What is prog and does it exist today?

[jazzpiano88]

I was displeased with the latest Yes, which seems more Regressive.   The Orchestral parts are really out of place and the vocals are like a Disneyland production. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhzKdB6ftsc

 

[KuruPrionz]

On 11/25/2022 at 12:52 AM, CyberGene said:

I started listening to Rush today and got reminded why I have mixed feelings about them and most progressive rock bands: the high-pitched (even squeaky) male vocals. It’s also the reason why I absolutely adore the sound of Porcupine Tree but can’t stand them for longer due to the vocal. Same with Dream Theater, Yes and many others. 
 

Ate there any prog rock bands with darker (not growl though!) male vocals?

 

P.S. Maybe I’m not bothered as much by the high pitch as I am by the vocal being too in your face and prominent. As a reference I love how Roger Waters and David Gilmour sing, they are not any virtuoso singers and I might even go as far as to say they are probably slightly lame as singers but it just blends perfectly with the music. 

One of many reasons I like Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Greg Lake was a great singer and not all squeaky. 

I'm with ya, Geddy sounds like somebody stepped on the cat's tail and Jon Anderson is smoother but annoying and his lyrics make no sense. 

 

I saw both ELP and Yes twice, as a whole I preferred ELP although it's not possible to overlook Steve Howe or Chris Squire and their virtuosity. 

A great band that somehow doesn't seem to be regarded as prog is the Dregs, no singer that I can recall but they were all monster players. 

[jazzpiano88]

23 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

One of many reasons I like Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Greg Lake was a great singer and not all squeaky. 

I'm with ya, Geddy sounds like somebody stepped on the cat's tail and Jon Anderson is smoother but annoying and his lyrics make no sense. 

 

I saw both ELP and Yes twice, as a whole I preferred ELP although it's not possible to overlook Steve Howe or Chris Squire and their virtuosity. 

A great band that somehow doesn't seem to be regarded as prog is the Dregs, no singer that I can recall but they were all monster players. 

 

Cat's Tail?  When you put it like that it tells me you're a superficial Rush listener.  Here's one of the better Rush songs composition wise as well, esp in the last half leading into the guitar solo.  And no Cat's tail.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDM8fXhRdWs

 

[KuruPrionz]

Just now, JazzPiano88 said:

 

Cat's Tail?  When you put it like that it tells me you're a superficial Rush listener.  Here's one of the better Rush songs composition wise as well, esp in the last half leading into the guitar solo.  And no Cat's tail.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDM8fXhRdWs

 

Fair enough, I listened to your link, all the way through with headphones on and my full attention. 

Geddy sounds like a tortured animal, or he would if he wasn't singing such infantile lyrics - that makes him sound like a tortured imbecile

. 

The band is incredibly tight, in the most boringly "perfect" possible way. Reminds me of a porcelain reproduction of a plate of food, perfect, shiny and inedible. 

I'm not a "superficial" Rush listener, I dislike them, always have and always will. Their music affects me the wrong way. 

I can't explain it, I just hate it - especially the sound of Geddy's vocals but there's nothing there that "saves" it for me. 

 

We probably both like and dislike different things, I'm OK with you liking Rush if that's what you're saying, if fact I'd say you are luckier than I am. 😇

[bill5]

4 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

A great band that somehow doesn't seem to be regarded as prog is the Dregs, no singer that I can recall but they were all monster players. 

aka the Dixie Dregs.....calling them not prog is rather laughable. "Prog" and eclectic as hell. Having one of the greatest guitarists of all time doesn't hurt lol 

[AnotherScott]

On 11/10/2022 at 12:23 PM, GRollins said:

Another Scott,

You’re close to a point that I have made before—that prog filled arenas and got airplay because the economy was in the doldrums in the ‘70s. As the economy heated up, prog fell out of favor because people began seeking more frivolous music that they could dance to. Prog demands attention from the listener, dance music doesn’t.

 

I don't think it was the economy... I think it was more a pendulum swing. Starting largely with the Beatles and 60s psychedelic stuff, popular "rock and roll" started getting increasingly experimental and complicated. But as it got more complicated (and yes, less danceable), I think pushback emerged, especially from the generation growing up "behind" those who grew up with that 60s foundation. Kids wanted to dance, and people weren't making dance music anymore! Hence the success of disco. Teens wanted an outlet for their teenage angst (and garage bands wanted to actually be able to PLAY the songs they liked without having to have music degrees), hence the success of punk. These things were reactions to the complicated musical state of affairs that had grown out of the music of the previous generation, who DID grow up with plenty of simple catchy songs they could dance to with lyrics they could relate to, while those growing up a decade later were hearing a bunch of "pretentious" stuff they didn't connect with, so they were primed to gravitate to the opposite when it was presented.

 

On 11/12/2022 at 12:15 AM, GRollins said:

I don't claim to have a 24 carat definition for prog. I'm the guy who says (tongue only partly in cheek) it's a label people put on music that doesn't fit anywhere else. Even now, after all these years of people insisting that Tull belongs in the same bin as Yes, I cannot for the life of me hear common ground between those two bands. I love them both, but similar in any way? Nah. The only explanation is that prog is the receptacle for unclassifiable music. If I'm right, then by definition a definition is impossible, which makes it difficult to include or exclude a given specimen; prog is in the ear of the beholder.

 

Yes, that's often been my description as well. It's the LACK of a set of defining characteristics that most makes progressive rock different from other popular genres. Your idea of a list of things that prog is likely to have and iconoclast's idea of a list of things that add or remove points may be about as close as we can get to "defining."

 

(That said, there is common ground between Tull and Yes, in things like the use of odd time signatures/rhythms, non-standard song structures/lengths, lyrics about things other than love/heartbreak, extended composed/structured instrumental sections, emphasis on keyboards as much as guitars, lots of chords or numerous different chord patterns within a song...)

 

On 11/12/2022 at 5:02 PM, K K said:

 If ELP is a progressive band, therefore their Love Beach album is as well ?

 

Love Beach is a progressive album, because the entire "second side" is a suite with many proggy elements.

 

That said, it is possible for the same band to have some albums that are progressive rock, and others that are not. Tull went back and forth a bunch.

 

On 11/25/2022 at 3:52 AM, CyberGene said:

I started listening to Rush today and got reminded why I have mixed feelings about them and most progressive rock bands: the high-pitched (even squeaky) male vocals. It’s also the reason why I absolutely adore the sound of Porcupine Tree but can’t stand them for longer due to the vocal. Same with Dream Theater, Yes and many others. 
 

Ate there any prog rock bands with darker (not growl though!) male vocals?

 

Plenty. But just to name a few of the most well-known ones...

 

I'll first mention Peter Gabriel in early Genesis... mentioned first because, for some reason, many later prog bands had singers who, to one extent or another, sound somewhat like that. There may well be more of those voices than the "squeaky" ones.

 

Next, I'll mention John Wetton, both because of his prog significance (e.g. King Crimson, U.K., Asia) and because of how much I liked his voice. ;-)

 

And continuing the recurring Jethro Tull theme of this post, there's Ian Anderson.

 

On 11/13/2022 at 10:44 PM, KuruPrionz said:

OK, let's see if this stretches some brains.

Happy Jack by The Who, written in November 1966.

Pre-Prog? Prototypical Prog Pop? No keyboards, interesting time signatures, intense drumming and spirited harmonies. Plus a cool story. 

 

The Who was always interesting and often had proggy elements.... In fact, to me, Tommy, Who's Next, Quadrophenia, and Who Are You are arguably prog rock albums.

 

On 11/25/2022 at 3:52 AM, CyberGene said:

 

P.S. Maybe I’m not bothered as much by the high pitch as I am by the vocal being too in your face and prominent.

 

Interesting, I've had the opposite perspective. In a typical radio pop song, the lead vocal is usually way out front, the instrumental stuff is there to support the vocal. In prog, it is more likely that the instrumental stuff is very highly featured, and vocal tends to not dominate the mix quite as much. That's been my impression, anyway.

 

On 11/25/2022 at 3:52 AM, CyberGene said:

As a reference I love how Roger Waters and David Gilmour sing, they are not any virtuoso singers and I might even go as far as to say they are probably slightly lame as singers but it just blends perfectly with the music. 

 

There are a number of vocalists who may be an acquired taste. Peter Hammill of Van Der Graff Generator and Dave Cousins of Strawbs come to mind.

 

 

 

[jazzpiano88]

12 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

Fair enough, I listened to your link, all the way through with headphones on and my full attention. 

Geddy sounds like a tortured animal, or he would if he wasn't singing such infantile lyrics - that makes him sound like a tortured imbecile

. 

The band is incredibly tight, in the most boringly "perfect" possible way. Reminds me of a porcelain reproduction of a plate of food, perfect, shiny and inedible. 

I'm not a "superficial" Rush listener, I dislike them, always have and always will. Their music affects me the wrong way. 

I can't explain it, I just hate it - especially the sound of Geddy's vocals but there's nothing there that "saves" it for me. 

 

We probably both like and dislike different things, I'm OK with you liking Rush if that's what you're saying, if fact I'd say you are luckier than I am. 😇

 

Yep, agree we like different things  (although we do both like the Dregs).  

[GRollins]

AnotherScott,

Sorry, but I backed away from this thread a page or two back when people started saying that anything and everything was prog. While I agree that a good, concise definition will be difficult to achieve, I fail to see how a vague, hand-waving, airy, "I feel like the wind was blowing from prog-land the day they wrote this song, so it's prog," approach accomplishes anything at all. In the absence of a rigorous test for prog, people are going to drag in pretty much everything under the sun...at which point I realized that this thread wasn't going to be productive for me.

 

That said, your point about time signatures, etc. linking Tull and Yes makes sense to me.

 

Grey

[KuruPrionz]

17 hours ago, bill5 said:

aka the Dixie Dregs.....calling them not prog is rather laughable. "Prog" and eclectic as hell. Having one of the greatest guitarists of all time doesn't hurt lol 

I saw them as the Dixie Dregs and again as the Dregs, stellar at both shows. Yes, Steve Morse is a monster guitarist. No slouches in that band, everybody was stellar. 

[Iconoclast]

On 11/30/2022 at 12:19 AM, bill5 said:

aka the Dixie Dregs.....calling them not prog is rather laughable. "Prog" and eclectic as hell. Having one of the greatest guitarists of all time doesn't hurt lol 

Speaking as an enormous fan of Steve Morse and the Dreggs, I don't know that you can truly call the Dreggs prog simply because of a lack of a singer. If they had a vocalist whose lyrical themes also met kind of a prog standard then yes, totally prog.  But I'd have to put them more in a fusion category with other bands that were in the OP's videos that are more accurately characterized as fusion. Are we splitting hairs here? Probably.

An interesting comparison: Here's 2 Steve Morse pieces, 1 w/vocals and 1 instrumental. They're both VERY intense musically but would you call one fusion and one prog? Or are they both Prog?  Infinite Fire (Flying Colors) vs The Odyssey (The Dreggs)   (As an ironic aside, Flying Colors actually performed The Odyssey during their first tour)

 

 

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Iconoclast said:

Speaking as an enormous fan of Steve Morse and the Dreggs, I don't know that you can truly call the Dreggs prog simply because of a lack of a singer. If they had a vocalist whose lyrical themes also met kind of a prog standard then yes, totally prog.  But I'd have to put them more in a fusion category with other bands that were in the OP's videos that are more accurately characterized as fusion. Are we splitting hairs here? Probably.

An interesting comparison: Here's 2 Steve Morse pieces, 1 w/vocals and 1 instrumental. They're both VERY intense musically but would you call one fusion and one prog? Or are they both Prog?  Infinite Fire (Flying Colors) vs The Odyssey (The Dreggs)   (As an ironic aside, Flying Colors actually performed The Odyssey during their first tour)

 

 

Are you saying that Emerson, Lake & Palmer's instrumentals are fusion and not prog?

Just curious. 

[Iconoclast]

41 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

Are you saying that Emerson, Lake & Palmer's instrumentals are fusion and not prog?

Just curious. 

I think I'm more identifying Prog as being associated with the act or album rather than a particular piece of music.  I think an album or act that had NO singer on it at all would be difficult to categorize as prog.

If you say "this band had one song that was proggy" then you've opened up the definition to include almost anyone. Conversely, no widely accepted "prog artist" has recorded exclusively prog. Benny the Bouncer for example.

I guess it's like the

definition of porn vs art; I know the difference when I see it.

[KuruPrionz]

9 hours ago, Iconoclast said:

I think I'm more identifying Prog as being associated with the act or album rather than a particular piece of music.  I think an album or act that had NO singer on it at all would be difficult to categorize as prog.

If you say "this band had one song that was proggy" then you've opened up the definition to include almost anyone. Conversely, no widely accepted "prog artist" has recorded exclusively prog. Benny the Bouncer for example.

I guess it's like the

definition of porn vs art; I know the difference when I see it.

I don't find things so cut and dried, there are lots of gray areas on my understanding of various musics. 

Which is why I mentioned above that I think Happy Jack by the Who may very well be the first "pre-prog" pop song to hit the radio waves. 

Because let's face it, prog evolved, it didn't just suddenly exist. 

 

There is another song that came out in 1979, well after prog was in full swing and none of the other songs on the album are like it. The album was popular and had a hit on it. 

It does have a singer. I played it in a band I was in long ago and far away. Googling the song title and the time signature has internet posters saying it is in 7/4 time or 7/16 time or alternating 4/4 and 5/4 time and that's to say nothing of the breaks. I don't consider it prog but it was far from the usual 4/4 rock and roll formula and perhaps was influenced by prog. 

 

In my world there are variants. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjXnhT3jXM4

 

[Tusker]

When it comes to labels I may have even more grey areas than you Kuru. Vive la difference…

 

My view is that these labels are NOT musically exclusive like a “personal” name. If two people are named John in a tight knit group, one of those Johns is going to get renamed, just to avoid confusion. That’s understandable.

 

Take a “role” name however and there is a lot more flexibility. Each of us may be a father and a brother and one label doesn’t exclude the other. By this way of reasoning, a piece of music can be prog and fusion at the same time. This is why I believe Andy Edwards had so much fun with his “The 10 Greatest PROG albums...that are actually JAZZ FUSION albums!” Which I linked to earlier.

 

When it comes to “role” names, some are highly managed. A person cannot easily call herself a lawyer without sitting for a bar exam, regulated by a state governing bodies.

 

However in matters of culture and art, no presiding body has been defined which has the authority to legitimize labels. We can understand that others may hear connections in the music that we don’t and vice versa. This doesn’t mean that no standards exist. It just means that there will be as you well put it… shades of grey.

[CyberGene]

This is totally subjective but my own understanding is fusion is predominantly instrumental and is part of the (wider) jazz world, whereas “prog” is closer to rock than jazz and while not strictly requiring vocals is still more often associated with (rock) vocals. 

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Tusker said:

When it comes to labels I may have even more grey areas than you Kuru. Vive la difference…

 

My view is that these labels are NOT musically exclusive like a “personal” name. If two people are named John in a tight knit group, one of those Johns is going to get renamed, just to avoid confusion. That’s understandable.

 

Take a “role” name however and there is a lot more flexibility. Each of us may be a father and a brother and one label doesn’t exclude the other. By this way of reasoning, a piece of music can be prog and fusion at the same time. This is why I believe Andy Edwards had so much fun with his “The 10 Greatest PROG albums...that are actually JAZZ FUSION albums!” Which I linked to earlier.

 

When it comes to “role” names, some are highly managed. A person cannot easily call herself a lawyer without sitting for a bar exam, regulated by a state governing bodies.

 

However in matters of culture and art, no presiding body has been defined which has the authority to legitimize labels. We can understand that others may hear connections in the music that we don’t and vice versa. This doesn’t mean that no standards exist. It just means that there will be as you well put it… shades of grey.

Certainly, one's exposure level can make a difference. 
LOTS of people only know Emerson, Lake and Palmer for their one big hit on the radio, Lucky Man. It isn't prog, not in the slightest. I saw them twice, they were prog.

If you only heard Lucky Man you wouldn't think of them in a prog context at all. Definitely a gray area, no?

 

On the other hand, Yes got songs up the charts on the radio that are definitely prog (Roundabout still gets play on "Classic Rock" radio. I saw them twice as well, I wish I liked the singer and lyricist better but I don't. Still amazing to watch the band play, stellar musicians by any measure. 

[jazzpiano88]

As long as he's still playing this in his shows, it still exists.

I think it's one of the best of all time (FFAF).

 

 

[EricBarker]

I've always considered the earliest prog concept album to be "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky (1874). Obviously, this hasn't been lost on anyone from ELP to Robert Normandeu (electroacoustic composer). If you take away the fact that the arrangement is solo piano or (more famously) orchestra, it's fricking progrock! It's even "METAL" at times (Baba Yaga & Bydlo). Rock hadn't even been invented yet, but Mussorgsky lived in a very cosmopolitan sphere in which he took in influences from all over Europe and Northern Africa, and somehow he created works that even sound bluesy at times, the tritone isn't lost on the sonofabitch.

What's more, is that it was a direct inspiration to early progrock composers, along with later works like The Planets (Holst), and Rite of Spring (Stravinsky). But none of them quite so directly as Mussorgsky. Maybe it's crazy to say it, but if you draw a progrock tree, I think it needs to start with, or at least footnote the fat Russian bastard!

[AnotherScott]

On 12/3/2022 at 4:06 PM, Iconoclast said:

I think an album or act that had NO singer on it at all would be difficult to categorize as prog.

My favorite prog rock albums that are entirely--or almost entirely--instrumental
 

Hatfield and the North: Hatfield and the North 

Focus: Focus 3 (also, Moving Waves) 

Gryphon: Red Queen to Gryphon 3 

Synergy: Electronic Realizations For Rock Orchestra 

Bo Hansson: Lord of the Rings 

Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells 

Camel: The Snow Goose

 

The first one is the only one that I think could make any claim to being fusion.

[EricBarker]

For modern day instrumental prog masterpieces:

- Liquid Tension Experiment (particularly 1 & 2, I haven't really gotten into 3 yet)

- Animals as Leaders, anything really, but particularly "Joy of Motion"

 

And for classics, I would add

Frank Zappa - Hot Rats, with the acceptation of the title track.

- Anything by Dixie Dregs

That being said, I've heard ALL of these labeled "Jazz Fusion" or at least Fusion adjacent. I think that does really say something about the thin line between genres. Once the vocals are gone, people consider it jazz.

[timwat]

1 hour ago, EricBarker said:

Once the vocals are gone, people consider it jazz.

 

It strikes me that a big difference between fusion and instrumental prog is what happens in the often extended solo sections.

 

Most (all?) of the stuff described in this thread as instrumental prog leans on the harmonic vocabulary of rock, classical, and occasionally blues, while I most often think of fusion leaning on jazz vocabulary and harmonic sensibilities. Wasn't it Miles who said something about the sh*t on the bottom changing, but the sh*t on the top staying the same?

 

That seemed to me one of the insights from an old Lyle Mays interview that was posted here a bit ago - that what PMG was doing was imposing classical compositional structure and zeitgeist on jazz - and I hear it from San Lorenzo and First Circle to The Way Up. Not that it's fusion, or prog.

 

But the experiment of fusion seemed to me to be jazzers changing the sh*t on the bottom, so to speak. Instrumental prog seemed to come from the roots of other trees, depending on who was experimenting. 

 

 

 

 

 

[EricBarker]

It gets blurry when you figure that many of the early prog bands featured young session musicians that were often playing a lot of jazz, particularly the very early UK stuff. The difference is whether they had FIRST made a name for themselves in Bop circles. Most of the fusion guys played with at least one major bopper and was then bonafide. John McLaughlin (Miles), Joe Zawinul (Canonball), Chick Corea (Stan Getz), Herbie (himself, and Miles). And then anyone who played with them were christened too. You had to be somehow publicly connected to the Bopbop lineage to be recognized as Jazz fusion. You could then go off and do completely non jazz albums, but you'd always be jazz legit. Meanwhile, there's a lot of jazz in a lot of early prog albums because cats like Robert Fripp and Jon Lord, Rick Wakeman, and many others were playing hard bop in local scenes and studios, but never with big names before they made it big first with their original stuff. This got even weirder with the Punk era where musicians like Sting had to bury their jazz cred or risk getting ousted by the fans.

Obviously it's a lot of marketing, but it comes out in the music too. But it's a minor difference of focus and weighting. They both have exactly the same ingredients, but in different amounts. And some bands sorta switch around but never get re-classified. "Larks Tongues in Aspic" is much more a free jazz album, where-as Romantic Warrior is full on progrock, yet Chick will always be "jazz" and Bob will always be "Rock". It's really arbitrary stuff.

[David Emm]

I guess I'm an outlier, but I have a major Jade Warrior jones. Their albums are on the Mega-Blessed shelf with all things Oregon and Mike Oldfield's "The Songs of Distant Earth." Jan Hammer's "The First Seven Days" likewise. 

[hurricane hugo]

didn't feel like starting a new thread, so I'm gonna drop this off right here...

 

 

[BluMunk]

On 2/21/2023 at 11:56 AM, JazzPiano88 said:

As long as he's still playing this in his shows, it still exists.

I think it's one of the best of all time (FFAF).

 

 

The first time I heard this song, it was Dream Theater's cover on 'A Change of Seasons'. Shamefully, I had been (and still am, mostly) a huge Elton John fan... based on his three Greatest Hits albums.

I heard the song and thought: "this is awesome... I wonder what the Elton John original sounds like. They seem to have really metal/progged this tune up!" Imagine my surprise when it turns out that the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album version is just as bad-assed as the Dream Theater version. Really makes one wonder about a different universe in which Elton John veered towards prog for his middle-career period.

[Tusker]

On 2/21/2023 at 10:03 PM, EricBarker said:

It gets blurry when you figure that many of the early prog bands featured young session musicians that were often playing a lot of jazz, particularly the very early UK stuff. The difference is whether they had FIRST made a name for themselves in Bop circles. Most of the fusion guys played with at least one major bopper and was then bonafide. John McLaughlin (Miles), Joe Zawinul (Canonball), Chick Corea (Stan Getz), Herbie (himself, and Miles). And then anyone who played with them were christened too. You had to be somehow publicly connected to the Bopbop lineage to be recognized as Jazz fusion. You could then go off and do completely non jazz albums, but you'd always be jazz legit. Meanwhile, there's a lot of jazz in a lot of early prog albums because cats like Robert Fripp and Jon Lord, Rick Wakeman, and many others were playing hard bop in local scenes and studios, but never with big names before they made it big first with their original stuff. This got even weirder with the Punk era where musicians like Sting had to bury their jazz cred or risk getting ousted by the fans.

Obviously it's a lot of marketing, but it comes out in the music too. But it's a minor difference of focus and weighting. They both have exactly the same ingredients, but in different amounts. And some bands sorta switch around but never get re-classified. "Larks Tongues in Aspic" is much more a free jazz album, where-as Romantic Warrior is full on progrock, yet Chick will always be "jazz" and Bob will always be "Rock". It's really arbitrary stuff.

 

I've been digging Jan Hammer's "Oh Yeah" album lately. The issue of branding you mention is so central to the way it is perceived. Some of those songs could be Mahavishnu songs or Allman songs, but instead they are received as a kinda jazzy keyboard-ey offshoot.

 

And when I think of Sting's later tours featuring guys like Chris Botti, your point comes through loud and clear. 👍

[Leroy C]

On 11/12/2022 at 1:52 PM, stoken6 said:

Putting this out there:

 

Bohemian Rhapsody - prog? If yes, why? If not, why not?

 

Cheers, Mike.

I routinely see Queen classified as prog.  Myself, I think of them more as prog-adjacent, but I can definitely see the argument with BR.

[Tusker]

5 hours ago, hurricane hugo said:

didn't feel like starting a new thread, so I'm gonna drop this off right here...

 

Kinda OT for this thread hurricane hugo, but I am hoping the GG fans might have done some gear spotting. What was Kerry Minnear's live rig? Seem like had a Yamaha organ. And was that a modified wurli he was using on "I'm turning around" on the sight and sound concert? Whatever it is, he's got some expressive phrasing. 😎

[AROIOS]

On 11/29/2022 at 6:56 PM, KuruPrionz said:

One of many reasons I like Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Greg Lake was a great singer and not all squeaky. 

I'm with ya, Geddy sounds like somebody stepped on the cat's tail and Jon Anderson is smoother but annoying and his lyrics make no sense. 

 

I saw both ELP and Yes twice, as a whole I preferred ELP although it's not possible to overlook Steve Howe or Chris Squire and their virtuosity. 

A great band that somehow doesn't seem to be regarded as prog is the Dregs, no singer that I can recall but they were all monster players. 

Can''t stand Geddy Lee's voice for a second. It's about the most disgusting sound to come out of an adult male, always gives me a mental image of some creepy, babyfaced, and likely castrated devil/villain from horror movies. Even Gollum makes a better singer than him.
 

 

[AROIOS]

Back to the original question, any rock music that breaks away from the cliche (e.g. pentatonic, blues, rock-n-roll...), and explore new territories in virtuosity, harmony and instrumentation is "Progressive" in my book.
 

That said, music is the dog and labels are merely the tail. I've seen "Yacht Rock" fans arguing passionately about whether the song "Sailing" was "Yacht Rock". It epitomizes the silliness of labeling.
 

Here's an obscure but dope "Prog" instrumental tune. The Dorian sound and funky synth bass showcases the "non-cliche harmony and instrumentation" criteria above.