters of the sea." (The Daily Northwestern, p.7, March 26, 1925.)

Where's Theodor W. Adorno when you really need him?

I'm under the impression that 1970s-style rock music (to some extent also covering more progressive stuff) has been going through something of a resurgence in popularity recently, at least here in Scandinavia. What else would you make of a band like Goat?



For that and other reasons, I've become curious as to why some genres of not just music but also film and literature fall in and out of favour with the general public, as well as academics and reviewers. Usually there's some degree of nostalgia in the pop culture for 20 years ago since that's when the generation currently coming of age were born, so right now we should be going through some kind of nostalgia for the 1990s' nostalgia for the 1970s?!

The whole thing reminds me of a list on RateYourMusic I linked to a while ago: A compilation of 500 Rolling Stone reviews showing that many records and artists who now are sacred cows were met with indifference or hostility from their reviewers at first. On the other hand, just as many records that got glowing reviews are now seen by the same publication as their artists' lesser work. Also interesting to see which "movements" are either accepted or rejected at various points in their history, like the writers' weird back-and-forth flip-flopping over punk and new wave. I'm kind of confused as to whether there's any kind of consistent mechanisms as to how that happens. Other than the "20 years rule", I'm kind of at a loss.

I also picked up a book about the horror genre's history in film and literature last week at the library, and the same phenomenon is at work: Many now-revered authors in the genre were regarded as purveyors of trash in their lifetime (Stoker, Lovecraft etc.), but the material popular back then has just as often been shoved into the kitsch bin by posterity. Maybe I should read the thread again to get through all the armchair sociological discourse, but I've got the impression from a quick skim people's basically arguing in circles.

Yeah, but consider the many rock groups from the same generation as AC/DC who aren't as popular with younger generations as they are. That's where the entire common "dad rock" epithet comes from.

Toaster Mantis wrote: Yeah, but consider the many rock groups from the same generation as AC/DC who aren't as popular with younger generations as they are. That's where the entire common "dad rock" epithet comes from.

Yeah you don't see many kids walking around with UFO or Thin Lizzy t shirts.

I have often thought about this myself. Somehow Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and even RUSH became cool with the younger generation when it seems that The WHO and YES haven't. I'm not sure what causes the younger folks to decide band A is cool and band B isn't but fortunately we don't have much of that on this site. As long as there is at least one band that leads to a fascination with prog then I guess that's all that really matters. Still I wish more younger folks were getting into YES and GENESIS not to mention Camel, ELP, Gentle Giant, VDGG, Spock's Beard, Flower Kings etc.

Edited by Prog_Traveller - September 10 2014 at 16:56

Prog_Traveller wrote: Toaster Mantis wrote: Yeah, but consider the many rock groups from the same generation as AC/DC who aren't as popular with younger generations as they are. That's where the entire common "dad rock" epithet comes from. Yeah you don't see many kids walking around with UFO or Thin Lizzy t shirts. I have often thought about this myself. Somehow Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and even RUSH became cool with the younger generation when it seems that The WHO and YES haven't. I'm not sure what causes the younger folks to decide band A is cool and band B isn't but fortunately we don't have much of that on this site. As long as there is at least one band that leads to a fascination with prog then I guess that's all that really matters. Still I wish more younger folks were getting into YES and GENESIS not to mention Camel, ELP, Gentle Giant, VDGG, Spock's Beard, Flower Kings etc.

Edited by rogerthat - September 10 2014 at 23:44

rogerthat wrote: I think marketing is involved in it.  Some bands are pushed more on the audience than others because perhaps the labels have decided they have more sales potential. I don't believe in the No True Scotsman fallacy.  I remember when it once rained here in November (completely unseasonal) the newspaper immediately ran a small article on November Rain. Eh, is it really necessary to so desperately promote GNR?  Some such bands are cherrypicked for promotion.  It need not have much to do with their popularity at that time either.  For eg, Van Halen have produced two of the biggest selling rock albums of the 70s and 80s and yet they have not been marketed the way GNR were because their transparent misogyny makes them 'uncool' and they lack boring, uber power ballads that MTV loves and GNR has in plenty.

Well, that's as much a matter of changing cultural norms as marketing or even inherent qualities of the music resulting in it being judged on different criteria. The case of certain hard rock groups being nowhere as popular as in the 1970s/1980s, because society now is more sensitive towards gender issues and less accepting of overtly misogynistic lyrics, is just one. A less politically loaded one I suspect is that often the aesthetic - not just lyrics and visual presentation but also things like production technology - of music can get very strongly associated with a particular cultural milieu unique to a specific time and place.

I mean, I like Yes but in their example their lyrics and cover art give off a major "explosion in a New Age bookstore" vibe. The synthesizers and elfin vocals furthermore date their entire aesthetic as very "first half of the 1970s" in a way that even strikes me as somewhat kitschy. To use Prog_Traveller's examples, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd's aesthetics don't scream "1970s" anywhere as loudly.

Funny how things that were originally meant to be avant-garde and small-p progressive might 40 years later come across as old-fashioned for the same reasons now and then.

Toaster Mantis wrote: rogerthat wrote: I think marketing is involved in it.  Some bands are pushed more on the audience than others because perhaps the labels have decided they have more sales potential. I don't believe in the No True Scotsman fallacy.  I remember when it once rained here in November (completely unseasonal) the newspaper immediately ran a small article on November Rain. Eh, is it really necessary to so desperately promote GNR?  Some such bands are cherrypicked for promotion.  It need not have much to do with their popularity at that time either.  For eg, Van Halen have produced two of the biggest selling rock albums of the 70s and 80s and yet they have not been marketed the way GNR were because their transparent misogyny makes them 'uncool' and they lack boring, uber power ballads that MTV loves and GNR has in plenty. Well, that's as much a matter of changing cultural norms as marketing or even inherent qualities of the music resulting in it being judged on different criteria. The case of certain hard rock groups being nowhere as popular as in the 1970s/1980s, because society now is more sensitive towards gender issues and less accepting of overtly misogynistic lyrics, is just one. A less politically loaded one I suspect is that often the aesthetic - not just lyrics and visual presentation but also things like production technology - of music can get very strongly associated with a particular cultural milieu unique to a specific time and place. I mean, I like Yes but in their example their lyrics and cover art give off a major "explosion in a New Age bookstore" vibe. The synthesizers and elfin vocals furthermore date their entire aesthetic as very "first half of the 1970s" in a way that even strikes me as somewhat kitschy. To use Prog_Traveller's examples, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd's aesthetics don't scream "1970s" anywhere as loudly. Funny how things that were originally meant to be avant-garde and small-p progressive might 40 years later come across as old-fashioned for the same reasons now and then.