Classic Rock Trivia Quiz

Progressive rock (or classic rock, as it is sometimes known; sometimes confused with art rock) is a style of rock music that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid-to-late 1960s, reaching its height in the early 1970s.

The genre was initially known as "progressive pop" and was a spin-off of psychedelic groups that abandoned conventional pop norms in favor of instrumentation and compositional principles more commonly associated with jazz, folk, or classical music.

The term "progressive" was used to describe additional factors: lyrics were more poetic, technology was utilized for new sounds, music came close to the status of "art," and the studio rather than the stage became the focal point of musical activity, which frequently required producing music for listening rather than dancing.

Prog is a fusion of styles, strategies, and genres that features a continuous shift between formalism and eclecticism. Prog's scope is sometimes restricted to a preconceived notion of lengthy solos, extended albums, fantastic lyrics, enormous stage sets and costumes, and a maniacal devotion to technical skill owing to its historical reception.

While the genre has been noted for its merger of high culture and low culture, few artists included literal classical themes in their work significantly at all; only a handful of bands deliberately imitated or referenced classic music.

The term "prog" derives its name from the words "progress" and "rock," both of which are important to many bands. The genre emerged at the time when recording companies were able to give more creative control to their artists, as well as the new journalistic division between "pop" and "rock."

Prog rose in popularity in the early-to-mid-1970s, but it soon faded away. It is widely accepted that punk rock's rise was a factor, although several other elements played a role in the fall.

Critics, who frequently derided the ideas as "pretentious" and the sounds as "pompous" and "overblown", were either hostile to or completely oblivious of progressive rock. Progressive rock fragmented in a variety of ways after the late 1970s. Some artists managed to establish a following throughout the 1980s (albeit with different lineups and song structures) or moved into symphonic pop, arena rock, or new wave.

Progressive characteristics have been retroactively ascribed to "proto-prog" early bands. The Canterbury scene, which dates back to the late 1960s, refers to a subset of prog bands that emphasized the use of wind instruments, complex chord changes, and extended improvisations. Rock in Opposition (released in 1978) was more experimental and when combined with the Canterbury style yielded Avant-prog.