Progressive rock snobbery

Post Reply New Topic

First I'd like to say I'm a huge fan of prog rock.

But I noticed something. A lot of progressive rock fans are very arrogant about the fact that they listen to prog rock. If you insult their music they won't listen, they just say "prog rock ain't for the masses" and "go listen to eminem". They say you can't appreciate their music because it's too complex. The best part is half the time the song in question isn't even that complex.

i know what you mean. i appreciate a lot of complex rock, but they can be very pretentious about it.

a friend of mine excitedly told me how the TOOL lead singer insulted his entire audience, by comparing them to sheep, for gathering en-masse at his concert.
what an idiot, both the TOOL singer, and my friend, for admiring this kind of attitude.
they should have fun playing for an empty hall.

I saw this fairly often on Progarchives and it was quite infuriating. I mean, sure these guys made great music, but listen to it without illusions. That said, it doesn't affect that I think Yes and King Crimson, to name but two, were absolutely brilliant back in the day.

This makes a bit more sense to me in the sense that this was probably part of Tool's act. They were fans of Bill Hicks who often confronted or insulted his audience. This is hardly an original tactic but it still works to create a bit of an edge if nobody's expecting it. Back in the day, the punk band Fear often insulted their audience to the point of almost starting a riot. James Chance used to suddenly jump into the audience and punch an unsuspecting person in the face to liven things up a bit (at one point this person was Robert Christgau), until eventually it got to the point where everyone came in expecting Chance to do it.

Is there an endless contest amongst music listeners to see who knows the most obscure facts? Random stuff like "Hey did you know the lead singer from Foo Fighters used to be the drummer from Nirvana?" Who cares as long as the music is good!

Hector/Zegh,
Some people think that bands shouldn't be "too commercial". I'm not sure what that means -if a band plays good music and people like it, then the band becomes popular. Isn't that how it works?

yes. and i cant stand when people deem another band good or bad based on their success. "too successful, theyre commercial, they suck"

i bet tool have nightmares about it "no... too successful... no.. no... no tv ads please.... not mtv... GASP!! !"

for the record. i like tool's music :]

Yeah, the guys who consider themselves to be 'above' people because of their musical tastes are really hilarious. Prog rock is great.

Also, Tool is great, but Maynard (the lead singer guy) can be kind of a choad at times.

Yes, it is. Sort of. There are different levels of "popular", depending on how heavily the product is marketed. A commercial success from an indie band can be totally outsold by a commercial failure from The Beach Boys.

Want to hear a joke?

Prog rock.

I kid, I kid. But snobbery on the part of prog rock fans is a bit funny. I enjoy it from time to time, but without a doubt some pretty damn silly stuff has come out of that genre.

Yes and no. Post rock, art rock is less snobbery surprisingly. I find the ardent stadium rock fans the most up their own arse, but that is because by definition they can't let go. Most people can appreciate music for what it is.

I've found this to be the case for quite a few Rock music fans (not all, of course). In fact there are many groups on Facebook made by fans of Rock music that are designed to slate all other types of music. One I looked at even said something like "XXX genre of music should stop stealing our industry"... WTF?! Since when did the "industry" ONLY belong to Rock music?

And yet there are NO groups that I have seen on Facebook that are designed to slate Rock music.

Now don't get me wrong - I have respect for Rock music and the talent and passion that goes into it. I can't really say I personally enjoy it to listen to, but a few years ago when I was on a Music Technology course at college we were involved in the running of the local Battle Of The Bands event. We had to sound test the bands and I can say I could feel and appreciate the magic that the guys and girls put into their performances, even though I did not like the actual music.

I am a Lover of Electronic music - it is my life and my passion and I make my own music too. It bugs me when Rock music fans say "Dance music is talentless crap and all they do is just push a few buttons on a computer".

To me, Music is a creative and expansive force that is in no way restricted to one genre or one way of doing things. If you have a talent for making music using ANYTHING, then why shouldn't you be allowed to? Why should gifted people be prevented from doing what they love simply because they do not stick to traditional methods? Music is not limited to "tradition"... it is an art form that grows and changes.

End of rant. (as you can see I am obsessive about music).

You're right. Something I've learned as I've gotten older is that art is not as limited as I thought it was when I was a teenager. What kills art is the wrong motivation. I don't just enjoy my kids' drawings because they're done by my kids, but because that is true artistic honesty. I wanted it to look this way, I made it look this way, what do you think? You make the music the way you feel like making it and see if anyone else likes it. They don't have to like it, they don't have to get it, it helps, but they don't have to. That said, I think people who want to work in any art form should study, improve their skills, expand their understanding if at all possible. The more skill you have, the better your chance of creating what you are trying to create successfully. I'm just saying that something simple and honest has the same merit until the individual decides otherwise. There really shouldn't be snobbery from those who think they've risen above the simpler things.

Although I'm being a hypocrite there, I have plenty of art forms that make me want to scream. I don't favor banning them, I just hate 'em is all. Like any hip-hop song that includes the formulaic "When I say ______, you say ______!" Really annoying.

What is prog rock exactly? What are some fairly good examples I could check out? It's hard to know what the snobs are snobbing about when I don't know which songs are prog rock. My problem in recent years is all the subtle sub-categories that have sprung up. I like what I like and listen to what I want, but I can't always categorize it if it's newer than, say... well, sometime in the 50s I think. And I'm only 36! I mean, there's indie and pop and metal and alternative and prog and trance and electronic and for crying out loud can no one standardize these suckers? I have albums listed twice in iTunes as two different genres!

So it's doubly silly to raise yer nose over the musical genre, isn't it? Who knows if it even is what you think it is?

I think, for now, I'd just be happy if they'd stop playing cheap pop music in the grocery store. Or any music at all.

hardcore classic rock fans can be just as bad. They're absolutely positive that the only real musicians in rock come from the classic rock era. The only reason they think this is because they don't ever give the new stuff a chance. I mean, don't get me wrong... I love classic rock. I grew up listening to it because thats what my dad listens to. But there are definately some amazing musicians in newer rock too. A lot of classic rock musicians are overrated simply because they did crazy things with their instruments that nobody had seen before. Now everyone's already seen it all so nobody gets impressed by the same things.

Unfortunately, IrishWhistle, the Dance/Electronic stuff can't really be standardised... even though they are standardised as Dance/Electronic lol. Because all the sub-genres are really quite different, and even the sub-genres have their own sub-genres.

You could just say some is Dance, and some is Electronic. But then you have...

trance ; house ; breakbeats ; down-tempo ; electronica/IDM...

And then Trance has: classic trance ; euphoric trance ; deep trance ; vocal trance ; euro-trance ; goa trance...

House has: deep house ; chicago house ; funky house ; commercial house ; acid house ; electro house ; tribal house

Down-Tempo has: chillout ; trip hop ; lounge

Electronica/IDM has: ambient ; dark ambient ; glitch ; techno ; electro ; noise ; drone ; experimental ; chip

Breaks has: breakbeat ; big beat; drum n bass ; jungle

-----
And there are SO many more sub-sub-genres...

And then of course there are: old skool & rave ; garage & speed garage ; all the hard stuff like hardcore, hard house/trance, happy hardcore.

And then there are the fusion genres, where certain genres cross over: ambient house ; tech-house ; dream house/trance ; folktronica

And then there are the new styles of Dance music: bounce ; bassline ; donk ; fidget...

Rock must have just as many genres, if not more. And they're all so different. I'd say the main ones right now are punk, metal, and alternative/indie. And of each of those styles, I know I like different versions of each, and so do other people. Plus there are rock fusion genres too, which make it so complex that even I probably couldn't name them all.

Exactly! The people who do it right of any genre know what it is their making and when you listen to it, it resonates because you can tell that they not only knew exactly what they were intending to make and did it impeccably but also you can tell that its an authentic inspiration that came from self-knowledge and harnessing the best of themselves. Try-hard bands and musicians literally can't make it happen, no matter what their technical prowess is you'll have people who aren't good with instruments making something much more enjoyable because they have the heart behind it and if its from an angle you can understand it resonates much better.



Its harder for people to get into the loop, true, but it also helps people put into words and communicate what they like. If its one person or another who are already well familiar with a certain sound and one is trying to explain it they can go by bands, try to correlate, talk about record labels they like, but the conversation almost always has to start with having a defined sense of what it is.

Here's the other part - from the creative end. When you have a subgenre it creates a specific structure - a set of rules that tell you within a set of boundaries what you can and can't do. What this does in turn is help people mine better and better creative ideas out of a certain sector of sound and the funny thing in a lot of cases is that it can keep climbing and multiple generations occur as newer people come into the game after falling in love with a subgenre off of what they heard the older or original musicians of that genre building, its not style jocking as much as it is figuring exactly what you like about the genre and what you'd want to sound like. its building, its a science, and many great musicians had epiphanies listening to other people's works in any genre - they take that and apply it as well. That results in more and more powerful and transcending product, goes right back to your point of learn, study, analyze, and find yourself in the music .