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Jake Kobrin View Drop Down

Prog Reviewer

Joined: September 20 2008
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Points: 1303

Posted: May 15 2010 at 15:17

People who actually enjoy James LaBrie and/or Geddy Lee's vocals.

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KingCrimson250 View Drop Down

Forum Senior Member

Joined: October 29 2008
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Points: 573

Posted: May 15 2010 at 15:29

Logan wrote:

Prog was pretty mainstream in the 70s, and of course there's a lot of music in prog categories that has had much mainstream success. Some Prog is a lot more mainstream than others.

What has somewhat irritated me is when people have equated album sales (commercial success) with how 'good" an album is. Commercial success does not equal artistic success in my book.

I commonly prefer lesser known progressive rock acts to the big Prog names. I won't say that the more obscure is better, but it is often better for me.

Haha well that's just the thing, proggers sometimes seem to have a tendency of seeing album sales as inversely proportionate to artistic success LOL

InClouds

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Posted: May 15 2010 at 16:26

Jake Kobrin wrote:

People who actually enjoy James LaBrie and/or Geddy Lee's vocals.

I enjoy both of them, but I can definitely see why some people might not like them. They're kind of......an acquired taste, I guess. Still, there are moments when LaBrie's vocals can make me absolutely cringe. Mostly on live stuff and anytime he tries to do something from When Dream and Day Unite.......

Anyway, I get annoyed when people give an album a bad review simply because it's not "proggy" enough. It's not like music has to be prog to be enjoyable. I understand that there are people that simply don't like most music that isn't prog, but if you're going to review an album then I think you should review it based on the actual quality of the music, not on how progressive it actually is.

boo boo

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Joined: June 28 2005
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Points: 905

Posted: May 15 2010 at 17:31

Jake Kobrin wrote:

People who actually enjoy James LaBrie and/or Geddy Lee's vocals.

Well I enjoy Geddy's vocals, combined with Peart's corny lyrics it's a guilty pleasure... actually I don't feel guilty at all.

who-knows-it's-prog View Drop Down

Forum Newbie

Joined: August 13 2009
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Points: 23

Posted: May 15 2010 at 19:29

People who defend Triumvirat as not pinching ELP music....go listen and cringe (ps i do likeTriumvirat) .

Can....a noise for all.

Music that people call prog but is so far left field it doesn't even touch pop.

Prog music that is only heavy metal with keyboards.

this is non-musical.......England being referred to as the UK.

People who find DSOTM boring........destroy them.

Dream Theater....why?

The Canterbury scene described as prog...............spew (i like some stuff...but prog?).

Vocalists...just because they can sing a wee bit different they get crucified......

American prog which (on here) seems to be the be all and end all of prog music........no it isn't nor ever will be.

American music that is a bit different described as prog because no one knows how to spell sh*t.

ProgressiveAttic View Drop Down

Collaborator

Honorary Collaborator

Joined: April 05 2008
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Points: 1243

Posted: May 15 2010 at 20:12

FusionKing wrote:

Those who say Yes and ELP got too self indulgent with the music.

[

Specially when they criticize Tales From Topographic Oceans and Tarkus (two of the greatest masterpieces ever produced IMNSHO!!!)

UndercoverBoy wrote:

-People who think that A Trick of the Tail is the best Genesis album.

Then you'll have a big argument with Jordan Rudess....

kingfriso wrote:

Falx wrote:

People who love "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway". I swear, the more I listen to it the worse it sounds. I love Nursery Cryme, though.=F=

So true!

I do like some parts of it... but I don't see what's all the fuzz about... (I am a huge Genesis fan by the way....and Selling England is the best Genesis album ever!)

Michael's Sonic Kaleidoscope Mondays 5:00pm EST(re-runs Thursdays 3:00pm) @ Delicious Agony Progressive Rock Radio(http://www.deliciousagony.com)

Falx

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Joined: May 05 2010
Location: New Zealand
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Points: 859

Posted: May 15 2010 at 20:34

Bits of The Lamb are ok, it's like pieces of meat floating in a very bland curry sauce though.

=F=

"You must go beyond the limit of the limit of your limits!" - Mr. Doctor
"It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

ProgressiveAttic View Drop Down

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Posted: May 15 2010 at 20:38

Falx wrote:

Bits of The Lamb are ok, it's like pieces of meat floating in a very bland curry sauce though.=F=

Exactly!

Michael's Sonic Kaleidoscope Mondays 5:00pm EST(re-runs Thursdays 3:00pm) @ Delicious Agony Progressive Rock Radio(http://www.deliciousagony.com)

presdoug

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Joined: January 24 2010
Location: Canada
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Points: 8920

Posted: May 15 2010 at 20:49

Originally posted by who-knows-it's-prog

who-knows-it's-prog wrote:

People who defend Triumvirat as not pinching ELP music....go listen and cringe (ps i do likeTriumvirat) .

Can....a noise for all.

Music that people call prog but is so far left field it doesn't even touch pop.

Prog music that is only heavy metal with keyboards.

this is non-musical.......England being referred to as the UK.

People who find DSOTM boring........destroy them.

Dream Theater....why?

The Canterbury scene described as prog...............spew (i like some stuff...but prog?).

Vocalists...just because they can sing a wee bit different they get crucified......

American prog which (on here) seems to be the be all and end all of prog music........no it isn't nor ever will be.

American music that is a bit different described as prog because no one knows how to spell sh*t.

i have never cringed, and never will cringe when hearing early Triumvirat, most of the time i am moved, and greatfull that i have really found where i want to be in music (i am referring to their first three lps)

i definitely find DSOTM boring as hell

TheLastBaron View Drop Down

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Joined: April 07 2009
Location: CA
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Points: 206

Posted: May 15 2010 at 22:23

I get a little tired of the whole And Justice for All was Metallica's best album ever and was more progressive and complex than Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets.

Irriatated by the assumption that muse and coheed and cambria aren't even prog enough to be considered prog related.

Tired of people defending the blaze bailey era Iron Maiden, sorry but IMO that era of maiden was pure garbage.

" Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds." - FDR

rod65

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Joined: January 28 2010
Status: Offline
Points: 248

Posted: May 15 2010 at 23:47

moshkito wrote:

rod65 wrote:

1. People who dismiss commercially successful bands or albums as definitively inferior

2. People who present their opinions on the quality of music as if they were objective facts with verifiable and unassailable criteria

There are good things in the commercial area ... however, the assumption that you are making is that something "commercial" is going to be around for 100 years, and everyone will be heard, loved , appreciated and talked about at progarchives and NME. ... And you damn well know that 95% of the music that is commercially succeeful is not going to be remembered a whole lot or discussed very much. And I can give you an example. Jefferson Airplane had a lot of nice things a lot of progressive stuff and at least one member was very experimental. Do they get any serious discussion? Nahhh ... there are more fun threads trying to trash James Labrie!

The 2nd one ... geeeee, you just did the exact same thing you are not liking. Can I send you a mirror for Christmas?

The hard part, and your comment might or might not suggest that, is when we're talking about KC, ELP, PF, Soft Machine and London, and then someone like me mentions The Beat Poets and mixes Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers and Mr. Naked Lunch, or Gurdgieff ... it throws you for a loop. All of a sudden you can not relate the music to the art scene, and you might not have heard enough to have any idea what the context, inspiration and work was used and turned into music! And then, all you can state is that I (or any one else) have no idea what we're talking about, and you can easily open up the internet and go check out the Brittanica for the year 1969 (they do issues for every year!!!) and see a lot of things listed ... ohh my gawd ... and Pink Floyd was playing next door the same night? And Soft Machine opened the set? And a pair of folkies called Incredible String Band were outside and they stole some of the audience and they were doing some farout stuff with some women and actors dancing around ... and some poets were a couple of blocks away in the middle of an anti-war demonstration against VietNam ... and one group had this really far out song ... something about tomorrow I'll be crying ...

Or I like this one better ... The Beatles White Album ... Revolution #9 ... when you break it down and hear Marat/Sade let me know ... and then go check out that play, where it came from, the folks that started it, and the musicians that were around those folks, the school ... oh sheep dip ... there is this far out art gallery across the street and this one lady has this white wall with a dot in the middle and John is hanging around all over it! And Pink Floyd is to play tonite after a whole bunch of poets and people are gonna stream through ...

Does any of it mean anything to you? That's the real issue, isn't it? I sincerely hope that your children don't find themselves in the same place as this generation did ... with parents that were not willing to listen and teach their children well ... except send them to fight for something that almost no one believed and that you and I certainly don't and didn't ... and France had given up on it 10 years earlier!

So, I guess music has nothing different than a feeling/fantasy for you than what Playboy, or some other magazine might offer you? It's all about your satisfaction?

Hi, Moshkito.

Where to begin? Probably, I should thank you for your response as you definitely gave me something to think about--one of the things I like about this site. As for the Marat/Sade, I've been familiar with it for about 25 years, and its relationship with Revolution 9 is not that hard to spot. Regarding Jefferson Airplane, I agree that they are under-appreciated. As for the mirror you offer, I do not think I am making the logical contradiction of which I am accused: in my first point, I was simply drawing attention--perhaps with insufficient clarity, and there I was as fault--to the fact that there is no necessary correlation between commercial success and artistic merit or the lack thereof; I was certainly not suggesting that selling a lot of records necessarily suggested musical brilliance. As the first point did not actually assert a set of absolute values, the second point cannot possibly contradict it. Again, sorry if I was less than clear.

As for the line with which you finish, honestly, I'm at a bit of a loss. If I told you I teach ancient and medieval literature for a living, and spend much of my time arguing against exactly the kind of feel-good subjectivity of which I seem to be accused, would you believe that we probably agree with each other on most of the major points? As for Playboy, I don't read it or any other pictorial magazine (that was unnecessarily insulting): I was not suggesting that there was no intellectual content to music, nothing that transcends my own subjectivity. And I agree with you that the context of any given piece provides much of its meaning. "Context is everything" is in fact one of my pedagogical mantras--precisely in maintaining my position against absolute subjectivity. Nonetheless, in music as in any art form, there is a large element of subjectivity--of perception and experience--that cannot be excluded. And insofar as that element is present, one cannot appeal solely to such things as context or any other single principle in evaluating any artistic production. It's messy. Just bloody messy.

I hope to hear from you again.

Best wishes,

Rod

boo boo

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Points: 905

Posted: May 16 2010 at 00:14

who-knows-it's-prog wrote:

The Canterbury scene described as prog...............spew (i like some stuff...but prog?).t.

???

Unless you think symphonic rock is the only kind of prog I don't see how you could think of canterbury as anything but prog.

boo boo

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Points: 905

Posted: May 16 2010 at 00:24

ProgressiveAttic wrote:

Falx wrote:

Bits of The Lamb are ok, it's like pieces of meat floating in a very bland curry sauce though.=F=

Exactly!

That's kinda my feeling of Tarkus with the title track being the piece of meat and side 2 being the curry sauce.

I don't think The Lamb touches England or Foxtrot but it's still a great swan song for the Gabriel era Genesis. Not without some filler but nothing bad really. It's true that they could have just made an LP out of the strongest tracks, but then the story would have been even more confusing, and I won't lie, I actually like the story and even the lesser tracks add on to the narrative and atomosphere. It's a brilliant album that dared to take more risks than any Genesis album before or since.

PS to Moshkito, I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. Nothing you said really gives me any idea of what you're trying to say, I assume it has something to do with how music can be objectified and you already know what I think about that.

Edited by boo boo - May 16 2010 at 00:36

InClouds

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Joined: March 30 2010
Location: MInnesota, USA
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Points: 109

Posted: May 16 2010 at 00:28

TheLastBaron wrote:

I get a little tired of the whole And Justice for All was Metallica's best album ever and was more progressive and complex than Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets.

Irriatated by the assumption that muse and coheed and cambria aren't even prog enough to be considered prog related.

Tired of people defending the blaze bailey era Iron Maiden, sorry but IMO that era of maiden was pure garbage.

I agree with everything you said, especially about Blaze Bailey era Maiden. I can't even listen to those albums they're so terrible.......Thank god Bruce came back!

TheClosing View Drop Down

Forum Senior Member

Joined: May 11 2010
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Points: 527

Posted: May 16 2010 at 00:38

WalterDigsTunes wrote:

- People who love all those newfangled "prog" bands that don't do anything other than run thing their derivative music through a distortion box.

People like this guy. I've been here less than a week, and he's already gotten on my nerves with his redundancy.

Fact is there will always be quality if you know where to look. Just because you've become a crotchety old geezer in your age doesn't mean it's not there waiting to be found. I suppose people just can't wait to become their parents. "Turn off that darn racket you hooligan!" LOL

Synchestra View Drop Down

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Points: 734

Posted: May 16 2010 at 00:41

InClouds wrote:

I agree with everything you said, especially about Blaze Bailey era Maiden. I can't even listen to those albums they're so terrible.......Thank god Bruce came back!

I'm so glad I couldn't go to concerts during that era, Bruce is a helluva front man

'Yeah, thats.. Whatever you're talking about for ya' - Zapp brannigan

boo boo

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Points: 905

Posted: May 16 2010 at 00:49

I did bring up people who think "prog" and "pop" are mutually exclusive right? I don't think genres are mutually exclusive from another, they are all colors on a big palette that can be mixed to create all kinds of combinations. Well ok, you shouldn't mix crunk with screamo, as Brokencyde have proved.

I do think that PA could use some new subgenre sections. I especially think there should be a section for "prog pop", for which groups like Muse, Queen, Super Furry Animals, Kate Bush, Stereolab, Flaming Lips, Roxy Music and others could qualify. Should put an end to all that controversy.

Edited by boo boo - May 16 2010 at 00:57

TheClosing View Drop Down

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Points: 527

Posted: May 16 2010 at 01:10

InClouds wrote:

[QUOTE=Jake Kobrin]Anyway, I get annoyed when people give an album a bad review simply because it's not "proggy" enough. It's not like music has to be prog to be enjoyable. I understand that there are people that simply don't like most music that isn't prog, but if you're going to review an album then I think you should review it based on the actual quality of the music, not on how progressive it actually is.

Yep, another annoying thing I've noticed that goes on here far too often. Besides imo practically all the best bands know how to balance a pop sensibility with things of a profound nature. The Beatles are a great example. The band would have never made such a huge impact on music if either Mccartney or Lennon was missing from the equation. Bands that are truly "progressive" don't limit themselves to genres, and a good band never plays beyond what the song calls for.

boo boo

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Posted: May 16 2010 at 01:48

I also hate it when people can't acknowledge that non prog music can still be progressive.

David Bowie isn't prog, but that doesn't mean he's not progressive.

Henry Plainview View Drop Down

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Posted: May 16 2010 at 02:10

boo boo wrote:

Isn't that what Crossover is for? It seems like you're just trying to further dilute what it means to be "prog". I agree that you can do things that are progressive within any genre or style (with a few exceptions), but that doesn't mean the result has a place on PA.

if you own a sodastream i hate you