Thjis Van Leer on the current state of progressive rock

[Steve983]

Everyone's entitled to an opinion

Exactly. The arguments over what is Prog and what isn't are pretty futile. If people like listening to music of a certain style then that's great, please go ahead and enjoy it. Whether its really 'Prog/Progressive or not doesn't really matter. The chances are though that its likely to be a damn sight more musically interesting/ambitious than most of the stuff in the main stream. I'm of the opinion that pretty much everything has been done in music already so all artists can do is blend existing styles to come up with something new.

[Rarebird]

There are only two kinds of music in the world: What I like and what I don't like. Period. End of paragraph. Everything else is outside my own head and therefore not my problem. There's plenty of music, even new music, for me to enjoy. That's all that matters to me.

I can only agree with that.
Genre names are so limiting. When I was young we talked about either symphonic rock or jazz-rock. Frank Zappa was in a class of his own. I don't think I ever heard his music in a symphonic rock show on the radio, which played bands like: Yes, Genesis, Grobschnitt, Eloy, Renaissance, Barclay James Harvest, Kansas, Saga, Jethro Tull, Jean Luc Ponty (Mystical adventures), King Crimson and others.

A friend of mine loved Frank Zappa, but no other artists that were considered symphonic rock. He once played me some Jean Luc Ponty, but when I bought Aurora, the album he played me, he didn't really like it. He basicly loved Jean Luc Ponty for his Frank Zappa connection.

[progmatist]

I remember when the Palladia network, now MTV Live aired coverage of the High Voltage Festival. It featured Transatlantic on their Whirld Tour. One of the artist statements was from Thijs, in which he concluded with "prog is not dead!" That statement was immediately followed by Focus' performance of Hocus Pocus.