The whole "prog/progressive" argument is really kind of ridiculous. It only serves to confuse when people start deciding that a band can be prog without being progressive or whatever. Dream Theater is a progressive band, because they do things like using unusual time signatures and displaying a high degree of technical ability.
I agree, it's completely ridiculous. And personally, there is no context in which I would use the term "prog" at all, certainly not to describe something that does not fit the full word it abbreviates. But look at your final sentence in the quote above, and think about how you came to adopt that definition of the word "progressive."
Again, you may not like this, but terms have specific meanings, and spontaneously changing them when you for some reason can't say what you mean with the word "experimental" confuses exactly everybody.
Exactly! Terms DO have specific meanings! The definition of the word progressive "spontaneously changed" in a musical context a few decades ago, possibly for good reason, but does that mean that it necessarily still applies to everything we're told it does? I'm not going to just start using it any way I want to obviously, because that would be unnecessarily confusing. But I can still point out the absurdity of misapplying it.
I have no problem with the word "experimental," I think it's a great word in some ways to describe what I'm talking about. But that doesn't make "progressive rock" NOT a misnomer when used to just mean funny time signatures and 20 minute songs.
By the same token, what's wrong with using a word like "technical" to say what YOU actually mean? It describes what you seem to be saying much better than "progressive." Man, it'd be a lot less confusing if you could just say what you mean by using the word "technical."
And looking at "progressive" as a standalone adjective is off topic here, we're talking genre names.
Why are we limited to genre names? All we're doing is using words to try to describe music. I know very little and care to know even less about what constitutes the difference between arbitrary genre labels. Frankly they tell you remarkably little about the music they claim to describe.
Anyway, I agree with everybody saying this is the dumbest argument ever, and yet here I am having it.
-J