Of course prog is pop (as opposed to rock), its direct precursor is psych-pop. Almost every singlel important player in the early prog movement came from a pop-psych band. Approaching prog from a rock perspective inevitably ends up being wrong.
Are you holding? Is William Holden here?
I know and OMG the cover, but Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman is pretty good.
Prog was getting into baroque noodling when modern composers were getting into minimalism.
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That sounds medieval and dirty⊠
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Nice one.
Moody Blues were my faves.
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I think a lot of the negativeâs of prog rock came about when âBubble Gumâ AM radio bands adopted the sound and cramed what was a long format style of music into radio ready bite size songsâŠStix, ELO and to a lesser extent Kansas.
Or worse when bands like YES threw away their long form sound and adopted a pop song structure like Owner of a Lonely Heart; If you tell someone about Yes today thatâs probably the first and only song they know because thatâs what gets played.
Up thread someone called prog POP music. Hummm? Because I really canât think of any pop music that has as one of itâs touchstones 20 to 30 min song forms.
In the 80âs and 90âs a lot of artists did some shameful things to make money including Prog rock artists but I wouldnât call prog pop because of that. Heck, only hard core stoner FM stations would play the full sides in the 70âs.
You mean, composers like György Ligeti? Heâs rather well-known, do you think? Nah, doesnât sound the least bit like ELP⊠(It was written after ELP had been around for a few years.)
Or do you mean Baroque noodling like this (within a couple of years of the Ligeti)?
Both contemporary classical and prog rock are very big places, and far from monolithic.
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Tarkus turned me on to ELP when I was a little kid. Not only the music but the album art.
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Ugh, every dude I dated in college was into prog rock. If I never hear about Adrian Belew again, itâll be too soon.
OTOHâŠ
That must leave you conflicted: Tool and KC have played together. As near as I can tell, theyâre mutual fans. 
Rush, however, leaves me conflicted: I like Geddy Leeâs bass-playing, butâŠ
Thatâs probably the reason Iâm more of a jazz and fusion fan - no banshee vocals.
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Rodney Mathews?
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I donât know enough music theory to properly describe a fugal orgy. But I know that it involves lots and lots of variations upon a basic theme.
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Judging from this it still sounds like youâre 13.
Yes! Rodney Matthews. Thanks!
Not really variations⊠A lot of imitative entries, maybe? When it comes to the stretto, a bunch of tight entries? (âStrettoâ does mean âtightenedâ after all.) 
Maybe you should at least read wikipediaâs entry on Art of Fugue before dismantling the analogy of a voice in fugue with a body in orgy.
I think he means that while pop-musicians went all baroque, Seriouz Compozerz were getting minimal.
A la Gyorgy Ligeti:
Minimalism can be seen reflected in pop-musicians like Brian Eno and the Velvet Underground (at least one founding member [Cale] and a temporary member [Henry Flynt] both worked with LaMonte Young).
Both baroque noodling and minimalism can see a simultaneous expression in Tangerine Dream, perhaps textuall shown best with Madrigal Meridian (not my favorite TD composition).
But betwixt and between a thousand other currents ran; can any straight line be shown? I doubt it.
I probably have the score of the Art of Fugue in my library somewhere. It is a set of individual pieces based on variants of the Art of Fugue subject, that is, the theme of each piece, which isnât varied throughout the piece (with the exception of some slight adjustments to maintain the tonality), is a variation of the same theme in the other pieces. The Art of Fugue is essentially a collection of fugues based on the same subject; it isnât really meant to be played straight through like a theme and variations.
Fugue is where a subject (a short, open-ended theme) is used in imitative counterpoint as the basis of the music. The piece usually starts with the theme in a single voice, and brings in the other voices one at a time, each stating the theme in its turn. Itâs kind of like what happens in Frere Jacques, but the voices donât necessarily continue in lockstep once theyâve stated the subject.
Groups of subject entries (which can be as few as a single entry at a time in the middle portions of the piece) alternate with contrasting material called episodes, which can be made of invertible counterpoint (the voices can be shuffled in subsequent episodes, so that what played in the soprano now plays in the bass, what played in the bass plays in the tenor, etc.), or can be quite free.
Near the end is usually one or more groups of subject entries called a stretto (singular) or stretti (plural). In these, the next entry of the subject occurs before the previous one is finished - it tightens the movement.
I might as well use an example from my own work. (After all, if I donât plug my work, who will? It does, however, have the advantage of being short.) It doesnât sound much like Bach, but then, Iâm not 18th century GermanâŠ
The exposition (the initial subject entries) lasts until about 28 seconds in, and is followed by an episode. (The last entry is somewhat obscured by being in an internal voice, the tenor.) The subject entries return at about 00:42, with an episode at 00:52. There are a pair of subject entries in the relative minor (G minor when in the key of B flat major) in the lower voices at 1:08, with a long episode following until about 1:46, at which point a group of stretti start, and they continue pretty much to the end. This kind of formal layout is fairly typical of a fugue.
There are such things as variation fugues, where subsequent sections of the same fugue use variations of the subject. Most of J. J. Frobergerâs works called Capriccio or Canzona fall into this category, for example.
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Iâve always thought he sounds more like a cat in the midst of getting strangled.
