"Prog Homage"

The human mind has a natural tendency, some say even a need, to try to accommodate incoming sensory data within compartments or categories. Data that has some degree of familiarity is easier to interpret and accept. There has long been a tendency for musicians to learn their craft by imitating the musics and musicians that they like and admire. Some of these musicians may even form or join bands that initially gel by practicing other people's songs. These bands may even get the courage up to try to perform live--often as a "cover band"--playing only songs that are familiar and therefore enjoyable and/or danceable to their audiences. Often these cover bands, if they are successful and inspired enough, may try to inject some of their own burgeoning ideas into their music--either within their interpretations of pre-existing songs that they are covering or in the form of "original" music, i.e. their own compositions. With some bands or individuals within bands this drive to create their own songs may be so strong that they either propel their fellow band members into doing more of this, eventually even doing only original music. In many cases, the drive to create new will meet with resistance from those content with playing other people's music or the desire to perform and record original songs may lead to a rift in the band between those with grander aspirations (like "fame") and those members who are more content with their involvement with music being local, part-time, and less consuming of their life.
     There has long been a tendency in progressive rock music to imitate, emulate, or be inspired by the work of other musician/artists that have preceded or are even concurrent with one's own existence. The imitative bands can go to such extremes as trying to play only one band's music, even performing as tribute bands. This group most often includes out-right replicators of the "Big Four," Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, and King Crimson, such as, Fragile, Off The Wall and Pink Floyd Legend, ReGenesis and The Musical Box, Schizoid King and 21st Century Schizoid Band, respectively. Others may be more likely to explore reproduction of a particular sound or style from the past.
     There can often be seen in progressive rock music a kind of evolution within a band's formation and evolution in which there is a leap from imitator to emulator to and sometimes, to innovator. 
In Prog World a term has been devised to try to compartmentalize artists whose work imitates or emulates the work of one or even a fusion of one or more bands from the past. We call this Neo Prog. There has grown a proclivity to create totally new music using a sound or style that is familiar to the listener that we can easily accommodate this music into a direct comparison to the old music of one particular band. I am choosing to call this music "Prog Homage." The music coming from these bands is so carefully and blatantly culled from a predecessor as to make the listener think that this could be music or songs that were "lost" or kept from publication by the originator of this sound or style. These are the kinds of albums or bands that have mystified or confused critics and reviewers, that have received high commendations for the quality of their contributions to the music world--even made us pine for the loss or lack of content from the originals. We're talking bands like KLAATU, DUKES OF STRATOSPHEAR, MR. SIRIUS, THE FLOWER KINGS, CITIZEN CAIN, THE WATCH, WOBBLER, AIRBAG/J RIIS, and even ANEKDOTEN, CICCADA, ROB READ/MAGENTA, TONY PATTERSON, and NAD SYLVAN.
     This has been bugging me for some time. Every time I hear an album or song that is so clearly created in a particular style and sound of another "Classic" era band--especially when the song is so flawlessly composed, recorded by virtuosic performers, as to make one think of what song or era of the predecessor's discography it may have come from. The amazing albums produced by Norwegian bands WOBBLER and AIRBAG in this past decade has really spurred this on. The devotion to sound and production detail in their wholly original compositions is simply mind-boggling. In some cases I find myself thinking that these new, modern songs might even be superior to the songs that informed and inspired them. 
     Welcome to a new sub-genre of progressive rock music: Prog Homage.

Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your own feelings and/or terminologies and means for categorizing these master mantle-usurpers.