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Somewhere seems to be the Spinal Tap of prog who, if you read the comments on the website.. likes to joke about themselves and the whole prog rock scene. Like this:
And with the very funny t-shirts saying "Death To False Prog". Perhaps and most probably a parody of the metal band Manowar's slogan "Death To False Metal" in the 1980's
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Yes, indeed. After more reading about their slogan, Manowar is mentioned:
Our slogan ”Death to False Prog” is indeed partly a joke. I just found it funny to take what was (and maybe still is) the slogan of overly aggressive cod-piece wearing metalistas Manowar and repurpose it for something as essentially nerdy and non-macho as progressive rock.
But it’s also meant somewhat seriously, to raise the question of why so much of today’s supposed prog sounds so very…average. When prog first began, it was about being unorthodox, about stretching the very boundaries of what popular music could do. It did this in many ways; in structure, timbre, meter, melody and harmony.
These last two are key, because melody and harmony are in many ways the very basis of an actual song. The rest, it can be argued, is arrangement. However, it seems that those arrangement aspects have now become the only real basis for calling something prog. Take a Celine Dion (or – more likely a Foreigner or Iron Maiden) song, throw in a tricky guitar solo in 7/8 after the second chorus and voila: prog. Stitch five of these together, and now you have a so-called Epic.
The bands who were first bundled under the umbrella of ”progressive rock” were quite different from each other, but almost all had it in common that it would be very difficult take a one-minute segment from any one of their songs and assume that you were listening to a regular pop or rock band. They were all – with some minor exceptions, deeply eclectic.
So, if the very nature of prog is to be eclectic, why on Earth does the site ProgArchives have a category called ”Eclectic Prog”? It’s a completely absurd and redundant term, like having the subgenres ”Grooving Funk”, ”Backbeat Reggae” or ”Depressive Emo”.
This is not about purity of genre – genre orthodoxy is often quite limiting – rather it is about purity of terminology. If there are bands who have found a way to marry the structure of prog with mainstream songwriting, more power to them. It seems to appeal to a lot of people, and some of it is certainly very good for what it does. But it bears only a surface resemblance to what the term “progressive rock” was coined to describe. There’s no shame in admitting that, so why does there seem to be such a desperate need out there to hitch these semi-prog bands to a term that only partially describes them?
Neither is it about quality. Music can be awful and still be prog, and it can be incredibly good without having a hint of progginess to it. And when I see that Magnum is playing the Prog Stage at the High Voltage festival, I am reminded that music can be both terrible and not prog at all