Songs That Shaped Your Taste

           Blood, Sweat and Tears hit "Spinning Wheel" was the first record I bought and loved in the fall of 1971, and it focused my attention on getting more radio hits on 45 rpm records.

               Then I heard Steppenwolf's hit "Magic Carpet Ride" and that solidified in me a taste for heavy rock.

    My mother bought me my first album, which was Steppenwolf's "Monster" and I loved it, and wanted more lps but was not allowed to get very many until I got older.

            Mom was not a music listener, bless her, but my Dad had a collection of 1940s jazz records by artists like Woody Herman and Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, so though I found jazz a little challenging at such a young age, it had it's effect on me.

              Another song that helped shape my taste was Alice Cooper's School's Out, and here was a rocker I knew my parents would not approve of, but that is why I bought more records by that band, and they were my favorite for quite awhile.

              Now fast forward to the 1980s, and I was kind of burnt out on heavy rock and looking for something new and was in my early 20s and though not a specific song, but a movie -Amadeus-cemented in me a long standing love of "Classical Music", and especially Symphonies, with the 1st Symphony of Mahler, 9th Symphony of Bruckner and also falling in love with the Beethoven piano sonatas opened up a whole world to me, and I started to collect classical records in 1985.

               As for progressive rock, I had been superficially aware of it, but not much, and then a friend lent me a copy of Triumvirat's Ilusions On A Double Dimple in 1985 and I was awestruck! This  was what I had been missing all these years, and was so impressed that a band from way over in Germany could kindle such an experience that changed my life, and opened the floodgates for a permanent love of progressive music.

          

King Crimson - Indiscipline, 21st Century...

Frank Zappa - Inca Roads, Didja Get Any Onya?

Gentle Giant - Design, Knots

Henry Cow - Nirvana For Mice, Industry

Peter Brotzmann - Machine Gun, Music For Han Bennink

Sun Ra - Space Is The Place, Yucatan

Penderecki - Threnody To The Victims...

And various pieces by Reich, Merzbow, Stravinsky, Ligeti, Coltrane, and things that we played when I was in middle school/high school band. 

Yep good ole Alice Cooper. The end of that record is actually very 'prog' in certain respects (drumming mainly). He fronts a radio show over here and actually plays a lot of prog and seems very knowledgeable about it.

I was never exposed much to classic music that much as a child or young adult. I remember liking the Mars - The Bringer of War which was used quite a lot to promote sci-fi shows but that was about it.

For me, I guess, it's more albums or album sides than just particular songs. Those that were in my parents collection that appealed to me: Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel (for the melodies and the vocal harmonies), Tchaikovsky's Symphonie pathétique (for the symphonic qualities) and the sound-track of Jesus Christ Superstar (for the narrative quality and the distorted guitars, but not in a punk way... Somewhere in '77 or '78 we went to see the theatrical performance in London, which was very impressive for a kid of 9, 10 years old!). Then, some things that were on the radio, notably Pink Floyd's The Wall (I was 11, 12, by then), I discovered Alice Cooper's Halo of Flies that was very very intriguing. A year or so after that, my elder brother bought Kayak's Merlin album and I was especially mesmerized by the A side of that album, for how it combined those melodic, symphonic, rock and narrative qualities...

Then, through some of my friends I discovered a bit of Rush, Saga, Focus, Ekseption, Rainbow, before, at 15, entering a record shop to buy my first vinyl: I was hesitating between a Judas Priest album or Yes' 90125. I bought the latter and the rest is history...

I love that song to death although can't remember it it impacted me so much when I was young.

Also leads me to another great song of the late sixties Where Do You Go To My Lovely? by the British folkie Peter Sarstedt. Ones to listen to on a bleak rainy Sunday afternoon in a dark quiet room..

 Perhaps one of the greatest 'guilty pleasures' of the seventies