Are there any progholes up in here?
Apr 18, 2021 21:06:41 GMT 10
Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2021 21:06:41 GMT 10
This is probably such a strange question for a pop culture forum and I feel like I'm often the only one who doesn't listen to Top 40s around here, but do we have any prog rock fans about? When I was in high school and everyone was obsessing over emo bands like FOB and P!ATD or post-grunge acts like Breaking Benjamin and Daughtry, I was over in my corner listening to Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Glass Hammer, and OSI (along with some of the older classics like Pink Floyd and Genesis).
For those who are perhaps not in the know, prog rock - really, progressive rock - is a subgenre of rock music that emerged in the late '60s and early '70s thanks to rock musicians who wanted to turn the genre towards the avant-garde. I think it was specifically the lead singer of King Crimson, one of the founding fathers of the genre, who said they wanted rock to become as worthy of consideration as sophisticated high art as classical orchestral music. And so, King Crimson and a bunch of other early proto-prog bands started writing music with the following characteristics:
1. Complex and virtuostic instrumentation often involving instruments that were unusual for rock music (keyboards, lyres, sitars, etc.); and
2. Songs at length with multiple movements, with some songs ranging from 7 minutes to as much as an hour.
Somewhat frequently, also, these songs tend to include samples of other media though this is not necessary in order to be considered "prog." You will very often find prog rock includes keyboards, especially Moogs and mellotrons, and there's often a tendency towards pretentiousness and self-indulgence (which, funny enough, all of this also describes vaporwave; it may explain why I like both of these genres so much).
Anyway, for those who need a demonstration, here is what classic prog rock, at its height in the 1970s sounded like:
Once the 1980s rolled around, prog was no longer a dominant force in music as you can imagine. People were done with pretentiousness and self-indulgence and wanted easier to digest New Wave, punk, hair metal, and the like. Bands like Pink Floyd and Genesis went full pop, Jethro Tull became super obscure, and arguably the last prog rock band running, Rush, just became a regular old metal band. Once Gen X and Millennials got into middle and high school, Pink Floyd just became a band that popular girls wore on t-shirts to seem cultured.
By the time I got to the genre in high school, we were in the mid-2000s and thanks to progressive metal bands like Dream Theater and Fates Warning, prog rock in general was experiencing something of a revival. It wasn't exactly in the mainstream (well, Dream Theater was beginning to be), but it was closer to being on the radar than it had been in decades:
I'm not honestly sure where the scene is now - I fell off right around the time I got to college, when electropop reigned supreme and rock started to die as an entire umbrella of genres. Also, a bunch of the big names from that time like Steven Wilson, founder of Porcupine Tree, have now moved on to more experimental, often more freeform solo projects that don't quite hang onto the same recognizable progressive characteristics like those described above. I have also gotten interested in all sorts of other genres.
But I do peek in every now and then, and have recently found that prog rock is still alive and well. The scene is not as enormous as it was even in the 2000s, but there are still new prog rock and prog metal bands bubbling up all the time, and a bunch of the old favorites are still pumping out albums. Indeed, I was very interested to see in 2016 that one of the bands that came up in the 2000s, an English neo-progressive rock band called Frost*, has started consistently releasing albums. They've had the interesting idea to keep prog rock relevant by blending it with other currently popular styles such as bubblegum pop, synthpop, and electronic music (especially on the "glitch" end of things):
So it continues to be a fascinating genre with some room to grow, though I doubt the genre will ever again meet or surpass its heyday in the 1970s.
I guess all of this is really a long way of saying: are there any other progholes on this forum? Anyone else who likes listening to 20-minute long songs with sitars and lyrics about Middle-Earth? Come on out, you nerds.
For those who are perhaps not in the know, prog rock - really, progressive rock - is a subgenre of rock music that emerged in the late '60s and early '70s thanks to rock musicians who wanted to turn the genre towards the avant-garde. I think it was specifically the lead singer of King Crimson, one of the founding fathers of the genre, who said they wanted rock to become as worthy of consideration as sophisticated high art as classical orchestral music. And so, King Crimson and a bunch of other early proto-prog bands started writing music with the following characteristics:
1. Complex and virtuostic instrumentation often involving instruments that were unusual for rock music (keyboards, lyres, sitars, etc.); and
2. Songs at length with multiple movements, with some songs ranging from 7 minutes to as much as an hour.
Somewhat frequently, also, these songs tend to include samples of other media though this is not necessary in order to be considered "prog." You will very often find prog rock includes keyboards, especially Moogs and mellotrons, and there's often a tendency towards pretentiousness and self-indulgence (which, funny enough, all of this also describes vaporwave; it may explain why I like both of these genres so much).
Anyway, for those who need a demonstration, here is what classic prog rock, at its height in the 1970s sounded like:
Once the 1980s rolled around, prog was no longer a dominant force in music as you can imagine. People were done with pretentiousness and self-indulgence and wanted easier to digest New Wave, punk, hair metal, and the like. Bands like Pink Floyd and Genesis went full pop, Jethro Tull became super obscure, and arguably the last prog rock band running, Rush, just became a regular old metal band. Once Gen X and Millennials got into middle and high school, Pink Floyd just became a band that popular girls wore on t-shirts to seem cultured.
By the time I got to the genre in high school, we were in the mid-2000s and thanks to progressive metal bands like Dream Theater and Fates Warning, prog rock in general was experiencing something of a revival. It wasn't exactly in the mainstream (well, Dream Theater was beginning to be), but it was closer to being on the radar than it had been in decades:
I'm not honestly sure where the scene is now - I fell off right around the time I got to college, when electropop reigned supreme and rock started to die as an entire umbrella of genres. Also, a bunch of the big names from that time like Steven Wilson, founder of Porcupine Tree, have now moved on to more experimental, often more freeform solo projects that don't quite hang onto the same recognizable progressive characteristics like those described above. I have also gotten interested in all sorts of other genres.
But I do peek in every now and then, and have recently found that prog rock is still alive and well. The scene is not as enormous as it was even in the 2000s, but there are still new prog rock and prog metal bands bubbling up all the time, and a bunch of the old favorites are still pumping out albums. Indeed, I was very interested to see in 2016 that one of the bands that came up in the 2000s, an English neo-progressive rock band called Frost*, has started consistently releasing albums. They've had the interesting idea to keep prog rock relevant by blending it with other currently popular styles such as bubblegum pop, synthpop, and electronic music (especially on the "glitch" end of things):
So it continues to be a fascinating genre with some room to grow, though I doubt the genre will ever again meet or surpass its heyday in the 1970s.
I guess all of this is really a long way of saying: are there any other progholes on this forum? Anyone else who likes listening to 20-minute long songs with sitars and lyrics about Middle-Earth? Come on out, you nerds.
SharksFan99 likes this
We could even have a link to it on the main homepage of the forum! There's definitely a huge amount of underground music subcultures that don't receive a lot of attention though, like the 2010s psychedelic-rock revival for instance.