There's a whole plethora of schools of thought about what progressive means in terms of progressive rock. Originally, yes, it was taken to mean bands exploring outside their usual music, perhaps a rock band bringing in jazz or funk influences, longer and more complicated songs, but these days it's hard to be really progressive when most things have been done, and nothing really seems new and exciting.
So for the purposes of identifying or categorising prog rock, an admittedly simplistic description would be that it generally needs to have satisfy a few criteria:
1. Some sort of instrumental, usually in the middle of a long song
2. Lyrics that don't follow the usual rock ideals, like fantasy, psychedelia, dreams, or based on books or films maybe
3. Music that makes you think, with deep well-written lyrics
4. Accomplished musicians who can really play, and have often been classically trained
5. Some of their songs/albums tend to follow concepts or plots
6. Few if any simple love songs
7. Definitely not aimed at chart/radio airplay (though this may happen in spite of that)
That as I say is a pretty simple definition, and of course prog means a lot more than that, but I think it's a little unfair to say Floyd haven't done anything progressive recently: they are after all broken up now. And I wonder what artistes from the 70s you're talking about? Many are no longer around anymore.
__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
|