I'm waiting for the list of the top 50 Fraggle Rock albums...

i think they had only 3.

NEKTAR - Remember the Future -- and Recycled (which has Larry Fast)
GURU GURU - Dance of the Flames
 
 
 
More new friends!

bayoubill
NEKTAR - Remember the Future -- and Recycled (which has Larry Fast)
GURU GURU - Dance of the Flames
 
 
 
More new friends!

Yep!  More good stuff. 
(Got several albums from both.)
 
All this nice prog and I'm currently listening to New Wave on shuffle-play.  Oh well! 

Historically speaking, when did "progressive" switch from an adjective to a genre?
 
I knew what the term meant back in 1969 when I was an avid Melody Maker / NME reader. But how is it that a contemporary album that imitates 40-year-old music can still be labeled "progressive"?
 
I have no better word to suggest as an alternative. Just wondering.

bayoubill
NEKTAR - Remember the Future -- and Recycled (which has Larry Fast)
GURU GURU - Dance of the Flames 
 
More new friends!

The 2 long cuts in the DotF's album you will learn real quick ... but see if you can keep up with that drummer ... he is one of the finest in rock music ever!  And his favorite joke is that he doesn't play with the bass or rhythm ... he plays with the band! Basically, in Guru Guru, a bass player is on his own ... because Mani is flying just like the guitarist!
 
One funny note here ... on their 5th album (Tango Fango) there is a piece of music making fun of East German marching band music and it is a joke song, that mixes it with rock'n'roll ... and the gest is ... this is our God! This is our party music! Rock music, complete with feedback and the good stuff ... not the other stuff. And this was done before the Wall came down, and in many ways, tells you how important the feeding of rock music to the other side was in the late 60's and into the 70's until the Wall finally came down!
 
Rock music, progressive or not, was, very important. It wasn't just a song! It was a sword and a cannon, like most would never consider.

bitflipper
Historically speaking, when did "progressive" switch from an adjective to a genre?
 
I knew what the term meant back in 1969 when I was an avid Melody Maker / NME reader. But how is it that a contemporary album that imitates 40-year-old music can still be labeled "progressive"?
 
I have no better word to suggest as an alternative. Just wondering.

I don't, really, think that many of the things done today are ... "imitating" anyone or anything. We could almost say that same thing for classical composers still doing Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and what not because it is the only music they know ... or music teachers nowadays, that only know 10 rock songs, 5 jazz songs and 2 folks songs, and then you think that 10 years later you will learn how to be yourself through that ... I'm not sure that most would succeed.
 
You would still have to learn what's inside and develop it, but the time and place nowadays, is not as conducive to new music as it is to how well it performed on the popularity meter, which is way less than about the music itself, and might be about a nekkid someone or other, or simply a strong teasing set of words that everyone gets attached to. It becomes advertising, not music!
 
By definition, the term itself is impossible, since music is always developing and always progressive. And that has always been my own complaint about it, since it does not credit it as "music" at that point anymore, but something that has a very sophomoric definition that no musician in his right state of mind would even consider playing! You do not create a CTTE with all those terms in mind ... you create it because this is what you felt at the time, and this is how each member reacted to it, and how they defined their piece of music ... had nothing to do with awkward time breaks and changes ... and this is the part that bothers me with the definition and some of the folks "controlling it" ... with one worst part ... they do not even have, or want, to study its history and the arts themselves, in order to explain it better ... which makes it, just another rock song, which is all those folks know anyway in their whole life!
 
The only thing that we know, is that there is a very large body of music that was astounding and it is still remembered 45 years later, and that is incredibly amazing. Even Elvis does not have that kind of admiration except in one place on this earth and even then it isn't for his music ... it's for his outfits! How's that for sick!
 
I've always said, for example, that KC's ITCOTCK is one of the most valuable snapshots, as in photograph, of London in 1968 and 1969 ... but every time I say that ... nooooo ... it's the greatest prog album of all time. The "prog" part is meaningless. The snapshot? It will live forever and be remembered for a very long time! And it is just sad that folks don't see this properly ... like Epitath is not about the IRA and VietNam, and 21st Century Maniac not about Nixon and Idi Amin, and some other ... heretofore un-mentioned folks, and a ballad that simply, and quietly ... asks you ... are you listening? does it all mean anything to you? ... and people still say ... just a boring song!
 
That's progressive for you ... so regressive it's sick!

Hi,
 
(An attempt at a definition!!!!! hahaha!!!!!)
 
Thanks for getting me started on that Bit ... here goes.
 
For me, the best term for the time and place, is NOT "progressive', but "psychedelic", of which, the likes of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, and most of the California bands, would, THEN, have some serious representation. However, I think the London contingent would have an issue with "losing" their "mastery" over the definition of their "music", which as stated and defined, will not include a lot of American and European bands at all!
 
Later it did, but not in the early days, despite the fact that Europe has a massive artistic/theatrical/film history that happened BEFORE popular and rock music, and it was quite vivid in the 60's all over. But it did not have a "hit song" to represent itself ... and this means that Godard is an idiot, Fellini is a bad clown, that Antonioni forgot to turn off his camera, and David Lean was exercising his narcissistic love for endless images that never died! And we have not even mentioned theater yet!
 
For me, the term that helps and defines it best ... is "psychedelic". The only problem with it, is that we automatically associate it with DRUGS, and we quickly forget to take a look at Picasso's Guernica, and how psychedelic it really was, and all of a sudden it gave rise to a new art style that became called "cubistic", and it wasn't about cubes ... it was about all the body parts that a kid was seeing outside his window in an ugly Civil War in Spain. Body parts and dead folks in the streets. What is it about that painting that isn't true? It is only "cubistic", because it is easier for us to imagine that we cut up the picture with scissors, so that we do not have to imagine the total HORROR that the person painting that was really seeing.
 
And 50 years later, we do the same thing with a different kind of music, that became popular, which was another element that hurt. The music and art controls, up until that time had been the movie studios and in the 50's TV started to break it apart some. And in the 60's, the studios and upper class, would no longer control the majority of the arts in these new times and places. Today, as you know, it's wide open!
 
The term, "psychedelic" for me, is just like reading "The Doors of Perception", and your curiosity, and innocence and even naiveté, lives ... just fine, along with everything else, and you do not even notice that the perspective is different, until later, when you try to recall and formulate a theory of relativity for yourself. If you "can't", you will forever be a slave to the drug, or some kind of religious soothsayer telling everyone else about the evils of drugs ... never mind the person behind it!
 
The only point, which matters, for me, is that it was done, and the expression has stood the test of time. That in itself, is a solid explanation for its strength and inner design, although I doubt that Jim Morrison would have said that they sat up all night for 7 days to write this story for a song! Or that Grace spent 4 days writing a set of lyrics that defines a whole generation that we're trying to forget ... never mind the fantasy that was before it, in the first place! Like the writer himself did not do the same thing?
 
The perspective is missing, and this is the part of "progressive" that bothers me.  Thus I prefer "psychedelic", knowing that as time goes by, this will get separated from drugs a bit more and the process and design, intentional or not, experimental or not, improvised or not, created an expression that was truly valuable as an artistic process. This "process" is highly valuable in theater/film acting processes, and has been for 50 years ... but for the most part it has been ignored by musicians, that seem to be more infatuated with fame and fortune, than they do their art. I'm not sure they "know" what their "art" really is, beyond a sing, and that could be a slight problem.
 
For some reason, I do not feel "confused" on this at all. The term would fit well in the designs, although it could easily be said that it started way back when with Stravinsky as well.

As someone who has probably researched and attempted to make sense of all the genres and subgenres out there (I have a spreadsheet with about 1,400 genres and subgenres as well as breakdowns by parentage, children, etc.), I can tell you that the whole area is stupidly subjective and lacking anything close to consistency.
 
The term "Popular" should indicate songs that people like the most, and perhaps it started out as such, but now it's used to define songs with a certain sound so that some songs are labelled as Popular (or, more often abbreviated, as Pop) that aren't all that popular, however they sound like other Pop songs.  Similar treatments are done for so-called Classic Rock.  There are albums that came out just last year that are labelled as Classic Rock just because they sound like albums that came out back in the 70's that earned the original title.  Progressive obviously was self-meaning when it first came out, but albums are really only progressive at the time they were released compared to whatever else what being released at that time.  However, once again, the label gets stuck onto that subset that started the word and now everything that sounds like those albums gets called Progressive even if it was just released and is actually regressive!
 
The bottom line is this:  At the moment a genre/subgenre is created it is at its most relevant in terms of the definition of the word(s) used (consider "New Wave" or "New Age").  After that, it becomes its own entity encompassing anything that sounds like members of the original group.  In other words, a bunch of new songs were created back in the 1960's that were called "60's music," but it's still possible for someone now to create a song that sounds like those and have it also be labelled "60's music."

Hi,
 
The only issue I have with that, and btw, that is a great description of things and I enjoyed it tremendously, is that in America and England, (well we don't know about Japan, China and the like!) the "pop" music world really does not care about the definition as long as they can compartmentalize it, so that someone "knows" where to find it to buy it.
Better yet ... the VIRGIN factor!
 
This was on the Dave Cousins' book about VIRGIN. They were not making any headway in their sales and one day they decided to create their own top ten list ... and the next day, 20 of their artists were selling a million and the other list was not as important or as big as Virgin's!
 
Plus they had the stores and distribution for the work, which made it easier ... good gracious ... all the albums are gone ... actually they were in the back office, but who cares ... it worked and sold!
 
I am not sure that pop music and its immediate communicating device (radio, tape, cassette, cd, etc) will have a proper, concise and complete history for a few more years. The majority of it, was originally owned by the movie studios (so they didn't have to pay for the use of the music to anyone else!), and eventually, radio devised the way to keep the money home, and blah and blah ... you know that part already.
 
But with the complete dismantling of the studio/corporate systems, and many bands making it on their own without these systems, the story is still ongoing and developing, and I think it might be another 25 to 50 years before we can give it a proper history ... that might make better sense of things.
 
The question, still is, how will it affect the "history of music", and not just one style, but the over all history of the art. For example, "pop art" did not hurt the history of the "art" with the likes of Andy Warhol, and many others. In fact, it enriched it. The same with the literature world, where a lot of writers, ended up being appreciated in the long run, even though they are not "major" by a wide margin, but it did not separate itself from the art at all. It blended rather well, and Naked Lunch and On The Road are "classics" today. The rock/pop music thing, is still stuck on the star system and on the sales system and it still ignores the arts ... because it likely knows that half of what it does is just money anyway and not art!
 
In this sense, then, some of this music is doomed to be just another "Elvis Outfit" and no one will remember the songs! But this has not happened to the stuff we're discussing here, which is still selling as well as it ever did, and in many cases, way better!
 
I would think, and still define it, as what we have come to call "progressive' as music by people that wanted to do more than just a song ... in some cases it was still a song, but in many it WASN'T. I think those folks deserve some credit for their work, but because it is a pop music thing, it's like ... all those players are just bums and they are not musicians, and I find that insulting! I honestly believe that many and most of these people, including those I have met and talked to, were out for a lot more ... and some of them were highly literate folks! They were not "bums".