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The award-winning ProgBlog 

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Most people have heard of progressive rock (or prog rock, or simply prog) but the great majority of them treat it with mild disdain (at best) or outright hatred (at worst). Most of the criticism is a mindless rejection based on current trends and a misunderstanding of the genre; “dinosaur” is a common term of abuse, neatly parodied by Adrian Belew on King Crimson’s 1994 album Thrak.

There is an increasing quantity of literature on the subject, ranging from the analytical or academic (Edward Macan, Rocking the Classics; Kevin Holme-Hudson, Progressive Rock Revisited) to the fairly straightforward lists (Charles Snider, The Strawberry Bricks Guide to Progressive Rock.) There are also thousands of fans out there who not only continue to attend concerts, but also contribute to a growing network of fanzines and on-line forums. Fans are even served by Prog, a glossy magazine from Future Publishing entirely devoted to prog in all its forms founded in 2009 and still going strong.

The ProgBlog has been put together to encourage discussion about progressive rock music illustrated by personal observation.

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New Blog

A prog library

(published 16th May 2026)

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This blog is long overdue, but the mountain of print material on the subject is huge, and I've recently bough two more weighty tomes to add to my library.

My first port of call, whenever I need some information about an album, is the LP or CD itself, and my next choice is to search through my collection of books, only querying the the internet. as a last resort.
I'd recommend anyone with an interest in prog to build a physical library. Biographies of prog bands have existed since the beginning of the genre, but shortly after the start of prog's third wave in the mid-1990s when the word 'prog' ceased to be a pejorative term, writers and academics began to address the lack of serious analysis on the subject.
Along with the academic writing, there are general books that give an overview of prog, books listing bands or albums and better biographies and autobiographies, so put down the mouse and pick up a book!  
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Latest gig review

Mad March Gig Marathon

Raphael Weinroth-Browne (Guildford), The Watch (Kendal) & L'Ombra della Sera (Genova)

23rd, 26th and 29th March 2026

Three very different performances, covering dance, a Genesis tribute and an album launch.

All were very enjoyable despite the travel involved - getting between each concert and home again saw me cover a distance of 3,778km

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Latest posts from the archive

A continuing project to restore lost blogs and gig reviews unavailable since the migration of the site to a new webhost in 2021

Blog: Electrostatic maelstrom

Prompted by a post on the r/progrockmusic subreddit concerning 'Van der Graaf Generator and other dark music genres' I dusted off a blog from May 2015 (the 10th anniversary of the reunion) and updated the piece as my reply.

This article is based on that response and reflects a further 10 years of my experience of the band

 

Gig review: Porto Antico Prog Fest - Genova

5th - 6th August 2023

​It's always worth a trip to Genoa for the Porto Antico Prog Fest but the headline acts on the two nights, Änglagård marking the 30th anniversary of their debut Hybris and Area Open Project, celebrating the 50 years of Arbeit Mach Frei, made it even more special

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Archive ProgBlog playlists can be found here:

2015     2017     2018     2019     2020     2021     2022     2023     2024     2025     2026 

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