The DPRPoll 2002 has been a bit tougher than in previous years. As you may have read, former Poll editor Ed Sander decided to hand over his duties as of January 1st, leaving the poll in the hands of the rest of the team. Without Ed's experience of the previous years it took a bit longer than usual to compile and evaluate the results. We promise to have it better organised next year!
This year's poll was organised and compiled by Jerry van Kooten, evaluated by Bart Jan van der Vorst, and corrected by Derk van Mourik and Bob Mulvey.

Last year, 725 people participated in the DPRPoll 2001, this year the number of participants decreased a bit to 686. A possible explanation for this is that we didn't manage to compile the list of prizes in time this year. Usually mentioning the actual prizes a week before the closing date draws another 100 or so people, but this year it will be a complete surprise for the winners what they will receive. All prize winners have been contacted, but if you are curious, have a look here what the prizes were.

This page contains a summary of the results of the poll. The full tables can be viewed by clicking through the 'next table' links in the upper right corner of the screen.

Participants

As mentioned above, 686 people participated in the DPRPoll 2002. Most people came from The Netherlands (27%), USA (17%) and the UK (9%), while Germany (6%), Canada (4%) and Sweden (4%) provided quite some votes as well. In total, inhabitants of no less than 47 different countries participated in the DPRPoll 2002, including Puerto Rico, Lithuania, Lebanon and Malaysia and Thailand!.

The average participant of the poll was 34.5 years old, although ages range from 15 to 56 years. The average has been steadily rising over the past years, and seems to confirm the unpopular belief that prog audiences are getting older indeed. However, it is assuring to see that over 40% of the voters is still under 30.

Best Albums of 2002

No less than 340 different albums received votes for Best Album of 2002. Below you will find the Top 30. The full list can be viewed by clicking here.
We have provided links to the DPRP reviews of most of these albums.

Nr	Band	Album	Votes	Percentage	Weighted Points
1	Spock's Beard	Snow	356	51.9%	1228
2	The Flower Kings	Unfold The Future	270	39.4%	979
3	Dream Theater	Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence	243	35.4%	769
4	Peter Gabriel	Up	199	29.0%	641
5	Porcupine Tree	In Absentia	156	22.7%	540
6	Camel	A Nod And A Wink	156	22.7%	503
7	Pain Of Salvation	Remedy Lane	115	16.8%	411
8	Echolyn	Mei	88	12.8%	253
9	Star One	Space Metal	84	12.2%	236
10	Threshold	Critical Mass	62	9.0%	170
11	Rush	Vapor Trails	59	8.6%	167
12	Kaipa	Notes From The Past	55	8.0%	149
13	Symphony X	The Odyssey	49	7.1%	134
14	Glass Hammer	Lex Rex	48	7.0%	134
15	Galahad	Year Zero	37	5.4%	127
16	Enchant	Blink Of An Eye	42	6.1%	115
17	Clive Nolan & Oliver Wakeman	The Hound Of The Baskervilles	41	6.0%	114
18	Quidam	The Time Beneath The Sky (Pod Niebem Czas)	36	5.2%	90
19	Tomas Bodin	Pinup Guru	33	4.8%	86
20	RPWL	Trying To Kiss The Sun	31	4.5%	78
21	Clepsydra	Alone	19	2.8%	75
22	Mostly Autumn	Music Inspired By "The Lord Of The Rings"	28	4.1%	72
23	Porcupine Tree	Stars Die - The Delerium Years	26	3.8%	72
24	Sylvan	Artificial Paradise	25	3.6%	68
25	Karmakanics	Entering The Spectra	29	4.2%	67
26	Coldplay	A Rush Of Blood To The Head	20	2.9%	66
27	Sigur Ross	( )	23	3.4%	60
28	Pendragon	Acoustically Challenged	19	2.8%	56
29	Marillion	Anorak In The UK Live	24	3.5%	55
30	Opeth	Deliverance	20	2.9%	51

Some quick explanations about the calculations. 'Votes' are the number of people who voted for a specific album, regardless if it was their number 1 or number 5. 'Percentage' is the percentage of all participants that voted for an album. The 'Weighted Points' are calculated based on the ranking of the (max) 5 albums the participants voted for; their number 1 got 5 points, number 2 got 4 points, etc. 'Weighted Points' is the sum of these points.

Although not entirely surprising, it is good to see Spock's Beard reaching the number one position for the first time (after coming in 2nd three times in a row) with the highest average points for a number one ever recorded in a DPRPoll. The 356 people who voted for this album gave over 3.4 points on average.
The Flower Kings retain their status of coming in close second after Spock's Beard, with the 270 voters giving an even higher 3.6 points on average.
Dream Theater may have suffered from an early February release (people tend to forget it was released in 2002) yet managed to nab a third place.
And with Spock's Beard, The Flower King and Dream Theater in the top three positions, you could actually say that for the third year in succession Transatlantic tops the poll!

Also noteworthy is Porcupine Tree's fifth position, as this album was only released stateside in 2002, with the European release only marginally in time for the poll deadline. Expect to see them in the 2003 poll as well.

Best Tracks of 2002

Participants in the Poll were also asked to name their favourite track of 2002. In total 208 different tracks, by 98 different bands, were voted for. The table below shows the 5 bands which got the most votes, regardless of which track.

The next table shows the actual Top 5 the different 'best tracks' of 2002.

And yet again we confirm popular belief that prog means long, self-indulgent tracks, with the top 4 lasting no less than 148 minutes all together - that is 36 minutes on average!!
Tied in a fifth position are two 'shorties' by Peter Gabriel and Camel.

Best DVD of 2002

There is no denying the impact of the DVD medium, so it was only natural that a question for 'Best DVD' was included in this year's poll. Although it was obvious to most, we were actually asking for best music or even prog DVD here, so people voting for The Lord Of The Rings and the likes, sorry, but your votes didn't count!
This particular question also turned out to be a bit of a nightmare for ourselves, as it proved to be incredible difficult for some people to look at a DVD case and find the actual title of that particular DVD. We received no less than 32 different entries for the same Spock's Beard DVD, and we also learned that there are 22 different ways to spell "Subterranea" :-).
Once corrected, the results were as follows:

We are aware that not everybody owns a DVD player, so obviously this question had less respondents than the other questions. Nonetheless 389 people (over 50% of the voters) voted for a total of 91 different music DVDs.
As with the Best Album, the number one vote got 3 points, the number 2 got 2 and the number 3 vote received 1 point. 'Weighted Points' is the sum of these points, while 'Percentage' is the percentage of only the participants who voted for a DVD.

It is interesting to see that a solid performance of a band is rated higher than a big onstage extravaganza, with the rather static performances of Yes and David Gilmour topping those larger stage shows of Roger Waters and IQ.
Spock's Beard's long awaited Don't Try This At Home (3 years in the making) came in second. No doubt the departure of Neal Morse -making this DVD a last recording of his enigmatic performance- and the packaging of the DVD (two DVDs and a CD) added to its appreciation.

The total list of DVDs that have been voted for can be found here.

Best Artwork of 2002

Again we have Spock's Beard's latest topping the charts, leaving The Flower Kings in a distant second place. Thomas Ewerhard's cover for Snow is indeed very stylish and follows old prog tradition by continuing the mood and concept set in his previous Spock's Beard cover V.
In total 98 different albums got voted for in the 'Best Artwork' category, the full list can be found here.

Best Concert 2002

The participants of the poll voted for 345 different concerts in 2002. To get a clear picture of which bands did best on the stage last year, we'll first have a look at the ones that got the most votes, regardless of which concert.

Now let's have a look at which of these gigs got the most votes for Best Concert 2002.

As always, the large number of Dutch poll participants combined with a small number of venues played in The Netherlands has resulted in three Dutch gigs ending up highest again.
Also, the extensive tours Roger Waters, Peter Gabriel and Dream Theater undertook in 2002 resulted in a relatively low number of votes for their individual concerts.

Best Newcomer

The votes for 'Best Newcomer' were far more divided this year than in previous years. Perhaps because this year there weren't as many newcomers that really stood out to the masses when compared to previous years. This is also reflected in the fact that more than ever people voted for side-projects by members of a popular band, rather than really new artists.
The various members of The Flower Kings nabbed up the largest chunk of the votes, with Jonas Reingold's Karmakanic topping the charts and many people forgetting that Tomas Bodin has released solo albums before. Another keyboardist we had to disqualify was Ryo Okumoto (who came in third!), his excellent album Close Enough is actually his eighth solo album to date - Not all that newcoming then.
Another questionable entry is Arjen Lucassen's new project Star One. Although sounding differently, this is the same person who already brought us Ayreon and Ambeon (last year's winner).

For a complete, alphabetical list of all 94 newcomers click here.

Biggest Disappointment of 2002

Many different albums, gigs, incidents, etc received votes for 'biggest disappointment'. We grouped the votes until they referred to a unique album, gig or incident.
The other most often mentioned, and more specific, disappointments can be found below.

Once again this proves to be a very interesting section of the poll, bearing in mind these results have to be taken with a grain of salt. It won't be a surprise to anyone to see Neal Morse's departure from Spock's Beard as the major disappointment of 2002 (or the disbanding of Transatlantic resulting thereof). However, who would have thought to see his latest album with that band to come in second! After all, the same album is also voted 'Best Album'.
Rush also has two contrary entries in the top 5 disappointments: 23 people were disappointed with their latest album (number 11 in the 'Best Album' chart), whereas 15 people who obviously liked that album were disappointed with the prolonged lack of a European tour by the Canadian threesome.
Once again Marillion maintains the dubious honour of being in the Top 5 for the past 6 years, with 16 people stating just plainly "Marillion" as their disappointment. Another 8 people complained about their lack of touring the USA, their DVDs and last year's pre-order scheme.

Click here if you also want to see how the participants of the poll evaluated DPRP.

Click here if you also want to see the list of prizes and winners.

You can also check out what the DPRP Team voted for themselves.

For comments about the poll, please e-mail The DPRP Team.