Genre Obsession!
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Progressive Music Lounges
Forum Name: Prog Music Lounge
Forum Description: General progressive music discussions
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=83967
Printed Date: April 26 2024 at 12:17
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Topic: Genre Obsession!
Posted By: progprogprog
Subject: Genre Obsession!
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 11:16
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I don't know if the subject had been created before, excuse me if so. Generally this post is more of a confession to be honest.
Since I joined this forum I found myself very concerned about prog varieties.old prog , new prog, classic prog, new wave, 70s, ... and you know what?, I'm really sick of it.If I was a musician or producer, then this obsession was a little bit reasonable, but for someone like me who is just an audience, this kinda approach just cause confusion. Paying attention to genres will help having better choices when you wanna buy an album, but with this whole internet stuff and sites like PA and Youtube, you can hear bands sample songs and decide whether you like it or not. Progressive rock music(specially old ones) are very uncommon in my area, and I think thats made me such a fanatic person about prog.  ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Replies:
Posted By: CCVP
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 11:40
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I`m obsessed in progressive rock, specially in progressive metal and symphonic space.
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Posted By: lazland
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 11:41
The Archives is meant to be, amongst other things, an encyclopedia of prog, and, as such, it is understandable that classifications are required. For example, in Encyclopedia Britannia you wouldn't put a whale in with a fish, would you? However, having said that, we are far too obsessed with the right sub genre, whether prog is prog, and etc. ------------- Enhance your life. Get down to www.lazland.org |
Posted By: Cimnele
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 11:49
| For the life of me I still can't understand why bands are forced into one genre here... a per-release or even per-song tagging system would be far smarter. I can only assume that the amount of work already sunk into this place outweighs the need to improve. :\ |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 11:53
Could you explain more?
------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Cimnele wrote:Posted By: rushfan4
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:02
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Posted By: Cimnele
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:03
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Well, if everyone could tag the individual releases of a group such as Soft Machine, who transformed from Psyche to whatever Canterbury is, to Jazz Fusion over the years, it'd be less misleading. As it is now, a band is added with one genre and entrusted to a team, even though their might be exceptions in their discography. Opeth would be a more recent band that suffers from its single genre rating - lodged in metal, they have albums which would be more satisfying listed as prog-folk, or crossover, or what have you. I suppose this does sound like Genre Obsession!... but if you're going to mention the genre at all, I say do it right. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:08
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EDIT: Was multi-tasking so I didn't see the two last posts before posting the following. ^ Tagging the categories (subgenres) of albums and individual tracks. For instance, tagging an album Symph, Folk, and Jazz. See http://progfreak.com" rel="nofollow - http://progfreak.com There have been lots of calls for multi-tagging. I really wish we had album and song-tagging here as well. I haven't been tagging albums and songs there cause I'm lazy, but I find the system we have at PA very lacking. There have been lots of calls to change it over the years, but it's been considered too much work. I wish that we had a srobust search engine feature where I could search by multi-category for albums by filling in fields in order of pereference. For instance, if I'm looking for an album that crosses Krautrock, Zeuhl, Folk, and Symph... I'm fine with keeping the subcategories for bands and artists although it is common for bands/artists to cross different styles,and think we could leave those categorisations to the teams at PA (to avoid much abuse there), but open up album and song tagging to anyone who wants to do it. ------------- Just a fanboy passin' through. |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:09
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Like rushfan4 said, it'd be almost impossible for PA, the archive is pretty huge. ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: Padraic
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:10
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Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:13
34,644 albums ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:13
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It doesn't have to be complete, or anywhere near complete, and if everyone can do it, then there would be significant progress (as people rate/review albums they would add tags). We keep the band/artist genre system we have in place and that is an added feature. People have been saying it was too much work since before I joined when there was not nearly so much in the database.
------------- Just a fanboy passin' through. |
Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:17
Genres and sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres (ad infinitum) are a by-product of our highly specialized society and the result of increasingly detailed attempts at identification and understanding. They serve a purpose. This is not limited to Prog or the Archives, nor are the administrators and fans on this site the worst offenders. Not even close. A neighbor of mine likes Industrial (NIN) but hates Metal (Metallica). It all sounds like Metal to me, but fine distinctions bring out the differences rather than the similarities. That said, it often drives me up the freakin' wall.  Basic distinctions are about all I can handle. The fact that a lot of the music I listen to is cross-over in orientation. (Is Fairport Convention Folk or Rock? Is The Ian Gillan Band Rock or Jazz?) So much music is eclectic by definition, and that is part of what makes me appreciate my favorite bands and artists. To me, the finer distinctions are a necessary evil - useful for identification purposes, or we might simply call it filing, but often confusing. Once again, it all comes down to what I (or anybody) likes and dislikes despite the categories. As I have said before, good music is good music no matter what genre it is put in. I used to organize my music collection by genre (Blues, Jazz, Rock, Classical, Metal, etc.), but should I put Ravi Shankar under Indian Classical, Indian, or World?  So now I just organize everything alphabetical by artist/band. So much easier. ------------- The world of sound is certainly capable of infinite variety and, were our sense developed, of infinite extensions. -- George Santayana, "The Sense of Beauty" |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:18
I wonder how many ratings are made every day at PA. What does it matter if they're not all tagged? ------------- Just a fanboy passin' through. |
Posted By: rushfan4
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:25
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I've not paid to close attention to the multitagging on the other sites, but I believe each band is given the default tag of whatever genre they are placed in. I am pretty sure that only some of the most familiar bands have actually had multiple tags added to their albums. For example, I know Rush have some that were changed to non-metal and I think maybe proto-metal. (Not entirely sure why they are even on MMA, but now that there is a hard rock category it makes a little more sense). -------------
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Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:26
Absolutely right, basic distinctions are quite enough for those who are just fans. ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:27
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The thing with categorisation is that it is extremely helpful to find music that will appeal to ones preferences at an archive, and it can help to expand ones tastes. I know that I'm much more likely to find music that will appeal to me in various categories at PA than in others, and there's so much in PA that trawling through all the music samples and reviews would be very tedious. For instance, Neo-Prog does not appeal to me, whereas RIO and similar "avant" oriented bands do appeal to me. I like music from most of the categories at PA, but I don't want to see them all lumped together alphabetically. I don't tag my album collection, and I have a ton of albums, but I don't need to as I know all of the albums in my collection and can quickly find whatever I feel like at any given time. If I go to a museum, I like to have different sections. ------------- Just a fanboy passin' through. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:31
At ProgFreak users can tag albums using various descriptors (same system I'd like to see here for album tagging) -- I used to wish that Mike and M@X would join forces to combine both sites, but it won't happen.. Rateyourmusic, which is a very big site, has different descriptors for different albums in a discography. ------------- Just a fanboy passin' through. |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:42
When I first found PA, It was weird for me to see bands in metal family on the archive, but now I think it's a good idea actually.It will let many youngsters to have a chance to be familiar with the prog masterpieces and also attract them to the genre.
------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: Bonnek
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 12:42
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I hope album tagging will happen some day. I think it's quite feasible, artists and their current genre could stay as they are, but the teams could gradually add tags per albums, starting from the most popular artists for instance. After all, there are maybe 36.000 albums in the database, half of them has barely one or two ratings and those would not be priority. Also, I guess half of the artists only have one album so those wouldn't be much work either. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 13:06
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I would rather see everybody given the chance to tag albums than leaving it up to teams -- teams would still decide on category for the band/artist. It may not be that reliable, and there may be abuse, and we'd have to have a warning and disclaimer, but I think it would be a bonus feature for users. As more people tagged an album the tagging would become more reliable (perhaps collab taggings could be given greater weight, and we'd have more collabs who would be enlisted for the it tagging work, if we only allow a few tags per album, which would push the bad ones off the tag list for each album over time -- maybe weighted taggings that uses an algorithm that takes into account the number of times a tag has been given to an album for greater reliability). I would hope that people would take the time to multi-tag when reviewing/ rating an album. We'd have to decide which tags to use. I wouldn't stick with just the names of our categories for tags -- pop, disco, funk, classical, folk (using the term loosely) would be some obvious tags to have. I would so love to be able to easily search this site for albums that cross particular styles. I haven't used this site for research for years. If I want, say, a psych jazz funk rock album from 1970, I google. I don't find PA as a good a research tool as I would hope for an an archive which has has had so very much work put into it by so many volunteers. ------------- Just a fanboy passin' through. |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 15:30
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There's only obsession if you want it to be.
To me, genre tags are just a helpful but never definitive indication.
Certainly it would be nice to have per-album tags (I myself proposed for it in my first months of PA membership) but so far I have had no serious problem with PA not having them. Band tag + some looking at the album reviews gives you a fair enough image of what you can expect from each album.
Certainly for seach purposes this is far from ideal and I would still support additional per-album tags (no need to change anything of the current tags, just additional tags to be gradually added) but the current situation is not that bad either.
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Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 16:21
Good idea , gradually adding tags to albums.But who does that?I mean how do sub-genre teams going to agree upon the tags for a single album?.Some albums are a little obscure. ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: Hercules
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 17:23
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OK, lets look in "prog folk".
We have Jethro Tull, who produced 3 blues rock albums, then four largely symphonic ones, then three folk ones with a bonkers one in the middle and then finally moved into heavy metal (they won a metal grammy for Crest of a Knave, though God knows how such a crock of s**t won anything).
Truthfully, out of 21 studio albums, I could just accept four as prog folk, yet there they are in that genre.
And Strawbs also are thus classed, despite only their first 5 studio albums (I class Antiques and Curios as a studio album as, though it's recorded live, the tracks are unique to that album) being prog folk. After that, they moved into glam rock, symphonic prog and ultimately "totally s**t rock" (new genre for you) from Nomadness onwards.
And as for "neo prog" - well just don't go there or I will really blow up and upset lots of people. Martin Orford never spoke so true as when he disparaged this label.
In short, genres are just silly names someone made up. It's just prog when it comes down to it. ------------- A TVR is not a car. It's a way of life. |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 18:11
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Categorizing bands is way easier than classifying a band's works.In this situation it's even harder to have a same opinion on an album. Lately I started Categorizing my albums in my player, which I label them into: "masterpieces  ""Worth listening" "No Idea Yet" "Weirds" "Ready To Delete"(This one is for times with low space cases) Any idea?
------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 19:49
Good points. Categorization has its uses and become more necessary the larger the listings get. Can you imagine a museum like the Louvre with only one section: Art? ------------- The world of sound is certainly capable of infinite variety and, were our sense developed, of infinite extensions. -- George Santayana, "The Sense of Beauty" |
Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 19:52
Good categories!  What constitutes Weirds? Sometimes I like weird music, like the Residents, but I would not put them in a category below No Idea Yet.------------- The world of sound is certainly capable of infinite variety and, were our sense developed, of infinite extensions. -- George Santayana, "The Sense of Beauty" |
Posted By: prog4evr
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 22:13
Agreed. For me (to quote Gabriel-era Genesis [a sub-genre]): "I know what I like, and I like what I know...."
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Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 22:35
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Right, genres are there because 'you' - as in a figurative you - wanted them. All fine and dandy to say they shouldn't exist, but they do. What I do have some reservations about is evaluating first whether a band fits into a certain prog sub genre...viz crossover or neo prog, etc. What then happens is if it doesn't fit squarely in that sub genre, it gets tossed around teams. The first question ought to be whether it is prog, because we have seen that that itself is a question mark often times and not so easy to get a fix on. If the collabs agree it is prog, then the question of where it best fits should be taken up. But just because a band that is prog for all practical purposes doesn't fit squarely into one or two suggested sub-gs doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't belong on PA. |
Posted By: irrelevant
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 23:57
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I like the idea of all users being able to tag. Remember, all it takes then is one person to know an album, and if that's all it takes then "too much work" doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. ------------- https://gabebuller.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow - New album! http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=7385" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=7385 |
Posted By: irrelevant
Date Posted: January 05 2012 at 23:59
Yeah, I've seen a couple of suggestions be rejected unfortunately because of that. ------------- https://gabebuller.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow - New album! http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=7385" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=7385 |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 04:21
Some RIO and Zeuhl albums are in that list.
 ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 04:24
Sometimes I think they(PA guys) force an album to be prog
 .And also have seen albums that really is a Progressive Music, but is not in PA.how can we suggest bands to them? ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: frippism
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 04:50
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^ Well you know, personal preference probably has a lot to do with it. But whatevs. Ever since I've started getting into the more experimental stuff I just sort of gave up the tags. Usually when I talk with someone about a band it goes: "Oh yeah this band's cool you should check them out!" "What are they?" "Um experimental-avant-metal-polka-jazz-blues-prog-pop-classical-oriental-electronica-idm-f**k it just listen to them, I have their stuff on my bloody Ipod". ------------- There be dragons |
Posted By: thehallway
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 09:57
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- Somebody to comes to the forum to complain about the focus and increasing fanaticism over genres, subgenres, and subsubgenres on Prog Archives. - Somebody suggests tagging albums, or even individual songs with their own subsubsubgenres, to reflect the eclectic nature of some artists and be more accurate. This makes the genre obsession even bigger, and ridiculously more complicated. - Everybody on the forum agrees.
------------- http://www.thefreshfilmblog.com/" rel="nofollow">  |
Posted By: Snow Dog
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 09:58
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^I don't ------------- http://www.last.fm/user/Snow_Dog" rel="nofollow"> 
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Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 10:05
I noticed it, but didn't want to avoid them, instead I decided to join them
 ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 10:05
I didn't either.  What's going on?
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Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 10:09
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maybe because it's hard not to complicate things
------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: octopus-4
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 12:02
I think a lot of people here shares this feeling. I'm one of those nerds . ------------- Curiosity killed a cat, Schroedinger only half. My poor home recorded stuff at https://yellingxoanon.bandcamp.com |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 12:43
Your location is the origin of a great part of prog, RPI, what's goin' on over there nowadays?
------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: octopus-4
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 12:51
There's a lot of new bands struggling to survive, then PFM and Banco are still around. Last year we had a two days progfest in Rome and Opeth with Pain of Salvation will play in Milan....unfortunately that's all. Compared to the mainstream we are still a bunch of nerds. Banco and PFM are more famous outside than here and if you switch on any radio here you can have an overdose of mainstream crap. Search for "Sanremo" on youtube and you'll have an idea ------------- Curiosity killed a cat, Schroedinger only half. My poor home recorded stuff at https://yellingxoanon.bandcamp.com |
Posted By: Ytse_Jam
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 13:07
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I think classification is useful in sites like PA where you can route your views among bands that you (are supposed to) like by simply sorting them by subgenre. If I like Genesis a lot, I would search for other symphonic prog instead of some krautrock.. Beyond this, I usually dont care too much about subgenres. |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 13:10
media and commercial craps
------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 13:13
Generally, classification's good as long as it's not turned into an obsession, IMO. ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: Icarium
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 13:23
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I have an obsession with Elton John now, as you can see in my avatar/sig -------------  
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Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 13:30
Though, I don't see it far from "love".Those two is proven to be abnormal  I believe fanaticism makes life more alive. ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: Icarium
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 13:57
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Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: January 06 2012 at 16:27
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I would love to see multi genre album/artist tagging on PA (it would help prevent most of the tiresome squabbles that the Admins have to wade into over classification etc) I'm not a techie person but I would imagine converting our huge database to be compatible with such a system would be a hugely complex job?
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Posted By: Turillazzo
Date Posted: January 09 2012 at 08:37
I absolutely agree with what you're saying...but there are many bands coming back (RRR, Maxophone) and also a lot of new ones (like Tempio delle Clessidre). The bands are not the problems, it's just that the fanbase is mainly composed of middle-aged men and in 40 years they'll be all dead. |
Posted By: octopus-4
Date Posted: January 09 2012 at 09:04
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I would sign-off 40 years...I'm expecting to be around for less time, honestly. ------------- Curiosity killed a cat, Schroedinger only half. My poor home recorded stuff at https://yellingxoanon.bandcamp.com |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 09 2012 at 09:46
Don't smoke, and You'll be fine. ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: CloseToTheMoon
Date Posted: January 09 2012 at 18:38
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I'm guilty of genre obsession. I can say I love Prog all day long, but really it's more complicated than that. I can listen to some fusion if the guitars are up front, but I can't do jazz for more than an hour or so. I go on band-to-band basis. That will usually pull me into a sub-genre. ------------- It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen. |
Posted By: progprogprog
Date Posted: January 09 2012 at 19:22
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No one can avoid it, actually I believe you need it in order to compare your sentimental responses in different angles of music.But as you start analyzing it, that's where real obsession triggers. ------------- Always thinking in extremes.That's my way to beat boredom. |
Posted By: centum
Date Posted: January 09 2012 at 19:25
oh my god, it's so funny you should mention Sanremo it has a very strong nostalgic popularity in Russia, we have fests like 80's Discotheque all the time |
Posted By: infandous
Date Posted: January 10 2012 at 09:10
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I think the album tagging idea is fantastic, and I have no problems with the current categorizations. Well, some specific bands I take issue with how they were categorized, but as mentioned previously, tagging would help to eliminate some of this. Categorization is impossible to avoid, no matter how much you think you are above it or whatever (heck, "music" is itself a category). As human beings, it's what we do, consciously or unconsciously, every single one of us. I mean, if we didn't, there would be no progarchives at all. Just a giant, all inclusive, music site where you couldn't find anything you wanted to find because none of it would be classified in any way. Except alphabetically, which is of course a classification. So you can't really get around it no matter what you do. Every argument I see against classification is specific to a given band or album. I think tagging would be the best way to resolve a lot of this. The band would get classified a specific way by the admins, then it would be up to the users to tag the individual albums. This might result in a bands albums not matching their classification, but if that happened (which, I think, would be extremely rare) then the admins could take another look at the band and possibly re-classify them. In any case, I don't mind things the way they are but do agree with Logan that it would be nice to find cross genre acts easier on the site. As it is, I don't really do much research here either, unless I hear about a specific band or bands elsewhere and want to find out more about them and their albums here. |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: January 12 2012 at 19:39
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I suppose one possible solution could be to just start allowing readers/members to tag albums via some separate indicator that had no connection to Team-assigned genres, gradually creating a public tagging system. But if you ask me, those things can be a real mess with terms as 'Psychedelic/Jazz-Funk Symphonic ElectroSpace Jam-Oriented Death Math Metal'. If someone actually finds that helpful, assuming they trust that many mishmashed opinions, so be it. |
Posted By: JJLehto
Date Posted: January 12 2012 at 20:01
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Yeah I used to be quite a genre stickler myself and obsessed with labeling, maybe because of that is how I ended up like this...I hate genres frankly With metal, I now have like 6 or 7 I use for my personal collection and prog rock is pretty much prog rock. I just drove myself insane with genres and found it easier and more logical just to consolidate. Started more than a few arguments about how can I think "x" is that? or how "y" isn't even really a genre? Besides the band themselves don't care a lick, even if they do! It seems every artist regardless of genre say "nah we're just (x) and whatever label you wanna put on us doesn't matter". A little lame to here from a band that is blatantly playing a style but valid point anyway! |
Posted By: Tormato
Date Posted: January 16 2012 at 18:27
Same here, exactly. I've never had a problem with finding the exact info that I need about any prog artist/band, album or song right here, and only here. PA is the only prog web page I visit and I need. If it's not in PA, probably not worthy. ------------- I like Tormato, so shoot me! Every person in the world can't think the same. |
Posted By: RH
Date Posted: January 29 2012 at 08:48
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Prog. Rock naturally !
In a human being life our minds passing many stages, like evolutions, since early times until a mature point of views, example: My obsession in my early times was hard rock but after with a mature stage of think, I knew Prog. Rock infinity ocean and find my place ,with my boat fishing and knowing different fishes styles!
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Posted By: FunkyM
Date Posted: February 03 2012 at 16:32
Gotta catch 'em all? |
Posted By: Chozal
Date Posted: February 03 2012 at 18:45
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I'm quite obsessed with the metal subgenres, and my friends often poke fun at me for that matter, but I do find in the contrary that there are a little too much of the subgenres in prog :3 But as said above, this site is meant to classify prog rock, and it does a fine job at that. All I'd say is don't bother with the subgenres if you don't like 'em but don't remove them from other users as they are quite useful to explore new directions. ------------- https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Infinite-Progability-Drive/141225469388975" rel="nofollow - The Infinite Progability Drive , feeding you daily progressive/weird music for just a like <3 |