Why isn't prog as successful as metal as an indus
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Topic: Why isn't prog as successful as metal as an indus
Posted By: desistindo
Subject: Why isn't prog as successful as metal as an indus
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 14:59
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I wonder why in the metal world every year you see a dozen os albums "praise as wonderful" while in the prog scene is hard to find the same sense of expectation. By wich means would you attribute that? ------------- Who watches the watcher of the skies? |
Replies:
Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 15:04
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Metal is much better at self-promotion. Just look at all the ads that take up our banner space on PA. ------------- My other avatar is a Porsche It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -Kehlog Albran |
Posted By: Smurph
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 15:05
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Things that sell well get more promotion so they sell better. Things that don't sell well get less promotion so they sell less. Capitalism! ------------- http://pseudosentai.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow - http://pseudosentai.bandcamp.com/ wtf |
Posted By: Something_Wicked
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 15:41
| Metal is a far larger "umbrella" term for many genres, whereas prog is particularly niche. No contest really. |
Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 15:57
We could argue that metal heads are less discriminating that proggers.  Our expectations are higher and thus are more difficult to please. To me, much of contemporary metal sounds the same no matter how awesome the chops may be or how fast they are played (and speed does not equal quality). But I think the previous responders have some good observations. Metal tends to be more image conscious than Prog, at least these days, and that leads to greater recognition and promotion. Overall, too, the target audience is younger and thus less experienced and more prone to promotion. Prog artists tend to let the music speak for them, which is less effective. When I was a teenager in the 70s one of the things that attracted me to Kiss was their image, so that when I listen to them, I visualized their outlandish outfits and makeup in my mind. It made the music sound better. I know better than that now, but many contemporary artists, including metal bands, learned from that. Much of the music biz is, and always has been, promoting an image. Some Prog artists may be more image conscious than others, but the emphasis is more on the music. Maybe if more were more image conscious they would be more well known.------------- 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: Stool Man
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 15:57
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Does it matter? Pop gets far more attention and bigger sales than metal, and that doesn't matter either. ------------- rotten hound of the burnie crew |
Posted By: CPicard
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 16:59
Less discriminating than proggers whose expectations are higher?... I doubt it: it's forgetting that a lot of prog fans tend to obsess over 70's classics or Neo-Prog, and that the metal scene is split up between many subgenres. Furthermore, the generation gap can play a great role: the older generation of metalheads can't care or even bear bands like Slipknot... A band whose image is quite important! Some people don't like bands which are too much "image conscious"! I remember having talked with the manager of French industrial band Treponem Pal who explained she was somewhat disinterested into modern metal because she felt that there was an annoying dominance of death metal nowadays. |
Progosopher wrote:Posted By: Horizons
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 17:24
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Cuz metal doesn't have to be complicated or alienating. ------------- Crushed like a rose in the riverflow. |
Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 17:54
Less discriminating than proggers whose expectations are higher?... I doubt it: it's forgetting that a lot of prog fans tend to obsess over 70's classics or Neo-Prog, and that the metal scene is split up between many subgenres.Prog is split into many subgenres as well. 70s symphonic seems to be the core and the root. The thread on the longevity of Prog is pertinent here. And who is to say that interest in 70s classics represents a lack of discrimination? Does age diminish quality? Is that music less than contemporary metal, no matter the genre? Furthermore, the generation gap can play a great role: the older generation of metalheads can't care or even bear bands like Slipknot... A band whose image is quite important! Some people don't like bands which are too much "image conscious"!I will admit to the generation gap - I am 54 years old and I don't care for Slipknot at all. I am not sure what you are saying here. Are you comparing Slipknot to classic 70s Prog favorably? I remember having talked with the manager of French industrial band Treponem Pal who explained she was somewhat disinterested into modern metal because she felt that there was an annoying dominance of death metal nowadays. I am not interested in death metal either, nor do I care for industrial. /QUOTE]
 ------------- 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: CPicard
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 18:09
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^Fine, I will take some time tomorrow to re-formulate my speech (I can't watch TV, browse the forum and play a game in the same time). Just one thing: if prog fans have so much "high expectations", I wonder why they don't drop progressive rock in favor of composers such as Xenakis, Scelsi, Stockhausen or Anthony Braxton. |
Posted By: dwill123
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 20:36
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Metal is easier to produce in quantity. I submit: |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 21:15
Call it a wild stab in the dark if you like but maybe because they don't sound like Prog because they ain't Prog?  ------------- 
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Posted By: sublime220
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 21:19
If they wanted to bring out feeling, they certainly did for me. Although I don't think that laughter was what they were going for. ------------- There is no dark side in the moon, really... Matter of fact, it's all dark... |
Posted By: siLLy puPPy
Date Posted: March 06 2015 at 22:29
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Becsause they are two different elements on the periodic table. Metal is a sound. A feel. Prog is complexity. The two obviously overlap as evidenced on this here holy proginess expression of PA. Really, everthing in life is a spectrum. Metal can be as simplistic as Poison's glam rock from the 80s or as sophisticated as Gorguts with "obscura". Bascially don't think of it as a competition. They are two different aspects of music that occasionally join hands and create babies. OOooooo. That makes me wanna hump someone's leg :O
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Posted By: friso
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 08:03
| Because metal is considered to be cool by its listeners and functions a part of a counterculture lifestyle. Music is not about esthetics, its mostly a social phenomenon. |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 08:08
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Lack of bling obviously. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Rick Robson
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 08:51
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Curiosity stuck me wondering here, wouldn't it be too because a fair amount of prog lacks some of that 'energy' commonly found as well in punk and post-punk music, albeit differently orientated in today's metal music in general, i.e. quite a bit more aggressive sound which has proved to be more commercially successful, especially nowadays? -------------  "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." LvB |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 09:16
Metal comes with a built in hip factor. Prog comes with a built in geek factor. 
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 10:06
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I remember reading somewhere, not sure exactly what book though, that the reason the original psychedelic/progressive rock movement of the 1960s/1970s lasted so short was that it didn't have the same cultural infrastructure of independent record companies and underground concert venues which the late-1970s punk scene would build up. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal picked up that way of organization pretty quickly, being almost contemporary with the punk explosion looking at that for a successful model of how to get a music scene running, and you do the rest of the math. The rock business world was somewhat more corporatized before that, so when a style went out of fashion the industry effectively ended up pulling the plug on it. Punk and metal, on the other hand, built up their own network of independent business circuits to rely on so that wouldn't happen.
The Rock in Opposition movement of the late 1970s did the same thing too, for that matter. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 10:25
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I don't know ... I'm not sure there is a ready answer ... but I tend to lean towards the thought that Genghis Khan was a Venusian Buddhist and his politics were Plutonian Crap! I kinda think that progressive, going back to the early 1970's took such an incredible lambasting in the press ... I mean even Tangerine Dream was called "washing machine music" ... which ought to tell you what that arsenichole was listening to stoned ... certainly not Tangerine Dream .... and the rock press, for the last 45 years has little appreciation for the work itself, and a lot of appreciation for anything else that is hip and cult or a FAD. In many ways, some of the folks in metal, are not silly and naive and musically, many of them are well disciplined enough and taught that they do not need your opinion to create their own music, and this was missing in the early days. The system then, was more about the record companies and "someone else", and it made you weary and leery and less able to give in to what the big money folks wanted. Today, things are different enough that a band can make a website, sell their CD's and not give a darn about a record company or a magazine, and still sell stuff ... and of course, by the time they sell a million, most of those magazines that ignored you now think you are a darling, and want you on their cover because you SELL. Early KC, is a good example ... you realize that these folks only had "themselves" to go by? This is not easy, and needs a very strong internal constitution all around to be able to get that far ... and be able to take it that extra step to nail it down! I think that YES also tried, and ran into a brick wall after the incredible assault of mean spirited folks that only wanted another hit for radio! And it still happens here on this board. No respect, care, or appreciation for the work itself ... I can look at Dream Theater, and see a band that decided a long time ago, that what they did was OK, if they stuck to their work and their ability, and made sure they were rehearsed enough that they could still do it on the stage. I think that some bands hurt themselves in this area, but in "metal" this is a lot less of a problem, not to mention that the equipment used these days is far easier to control than 40 years ago. Synthesizers were not easy to control (witness Tangerine Dream and the countless live albums in the early days and how different the pieces were), and it made a difference. And maybe this was Rick Wakeman's complaint about TFTO ... it was hard to play it live again, and a massive drain, that took away from his having fun after the show with the girls! Today, it is not an issue and can be done from one workstation alone! I think we have to be careful in these comparisons ... we're comparing a Lincoln Continental or a Bentley to a Model T ... and that is not exactly a good comparison at all ... and the comments come out very poorly designed or thought out. A professor in college would have told you to go home and re-consider your premise, and I would not wish to discourage you with an F for a grade ... you see the problem now? ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 14:28
Just exploring some ideas, mon ami, and much of that based on a little joke. Are Proggers really more discriminating than Metalheads? Perhaps site members can clarify that for us. This is a forum after all. I can only truly speak for myself. Of the composers you mention, I am only familiar with Stockhausen by reputation and the others not at all. Not all Proggers listen to Classical from early to contemporary times. Each listener has a different approach and different sets of appreciations and expectations. I tend to compare Prog music to Classical because one of the aspects of Prog that distinguish it from other forms of Rock is its careful and often studied composition. In this way it is similar to Classical but it is still Rock. I also adjust my expectations depending on the genre I am listening to. A poor Classical composer may be a great Rock musician. A good rocker may not excel at composing. I don't expect Joe Satriani to sound like Beethoven, or Yes to sound like Mastodon. Each has a unique set of standards, but we can say some are higher than others, and I do think good Prog requires higher standards than good Metal. There is plenty of room for overlap of course. And no, not all Metal bands are equally image conscious. ------------- 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: WeepingElf
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 15:40
I think prog fans are much less divisive than metal fans. Look, there is that infamous battle about what is "true" (often spelled "trve") metal among metalheads. I haven't seen such a debate about "true prog". Sure, many prog fans value some styles of prog higher than others, but most prog fans, it seems to me, are into prog in general, and do not dismiss anything as "false prog". (Alas, I may be an exception. There is music that is often called "prog" which I don't consider prog - but who am I to say that that was "false prog"? Words mean what they are used for, and there may be more than one meaning of "prog". Things can be "progressive" in many ways, and even in electronic dance music, there is a notion of "progressive" that has nothing to do with progressive rock.)
Yep. Stockhausen's influence on prog and on rock avant-gardes in general is IMHO vastly overrated. Many people say that Krautrock was strongly influenced by Stockhausen, but these two don't really have that much in common. The Krautrockers were heavily into improvisation; Stockhausen meticulously and often pedantically planned everything.
Fair. Prog is where actual musical composition happens these days. Most other rock avant-gardes, from Velvet Underground to San Francisco to Krautrock, were more into improvising on minute musical formulae, if not outright noodling on a single chord. Jazz is similar. I even dare say that many contemporary academic composers do not really compose in the classical sense; rather they compute music based on series and algorithms, something that can be done (and sometimes is done) on a computer. Film music is mostly genuinely composed music, but it rarely works without the film. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Rick Robson
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 16:05
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^Thanks for sharing your insightful and wise thoughts, WeepingElf! And very interesting what you point out about Krautrock, a music genre that I have not yet dug into, albeit so praised and so talked about.
------------- "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." LvB |
Posted By: Rick Robson
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 16:16
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But I have to say that I think somehow differently regarding a point of the previous post, to be honest it makes more sense for me that good Prog requires more varied musical tastes than good Metal.
------------- "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." LvB |
Posted By: LiquidEternity
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 16:36
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The whole question is a bit of a nonstarter, if you ask me. Prog and metal are not two separate things. These aren't two conflicting genres. I don't know how better to write it than that one is a massive, widespread genre and the other is an applicable style or approach. In my mind, you have the giant Venn diagram of different genres of music, with your rock and metal and jazz and rap and classical (not sure if that's a fair genre, but you get my drift) and so on, and the point where they overlap is where prog comes in. I have yet to meet someone that is primarily a fan of metal who doesn't appreciate some form of progressive metal (though many prog fans I've met can't stand prog metal or even metal in general). And I honestly, as a 26 year old dude, do not see anyone thinking that being a metal fan is cool or that being a prog fan is uncool. But I'm from the hipster generation, and we also grew up listening to classic rock--which means we all already know Yes and Genesis and ELP and Jethro Tull, and many of us know quality songs of theirs from the 70s. It's not weird to us. I dunno. I haven't really seen anything new since I started into listening to prog over a decade ago. I mean, it's all been new to me, but I can't think of anything that appeared in the last twelve or so years that introduced something new in the prog scene. That sounds more cynical than I mean. All I mean is that it's all there and has always been there, so I haven't watched anything change away from what I wanted it to be. And I think that's a big difference between guys like me and the previous generation. There is no "golden era" where everything was going just right! There is just fifty years or so of the most varied and entertaining music ever invented laying around no further than a CD store (okay, there's the nostalgia) or amazon or something. I haven't watched as a movement as a whole I've been attached to has grown or changed or been subverted or enlightened or whatever. I wonder if that's part of it. I got up and did some house cleaning partway through my response. It's entirely possible I forgot what I was writing about and wrote something non sequiter. Oh well. I'm gonna submit without double checking, just because I don't want any of my work to go to waste. ------------- 
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Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: March 07 2015 at 19:29
But we do debate what Prog is. Thanks for the reply! ------------- 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: moshkito
Date Posted: March 08 2015 at 09:31
I would probably re-word this. Metal, today, is/was not something completely different and loud ... what became known as "progressive" was not mainstream and it was extremely different from the best selling stuff. By comparison, "metal" is "recognizeable", and a lot of the things that we call "progressive" were not exactly VISIBLE around the other stuff. Folks had no idea what Soft Machine was doing, either!
Prog/Progressive didn't succeed because the media in the world is about sales and top ten only. They only support the money they can make off it. The rest is just talk.
SOAP BOX DEPT:
i really wish that some folks would realize that yesterday -- 40 years ago -- things were not the same as today to make these simplistic comparisons! Just only yesterday we didn't have cars ... we had carriages! And in London in 1910 they were making jokes that women would never drive because they do not have the strength to depress a clutch pedal ... (that doesn't even exist today with automatics!) ... or thomen were not smart enough to even vote! .... In the end these questions are just showing how un-studied it really is. That same person is not asking why we don't think that baroque crap is not being played or loved by fans, today and they are buying death metal instead! Such insolence, hey? Times, music, anything ... it has all changed ... and you need to look at the time they came up ... because it is not the same as TODAY ... not even close! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: March 08 2015 at 13:46
Excellent point in the soap box. The situation has changed. In the 70s Black Sabbath was the height of metal, Yes and ELP received major radio airplay, and Rock included Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin. Digital recording did not exist, John Lennon, Frank Zappa, Keith Moon, and John Bonham were still alive, and Donny and Marie Osmond had a popular television show. The biggest selling album ever was Frampton Comes Alive at a still respectable 14 million. Home computers were still a vague idea and nobody under 30 was born 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: Rick Robson
Date Posted: March 08 2015 at 18:45
Right on Pedro, interesting matter, and a point here reminded me of a work coleague who has been interchanging some prog in mp3 with me, she also loves rock, prog rock and knows quite a few metal bands, enjoying pretty much some of the more modern ones. But what's the point then? She loves baroque music a lot! - I guess that there is always more people like her than we can imagine, with power to change today's best selling stuff. It's somewhat like saying the social environment can change you, but you also can change it.
------------- "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." LvB |
Posted By: cstack3
Date Posted: March 08 2015 at 19:58
This bit of script from "This Is Spinal Tap" spells out my opinion of heavy metal succinctly....Marty: Let's talk about your music today...uh...one thing that puzzles me
...um...is the make up of your audience seems to be ...uh...
predominately young boys.
David: Well it's a sexual thing, really isn't it. Aside from the
identifying the boys do with us there's also a re-reaction to the
female.....of the female to our music. How did you put it?
Nigel: Really they're quite fearful - that's my theory. They see us on
stage with tight trousers we've got, you know, armadillos in our
trousers, I mean it's really quite frightening...
David: Yeah. Nigel: ...the size...and and they, they run screaming. |
Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: March 08 2015 at 20:10
^  ------------- 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: Terakonin
Date Posted: March 08 2015 at 23:01
| I would say that one of the many reasons metal is more successful is because there is a reasonably sized subculture associated with it, and that's something prog doesn't have. It's purely about the music. |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 09:11
ohhh dear ... baroque never had a culture! Romantic never had a culture! Surrealism never had a culture! Dadaism never had a culture! Metal'ism -- I guess, has something that the world has never seen or experienced ...
What kind of BS is that?
Welcome to the board, btw ... the comment is not meant to give you a scare! But you got to use your noodles!
------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 10:24
Sure, there are those metalheads you can tell they are metalheads by what they look and what they wear; this is more difficult with prog fans, whom you can only tell if they wear a t-shirt with a band logo on it - but then, you must be a prog fan to know the band ;) But the metal audience certainly is wider than those obvious metalheads, and mainstream pop also doesn't have a "subculture" associated with it, and they sell a lot of records ... Perhaps the low esteem of prog in the general public is due to the fact that it is intellectual, and contemporary leisure culture has a strong anti-intellectual bias: if you are cool, you spend your leisure in the gym, not in the library. Hence, prog is music for "geeks" and thus uncool. Sure, classical and modern jazz are intellectual, too, but they have prestige to a much higher degree than prog, so they are OK ... But frankly, I don't know. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: LearsFool
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 10:39
That all depends on who you ask. And kids who spend their leisure time in the library are more in line with the soft side of indie rock and their poetic influences, like Joy Division and The Smiths (but not Patti Smith - must be too punk for them). They don't even listen to The Feelies, let alone any prog. -------------  
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Posted By: Rednight
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 11:08
I more and more see metal as those two descriptions (and don't call me cuz). |
Posted By: silverpot
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 11:29
I think that's a good observation. Most metal fans know they're metal fans and spend their hard earned cash on paraphernalia and take part in the festivals devoted to metal music. For many it's a lifestyle. Whereas most prog fans have no idea that the kind of music they listen to is called prog. I certainly didn't until I found this board, neither did my friends until I told them. |
Posted By: CPicard
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 11:38
Just a few questions: - How many people from the lower classes were aware of Bach, Purcell or Monteverdi at the times of Baroque? I can believe that Monteverdi's first operas had some success among the "popular classes", but I still have some doubt about the other musical works of these times. - Was Surrealism followed by a huge audience (not to talk about the Dada movement)? Did "Un chien andalou" gather thousands of people at the movies? - Same for Romantism: how many people in the XIXth century have read Madame de Staël, the young Victor Hugo or Byron? Were these writers connected with the composers of their times? |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 13:09
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There is no way to tell. History books are not detailed enough on these things, and we all have this historical view that is more of an upper class thing than otherwise, although we do know, for example, that the majority of audiences for Shakespeare were not the courts ... and that may have given us the first CLEAR indication that the courts and upper class were becoming less and less the definition of the arts and the like. This is not the case in painting where the church spent years destroying everything, so history in that area is really harsh and one sided! Likewise, Moliere, who spent most of his life making fun of the upper class ... it would be unlikely that his biggest audiences were the courts and the upper class. Today, this is different. The sales and commercial development of the popular and public class, have out-numbered the "classical" and these (supposedly) higher elements in music so much, that tomorrow, guess who the new rich and upper class will be? That will change the culture of music and its definitions forever! We're in the middle of the "public" revolution and in about 30 to 40 more years we might have a better run/knowledge of where these things might go for a few years.
Actually it went backwards and the likes of Jean Cocteau helped bring attention to these things backwards because all of a sudden the church was putting them all down ... and that means everyone went to see it. This concept, btw, only ended with the famous film "Deep Throat". Nowadays if the church says anything, everyone laughs and ignores it! Surrealism, when it hit, came at the worst possible time, but also the best time. Worst because of the massive economic problems and stock market crashes that really created havoc with many economies and that meant no one could exactly afford a book or a movie. The 30's in America are a very interesting time, but also one that shows how most arts sufferent and did not go very far. Weird part is that Surrealism continued, probably because of the European side of it, while the newspaper plays and other American designs were lost in the process, but they, eventually, gave rise to things like Orson Wells!
Which is the reason why I always say ... as far as we know ... since those are the only things listed and shown. I taught a class on Gothic Horror and started it with Horace Walpole in the 1750's (Castle of Otranto) ... and by the time I got to 1850, I had already mentioned over 100 books, and get this ... most of them have had a movie taken from them! But if you read a compendium on Romantic Literature it lists Lyricism, Nationalism, Gothic, and maybe one or two others, and then dies ... and the examples are weak and not complete. Same thing for studying "progressive music" and why I want to take out things that are musical/musician trickery that has nothing to do with the music itself, even though it adds a mood or two ... maybe! Our definition has to be smarter than just ... gotta have keyboards, time changes, and more bs ... which all music has anyway! Ohhh wait ... orchestras did not have keyboards ... no one could afford an organ in a hall, and harpsichords would get buried ... ohhh dang ... that's what all the string instruments were supposed to be! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 15:41
Sure. There is a notion of "being metal" which goes beyond listening to the music. There is not much of a notion of "being prog" going beyond listening to the music.
Huh? Most prog bands are unknown to people who aren't aware of "prog". There may be some Pink Floyd fans who aren't aware of "prog", and there may have been some Marillion fans in the 80s who weren't aware of "prog", but these days, most prog fans do have an idea that the kind of music they listen to is called "prog". But this may vary by country; I can only speak of Germany here. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: silverpot
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 19:21
If you say prog in Sweden people associate it with something completely different, so yes, it does vary with country. I should have been clearer about that. |
Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: March 09 2015 at 21:02
We do not have to dig the depths of history to answer rather mundane questions. What some of the folks here have said about metal vis a vis prog is true. It is a lifestyle. No, every metalhead doesn't have to have long hair or wear denims but the fact is if you go to a metal gig (and I mean 'pure', 'tr00' metal like Slayer, not a band like Dream Theater where progheads might turn up), most of the audience would be in 'metal wear'. Most will be headbanging, most will jump into the moshpit, etc. Prog has never been about a lifestyle. Some of the bands like ELP may have enjoyed a lavish lifestyle in the 70s but it didn't automatically imply that progheads needed to be flamboyant too. Prog attire was and is either intentionally outrageous (as in Gabriel's costumes) or entirely non descript, sometimes even old fashioned. The fact is since the birth of rock, the 15-24 thereabouts demographic has become very important for the music industry to ensure commercial success of their records. Such thinking percolates to the underground too; it is not immune to it. The fact is metal's lifestyle appeal draws in a lot of youngsters. Not solely the lifestyle, sure, but many who are at first drawn to the music also buy into the lifestyle and the famous metal motto of "Stay metal" (alternatively, "Stay brutal"). One of my friends resisted cutting his hair to satisfy his corporate masters for a long time because he saw it as having to go against his metal ideology or what have you. What was the scenario with regard to baroque is really not relevant here because you didn't have worldwide distribution of recorded music and you didn't have worldwide avenues of promotion like TV and internet. Even if the music biz has always existed, it now operates more in the fashion of a transnational conglomerate and the music itself is not immune to the implications of that. Music being regarded as 'hip' is important because whether the music is 'good' or not is surely not a question with a definite answer and varies too much from person to person. Hipness on the other hand can be spread through aspiration and peer pressure.
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 10 2015 at 04:49
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I got the impression that progressive rock was initially part of the same overall cultural moment as the psychedelic movement it branched off from, which did have a subculture or two of its own associated with it in the Beat Generation and the Hippie Movement that a whole set of philosophical and spiritual ideals as well as a certain visual aesthetic came as part of. This is, as far as I recall, what the Rock In Opposition movement tried to preserve in reaction to the commercialization of progressive music and get back to its original avant-garde ethos but even that tells that most of progressive rock had kind of separated from the psychedelic culture's origins at some point with the two being separate scenes that just overlapped a bit in places. Of course, all that stuff stopped having much of an influence on the mainstream culture at large by the late 1970s if not the early 1980s by then, before I think it saw a revival of sorts in the 1990s? Even then it's now for the most part something that plenty of cultural history books, newspaper columns and documentaries get made about but nowhere as many people actively identify with as metal, punk, hiphop, goth etc. at least if you ask people my age around here. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: March 10 2015 at 10:17
Yes. Classical progressive rock was part of (the English wing of) what is widely known as "the Counterculture" (read, for instance, Macan, Rocking the Classic), which of course was in many ways different in different countries, yet all those movements had something in common, namely a post-materialist progressive outlook (a drive to better the quality of life - and not only the material standard of living! - of the entire human race). This is most visible in Yes, but plays a role in prog as general. "The Counterculture", however, faltered in the early 70s, though not without serving as a recruiting field of "Green" and left-wing political movements, leaving prog without a viable subcultural substructure, which may be one of the reasons why prog fell out of favour in the late 70s.
I think this is true. Some people saw classical progressive rock as a commercialization of the psychedelic-avant-garde "real thing". There may be something to that, sure; it was easier in the early 70s to sell multimovement suites than LP-side-long noodlings on a single chord. Of course, the latter is IMHO hardly endurable without taking "psychedelic" drugs, and we all know what a sham those drugs were and still are.
Sure. Of course, metal, punk, hip-hip, goth etc. all have a stronger "provocation value" than prog. They sound "ugly" to the average person who is not involved with the relevant scene, and are therefore better suited to the "ressentiment listener" who uses music to show his discord with the mainstream. Most kinds of progressive rock do not really afford that. I remember how in '88, my grandmother entered my room while I was listening to Marillion, and said that the music was "beautiful". Those of my classmates who listened to Slayer or Public Enemy certainly did not hear that from their grandmothers! ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: March 10 2015 at 12:24
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NICE ... very nice ... and you can go to Germany, France, Italy, America and England and it's all there!
... you ready? ... it faltered, and even Peter Gabriel sang about it (SEBTP) ... so you know how fast it started falling apart, but in my book, it didn't help that PG was feeling frustrated by it all, and not wanting to go further with it. And the LLDOB is the rest of it. QUIT! DIE! OVER! I think that "prog" continued, but it was not just as "popular" and by that time the "giants" of progressive had gone pop anyway, and it made it look like the scene died, when in fact, it NEVER DIED ... except in England ... which has made me want to say that it was a media thing in London all along, and the realities wwere slightly buried in words, that most folks would not even know what they meant? ... something silly like that! The 80's was full of new stuff ... but the problem is that we "thought" that there was only one GOD that could show us the way! And this is the main issue ... we refuse to accept that "GOD" has many names in many different cultures and that music -- progressive or not -- is also elsewhere. This, believe it or not, is a very important pretext for this discussion, albeit one that could become incendiary real quick and shouldn't ... but it is just another example, of how we do not believe that there is a world at the end of the ... FLAT ... ocean that has been keeping away from ........................ ???? ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: March 10 2015 at 15:11
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Indeed, prog never died - it only fell out of favour and was considered "uncool". ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: March 10 2015 at 15:18
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^Your right. It's still dying. ------------- This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State. |
Posted By: SteveG
Date Posted: March 10 2015 at 15:24
------------- This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State. |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: March 13 2015 at 10:52
I wrote this BEFORE I read that section in the Robert Wyatt book ... guess what ... it would be political pressures and what not that would help many people think that "progressive" died ... when in fact the social/political times in England changed so hard that it affect people subtly! And caused the arts to change as well! It might be possible to say that Robert is overly sensitive to it, but his examples friends make it very clear that things change ... for something else. ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: FallingEdge1
Date Posted: March 22 2015 at 21:25
| For whatever reason, more people like prog than metal? Doesn't make it better or worse, but that might just be the way it is. |
Posted By: thwok
Date Posted: March 24 2015 at 07:29
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The metal "industry" is better at self-promotion because it's easier to promote. It's easier for advertisers to reference ideas or things that are stereotypically "metal" than it is to do the same thing for prog. Of course, prog is, almost by definition, not stereotypical. Progressive music evolves and requires active, prolonged attention to fully appreciate. ------------- I am the funkiest man on the planet! |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: March 24 2015 at 10:30
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Certainly, prog is a more "difficult" product to market than metal, partly because it is less stereotypical, partly because the audience is less "visible" (since the fall of the Counterculture in the mid-70s, prog is pretty much without subcultural substructure - but it gets along pretty well without it), partly, of course, because prog is more complex and sophisticated than most metal. On the other hand, prog is less divisive than metal (as I already said earlier) - there is much less debate about what constitutes "true prog" than there is what constitutes "true metal", and there are more named metal sub-genres than there are named prog sub-genres (I say "named sub-genres" rather than just "sub-genres" because sub-genres cannot easily be counted), despite the fact that there is at least as much diversity in prog as there is in metal - and yet, progheads get along with fewer sub-genre names than metalheads. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: chopper
Date Posted: March 24 2015 at 10:40
True, metal has the horns, the leather, the denim, the patches. Prog has, er...
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Posted By: TODDLER
Date Posted: March 24 2015 at 11:43
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On my end, I'm witnessing many sights to be seen through "hands on" situations. Metal is very huge and it did develop over the course of time to be an empire and as said earlier in a post, this reasonably sized subculture was in fact completely vast for me personally when I traveled the road in the 80's. Regarding the fore-front of image, it was a bit like "Rock n' Roll" where you dressed up and your face belonged to a make up artist for about 30 minutes It was very corporate on different scales and went skyrocketing in the 80's because the music dealt with the occult. If you watch the film "River's Edge"...you can gather some insight on the mentality of the youth and Metal music during the 80's regarding how a somewhat contrived "in scene" interest in Devil worship derived from the lyricism of Metal. Prog had a huge impact on the youth of the 70's, but the Metal youth of the late 70's and 80's were ready for some dark rebellious act to follow along with a style of music that had an underground scene which they were attracted to. Some of the bands were sincere, but I shake my head in disbelief when I recall record executives forcing my friends to follow the art department's example for an album cover. I had some good friends in Metal bands who were signed to major labels and they were futile over the record company not allowing them to have a normal picture/photograph of the band. Instead ...they were being forced to take on a cover created by the art department that displayed violence against children. A lot of it was sexual and not too distant from what the "Children Of God" would practice. This social environment was not of the Prog world or the Prog community/movement in any sense. A few Prog bands of the early 70's crossed into Metal territory or in the premature sense of music development to Metal, but weren't going full scale as to promote the occult. Lucifer's Friend were Classically trained musicians with an English vocalist John Lawton. The idea then..was projecting what King Crimson had done in 1970 with a dark subject, yet the band was important to the underground Metal scene of the 80's because of how they formed different ideas in the area of playing, just as Ritchie Blackmore had produced on "In "Rock". Metal became a huge spectacular event through media coverage of the "Satanic Panic" era. That is a far cry from the reputation of Prog. This was more like a fad and getting the youth interested in bizarre, disturbing album covers and ultimately interested in worshipping the devil or practicing witchcraft. It was a fad. It was also brainwashing to the youth and today...that's evident to the kids who lived through it, made bad choices, and look back on it as negative, disturbing, and even moronic. This is a far cry from the crowd that Prog musicians played for. It was like opening up the essence of Devil worship with the nudity and a mixture of violence toward children as they were often presented as a sacrificial object. They just wanted to make the subject as open as they could to profit and that lacked interest to a degree because it was presenting product with an "in your face" approach and therefore it was insulting and rather annoying as opposed to feeling in a dark mood, playing some Art Zoyd and enjoying the mystery of life.
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But in any event, the mentality of theater in Rock was part of the Metal presentation which dated back to Little Richard days. On a personal note ..a percentage of Metal was completely contrived and this all began with the promotion department. Many Metal bands were sincere about their music and that's all that mattered. Posted By: Davesax1965
Date Posted: March 24 2015 at 12:22
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Because "metal" is product which can be shifted to the gullible, whilst "prog" involves much more listener input. Heavy Metal is sh*te. No other word for it. ------------- |
Posted By: TODDLER
Date Posted: March 24 2015 at 13:42
But the interesting thing about Metal is that you have to develop technique to play it. I discovered long ago that a great deal of the repeated guitar lines derive from Paganini's 24 caprices. Many of us dislike the style and not consider that Metal music requires practice and especially on guitar. People often think that because they can separate different styles of Metal, that they can also separate the chemistry in the music and it is simply not true. Metal is a formula that is based around every different approach to the style itself. It expands from there and some of it is composed rather well, but it's so stylistically different from Prog because of it's driving force of heaviness in sound. It can be complex...but with emphasis placed more on volume.
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Posted By: CPicard
Date Posted: March 24 2015 at 15:22
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So, in a nutshell: Metal = sh*t crapped by Satanic mass media owners and distributed to children and retards with no musical education and some hearing difficulties. |
Posted By: Slartibartfast
Date Posted: March 24 2015 at 21:29
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OK at the risk of repeating myself possibly - it's because prog isn't an industry like metal... If prog were more industrial, perhaps it would have succeeded more... ------------- Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened... 
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Posted By: TODDLER
Date Posted: March 24 2015 at 21:31
A percentage of it is..yes. But again, a percentage of Progressive Rock in the mid to late 70's was commercially contrived garbage as well.
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 05:29
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People who don't like evil music are delusional floating in clouds, the wisp of the tree and the chirrup of the finch. Life is not fairytale, only death is real, if you're deaf to death you're deaf to life. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Bigseal
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 06:43
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From what I remember prog only became prog later on, it was originally pop music. Artists like Pink Floyd were on Top of The Pops. Prog has always evolved naturally, but metal came later out of heavy rock. ------------- https://www.facebook.com/davy.olist |
Posted By: Davesax1965
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 08:04
Toaster, even death isn't real. Reality only probably exists at the sub dimensional level suggested by M Theory, which involves two dimensional "brane" structures which interconnect the supposed 11 dimensions of spacetime. Everything else is just fairy stories. ;-) ------------- |
Posted By: Davesax1965
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 08:05
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Heavy metal. If I want to see a bunch of grown men with long hair and overtight trousers being all dramatic, I'll go off and watch a pantomime. At least that's all taken with a pinch of salt. Slap of my thigh.
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Posted By: Padraic
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 08:51
Sounds like a description of prog rock to me. Except maybe capes instead of aforementioned trousers. |
Posted By: Cristi
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 09:51
There are a lot of metalheads that enjoy listening to a lot of prog so... Plus as someone stated, there is metal that is quite complex. I don't know what metal you've heard but sh*t it is not; I dislike some of metal's subgenres (but then again I dislike some prog ones as well) but calling it like you've just done is just unfair. Saying something like "I dislike it" would be one thing, calling it "sh*te" is another. Of all the people I know that listen to some metal, none of them is gulible. |
Posted By: Cristi
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 09:57
"Satanic mass media owners" - ROFLMAO. hope you're trolling, if not, you're (kinda) ridiculous. |
Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 10:35
That is a false correlation. Perfectly normal and realistic people quite capable of taking a glass half-empty view of things may dislike horror movies (and likewise evil music) not so much for what they express but for the aesthetics. On that note, much of the conversation on music, or even other art forms for that matter, seems to center only on the raw emotion, that is whether it is a happy or sad piece of music. Aesthetics also forms an important part of the reason why people like or dislike a given work of art. It is also part of what makes art appreciation so subjective because different people react to the aesthetic side of art differently.
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Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 10:38
Seconded. Davesax1965 just regurgitates common prejudices against metal. I doubt that he ever took the time to listen to a good assortment of metal albums. Sure, some kinds of metal are as ugly as an oil spill and full of questionable ideology, but there is plenty of metal that is pretty deep and complex. "Progressive metal" is far from an oxymoron, and many people are into both prog and metal. ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: Rednight
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 10:42
I'm a card-carrying progger, but I find some distinct pleasure in watching That Metal Show when I can catch it. There's some bit of fascination I have for metal, probably because of its base elements (those that the masses identify with). With that said, apart from a few of the classics, I wouldn't drop a dime on any of it. Hell, I'm having trouble affording purchases of my beloved passion - PROG! 
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Posted By: TODDLER
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 12:59
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It's possible that Ronnie James Dio read books on demonology or witchcraft and it's obvious that he was more creative dipping into the subject matter with his lyrics. Ritchie Blackmore may have similar interests, but the point is they were both doing something more creative and sincere..if anything. Eric Bloom from B.O.C. once said that in the beginning of their career, record executives gave them books on witchcraft and science fiction to study. Eric Bloom made it clear that the band received orders to study the books and write around the subjects. Ironically, in this particular case, the band produced some fine concept albums relating to the underworld and gaining a decent fan base in the end. This is an exceptional case because many Metal bands were just writing something dark to get attention and not exactly interested in the subjects they were singing about short of doing what they were told to do by the record companies. Obviously the difference between the popularity of Metal and Prog was based on the fascination people had with the occult and how they could apply an image to their own lives by dressing the part, (usually in black), and wearing occult rings and pentagrams around their neck. As a point of interest, this activity displayed the surface fringe kind of cheapness within the occult and was commercially designed to make money. On another note , several youths died in Satan cult killings and the press attributed their deaths to the lyricism of Metal. The deaths were serious and a problem when consulting Senator Gore's wife...however she placed the blame on the artist, but when the artists revealed that they would tow the line so they wouldn't lose their more than stable income, it was then revealed to her that the record companies had something to do with this. She forced them to use a restriction method with album stickers, but still blamed the artists for the material, when in fact the material was often contrived by the record executives. Point is...she would judge the Metal artists by putting them on the stand, while she sat rubbing shoulders with the record executives. I played for audiences like these...for many years and touring, observing their behavior from a distance and sometimes, unfortunately...up close. Many kids were completely lost. They were lost because they weren't personally interested in the underworld, but played up to be by dressing in this certain code, listening to Metal and flaunting the underworld. Some of the young victims and murderers from cults committed suicide when incarcerated. The reason being that they were connected to a Satan worshipper's sect and a real sect does not tolerate whistle blowers if it involves a full scale police investigation. They were depressed on the inside and would be tracked down and killed on the outside. This was all connected to the influence of Metal music. A real sect does not want to make contact with a young teenager that worships the devil. It's very debatable, but there are cases where it has occurred , such as the young offspring of the family sect listens to Metal, and forms he/she's own Satan cult , someone gets murdered in a sloppy way, crap hits the fan, a journalist gets involved and then only God knows what the real story is right? But seriously, this has occurred in history and the kids will take their own lives before revealing the sect. If the sect is investigated and rare evidence is revealed, instead of hours of interrogation and de-programming methods to obtain evidence from witnesses or victims, , leading the police to the suspicion of a certain sect, the evidence never holds water in court and the detective on a mission is almost always presented as a person with half bent theories or accused and characterized of being a person on a mission to make themselves famous and not truly worthy of bringing justice to the world. Metal music , no doubt...inspired these events to a magnitude of global interest, but it's important to know that the same kid who destroyed himself after crowning himself with "Better By You, Better By Me" is the same kid who might put a gun to his head if he heard "Strawberry Fields Forever" because he/she is so delusional. This is how the Metal musicians defended themselves. This was part of their theory to prove that it's up to the individual as to how they will relate to a song. It's not the song written to be blamed, it's how you are written or made up as an individual that has to be blamed ..if that in fact is where it all stems from ..which would equal a person who has been deprived of music all of their life and still goes out and murders someone because they are psychotic. People who are wealthy and are members of a Satan worshippers sect find this entire series of tragic events to be laughable because their life is a secret and someone is making profit over revealing it. Most of the time they are not worried about justice when they make films for S.R.A. victims or runaway victims of the "Children Of God" for example. They sensationalize it so much ...that it seems to be farce and it has that air about it to the intelligent person who quickly doubts it's content on the journalistic aspect and the overall hyped up presentation of the subject alone. Cults do exist, Satan worshippers sects exist and I openly admit that I am a victim, but truly they are making Hollywood out of it. |
Posted By: Altairius
Date Posted: March 25 2015 at 22:16
| Prog is good. That's why you can't make an industry out of it. |
Posted By: Kati
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 01:15
My hypothesis is that prog musicians were too clever and unpredictable for record labels to fool and control them in the long run. Thus after great prog moozik punk rock arise whereby unfortunately great bands and instrumentals went downhill, new punk bands were promoted heavily instead, kids the record labels could control as they only wanted to be rock stars meanwhile they could even not play well their instruments 
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 03:18
Alas Sonia, Prog musicians were as gullible and naïve as any other musician when it came to business. Being clever had very little to do with it. Your view of Punk is not quite right either, but searching the forum for "Punk" will reveal lots threads where this is explained more accurately. Most of the Punk musicians were actually very good at playing their instruments, they just dumbed-it-down for the music press. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Kati
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 03:29
Dean, so far this is my personal opinion however I am open minded and certainly have a lot to discover and learn I know, if you want please show me a punk band who actually played great instrumentals?
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 03:42
Playing great instrumentals and being able to play great instrumentals are two different things. Discussing and/or Posting Punk in this thread is too far off topic even for a serial-meanderer such as I. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Kati
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 03:51
I do not think it is of topic, I think it is relevant and within topic why prog died mainly due to bad publicity and obviously the music industry companies. It's our perception of what happened or not in discussion you silly billy
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 04:15
While I've only skimmed some of the posts in this thread, I have read (and understood) the OP - this thread is not about why prog died. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Kati
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 04:27
You silly sod, unless I am mistaken this thread is about why prog has not continuously flourished (as in popular demand) compared to Metal  hug!
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 04:32
"The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature . . . is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror." - Edmund Burke "Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived as a violent attack on unknown forces, to reduce and prostrate them before man." - F. T. Marinetti "True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys." - Yukio Mishima ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Kati
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 04:56
Toaster Mantis hello! I disagree with you here, why would one place him or herself between nasty or evil people? To me I cannot comprehend. I stay away from all negativity (this only drags you down) and instead focus on the positive. I am not naïve, I know that not everyone is nice HOWEVER I still believe most people are actually really nice and sweet too. You are sweet too very sweet behind that bravado and even without the bravado too you showed many times how nice you are, Toaster Mantis
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Posted By: Blacksword
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 05:38
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I've come to this late, but wanted to throw my penny into the well... Metal is simply more popular with the young, and unlike say the early 80's has a degree of crebility nowadays across a wider crossection of people. Metal, even among those who don't worship it, is less open to ridicule than prog. Prog is broadly regarded as elitist, twee, ridiculous and played by very old people who don't care about the listener, and are doubly clueless about younger listeners...and that's just among those who even know what prog rock is.. As far as popular music goes, metal is also a bit of an anomoly. It's timeless, appeals to multiple generations, is completely uncommercial and yet - in the case of many bands - enjoys healthy commercial success. Prog rock was of it's time, and is now reduced to an underground appreciation society among predominantly middle aged men. I'm surprised anyone else is surprised that it is ignored. Why wouldn't it be? ------------- Ultimately bored by endless ecstasy! |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 06:29
That is one view - I see it as asking why Prog isn't as successful today as Metal currently is. Sure there is some vestige of taint attached to it from those days but that was 30 years ago and Metal is also a tainted genre of music in the eyes of those who would tarnish Prog as being pretentious and overblown. The up-their-own-arse pseudo-intellectuals who put down Prog are equally disparaging about Metal. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 09:26
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@Kati and rogerthat: I were obviously joking with those two posts, or at least thought my joking intent was obvious. I guess that kind of humour doesn't really travel that well on the internet, perhaps also depends on what kind of community I'm talking about. I should probably have made that clearer. I'm just kind of annoyed at people here sl*g.ing off metal as a lesser artform than prog rock, when a lot of seemingly "lowbrow" black/death metal is at least as compositionally complex as much of the avantgarde/progressive music that gets praised here, and in some cases as profound or at least ambitious in lyrical themes despite its garish visual aesthetics. If you don't like the genre that's fine, nothing's for everyone after all, but a lot of the dismissal seems to be rooted in extremely specific and narrow definitions of art's purpose and role in society I see very few people I know subscribe to now because of how anachronistic they are within art history, not even within an academic context. There's probably also a generation gap or two I'm on the wrong side of and I might have forgotten that. Keep in mind I'm from a country where even the more extreme metal subgenres command a significant amount of mainstream crossover popularity, and people who can't stand them still admit it takes quite a bit of instrumental skill to play that stuff or at least that there's often some pretty heady themes motivating the music. (if I didn't, I might actually have gotten more defensive than I did... the metal community here in Scandinavia doesn't have anywhere the same degree of subcultural patriotism as that in say Eastern Europe) So quite a few of the sentiments aired in this thread just struck me as antiquated, or culturally elitist in a bad way. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 09:42
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I was not a little surprised to see such a comment from you. But then, I have come across pretty ludicrous defences of metal from metalheads over the years so I assumed (wrongly,as it turns out) that you were serious. Well, you can't really expect old timers to be particularly enthusiastic about metal. Its ethos is too far removed from the flower power era (which eventually birthed prog rock). Sure, somebody like Dean may be fond of metal but I am never surprised to find dismissive opinions on metal from old timers.
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 10:09
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Old-timers attitude to metal surprises me a little - we wrinklies invented the genre after all; those who followed Ironing Maiden et al in the late 70s are well into their middle-ages now and those who came to appreciate Metal in the 1990s are fast approaching their 5th decade on this planet. Sure those old metalheads can be very disparaging about Nu-Metal and other such modern creations, and probably not without reason given that they are not interested in that shouty rap style of vocal delivery regardless of what genre it is produced in. Because 90% of everything is crap it suggests that 10% of everything is not crap - yet while there is Metal I like and Metal I don't like just as there is Prog I like and Prog I don't like, it does not follow that all the Metal and Prog I like is good and all that I don't like is bad. I cannot stand Jazz, but I cannot honestly say that all Jazz is crap (just 90% of it ).What hacks me off in this and every other discussion we get into over why Prog isn't popular is that, (as with a lot of music genres and subcultures), it's the public who seem to be blamed for the success or lack thereof and that's plain stupid. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 10:27
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Yeah, it's something I've commented on in a couple threads I've started myself about intergenerational appeal or lack thereof in the progressive rock community. It's more when people dismiss music outside their personal comfort zone as objectively bad, or imply something like that, I think you should have some extremely good arguments for that position. (which I don't hear very often) The funny thing is that I also see quite a bit of resentment from some underground metal types towards psychedelic and other intellectual "art music", which they identify with the cultural elite for having a more socially high-status fanbase and being more respected by academics as important to cultural history... or just see as standing for other philosophical ideals that happen to be at odds with their own. Not to mention that quite a few early metal groups jumped ship from prog/psych-rock because they regarded that movement as a dead end. It's mostly people from other countries, where the metal community is more marginalized in the culture at large than where I live, who are like that though, because the conditions motivating that type of "subcultural patriotism" (as I called it) haven't existed here since I think the 1990s. I do encounter it in veterans of the metal scene around here. I don't think most music subcultures actually live up to their own proclaimed ideals that often, though, but that's another story. My thoughts are kind of scrambled right now because I've just finished helping a friend with her laundry. Will probably post a longer reply later on. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 11:54
Aye. I think some of the Goth community gets closest, which probably explains its longevity as a subculture, but I suspect even that varies a lot with some just using it as an excuse for dressing-up. I never bought into the wicca/earth-magik ideology myself but many of my friends in the community take it seriously and get very angry when people equate it black magic, devil worship and satanism.
Laundry can do that to a man. Their garments tend to mess with your notions spacial geometry. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 12:01
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In my (admittedly limited) experience the goth/industrial/noise crowd also has a way higher percentage of LGBT people involved among its membership than any other countercultural music scene, which might explain what you mentioned. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 12:04
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A higher percentage of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysop" rel="nofollow - Sysops too for some reason as yet to be fathomed. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Padraic
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 12:40
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Why isn't prog as successful as metal Why isn't prog as successful as metal Why isn't prog as successful as metal Why isn't prog as successful as metal Why isn't prog as successful as metal Why isn't prog as successful as metal Sorry. Had to get that off my chest. Carry on. |
Posted By: twalsh
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 14:01
I'm not sure what to make of these paragraphs. The first appears to mirror much of the 'Satanic panic' of the 1980s, while the second appears to be almost a rebuttal of the panic. I have a different take and the Satanic element in and of itself is not very central in my opinion. Metal appeared to have several themes that were particularly appealing to teens, some more prevalent in certain subgenres Power (adolescents tend not to have much, particularly the less popular) Rebellion (Wham! and 80s pop did not have this) Authenticity - ironic given themes of fantasy being so common. Back to the Black Sabbath days, heavy music acknowledged the existence of evil and hypocrisy (something that society likes to deny or externalize). This is especially important for people in their teens and early 20s when discrepancies between what people and the media say and how people actually act becomes more apparent. Hedonism- sex, mind-altering experiences, general high energy excitement. The more sanitized 'romance' of pop music does not fully speak to raging hormones. Complexity (in some genres) - Hair Metal tended to be more simplistic and pop-like but NWOBHM and Thrash frequently has musically and lyrically progressive elements. Teens in particular may have identified with finding their own art form that 'deserved' to be taken seriously. Not only were these themes well-matched to adolescence and young adulthood, but there tended to be a certain unity in these themes with metal music. In contrast, prog seems much more Individualistic, self-assured, concerned with musical authenticity (versus a more societal focus) and almost indifferent to what others thought of their image and ideas. To a degree this violates the herd instinct common to most people but particularly to adolescents. Too much individualism does not make a lasting movement, no matter how talented. Metal had a more calculated 'formula' (with many exceptions) that continues today.
------------- More heavy prog, please! |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 26 2015 at 15:34
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I also get the impression that people here vastly exaggerate how disliked by the mainstream progressive rock is, but maybe my geographical location in Continental Europe once again distorts my perspective? After all, Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator charted way higher in France and Italy than back home in the United Kingdom whereas the Rock In Opposition movement somehow actually achieved a not-insignificant amount of mainstream crossover popularity in Sweden... where a good chunk of the current prog rock revival groups come from, not coincidentally! ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Richbich
Date Posted: March 27 2015 at 01:29
| I like metal alot too, but prog is harder for more people to get into into. Metal kind of appeals to more of the people who want to have fun where prog is more for people who like to think about things alot, then they kind of meet in the middle. I dont mean that metalheads are idiots at all though many of them are intelligent. |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 27 2015 at 03:56
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I'd say that really, really depends on what you mean by "prog" and "metal". A lot of traditional heavy metal isn't particularly inaccessible to many mainstream rock fans if you can get over a less blues-based more "neoclassical" melodic sensibility and lyrics that work more through fantastic metaphor than real life emotions, same situation as those progressive rock groups that get played on classic rock radio though. I wouldn't really call Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden or Metallica less or more accessible than Genesis, Pink Floyd, Rush etc. The more extreme subgenres I'd call more inaccessible in theory. Not just the harsh vocals, extremely abstract riffing styles and musical grammar very different from "normal" rock music but also that the compositional structures can get even more complex and hard to follow. Then again the same thing applies to the most complex Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa records... as well as avant-prog like Art Zoyd, Henry Cow and Univers Zero. Maybe the latter are more accessible on account of not featuring growled and screamed vocals, but then again what's "accessible" is in large part determined by cultural norms and personal comfort zones. Things that in turn vary with time and place. I mean, the earlier death metal groups like Entombed and Morbid Angel weren't that far removed from the mainstream-accepted speed/thrash of their day. Hell, Slayer and early Sepultura basically have one foot in each. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 27 2015 at 06:19
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Now, as for the cultural difference between prog and metal? Here in Denmark, according to Jens Jam Rasmussen's 2010 book on the history of the Danish metal scene at least, there was a certain cultural distance and even mutual rivalry between the avantgarde/progressive rock movement back in the 1970s and the psychedelic hard rock scene which later turned into heavy metal. The former scene as represented by groups like Blue Sun, Burning Red Ivanhoe, Secret Oyster were made up of classical/jazz-trained musicians who had usually attended art school, conservatory or university where they'd get into contact with much of the cultural and artistic avantgarde's cultural frame of reference. As a result, they had often made up elaborate philosophical background concepts and were very focused on expressing those in their music with a strong focus on instrumental interplay in a group setting. On the contrast, the "concrete rock" scene as they called it here in Denmark before the heavy metal/hard rock label stuck, were made up of self-taught basement/garage jammers who just wrote about what they thought were fun... with their cultural frame of reference just as often being drawn from exploitation film, pulp genre fiction and other "low culture" art forms. Bands like Far Out, The Old Man and the Sea and Sensory System can be mentioned as examples. Likewise, their music was often focused more on guitar heroics than on instrumental interplay. Those heavy metal musicians who did come from the former prog/psych background did in part jump ship because by the mid-1970s the progressive rock scene came to appear to them a cultural dead end or had exhausted its possibilites. Notice that two of Mercyful Fate's members, Michael Denner and Kim Ruzz, came from a prog hard rock group called Iron Space which I'm not sure ever recorded anything. Apparently they were inspired most by Atomic Rooster and Jethro Tull's harder songs, but a couple of their own songs were later reworked very heavily into MF songs. (can't remember exactly which ones) King Diamond's first band Black Rose, whose demo recordings have actually seen a re-release, were somewhat in the same vein just more to the Deep Purple/Uriah Heep direction. They had by then come to find the prog/psych movement's aspirations to high culture a creative straitjacket and its motivational ethos of New Age-y utopian idealism rather naïve... instead gravitating more to a Nietzschean heroic existentialism. (which most Satanism consists of at its philosophical core, just with added) However, especially Mercyful Fate did keep the things they kept: Elaborate instrumental interplay, ambitious songwriting often built around the adaptation of classically inspired narrative structure to rock instrumentation, fantastic subject matter with nonetheless a genuine philosophical substance as underlying concept... notice that they were the first serious occult metal group of note. I think that later aspect is where some of the conflict comes from, the earliest heavy metal subculture around here came from people who weren't satisfied with mainstream society but did not really like the existing countercultural milieu either... often as a result of not coming from quite the same sociological demographics. Same thing with the glam rock movement that arose at the same, later turning into punk by way of The New York Dolls, The Sweet or for that matter David Bowie befriending Iggy Pop. The heavier end of that scene, like Slade and The Sweet, were after all both proto-punk and proto-metal. The overall point is that by the time of the late 1970s when the New Wave of British Heavy Metal rolled around, the hard rock/heavy metal movement had built up its own culture with its own norms and ideals with its own aesthetic reflecting those. Same thing with punk, which had also built up its own subcultural infrastructure of independent record labels, underground concert venues etc. which the metal scene would soon follow suit with despite not taking the entire "do-it-yourself" work ethic to the same. This is nonetheless something that the punk subculture had created with the specific with not being as reliant on buying into the mainstream music industry's corporate structure as the progressive/psychedelic movement was, which ended up killing it once the big labels lost interest and pulled the plug. The Rock In Opposition movement, to its credit, also embraced that independent music ethos as they were an active move away from the mainstreaming of progressive music back to its avant-garde oppositional roots. Punk and metal were also moving in different directions away from both mainstream society and previous countercultures, and generally don't reflect quite the same ideals either though there's some overlap. (here in Denmark, and probably also Sweden, the death metal milieu is at the grassroots level made up of the exact same individuals as the more extreme punk subgenres - crust, grind, hardcore etc) Does all of that make sense? The "too long didn't read" version is that since psychedelic/progressive rock as a cultural movement preceded both heavy metal and punk, much of those two subcultures' formation tried to get right what the psych/prog movement got wrong and correct the reasons that one didn't really work out in the end. They're also based upon different systems of ideals, even if they sometimes overlap, both on the level of how the aesthetics of the style is put together and the deeper philosophical/ideological aspect the stylistic conventions have evolved to express, that also appeal to somewhat different demographics. I think it took several hours for me to type this. I'm getting flashbacks to writing my master's thesis last year... ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: TODDLER
Date Posted: March 27 2015 at 06:40
The Satanic Panic era was a means for journalists to profit...which is why skeptics find the era farce and disbelieve news reports covering any or all tragic incidents. That is moronic on the skeptics behalf because cult killing will occur regardless if a journalist sensationalizes it or not. It's not the Satan cult's problem if a journalists wants to make them look stupid and pretentious. They are going to worship Satan anyway , they will sacrifice people anyway, and if a majority of people in society believe what the newspaper prints, or what the news on television decides to report ...after they have already screwed up the true story , telling lies, then that is their problem. The "Satanic Panic" was very commercial and appeared to be a hoax because journalists made it appear that way to intelligent people , while scaring the hell out of people in society who took the sensationalism seriously. In the real world, the murders and disappearance of children existed. In the news media, it was made to look stupid.
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Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: March 27 2015 at 07:00
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Regarding the question of crimes related to Satanism and the occult, I found an interesting article about the subject a while ago but unfortunately I can't locate it right now. Anyone interested in it? ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 27 2015 at 07:25
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Noooo - 99.999% (or some other randomly made up statistic) of Metal has nothing to do with Satanism. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Blacksword
Date Posted: March 27 2015 at 07:45
No. Not with regard to music. You can find occult symbols anywhere if you look for them, and the few references to Satan worship in metal are nothing but guff. Just using darkness as entertainment. Now, if you want to talk about the relationship between Satanism/occultism and the establishment, then I'm interested, but that's a different thread for a different forum I would say.. ------------- Ultimately bored by endless ecstasy! |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: March 27 2015 at 08:03
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Satanism - everyone else's religion apart from your own... -------------
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