Originally Posted by: Vegas WierdoFor the longest time I thought of "progressive" as something that costs tremendous amounts of $$$ to produce and where each part of each track has to be lain down 500 times to attain perfection; where all the songs are 20 minutes of precision noodling and are meant largely to showcase the musical education and skill of primadonna virtuosos. I always have pictured acts like Yes, or Emerson Lake & Palmer, who were on some mission trying to reform rock 'n' roll into something with the prestige and standards of classical or avant-garde jazz. And of course, the burnt-out cokehead mastermind behind it all usually drives the whole enterprise into the ground with his neurotic perfectionism and grandiose ego, and you see it all rehashed on Vh1's "Behind the Music."

I also have this flashback to Eddie Van Halen playing his guitar with a violin bow, underwater next to a coral reef while dolphins were swimming around. Was that him? Who was that? I remember being 9 years old and seeing it on MTV or something. It was one of those guys from back in the mid-late 1980s. Maybe it was Randy Rhodes? I don't remember....

Well, needless to say, I came up on hardcore punk rock and down-and-dirty thrash metal and the like... so to me "progressive" was always a dirty word that equated to overproduced, overdone, insufferable and tedious. On the other hand, bands that were avant-garde and experimental in their early heydays such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fugazi, Public Image Ltd., etc. were in my mind always known as "post-punk", "indie rock" (back in the 1980s and early 1990s before it meant what it seems to mean today), or "alternative rock", all of which had far, far more in common with the Sex Pistols or Siouxsie and the Banshees than they did with Pink Floyd or Yes. Then you had these loony weirdos from the 1960s like Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, 13th Floor Elevators, etc. who were in a category all their own.

Well, I've branched out since then. I'd rather chew glass than listen to Emerson, Lake & Palmer... Yes, the Grateful Dead or the Eagles or whoever... and I can only take so much of Dream Theater or Queensryche even though I'm a lifelong metalhead, but I now love King Crimson after having discovered them after all these years... and they don't get any more virtuosic, perfectionist, or egotistical than Mr. Robert Fripp. Some of this "neo-prog" stuff coming out these days like Air (the French guys) is pretty good.

Also, Iron Maiden and 1980s Metallica (everything before the Black Album) have always been A-1 in my book, and they're just as neo-classical or progressive as they are punk rock. Maiden came around with the New Wave of British Metal with Judas Priest and the like, right around when the Damned were tearing up London; Metallica came around in the California hardcore thrash punk scenes of L.A. and San Francisco and were just as influenced by the Misfits, Bad Brains, and Black Flag as they were by Ritchie Blackmore or Joe Satriani (Kirk Hammet's guitar teacher).

As far as the Nordic black metal type stuff goes... when it's like 20 minutes long with cellos and operatic backing vocals and they're doing endless arpeggios that take 10 years to learn... I can only take so much. I prefer good old fashioned 40 second grindcore bash-your-brains-out vomit. :D

But, the long and the short of it is... the two sides, punk/thrash/noise and neo-classical/progressive can certainly get along.

Crap! I'm gonna be late for work! :eek:

You seem to have a indepth, vast knowledge of musical forms, but I worry about your personal safety should a certain hardcore, sycoticlly loyal, grass roots Iron Maiden fan base see the words progressive/ and punk in the same sentence with their beloved Ground breaking metal band. I mean to me a word is just a word, but there are limits,{example} Carmin electra, and gross, nasty, and ugly are terms that just wont work together due to the dynamic unchangable laws of physics + quantem mechanics surounded by electrostatic pulses of imposibility to the highest power. Now the **** is getting deep! No, dude I am just hazing you a little. You may very well here a progessivlly intoxicating hint of punkish flavor deep down in the boweles of Maidens molten inner core, I just wouldent go public deep into indian territory without the much needed research into the dynamics around metals newist deadly infections known as,{ Progessive Punk Pox }, or PPP. I hope theres a cure, I fear cross contamination due to my mear touching of the subject.