Originally Posted by boo boo
Thats not the way it was in the 70s, the concept of being progressive rock was being completely original and sounding like non other band, and very rarely did prog bands sound like other prog bands...King Crimson, Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Jethro Tull, ELP, Van Der Graaf Generator and Gentle Giant were all at opposing ends of the sonic spectrum, but they all shared a common unitity, which was taking rock music to a new level...They all shared similar characteristics but each one had their own unique sound, thats one thing about prog in the 70s that has always intrigued me, that every band was not too similar, not too different...Its one thing that has always made the genre both distintive and diverse.
I think what you are refering to are these bands who admire classic prog so much that instead of taking a new direction they just try to copy and rebuild the old sound, and they were more concerned with authenticity than with innovation or originality...In the 80s bands like Marillion, Arena and IQ reached a great deal of popularity for how they captured the "classic" prog sound, this became the Neo prog movement (probably my least favorite sub-genre to prog)...Next to these bands there was nothing else, prog was dead in the 80s pretty much, but it regained popularity in the 90s, and bands began making more original progressive rock music, such as Primus, Tool, Radiohead and Sigur Ros...Yet for some reason some music purists dont consider them prog because of their lack of similarity with other prog bands, too progressive to be progressive, lol.
This is my problem with Don and other so called "progressive fans"...They say they love progressive rock, but they refuse to acknowledge any of the most progressive modern bands as being progressive rock because they arent doing what has been done before, which makes no sense, thats what progressive rock is all about, doing what hasnt been done before, yet people like Don wont acknowledge TMV or Radiohead as prog dispite their innovations, and yet they embrace Dream Theater as prog dispite havent innovating anything, instead they do what has been done before, and that to me is NOT true progressive rock.
This kind of debate is what devides fans of prog, between the purists who think all prog bands should remain the same, and the more open minded fans who embrace the idea that progressive rock bands should continue being, well, progressive.
I consider myself part of the latter group, i consider myself a true prog fan, because i think progressive bands should continue to try different things, its idiotic that all these so called prog fans want to keep the genre in a time capsule...Progressive rock should always be progressive, or else its just a very big oxymoron.
Put it this way, i love King Crimson and i love Yes, but as long as we still have their music to listen to, we dont really need another King Crimson band or another Yes band.
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