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How are Pink Floyd considered PROG rock?
- Thread starter MidnightRunner
- Start date
Beat me to it...
Prog might have been a mutation of psych/acid, but not the same thing, and for a spell, there was plenty of trippy stuff on Top 40 hits radio. IB and VF often get pegged as metal or proto-metal, which I never got; to me that would be more like Blue Cheer or even Steppenwolf, although there is the eternal Zep/Sabbath debate.
Someone showing their age again.
It was never called "prog" back in the day. No one ever said "prog" until much later. It was "progressive rock" because the musicality was progressing in complexity from the things that came before, and a lot of music from that era had progressive elements.
It had zero to do with popularity, though much of it remained unpopular. But bands like Yes had charting hits in the 70's with Roundabout, And You and I. I don't think anyone would dispute that they are a "prog" band.
It was never called "prog" back in the day. No one ever said "prog" until much later. It was "progressive rock" because the musicality was progressing in complexity from the things that came before, and a lot of music from that era had progressive elements.
It had zero to do with popularity, though much of it remained unpopular. But bands like Yes had charting hits in the 70's with Roundabout, And You and I. I don't think anyone would dispute that they are a "prog" band.
I would say back in the day they fit in with all the other progressive bands. They were not as musically complex, but they were writing music that was more free and expressive in its format, and not the typical formulaic, three-minute songs that were designed to be radio-friendly.I'd certainly consider David Gilmour a virtuoso...on a good day, anyway.
Apart from that, @MidnightRunner , I'm wondering who says they ARE prog rock?
That poll means 3x more people find PF prog than Genesis
In this instance, I have to agree with you, though I often agree with Michedelic.
There was simply too much going on, and too many various sounds happening and influencing each other, to draw neat divisions around much of this music. Michedelic is right to point out the various psychedelic roots and the more classical-oriented Canterbury roots, but all of this music was influencing the others simultaneously in one rather glorious explosion of creativity. Where do you put Daevid Allen's Gong, for example, with all of Moerlin's jazzy influence?
If we look at why and how we ended up hearing this music, the picture is a little simpler. The underground stations of the day played it all. Some of them started labeling themselves "progressive" stations because they played music that was a progression out of the standard AM radio fare. To me that is where the concept of progressive music lies - it was an amalgam of all these non-standard influences happening in the late 60's throughout the seventies and into the very early 80's before it all became corporate.
That is because most people only know the Phil Collins fronted era of Genesis, which was massively commercial.
It's a spectrum and you can't pin "progressive rock" to one thing. Much like "jazz fusion". Better to listen without the labels and just like what you like.
- Jan 1, 2014
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- Decendant from the Clovis culture. "Emitting that wonderful bass effect since 1970".
In most of the interviews I've ever read with members of PF, they typically referred to themselves as a Pop band (context clues suggest that 'pop' being more or less the same as we might use 'rock' today). I do also remember reading that they did not care for an early descriptive term for the band: 'space rock' - which was coined I think after Astronomy Domine was released. I think that Space Rock probably shares some of the same connotations as psychedelic music and maybe even Prog - so I take that to mean that PF themselves probably didn't consider themselves Prog, Space, Psychedelic, or anything else other than a straight ahead rock band.
Now I will balance this by saying that music is in the ear of the beholder. So regardless of what gilmour says, it might sound perfectly prog to some.
For me? There is no doubt that the heyday of the band includes tons of sound layers and sound effects and all sorts of things that give a deep textured richness to the music, but the structure of the songs are kind of straight ahead. To me they sort of occupy this area that's somewhere between Led Zeppelin and David Bowie and the true prog bands. just my take though. I don't spend too much time worrying about the genre.
Now I will balance this by saying that music is in the ear of the beholder. So regardless of what gilmour says, it might sound perfectly prog to some.
For me? There is no doubt that the heyday of the band includes tons of sound layers and sound effects and all sorts of things that give a deep textured richness to the music, but the structure of the songs are kind of straight ahead. To me they sort of occupy this area that's somewhere between Led Zeppelin and David Bowie and the true prog bands. just my take though. I don't spend too much time worrying about the genre.
Which means PF wouldn’t be ‘prog’ after all, just rock(nominally), albeit done their way.
I always thought progressive rock had more to do with how the music progressed as far as movements within the piece. That is why I never questioned if bands like YES were progressive because of the way their songs progressed. I would throw a lot of huge rock acts into that category but given the range and awareness of mental issues Pink Floyd has displayed through an awesome career I think the only label I could give them is one generic for rock. Otherwise I say they defy definition for a category.
kind of my point, that PF also was massively commercial later.
I think when these bands were active, they were just doing their own thing
I appreciate that thing, sans labels or paradigms
It means progressive rock doesn't exist at all and everything played with guitars that isn't jazz or classical is rock. Taken one step further, genre doesn't exist and we're all just vibrations of the universe.
...or any thing, the way some folks toss around the term
This really gets down to a semantic issue: "Progressive rock" as a phrase means (at least) one thing as a logical understanding of the definitions of those two words when combined. But it -- and its shortened form "prog-rock" -- has come to mean something else entirely, because it now represents a genre of music that may have actually been "progressive" at one time, but now if it is, it only is due to coincidence. "Prog-Rock" the genre is not by definition rock that is progressive; now it's just music that conforms to the tropes that grew out of the original bands that were considered "progressive" ~40-odd years ago.
Yes, but the limited knowledge of a subset of poll respondents only means that the poll is flawed, not that the label is wrong.
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