Could those "notorious offenders" be a band which reportedly drew the largest single concert crowd in human history (300,000 people)? And yet this same band seems to have been erased from the Great Computer's memory banks?

The biggest obstacle to Prog Rock has been the Proggers themselves. No matter how great and well loved their works, they have always felt they were phonies because they weren't creating real music. So the above referenced ELP produces the fantastic Brain Salad Surgery, but it's still that nasty popular "rock music". So they go off and spend all their money on touring orchestra (which I saw in 1977 at Madison Square Garden) to do a synthesized version of Aaron Copeland songs (art by association). And yet, it wasn't as good as their own work on BSS.

"the same way that red-state denizens celebrate their own ignorance"

Yuk, yuk, yuk. Well now, nothing says "Prog" quite like some good ol' fashioned, ignorant, hostile cultural bigotry. Yuk, yuk, yuk.

I love prog rock and was going to go to this festival until I read this pompous idiot's interview. No wonder his festival is failing when he makes statements that essentially say "Why don't you imbeciles who comprise 1/3 of the nation want to go to this--you're acting like the other imbeciles who comprise 1/3 of the nation!" Good business plan--insult everyone you can while acting like a total douche.

It is a well known fact that Seattle and Portland audiences were never intelligent enough to handle any sequence of chords that extended beyond I-IV-V, nor were they capable of time signatures other than 4/4 (occasionaly "experimenting" with 8/8 (!!!). It just never resonated with the hipster beard, tats and piercings crowd.