"Every Home Is Wired":
2 -- The Progressive Rock Subculture and the Net
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Progressive Rock and the Traditional Media
With Prog such a constantly changing, internally heterogeneous and contradictory genre, it is hardly surprising that (except during its heyday in the early 1970s) it has found little favour with the traditional music media. Print, radio and TV, as limited-bandwidth mass media, are inherently favouring the mainstream, as we have seen, and they have thus generally preferred to cover the music and artists of pop and rock that are easily classifiable and are distinguished through dominant personalities, rather than concepts, philosophies and ideologies. Additionally, Prog's inherent hybridity is also criticised by media often favouring the idea of 'honest' and 'straightforward' rock. Bit 39
Where Progressive Rock albums are reviewed, the genre is often regarded with open hatred: Prog fans still recall a 'review' of an album by ex-Yes and ex-Genesis guitarists Steve Howe and Steve Hackett (operating under the band name 'GTR'), merely consisting of the unequivocal three letters 'SHT'; a 'review' of the 1994 Yes album Talk simply just read "Shut up". Longer reviews are often similarly critical, usually focussing on what are seen as pompous and pretentious tendencies in the music, and overly esoteric and fanciful lyrics. It can be inferred that this is done partly out of cynicism towards countercultural ideals -- a criticism of Prog thus comes to stand for a criticism of the naïve, overreaching and failed elements of hippie culture itself, possibly from reviewers who are themselves disgruntled ex-hippies.22 Macan believes that because of these attacks many recent bands' music is purely instrumental to avoid the traditional Prog lyrics idiom that "became so closely associated with a specific type of subject matter" (212); however, this ignores the instrumental focus of some earlier Prog, and the lyrics of many more recent bands.23 Bit 40

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© 1998 Axel Bruns