ProggyMan

What exactly did they innovate? Their music was very different from anything else at the time, and used more feedback than anyone else had, but they really weren't very experimental or groundbreaking. Influential, but that has nothing to do with being a prog band.

Urban Hat€monger ?

Most of my record collection ranging from Bowie , through art rock punk & indie to current drone bands

Already explained this to you the feedback was only one issue , I gave you others.

Never said it was I don't know why you're pointing this out to me perhaps you should go back & read and follow the debate rather than trying to point score.

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ProggyMan

Everything you brought up was them being different from their colleagues, not actual innovation. 15 minute songs have nothing to do with being innovative, same with monologues, and the rest has been there done that.

Rainard Jalen

Most of the 70s prog bands weren't "very experimental" or groundbreaking; they tended to ape each other. Does that mean that most of them should not be considered prog? And you haven't answered the question: what about punk bands that actually were very experimental and groundbreaking, and who fused the music with various other genres (e.g. reggae, dub etc.)? Why don't we call them prog too? Why don't we call all the "very experimental" and groundbreaking indie bands today "prog"? I guarantee you, they've broken a great deal more sonic ground than the likes of Porcupine Tree and Tool.

Like with the case of "rock", there really aren't any stylistic elements that define or qualify something as "prog". Like grunge, it's more of a movement than a sound. You only get in by being associated with the fanbase.

boo boo

Wrongo. From the 70s alone I can name you a lot of 70s prog bands that had their own unique sound and sounded considerably different from another.

Because prog bands didn't fuse genres.

They're not called prog for reasons I already explained. Being progressive dosen't automatically make you prog. Prog has several characteristics.

Oh how wrong you are.

http://www.musicbanter.com/rock-meta...on-thread.html

No. Its both a movement and a sound. But honestly its more of a sound, because some bands who don't consider themselves prog are still labeled as such. Granted the sound of prog is incredibly broad, but whats so wrong with that? The same could be said for punk and metal.

And prog is considerably larger then grunge. Grunge is limited to 20 or 30 something bands. Prog on the other hand. Progarchives alone has over 3000 bands listed. Yes the qualifications for being prog are broad, but they are there.

Anyway. Velvet Underground are not prog. They were however incredibly progressive and were one of the most important and innovative bands of their time. Anyone who denies that is a fool.

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It's only knock n' knowall, but I like it

http://www.last.fm/user/kingboobs

Rainard Jalen

There were, as you say, hundreds or such bands. Of course a lot of them had their own sound. "Most", however, which was the word I used, almost certainly did not.

Congratulations! That was not my own criteria. It was implied/suggested by an earlier poster. Read previous posts first.

This is exactly what I was saying. Being "progressive", whatever that means (anything new and inventive could equally be as "progressive" as anything else), evidently has a meaning of its own as laid out by those in the prog movement/community. It's whether or not their conventional use of the term covers a band that matters, from their standpoint. For the rest of the world, it's whether the general conventional use of the term applies. That's pretty damn hazy grey area.

You don't get what I'm saying. There might be certain elements that are PROTOTYPICALLY prog. You might find bands however that don't particularly embody those prototypical elements yet are included under "prog" all the same for other reasons. Hence why it's more of a culture than a sound. Clearly I was not saying there are no prototypical stylistic elements of the sound. That would be absurd.

That's just my point. It's so broad that the whole catalogue of bands cannot be captured under some set stylistic criteria. The same can be said of punk and metal, as you say. It could equally be argued that, while having prototypical examples, they are more cultures than clearly unambiguously defined sounds.



As for the claim that "bands who don't consider themselves prog are still labeled as such", then this is misleading. In such cases, labeling them as prog would be controversial and disputed. A band only really fit within something if the classification can be generally/conventionally regarded as accurate.

Urban Hat€monger ?

Name me 5 Rock n Roll bands from 1967 who were combining ALL of those things.

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ProggyMan

How do you not get it? Being different from the current scene doesn't mean you're innovative.

Urban Hat€monger ?

You said people had done it before.

I'm just asking which rock n roll bands has incorporated those things into rock music before them.

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ProggyMan

Well, I looked up some of their history and they used alternate tunings on their instruments, and a bunch of other stuff I didn't know about. So I concede that they were innovative.