Quote:
Originally posted by Yesspaz
See, even prog is commercial. There's great prog going on out there, but it's not being called prog for two reasons. #1, prog is a bad word in music criticism so when a label gets a good prog band they promote them as anything but. #2, Prog has become as hackneyed and commercial as anything else.
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This leads to something I've said for a few years now...
"Progressive" is a dangerous word. It has an everyday dictionary meaning, and usually used in a positive context. When you apply that as an adjective to describe music, it implies that the music is "more advanced". To take it one step further, this leads to a lot music snobbery, a perception by the media that the fans of prog (and some of the artists) have a superiority complex. I'm sad to say that I think this perception has a stong basis in reality. While it's great how open-minded prog fans can be, their disdain for most commecial endeavors is quite prevalent.
See, we've set a standard that is impossible to meet. We want progressive rock to remain progressive. We often scathe bands who sound too much like another band. This "higher standard" has its pitfalls, because most of the music labeled as "progressive rock" are NOT progressive in that sense of the word. And the ones that are a little bit more original in their approach aren't necessarily actually "progressive" in thought and sound.
Personally, I try avoiding using the word as an adejective. Most people use it as a catchall, or misuse it in a way that is synonmous with words like "creative", "experiemental", "innovative", etc. This can lead to Mozart, John Coltrane, Bartok, and Evan Parker being labeled as progressive and being lumped in with Yes, Genesis, and ELP.
Maybe that is important for some, but it feels fairly arbitrary to me. I like music with guitar, but I wouldn't classify music from all different genres (rock, pop, jazz, classical, etc) and call music that sounds nothing alike "guitar music", if you get my drift.
Truth to me is that it's a name that some people way back when slapped onto some band like Yes and ELP and it stuck. "Progressive Rock" means to me basically th expansion and exploration of rock music beyond what was, at the time, a fairly simplified expression. So even a band like Citizen Cain is progressive rock to me because they are playing beyond the basic conventions of rock.
It makes for interesting discussion anyway...
- Cozy