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SteveG 
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 Posted: February 13 2020 at 07:12 |
 Cristi wrote:
dougmcauliffe wrote:
Say what you want about those basic bands like foreigner and reo, but two albums I’ll always shamelessly love are Boston’s debut, and bat out of hell |
I like both Foreigner and Boston. Foreigner because I enjoy Lou Gramm's vocals a lot.  I even listened some of his work outside Foreigner. |
I've known to blast "Hot Blooded" and "More Than A Feeling" while cruising in my car, back in the day, when no one was looking. 
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dougmcauliffe
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 07:45 |
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Starrider by foreigner is actually a cool song, in fact the debut isn’t bad. They’re just kinda generic after that.
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The sun has left the sky...
...Now you can close your eyes
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progmatic
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 08:03 |
[/QUOTE]I've known to blast "Hot Blooded" and "More Than A Feeling" while cruising in my car, back in the day, when no one was looking. [/QUOTE]
Say it ain't so!!
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PROGMATIC
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AFlowerKingCrimson
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 09:13 |
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I've seen Foreigner twice. Great band. No real prog elements other than starrider imo but that first album is great. Foreigner 4 is very good too but I don't think they had that many really good albums. I'm only really familiar with the first four. I heard AP but it was more in the pop direction and while not awful it was clear they had gone in a different direction by then.
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progmatic
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 09:32 |
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Foreigner was like Asia for me -- a huge disappointment. With Ian McDonald on board, I had high hopes for Foreigner. Instead we got cookie-cutter radio-ready crap like "Juke Box Hero," which sounds like it was performed by robots. Same thing with Asia and GTR -- what letdowns.
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PROGMATIC
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SteveG
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 09:38 |
progmatic wrote:
Say it ain't so!! |
Hey, it was the only rock station I could get. The other station played Abba and the Carpenters.
Edited by SteveG - February 13 2020 at 09:39
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Cristi
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 09:56 |
progmatic wrote:
Foreigner was like Asia for me -- a huge disappointment. With Ian McDonald on board, I had high hopes for Foreigner. Instead we got cookie-cutter radio-ready crap like "Juke Box Hero," which sounds like it was performed by robots. Same thing with Asia and GTR -- what letdowns. |
Except that Juke Box Hero was from 1981 and McDonald had left in 1979. So you can't blame him.
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progmatic
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 10:14 |
[/QUOTE]
Except that Juke Box Hero was from 1981 and McDonald had left in 1979. So you can't blame him.
[/QUOTE]
I did not know that. That makes me feel somewhat better! Thanks! Always have been a fan of Ian.
I will try to return the favor. If you haven't heard Judy Dyble's "Harpsong" you must! (And today is Judy's birthday, BTW, but I digress)
The second half of the song is intrumental, reuniting Robert Fripp and Ian McDonald for an incredible jam that sounds like a missing song from King Crimson's early years.
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dougmcauliffe
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 10:28 |
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Tbh foreigner is marginally better than Asia, atleast I can shamelessly go to a foreigner show and have fun. You’d never in a million years see me at an Asia show.
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CHanse97
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 10:53 |
Enchant X wrote:
CHanse97 wrote:
Fischman wrote:
Kansas is infinitely superior in every way by any possible measure. |
Except in making me care enough to buy a single song.
Personally, I don't give two rips about that knock-off, low budget, pseudo-prog band dubbed "Kansas."
At least Styx is actually enjoyable and has significant replay value. I don't listen to Kansas except when I forget my phone at home and it pops up on the radio. And even then, I usually flick to other stations to see if there is something good playing before I suffer through another replay of sub-par musicianship from Leftoverture. Kansas was where virtuoso music went to cry itself to sleep to the sound of "Carry on Wayward Son" and its IQ diminishing, mind numbing repetitive off-key vocals.
At least when Styx put out trite they had the decency to kill the band (cough Kilroy). Meanwhile, Kansas hasn't had a decent song since their first album. Love em or hate em, Styx's albums were consistent and at least entertaining. Kansas is the musical definition of brain drain.
Plus, Styx's early stuff was legit prog and was actually pretty cool. Their first track, "Movement for the Common Man", actually did Copeland's Fanfare in rock form before any other rock band. And then there is the criminally underrated Crystal Ball which is a full blown prog-pop album with some of their strongest and best material ("Ballerina" is friggin great, "Put me On" is full blown prog, "Crystal Ball" is excellent folk-rock/prog, and the whole album has one amazing and consistent sound and tone which is lacking even on the best produced prog albums all too often).
Not to mention we can talk endlessly about the Hendrix inspired Young's guitar work and the fact that he is basically the reason many awesome guitar sounds and techniques (like the growl) gained popularity in pop music. Or Tommy Shaw (whose singing voice is actually good... unlike Kansas' vocalists who are all boring and uninspired). Or Dennis DeYoung, who has probably one of the most recognized and amazing voices in all of rock, and whose keyboard work is actually quite amazing if you actually sit down and listen to it (not to mention he was an early innovator on the Moog Synth). Or we could go to their more obscure stuff, like Serpent is Rising, where they had some extremely awesome hard stuff. The titular track of that album features hard as rock guitar, is progressive, and also vocals that would make Greg Lake's electronically distorted voice on "21st Century Schizoid Man" look kinda like a joke. Unlike Lake, the rasp and growl was J. C.'s real voice on display for Styx.
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Kansas have slaughtered Styx in this poll ... you are aware of that I trust ?  |
Very well aware of that... also aware that more than half the people voting did so purely based on how "prog" the contestants were, which isn't even what the OP asked for.
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AFlowerKingCrimson
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 10:59 |
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^Nope. But to some on here the more prog something is the better something is(or at least it seems like that's their reasoning whether they are consciously aware of it or not). Plus, based on several comments on here indicating the dislike of anything aor or arena rockish, I'm not really that surprised andneither should anyone else be really. Sure, Kansas had some arena rock moments and often get thrown in that category but obviously anyone who really knows the band or is a big prog fan knows better. For Styx the prog elements never really outshined the over all arena rock feel for the most part but imo that's inconsequential to a band's over all quality. Maybe many on here just don't like anything that is the least bit commercial or aor sounding. Not sure but it sure seems that way at times.
Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - February 13 2020 at 11:00
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verslibre
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 16:32 |
Cristi wrote:
I like both Foreigner and Boston. Foreigner because I enjoy Lou Gramm's vocals a lot. I even listened some of his work outside Foreigner. |
Lou's vocals were exceptional. The one dept. where "AOR" (which is arguably as silly a label as "neo-prog") had the edge over other genres was vocals. Any prog band would have been lucky to have a singer like Lou. In his prime, he was one of the best.
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verslibre
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 16:33 |
progmatic wrote:
Foreigner was like Asia for me -- a huge disappointment. With Ian McDonald on board, I had high hopes for Foreigner. Instead we got cookie-cutter radio-ready crap like "Juke Box Hero," which sounds like it was performed by robots. Same thing with Asia and GTR -- what letdowns. |
That was four albums in. Try the very first Foreigner album. I bet you'll like it.
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AFlowerKingCrimson
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 17:22 |
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Let's keep the conversation on Styx and Kansas ok?
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verslibre
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 18:49 |
Sure.
AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:
I've seen Foreigner twice. Great band. No real prog elements other than starrider imo but that first album is great. Foreigner 4 is very good too but I don't think they had that many really good albums. I'm only really familiar with the first four. I heard AP but it was more in the pop direction and while not awful it was clear they had gone in a different direction by then. |
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AFlowerKingCrimson
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 19:14 |
verslibre wrote:
Sure. |
Thank you. Lol.
Hey, at some point we all(including me)need to steer the ship back.  |
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CHanse97
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 21:31 |
AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:
^Nope. But to some on here the more prog something is the better something is(or at least it seems like that's their reasoning whether they are consciously aware of it or not). Plus, based on several comments on here indicating the dislike of anything aor or arena rockish, I'm not really that surprised andneither should anyone else be really. Sure, Kansas had some arena rock moments and often get thrown in that category but obviously anyone who really knows the band or is a big prog fan knows better. For Styx the prog elements never really outshined the over all arena rock feel for the most part but imo that's inconsequential to a band's over all quality. Maybe many on here just don't like anything that is the least bit commercial or aor sounding. Not sure but it sure seems that way at times.
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I have problems with the entire definition of what "prog" even is. Prog communities are, ironically, often just as uptight about music as the Classical musicians who wrote off their rock counterparts. It is far too often we in rock (even still today) heard that we were not real musicians, didn't write real music, etc. And it seems like the entire definition of prog and the communities that develop around it are often just as bad.
And yet, no one can even provide any concise definition of what progressive rock even is. Almost every definition I have seen, Styx fits.
Use of variant time signatures, experimental soundscapes, artistic edge, verbose musicianship, atypical/not typical of pop or rock, mixed use of various genres of music, complicated vocals, etc... Styx meets all of them on almost every album (save Cornerstone and Kilroy). Sure they have what we commonly define as pop-rock elements... except that Styx is actually one of the bands that basically created those trends to begin with. Styx was regularly berated throughout time and history everywhere for not being within the scope of pop rock or more typical rock music.
Styx was prog and meets virtually every definition I've ever seen for what quantifies "progressive rock." They just had that audacity to be accessible while doing it.
And now they've been reviled by musicians and critics from every single angle for it. Rolling Stones bashed every album they made. Prog critics despised them for daring to be accessible and have defining aspects of pop-rock. Pop musicians consider them too hard or too unorthodox.
You can just look at the Prog Archives article here to show just how insanely biased these critics. It literally has an entire segment about how prog fans are shamed by the mere inclusion of Styx. It is just a bunch of stuck of critics who can't sit down and recognize a virtuosic prog-pop band because they dared be accessible and not put in 4 minutes of nonstop Dream Theater-esc flashy showing off.
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CHanse97
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 21:33 |
Like if people like Kansas, cool. Good for you. Isn't for me, I personally despise them and get virtually no enjoyment out of them.
But stop crapping on Styx as "not prog" or some other nonsense. People will like what they will like, but if you are going to criticize something be at least 2% credible. Because, frankly, if I were to sit and use the same nondescript and undefined metric y'all use to say Styx isn't prog, I could probably make the same case that Kansas, Supertramp, and Pink Floyd past Meddle aren't prog either.
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Enchant X
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Posted: February 13 2020 at 23:51 |
progmatic wrote:
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I've known to blast "Hot Blooded" and "More Than A Feeling" while cruising in my car, back in the day, when no one was looking. [/QUOTE]
Say it ain't so!! [/QUOTE] very cool, so have I ! when no one was looking of course
Edited by Enchant X - February 13 2020 at 23:53
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Enchant X
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Posted: February 14 2020 at 00:00 |
CHanse97 wrote:
Enchant X wrote:
CHanse97 wrote:
Fischman wrote:
Kansas is infinitely superior in every way by any possible measure. |
Except in making me care enough to buy a single song.
Personally, I don't give two rips about that knock-off, low budget, pseudo-prog band dubbed "Kansas."
At least Styx is actually enjoyable and has significant replay value. I don't listen to Kansas except when I forget my phone at home and it pops up on the radio. And even then, I usually flick to other stations to see if there is something good playing before I suffer through another replay of sub-par musicianship from Leftoverture. Kansas was where virtuoso music went to cry itself to sleep to the sound of "Carry on Wayward Son" and its IQ diminishing, mind numbing repetitive off-key vocals.
At least when Styx put out trite they had the decency to kill the band (cough Kilroy). Meanwhile, Kansas hasn't had a decent song since their first album. Love em or hate em, Styx's albums were consistent and at least entertaining. Kansas is the musical definition of brain drain.
Plus, Styx's early stuff was legit prog and was actually pretty cool. Their first track, "Movement for the Common Man", actually did Copeland's Fanfare in rock form before any other rock band. And then there is the criminally underrated Crystal Ball which is a full blown prog-pop album with some of their strongest and best material ("Ballerina" is friggin great, "Put me On" is full blown prog, "Crystal Ball" is excellent folk-rock/prog, and the whole album has one amazing and consistent sound and tone which is lacking even on the best produced prog albums all too often).
Not to mention we can talk endlessly about the Hendrix inspired Young's guitar work and the fact that he is basically the reason many awesome guitar sounds and techniques (like the growl) gained popularity in pop music. Or Tommy Shaw (whose singing voice is actually good... unlike Kansas' vocalists who are all boring and uninspired). Or Dennis DeYoung, who has probably one of the most recognized and amazing voices in all of rock, and whose keyboard work is actually quite amazing if you actually sit down and listen to it (not to mention he was an early innovator on the Moog Synth). Or we could go to their more obscure stuff, like Serpent is Rising, where they had some extremely awesome hard stuff. The titular track of that album features hard as rock guitar, is progressive, and also vocals that would make Greg Lake's electronically distorted voice on "21st Century Schizoid Man" look kinda like a joke. Unlike Lake, the rasp and growl was J. C.'s real voice on display for Styx.
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Kansas have slaughtered Styx in this poll ... you are aware of that I trust ? |
Very well aware of that... also aware that more than half the people voting did so purely based on how "prog" the contestants were, which isn't even what the OP asked for. |
its funny how different people interpret a band
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