What makes people find Prog boring?

LinusW wrote: micky wrote: what makes people find prog boring?   easy... the 85% of modern prog that is complex... but has not a shred of progressiveness (ie..  a semblance of BEING interesting).  Blame yourselves for that.. .you propagate the notion by rejecting or mocking suggestions that are progressive... but don't fit the stupid idea of prog= complex music. Micky - a one man Rebel Alliance

ahhahah..  you know how those stories always end....   with the rebel missing  his  head

Cacho(Prog Master) wrote: Prog President wrote: At least a 80% of my school, or 80% of all the people who goes to the clubs I go to dance, just say that "prog"(they don't even know that word though) is boring, just because the fact that it's not in the mainstream right now. If they were living in the 70's, they would definitely "dance", sing-along, and play all day stuff like Floyd. I don't think they even listen to the music. Not insulting them, all of those are friends of mine, so.... Just telling my observation. I could give a highly danceable or catchy song to a friend of mine who listens to music that all people like, and still wouldn't "like it" just because the rest doesn't like it. This.

Definitely that!

micky wrote: LinusW wrote: micky wrote: what makes people find prog boring?   easy... the 85% of modern prog that is complex... but has not a shred of progressiveness (ie..  a semblance of BEING interesting).  Blame yourselves for that.. .you propagate the notion by rejecting or mocking suggestions that are progressive... but don't fit the stupid idea of prog= complex music. Micky - a one man Rebel Alliance ahhahah..  you know how those stories always end....   with the rebel missing  his  head

. . . . Or destroying the Death Star.

Synchestra wrote: King Crimson776 wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: The fact that a good amount of it is not in 4/4 might confuse less adept listeners. Unable to compute the complex rhythms, their less-developed music receptors will interpret the sound as mush.  Another thing is that you can't dance to prog and often can't rock to it either, it's never sexual and often expresses its ideas in an intellectual way, it's something that was never meant for the masses (in or current world anyway). My sister has been dancing to alot of my prog lately, she said that its more fun to dance to than the stuff on the radio... Although we are talking Porcupine Tree and The Mars Volta and not, say, Gryphon  but the point is not all prog is undanceable   What makes prog boring? the short answer is: Nothing

I was playing Jacula last night and my daughter remarked that it was depressing church music!

TheProgtologist wrote: This is what my wife says about all the classic prog I listen to....   "It all sounds like elevator music"

This is why I'm with girl who loves rock music and also a lot of prog rock.

I grew up on listening rock, pop, electronic music (I'm 89), but finally I've came to prog music completely. Good for me, huh ?

Short answer: because IT IS boring. Well, some of it. Riverside above all. I'm joking, but not so much.

I agree with your post and I quite find myself in there - with the difference that I'm not a teen, I began listening to prog when I was... 23? I don't count Dream Theater and likewise, of course.

Prog is difficult music, by definition.
Prog is often related to musicianship, so it's quite self-referring, solipstic, call it what you want, but it often deals more with the intellectual excitment ("how many strange notes can this guy do") than the emotional one ("my god, this song rocks/makes me cry/turns my guts upside down")
And at last, of course, it's a matter of taste and mood. I used to dislike soft music when I was teenager, and listened only to metal. Now I'm more mature, and metal bores me while slower or mellower sounds agree with my spirit more.
But the opposite also happens: I met a guy who listened to black metal when 14 years old, to prog when 17, and now he's a folk-punk guitarist. The strange paths of life.

I got it, the non-prog that has spread like disease through their minds.  We haven't won yet, have we?

Yorkie X wrote: Good prog music contains consciousness, it has the ability to evoke emotion and in some cases make one more self aware, there's a spiritual experience with good music that many prog bands manage to capture , its not about preaching God but more about transcending deep into the sonic dreamscape freeing your mind your soul your body to heal and bath in the glory of mans creation ..  to feel one .. Then there's pop it starts at the groin passes through several accountants and finishes at the groin .. deep

Are you operating with the concept of the chakras (spiritual energy centres in the body) and expanding here from how music stimulates this depending on its structure, with more advanced types of music hence stimulating/unblocking higher levels of chakras?



Given that certain Yes albums are alleged to revolve around subject matter drawn from Eastern mysticism (Buddhism, to be exact) it is not exactly unlikely that this kind of illumination might have been part of their intent in their music!

Here comes the really crazy thing is... a while ago I tried to read (didn't finish, though) a book about esoteric astrology, which is an attempt by Theosophists to update astrology to their beliefs and (then-)modern science. Theosophy already being a synchretic religion, the "glue" here was the concept of the Seven Rays as identified with radiation from different types of stars.



If you then introduce the Pythagorean concept of the music of the spheres, which conceives the universe as one gigantic chord with different... well, then you can link all this to Hawkwind's 1971-1975 infatuation with composing their music according to astrological principles as detailed in the booklets to the albums they made back then. Ironically, they're one of the less "cerebral" - certainly less scholary - and more mystical/Jungian-subconscious 1970s prog acts. Their song Seven by Seven certainly seems to concern the seven rays, and a lot of the lyrics to other songs they wrote then make more sense and have new layers of meaning when you have as much as a passing familiarity with Esoteric Astrology. (Hawkwind and Theosophy - upcoming Prog Blog? )

Of course, if you ask me all this stuff with Chakras and Seven Rays is hogwash. I'm more of a Discordianism person.



HAIL ERIS! HAIL DISCORDIA!


Edited by Toaster Mantis - August 12 2009 at 12:29

rogerthat wrote: It's all a matter of taste, there's really nothing more to it and yet this topic resurrects itself in different hues all the time.

And plenty of us here are ready to post on this topic until we go blue in the head.