Consequently, I much prefer, say, Van Der Graaf Generator (which gets its quality from its bite and spitting poetry and spinning, hypnotic riffage) to ELP (which does offer some good theatrics but which seems most of all to be trading on the impression of “look at me, I’m an awesome instrumentalist!” when compared to a fusion band like Return to Forever ELP is pretty amateurish). catchy and dynamic and theatrical with a real connection to the audience, not because it’s “progressive” in any sense. So, the point is, pop/rock has to be great as pop/rock, i.e.

Right, but the pretension of prog is that it is breaking “new ground,” and it is (was), viewed as an extension of rock from already-very-expanded view the Beatles (and others) established, but when you compare the gestures towards long-form complexity that Yes or Crimson or whoever created (and I do like these bands a lot, much better than I like just about any fusion) with what the “professionals” more educated in the history of music were doing even before that, and by this I mean actual classically trained composers and jazz veterans, then prog rock just looks like kids fooling around.

The myth of sisyphus audible