Prog - a four letter word?

I love it, but I've also kinda outgrown it.

I went through a HUGE prog phase in my teens and early 20s, especially focused on (early) Rush, Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. In college, I was the guy who'd play 'Relayer' and 'Brain Salad Surgery' in my fraternity house room, much to the dismay of some of my fraternity brothers (who seriously questioned my taste in music). I lived and breathed this stuff.

And then, one day, I didn't like it anymore. A switch clicked in my head and I found that, apart from Rush, I really couldn't listen to the 70s prog stuff anymore. I got into progressive metal and started to beat Dream Theater, Queensryche, and Fates Warning into the ground. They became my bands of choice into my mid-30s, much to the dismay of my wife.

A few years ago, another switch went off and I found myself burnt out on most of the current prog scene. I still listen to Dream Theater occasionally but that's really about it. Again, Rush survived intact, but that's about it.

I've enjoyed the proggier parts of Floyd, I've always liked Yes, and early Genesis. As for newer stuff, Coheed and Cambria, at least up until their last album, are a great band in my opinion.

It's all good, long as the band stays on point. Or even has a point. Part of the joy of the last Mars Volta album was hearing them realize that fact after 3 albums of pure wank.

Always been a big fan of prog, but especially so during my pot fueled college years. Still love the hell out of most Pink Floyd and Yes (although 90125 is getting closer and closer to becoming my favorite Yes album. Blasphemy, I know). I'm also a big King Crimson fan, although I prefer the Belew era to the Larks Tongue / Red era.

Modern attempts to emulate the style of 70s prog rock are like Robert Rodriguez's grindhouse flicks. They aren't terrible, and they can even be fun sometimes, but hes trying so hard to ape that old grindhouse style, that he ends up with a final product thats way too slick and flashy and doesn't feel organic. If that makes sense.

Sort of depends. When I was first getting into rock music, I liked the real technically flashy stuff, like Rush, Yes, ELP, etc., but I sort of grew out of it (although I still occasionally listen to Rush, whose knack for the pop hook often goes underappreciated). Then I had a mini-King Crimson phase, and I think that's informed my appreciation of certain post-punk bands - there's a distinct similarity in approach that I hear there. I have a soft spot for most bands that venture out of 4/4 regularly, but my tastes eventually started leaning toward bands that fused prog technique with punk sensibility like Burning Airlines, Shudder to Think, Dismemberment Plan, etc. The bands that fit the narrower, more traditional conceptions of prog, like Dream Theater and Porcupine Tree, I can do without.

You're absolutely right that it wasn't the cultural misstep it's often assumed to be by people who don't really know their music history. The party line is that punk was a reaction against the excess of bands like Yes, ELP, Floyd, etc., but some of the biggest figures in punk had super proggy tastes. John Lydon was really into Van Der Graaf Generator, Hawkwind, Henry Cow, etc. (and I can't find anything online to confirm it, but I swear I've read that he was a King Crimson fan, as well). Television's solos are certainly of prog-worthy length. Keith Levene from PiL and Bob Stinson from the Replacements both idolized Steve Howe from Yes. It went the other way, as well - Peter Gabriel and certain other forward-thinking prog artists took some cues from punk.

Like any much derided genre, there's some amazing gold in there that gets over shadowed by all the wank.

I'm a huge Rush, King Crimson, Yes (some of it, mostly earlier stuff), Genesis (some), and Pink Floyd fan.

As far as newer bands that I feel carry on the prog feel (without necessarily being straight up "prog" if you're being rigid, which to me goes against the whole point really), I love The Mars Volta (all of it; sue me), Tool*, Mastodon*, ISIS*.

*as you can tell, I REALLY don't enjoy splitting hairs.

I also vehemently cannot stand Dream Theater.

Okay, now, that's a great exception. I loved the last Mars Volta album, and it's probably just as "proggy" as the others (which I either hated or was underwhelmed by) - it's just focused and not so heavy on the musicianship that it neglects energy.

I suppose a lot depends on how and where you draw the line: I've seen definitions of "prog" that include Roxy Music, Zappa, The Moody Blues, and Captain Beefheart, but that's certainly not what the term brings to mind, at least not for me.

It's not a genre that I turn to often, but there's good and bad, interesting and wankery, frequently within the same band at different times.

Besides the usual suspects mentioned above, prog bands I enjoy to one degree or another would include Phil Manzanera's bands Quiet Sun and 801, Soft Machine, Dixie Dregs, Tangerine Dream (well, their soundtrack stuff... never actually stayed awake through any of the others), The Strawbs, and Henry Kaiser. While I love Todd Rundgren, I really can't abide Utopia (except for their faux-Beatles album). Kraftwerk and Yello were good for a giggle. Oh, and Magma. Heh. Now there's a band that I haven't listened to since I quit doing weed after college.

Good time to be an ELP fan, at any rate: they've released a retrospective box set and two live albums so far this year.

70’s Prog was a big part of my listening diet in my early teens. In retrospect, it was sort of a launching pad away from Rock toward European Classical music. It’s not such a huge leap to go from "Close to the Edge" to Ravel’s "Daphnis and Chloe", if one is so inclined.

I actually have a lot of respect for Rock bands that earnestly compose epic (I’m talking 15 minutes plus, not "Bohemian Rhapsody"/"Paranoid Android" length) songs, even if they’re almost never completely successful. Bonus points if they avoid medley structure.

I knew someone was going to post something akin to this. Because I was only going to post that over the years I've met a tonne of people who had given me shit for loving the shit out of prog (any off-shoot of prog - like joey said, any genre has it's good and bad examples). They harp on about how it's pretentious, self-righteous, just a bunch of wank etc etc . . . and then praise "a real band, like Tool".

Jesus, that last part fucking kills me every time.

I really dug the "mainstream prog" likes of Yes, Rush, Genesis and the rest when I was a disaffected young musician. But I reached a saturation point when I started digging through the catalogs of latter day underground bands carrying the prog rock torch and found too many of them taking their cues from the same six bands. Or, worse, diluted secondhand influences like Marillion.

Later, I found there was an undercurrent of lesser known progressive groups who existed during the 70's that took the basic prog ethos in their own directions: Magma, Univers Zero, National Health, etc. Generally bands that have an even stronger disregard for pop/rock song structure and veer closer to the realm of compositions for rock instrumentation.

And goddamned if I still don't love prog rock lyrics. It's so nice to hear songs that aren't essentially about sticking your dick in a woman.

Magma yeah................http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlJKKtgreqw