A lot of this stuff keeps getting reissued with remastering and bonus tracks. King Crimson is releasing a 20 cd box of live dates of “Starless and Bible Black” after a similar one for “Red” last year. They have a whole bunch of other concerts for download and cd on their website. Probably not a large audience, but a lot of obsessive ones.
Well, I’m still a pretty big fan of the genre (I used to be a HUGE fan of the genre), but if I had to explain why so many people HATE it, I’d say it’s this:
If you don’t like “Satisfaction” or “Ticket to Ride” or “Proud Mary,” well, no problem. It’s over in 2 or 3 minutes. You can tolerate a bad song that long. You don’t even bother switching radio stations.
But if you don’t like Yes’ “And You and I” or Genesis’ “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight” or King Crimson’s “In the Court of the Crimson King”… well, those songs go on for a looooong time. Long enough to drive you NUTS while you’re waiting for something else to come on the radio.
Heh, the notion of radio driving music tastes is starting to look as dated as Prog. 
Mind you, I love both Prog and radio myself … but then, I am old. 
I must be much older because I don’t listen to the radio in the car–in typical geezer fashion, I’m listening for strange sounds from the car itself; trying to nip an expensive repair in the bud. Almost never works.
There are still plenty of prog artists out there that are still putting out great music.
Wobbler
White Willow
Kerrs Pink
Cairo
Camel
Flamborough Head
Glass Hammer
Happy the Man
Steve Hackett
…just to name a few.
I grew up in the late 70s and listened to a lot of prog rock, starting with Yes and Rush and Kansas and later getting into Genesis, ELP, King Crimson, etc. Also some of the more obscure bands like Camel, Nektar, and Triumvirat (aka the German ELP). What about Wishbone Ash, would they be considered prog? Like anything else, there is both good and bad, but yes I still listen to a lot of that stuff.
Obligatory link to the “rules” of prog rock. Not all of them are gems, but some are damn funny.
I absolutely agree. Punk was a reaction to the transition of rock from the kid’s music to being a vast business driven stadium experience. The new kids (the Punks) despised Bowie, Led Zeppelin, the Stones etc because they’d sold out to the Man.
But I still like Karn Evil.
Forgive me for eliding your post because I think you touch the heart of the matter. Progressive rock split off to a higher calling and eventually the creative energy ran out. I’m heartened to know it still carries on.
At this moment I am listening to Pavlov’s Dog which works for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OejwvdsNE0Q&list=PLzVQyayVebOBBf_yCO3VkRKJGD_yLratp
I should add that Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick is another prog-rock curiosity which is clutched closely to this febrile chest. In New Zealand.
I’m a little surprised that no one in this thread has yet advanced the theory that the reason prog hasn’t held up is that its listeners aren’t on the same drugs they were on back in the seventies. 
I’ve been reading this thread with interest. Prog is one of those things that I sorta want to like (as I’m attracted to the idea of ambitious, complex rock with classical influences and great musicianship), but I’ve never actually gotten into it, at least in its pure form.
From 3 minute pop songs to something on a par artistically with classical music, more or less.
Whether it managed that (or whether that’s even a progression) is another debate.
The prog rock of the 70s is well before my time, but I grew up with my parents listening to some of it and acquired a taste for some of it. As a fan of the more underground metal and rock scene, I can also say that prog rock and prog metal are alive and well today. That said, I’m of the opinion that if a band is still doing the same sound from 40 years ago, it’s not really fair to call it progressive anymore, except maybe in the “what’s old is new” sort of way.
For instance, over the last couple of years, several metal bands have released albums in the style of the 70s prog rock movement, not just as a continuation of whatever they were doing, but even using old instruments and having it mastered to sound like it was playing on vinyl even off a CD. As it was actually something considerably different to what they had been doing, I think it’s still fair to call it progressive, but if they stick to it, I still end up thinking about it as 70s prog, rather than actual progressive rock.
In fact, I see it a lot in other ways. For instance, I saw Dream Theater mentioned up thread, and they’re often regarded as THE (or one of the biggest) progressive metal bands, and while I like them a lot, their sound hasn’t really changed all that much. It’s definitely got roots in the 70s prog rock movement, but they’re not meaningfully progressing anything. Meanwhile, there’s other bands that get labeled as progressive precisely because they’re always experimenting and over a lengthy career there’s a distinct evolution in their sound.
Still, I can enjoy listening to a fair amount of 70s prog rock bands and, despite that most of my tastes are in metal, and the heavier subgenres particularly recently, my favorite album of last year (Ayreon’s The Theory of Everything) and my current favorite so far this year (Anathema’s Distant Satelites) have both been very firmly prog rock/metal. Hell, Arjen even had members of Yes, Genesis, and ELP among the guest musicians on The Theory of Everything. And both albums have generally gotten glowing reviews as well, so I’m far from alone in liking it.
Listen to White Willow’sIgnis Fatuus.
Prog had the best album covers hands down. No other genre has ever come close.
Thick As A Brick.
Just sayin.
The first three or four minutes of “Close to the Edge” is totally uncompelling nonsense to me, too, and I know a lot of people who hate it for just having heard the (normal-song-length) intro, but after that the song morphs into a sonic masterpiece that will stay with you. Might take repeated listening, headphones and all, as it did with me.
I was born the year Punk Rock hit, but I’ve always listened to Prog Rock, mostly from pre-'77. Plenty of introverted noodling there, but also incredibly heavy riffage, driving complexity and atmospheres (plural). When the mood hits, other forms of rock (Metal included) just sound too safe and by-the-numbers to have the desired effect.
Me too. I’ve also started to collect Annie Haslam’s paintings.
I’m a massive YES fan. Have been since the early 1970’s. Does their work hold up? Well. The work produced during their Golden Era does. Some of the later work does. 90125 does, at least for me, though it’s really a Trevor Rabin album. Solid writer, that fellow there. Interesting fit into YES, to be sure.
The comment above about how it was pop musicians getting to flex their classical chops has always seemed spot-on to me. Various documentary DVD’s on YES that I own support this.
Rick Wakeman especially had formal church and conservatory training. He, along with Chris Squire, Bill Bruford, Steve Howe and others drew upon their knowledge of classical form in their compositions. While I wouldn’t argue that YES music is classical music, there is form and structure to some of their works that is directly influenced by classical form.
In the early 1980’s, I lived with a woman taking her Masters in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College. She’d spent her youth and teen years with Ballet West, rising to Prima status. Her classical ballet chops were just terrifying. Having a strong classical foundation didn’t stop her from exploring every other kind of dance. But it is unquestionable that when I watched her dance with others, it was quite apparent who had classical ballet in their background and who did not. So it has always seemed with YES. The members with an awareness of structure did contribute to the Golden Era. On the very much OTHER hand, the 90125 era was dominated by rhythm over melody. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a strong rhythm section.
Not to overly hijack this thread, but it does seem to me that a band that’s very long-lived like YES and plenty of other bands that still push out an album now and then, are usually regarded as having done their best work decades ago. Is some of the newest YES work interesting? Well, I guess so. But none of the tracks on their new album light me up. Is this because they are not deeply embedded note for note and nuance for nuance as are, say, Heart of the Sunrise? Very likely. ( This video clip is from their “Union” tour. This tour included several iterations of YES on the same stage. Egos galore. They transcended the egos and put up a very interesting evening of music from several YES eras. Two lead guitars, two keyboards, two drum sets. Oye. )
But I truly think many artists in the genre of …well… most popular music… tend to blow their load by the time they’re about 35.
The very talented and creative ones can alter genres, explore new song lengths, etc. Witness 90125, or Billy Joel’s late 1980 into 1990’s work. Most go stale or keep recycling early works. Now, fair to say, YES is guilty of the recycling. Their current tour is comprised of entire performances of “Close To The Edge” and “Fragile”, with a few new songs thrown in. A crowd-please, I would guess. And yet… they ARE making new music and it is selling to the fan base. Rare, I think for a Prog Rock era band at this point.
( I have a deep loyalty to Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman, so I won’t be seeing them this go 'round… )
I wander into this fully prepared to have someone turn me around and gently push me back out of the thread. That being said…
I was born in '75 and grew up listening to a very different range of music (R&B, jazz and rap, primarily). It wasn’t until I was in my early 20s that I was exposed to Pink Floyd — and even then, only DSotM and The Wall, but I’m rather fond of both albums. I have heard of many of the other bands referenced in this thread, but not truly familiar with them at all.
So is someone here patient enough to explain to the likes of me why Pink Floyd is hated and/or not considered representative of prog rock by you folks?
For me, Floyd are prog but of a very different kind to Yes, Genesis, ELP, King Crimson, etc.–very little influence from European classical music traditions and much more rooted in the blues. And this is evident in how the other bands all seemed to intermingle in a way that never included Floyd.
The Wall is (IMHO) kind of prog-lite a la Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds or Bat Out of Hell. But Atom Heart Mother, Meddle and Wish You Were Here are all genuine prog.
Pink Floyd is hated because:
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People love to put down the popular. “Oh, you like them?”
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Frakking everybody had Dark Side of the Moon.
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They were popular enough that most people had heard of them, which made 1) inevitable.
The ironic thing (a la the Floyd posts above) about that is that soon after the punk revolution exploded out, a lot of (yes) post-punk bands ended up pushing musical boundaries left and right. No, they might not have been making 20 minute long epics about mushrooms or elves, but they were definitely doing a lot of stuff no less complex than anything from the heyday of prog. Complex still, but in different ways.