I think the proggiest thing on that album is Wright's synth solo in "Run Like Hell"

I'll be honest with you ... when definitions tell the world that you are screwed up and you don't know anything, and no one can do anything ... I'm not sure I would not say ... too bad for you ... I wrote the piece, got famous off it and have the millions to show for it, and I don't care if you call it prog, bullsh*t or anything else you want ...

 

It's the craziest thing ...

 

Don't start telling me that you only like "progressive" music, because I am not sure you can define it and show it with examples. The Wall might not be "progressive" if you consider just a bunch of songs, but everything else about it, is more progressive than the majority of things that have ever been done ... and that is the reason why it is remembered, and appreciated, and if you decide you don't like it because it ain't progressive enough for your knickers ... too bad!

 

Can you see the fault with that question now? ... how the fudge would you feel if you had composed that massive piece of music, and then some kid comes up and tells you some words that ... have nothing to do with music, and certainly not anything to do with your own work?

 

Yeah ... you would flip the kid, too! And I would say on top of it ... I don't need your nickels!

 

It's not "we don't need no education ... we don't need no thought control ... " ... it's "we don't need your opinions ... we don't need no oppresive ideas ... " ... that are all about ... I can't do something! I can't think of anything more ... unjust ... and a bigger crime ... than say ... I don't like that man's music because he ain't black ... or green ... or blue ... or progressive!   

Awesome

Iván 

 

Of course The Wall is progressive

Steely Dan are just as prog as Pink Floyd. Oh sh*t, look what I just got myself into. 

They're two entirely different bands though (and both were commercially successful). Pink Floyd often crated long and drawn out spacey-rock and Steely Dan crafted (quite intricate) song based jazz pop/rock. 

Of course that they are different bands. So different that I like Steely Dan much more than Pink Floyd, and I think that Steely Dan' music is better, regarding entire catalogue by both.

I disagree that Steely Dan recorded so commercial albums as DSTOM, WYWH and The Wall. Those Pink Floyd albums were sold in so much copies than ANY other progrock band, be that "spacey - rock" or "jazz pop/rock", were sold entire catalogue. 

Does that mean that because of it, Pink Floyd are "less prog"?

Of course that not means that Pink Floyd is "less prog". Pink Floyd is an iconic progrock act for so many people worldwide, even for a crowd who never heard any other progrock band.

Lawl.

But the best track on the album is 'comfortably numb' which Gilmour wrote (music that is).

Also "Animals" is almost all written by Waters, but no-one questions whether "Animals" is progressive or not.

 

And who cares if an album is less "prog" than others ? it certainly doesn't mean it is inferior.

 

I am wondering what specifically the poster feels makes The Wall "not very progressive".

 

Is it the artwork by avant-garde cartoonist Gerald Scarfe? Is it the fact that it is a concept album about a rock musician's descent into isolation and madness, based in part on Floyd guitarist Syd Barrett? Is it the trial scene where a judge that looks like a massive buttocks sentences the defendant to be exposed before his peers? Is it three separate sections of "Another Brick in the Wall" sung from different viewpoints? Is it the enormous amount of studio time spent on sound and vocal effects? Is it because the movie based on the album was one of the most surreal and arresting rock film experiences ever created? Is it because the song "Comfortably Numb" fades in an out of reality, with Waters handling the conscious sequences and Gilmour singing the hallucinatory parts, and then finishing with a towering extended lead that is one of the greatest ever recorded?

 

Oh...wait...those would all indicate a highly progressive album. Never mind.

No, that indicates they put a lot of thought and hard work into it. 

Could someone explain what exactly isn't prog about The Wall?

  That's the Word ! 

 

No 3 minute synth solos or epics. As we all know, it is NOT progressive (I don't mean just not prog, but not in any way progressive) if it's not very long songs full of radical time signature changes, polymetrics and long synth solos.

 

Maybe none of the songs on their own sound like typical prog. But since like other PF albums it really should be judged as a whole rather than the sum of it's parts, the album itself is pretty goddamn progressive.

 

And I'm tired of people writing off obviously progressive music because it's not "prog", some idiots think that's equal to not being progressive at all.

 

Yeah. Post punk was not progressive but Symphony X sure is.

 

Some people need to look up what progress actually means. I really wish people would remember how to use the word progressive correctly and realise it isn't quite the same as "sounding like Genesis", because when people say with a straight face that David Bowie wasn't progressive despite the incredible diversity and creativity of his career but any band that strictly imitates an already established prog act is progressive just because they sound alike (though almost always inferior) I get more than a little pissy.

 

Not prog =/= not progressive, hell prog has become so NOT progressive now that I really wish the concept of prog and it's whole community would just die off. All of the better prog bands these days tend to be polarizing because people seem so enraged that people dare call a band like The Mars Volta progressive even though they dont sound exactly like some other band they can think of.

 

Prog has ironically become a very constrictive limited term. Think about that, the word "progressive" has rules and limits now. Does anybody realise how STUPID that is?

 

It's not the only genre guilty of this, there's a lot of idiots who don't consider anything punk unless it sounds exactly like The Sex Pistols.

 

Because the next time I see somebody with a Kamelot avatar saying Brian Eno isn't progressive I WILL try to ruin that person's life.

 

I know I'm really nitpicking over a simple thing, but it really does bug me. I don't think the tern"progressive rock" has been shortened to "prog rock" over time just out of sheer convenience. Because as the genre has evolved it's been made VERY clear that prog doesn't strictly mean progressive anymore.

 

It did at first, when the term was first being used for bands that actually were progressive, but then people started using the term for bands like IQ and Toto and so shortening it to prog became a neccesity because calling those bands progessive would (and should) result in you being completely laughed at outside of the prog community.

That's right. 

Why is IQ not "Progressive Rock"? And why do you put them alongside Toto? Two bands so unlike.

 

The Wall feels to me more like a progressive rock album than DSOTM.More expressive and takes you on more of a journey.

 

Just because The Wall isn't the first concept album doesn't mean it's not progressive, it's stupid to say all newer concept albums can't be progressive since there are many different kinds of themes they can explore.

 

The Wall may not be the first concept album to feature the kind of themes it did (alienation, bitterness, fascism) but it was the first to execute them as well as it did.

 

That they put a lot of thought and work into it is neither here nor there.

 

Someone put forth the proposition that DSotM was more "progressive" than The Wall, and additionally stated The Wall was "not very progressive." I have yet to see valid clarification of such statements. To be honest, I believe such statements to be subjective in the extreme and not very factual.

 

 

 

The OP cares, that's why he made this thread.

Agree. When I listen to Arena, IQ and Pendragon I feel I'm listening to very dated music. Doesn't mean it's not Prog rock. When I listen to David Bowie I feel I'm listening to an artist always ahead of the game, experimenting with new music forms and willing to collaborate with other artists to achieve his ends. I think more of David Bowie as a progressive Pop artist and influencer of Prog rock artists such as Marillion. Coming back to the original question I still don't see why an album such as Animals is more progressive than The Wall, apart from the obvious that Animals has longer songs! 

 

Yeah, I don't think a band has to be progressive to be prog, and even if I don't find a band progressive I don't consider that a bad thing, if they have a sound they are good at, nothing wrong with sticking to it.

 

But yeah, there are many progressive musicians from many genres that are not prog rock.

 

There are electronica artists who can be considered progressive (Aphex Twin), hip hop artists who can be considered progressive (Madlib), even punk artists can be progressive, in fact that's essentially what post punk was, progressive punk.

That last point is an important one, concept albums and Rock Opera, (or Rock Musicals as they should more accurately be called), didn't tell the whole story within the music, they required some-other means to convey the back story - an external narrative to unlock the meaning and to relate the concept - if someone needs to explain the concept then it doesn't really work as a concept. The Wall is one of the few concept albums that does not need CliffNotes to aid the listener in understanding the message or the idea being expressed - it's contained there in full within the lyrics. Of course Floyd were not the first or the only band to do this, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway doesn't need the narrative on the album sleeve, but it has it never-the-less, then that was Gabriel's method, on stage he would use short surreal stories to prelude each song (mainly to fill-in time while Rutherford, Hackett and Banks tuned and re-tuned between each song) so the narrative on the album sleeve is an extension of this. Waters didn't use such contrivances, his stage "presence" could not support that (the whole idea of Floyd was a band that hid behind "spectacle" on stage and that is reflected in the concept of the wall and the surrogate band), apart from a few iconic moments like Waters hitting the flaming gong or Gilmour's back-lit solo during Comfortably Numb, they did not engage in the stage theatrics; that happened around them and in front of them, or perhaps in spite of them - another point emphasised in the production of The Wall as an album; in the construction of the Wall itself on stage; and in Parker's cinematic version where Floyd do not appear at all, each are just another brick in the wall in the same way that Cousin Kevin, Uncle Ernie and the Gypsy are just bricks in the wall for Tommy.

 

Of course the whole of that last paragraph just concerns the story as portrayed by the lyric, so begs the question "can lyric be progressive?" - something that I feel is not exactly overlooked in Prog, but at least sidelined to secondary importance, an idea not helped by some of the more toe-curling lyrics that Prog is destined to throw up from time to time. My answer to this is "yes, of course" - Hammill is the past-master of the Progressive lyric and has few equals, Bowie for all his adoption of trends in music and pseudo-intellectual tangents is Progressive lyricist who can form seemingly simple songs from esoteric and erudite concepts and ideas that could at times leave Sinfield's oh so clever lyrics wallowing in a land of make believe. Anderson (Jon) is oft derided for his incomprehensible and baffling lyrics, but that in essence is what Prog is musically so those same ideas given voice should be accepted as being on par with the music - music and lyric being equal components of the whole, of equal weight and equal relevance. These lyricist show that the gulf between Prog lyric to Pop/Rock lyric is as wide as the gulf between Prog music and Pop/Rock music, something that we recognise in the definitions of Progressive Rock in the http://www.progarchives.com/Progressive-rock.asp" rel="nofollow - PA Guide to Prog Rock  and something to be considered before nay-saying some of the additions to the archive.

 

Dark Side of the Moon was Waters first successful foray into this realm of progressive lyricism, and one of the few Floyd albums where the balance between Progressive Music and Progressive Lyric achieved equilibrium, (I could add that this numbers as one of the few Prog albums ever to achieve this). Wish You Were Here and Animals tips the balance back towards the music and the lyric, while important to Waters maybe, is less important to the listener. However, on The Wall and The Final Cut we see the emphasis shift away from the music, so the lyric (and Waters' influence) is more important than the music that carries it. Here the music is composed to fit within the time constrains imposed by the lyrics, without that restraint and the withholding of musical excess and extended soloing, the album's length would increase with furthering the concept one iota - and to that end a double album is long enough, a triple or quadruple album would become an endurance. That is not to say that the music is unimportant, or not progressive in itself - instrumental versions of those albums, should such a thing exist, would still be progressive - musically both albums are not a million miles away from Atom Heart Mother in the way themes and motifs replicate and repeat through each track and in the overall tone and feel of the music - the fact that we can recognise the similarities between these albums is more than just the observation that they were composed by the same person or played by the same musicians (substituting Kamen & Ezrin for Geesin & Smith where appropriate).

 

As Bob said early on in this thread, we need to regard The Wall as a whole and not as a compendium of individual songs, and with that we need to take into account the lyric content as vital component of the whole when assessing it as a work of Progressive Rock; that the elevation to the "high art"  that some appear to hold Prog Rock requires that acceptance of lyric as narrative prose taken as something "higher" than melodic rhyming couplets to sing along to in the shower or woo a prospective mate on dancefloor.

 I would suggest perhaps that your tastes lie within a subset of progressive rock

 

boo boo wrote: The Wall may not be the first concept album to feature the kind of themes it did (alienation, bitterness, fascism) but it was the first to execute them as well as it did.

Flash news, all your favourite albums and bands are not and cannot be progressive just because they are YOUR favourites. Prog is not about good or bad. 

\Thread. With prog it is very easy to over-analyse when how you feel as you listen is the most important thing, the genre of prog is about emotions in the music and not solely about complexity. Floyd were never a band that played in 9/8 and showed off a great deal of virtuosity but were always a prog band.

The more I think about this, the more I prefer to not think that this is progressive ... but it does not take away from it, anything ... it's still excellent music and work all around.

 

I still think that this will become one of the best known "operas" of the 20th century ... and I just can't wait for someone else to try and do this and see their interpretation ... and clean up the staging so the fluency and themes of the work are more integrated and displayed better ... it might be better if we either concentrate on the kid that is all alone, or concentrate on the effects of war on the folks involved, and I am not sure that the whole thing is clear enough to join both themes and in the early version a lot of "The Final Cut" was a part of it, and in the final version it is not ... and I think that it confuses things ... I think that a kid growing up in an oppressive place, might feel that way, but I am not sure that he/she would be so vehemently opposed to everything and consider their ex-instructors a vicious military ... somehow it's a bit of an extreme here for me ... I can see the anger and the isolation, but hardly see the rest of the political situation, even though it could happen.

 

As to "progressive"? ... I have never felt that Pink Floyd was all about "progressive" anything ... just inventive and excellent work all around ... the kind of work that defies description and designation, and in the end, that is the best art there is.

 

I agree with this.

 

I do like the term "prog rock" just because it sounds cool. It never annoys me when people say "this isn't prog", but when people say "this isn't progressive" even when it's something that CLEARLY is...............................

Pink Floyd don't consider themselves Prog Rock..never have. Anyhow prowess over instruments has nothing to do with Prog anyway.

Animals is not progressive! Dogs and Pigs are both long tracks but not progreesive, and they are preety groovy. Sheep is kind of progressive, I guess...

+1

 

+2

 

+3

 

+4

 

Echoes my sentiments exactly.

 

It's great music, and I couldn't give a damn if it is progressive or not ... that band's music and work will survive hundreds of years and no one will remember ProgArchives! ... even our comments would be even less important in either direction!

 

But if "progressive", or "prog" means "innovative", "creative", "original" ... then the discussion is over. But the band, themselves, never used the term, and Roger laughs about it all day long! And Jim Ladd will say something witty about people that think they know music and then call it radio-active waste!

Not disagreeing with this at all.

 

But the issue, in my understanding of it, is that we confuse someone playing this and that with what it is ... or might not be.

 

In the end, it doesn't matter if you play whatever you play ... if they are 4/4 or the same 4 or 5 chords, if your emphasys is on a different accent and on a different "non-format", away from the ones that most rock music tends to follow.

 

My contention is, that the description, is trying to do something that music has done for hundreds of years ... and that is to "simplify" what is done, or heard, and see if you can copy it or play it ... or at least write it down ... which is one of the things in some of the definitions that state that improvisation can not be done and there are not to many solos that were not originally improvised anyway!

 

But let's not state that all fusion is progressive or prog, because it can be ... but it might also not be!

 

In the end, we fail to see the most obvious things, that you can see in the early albums and bootlegs ... the massive amount of improvisation and experimentation and playing around with sound effects, that became a massive part of their work ... think about that ... you are talking about the "musicality" of it all, and they were thinking how to add music to this sound, or effect or type of moment ... it's a bit different, and in that sense, yes, very progressive!