Tell me about your prog journey

In middle school an online friend of mine made a video and used "Ride the Comet" by Ayreon from 01011001 as the background song. As someone who had the general opinion at that time that I didn't really care for music, I was really impressed by what they heard. I listened to that album religiously for a while and then expanded into some of the other albums before falling off from it. About 4 years ago, I learned a friend of mine from my local game s hop also liked Ayreon and so we listened through most of the albums on a long road trip together. That re-sparked my interested in Ayreon which led me to branch out into the work of the vocalists involved. This introduced me to Dream Theater, Opeth, etc. That made me realize all these groups were considered 'progressive' which led to me listening to more modern prog groups like Steven Wilson, Haken, and more. Then I slowly started to branch into old school prog with Pink Floyd and from there discovered King Crimson, Genesis, Yes, ELP, Gentle Giant, Hawkwind, Rush, and all my other favorites. I also recently started collecting vinyl earlier this year which has allowed me to find even more obscure groups and I now have over 100 records that are all prog. It's funny to think that if it wasn't for that one Ayreon song, I would've never been exposed to the genre I love.

Grew up in a musical family (began playing organ at the age of 4) in the 60's with top 40 radio constantly playing and the newest Beatle & Stones albums always on the family turntable.  When Sgt Peppers was released the whole musical world drastically changed and rock musicians realized that the old rules no longer applied (one of several reasons I consider Sgt Peppers the very 1st prog album).  

 

Then in 1974 I saw a TV commercial for the show "In Concert".  They showed clips of Black Sabbath and Keith Emerson's flying piano from the recent California Jam festival. I wanted to be a fan of a band called Black Sabbath and I definitely thought a flying piano was cool!  I recorded the Black Sabbath episode on a cheap little cassette player, but somehow missed ELP the next week :-(  Spent the next few months getting into Sabbath then found myself in a record store just browsing and I came across Brain Salad Surgery.  The artwork...the album title...oh ya, the flying piano!  I just had to hear these guys!  Played the album literally every day that summer.  About the same time I made friends with this Yes fanatic at the local hobby shop.  He got me into Yes, Genesis & Tull and started bringing me along to prog concerts with his friends - the first being Gentle Giant opening for Yes in '76.  

 

The biggest prog thing happened in autumn '77 when I went to my local record store and said to the guy behind the counter, "I've seen some really cool album covers from this band called King Crimson.  Do you know anything about them?"  He got this evil smile and said, "hang around for a few minutes...I'll put some on".  He played Fracture from Starless and Bible Black at ear splitting volume.  That was it...game over...King Crimson became my fave prog band.  

 

Learned how to play bass and played in a few prog bands with the guys filling in the blanks and turning me on to VDGG, Rush, Soft Machine, Shadowfax (before they went new age) etc.

 

As prog withered and died in the early 80's I got into hardcore punk like the Dead Kennedy's, The Minutemen, Black Flag, Husker Du, DRI, MDC, GBH and a bunch of other 3 letter acronyms :-)  Also stumbled across Zappa's Studio Tan at the local library so began exploring his stuff.  I had no idea there was a Neo Prog renaissance happening at the same time!  Made friends with this guy at work in the early 90's who was into it and turned me on to Marillion, IQ, Twelfth Night, Pallas, Pendragon, Aragon etc.

 

In the mid 90's discovered this email list called, "The Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock".  Printed out the whole thing and started bringing it with me to record stores and discovered little known gems like Cathedral's 1978 Stained Glass Stories, Split Enz' 1976 Mental Notes, and bands like Asia Minor, Pentwater, Mirthrandir, Devil Doll, Yezda Urfa, Babylon, Celeste, Lift, Spring, Asgard, etc...  Also stumbled on the Swedish prog renaissance with Anekdoten, Anglagard, Landberk, etc...

 

By the late 90's I'd mined all the prog veins I could think of...except...France!  Decided to not let French lyrics remain a barrier and discovered Ange, Pulsar, Mona Lisa, Atoll, Quadra, Versailles, Elohim, Wapassou, etc. (the first 3 of which have become some of my all time fave bands).  The next big source I found was PA!  Through running reports and studying the database along with recommendations from other members I've discovered a crazy diverse group of prog like Magma, Caravan, Jose Cid, Clearlight, Pentacle, Welcome, Klaus Schulze, Quarteto 1111, Pollen, Nightwinds, SBB, Tantra, Memoriance, Mastadon, Gazpacho, etc...

 

And the search for new prog continues...

Edited by The.Crimson.King - June 26 2017 at 12:20

Zem wrote: In middle school an online friend of mine made a video and used "Ride the Comet" by Ayreon from 01011001 as the background song. As someone who had the general opinion at that time that I didn't really care for music, I was really impressed by what they heard. I listened to that album religiously for a while and then expanded into some of the other albums before falling off from it. About 4 years ago, I learned a friend of mine from my local game s hop also liked Ayreon and so we listened through most of the albums on a long road trip together. That re-sparked my interested in Ayreon which led me to branch out into the work of the vocalists involved. This introduced me to Dream Theater, Opeth, etc. That made me realize all these groups were considered 'progressive' which led to me listening to more modern prog groups like Steven Wilson, Haken, and more. Then I slowly started to branch into old school prog with Pink Floyd and from there discovered King Crimson, Genesis, Yes, ELP, Gentle Giant, Hawkwind, Rush, and all my other favorites. I also recently started collecting vinyl earlier this year which has allowed me to find even more obscure groups and I now have over 100 records that are all prog. It's funny to think that if it wasn't for that one Ayreon song, I would've never been exposed to the genre I love.

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: That's a truly amazing story. I love hearing stories like this. I am going to go out on a limb and say you are probably no older than 22? I really like to hear stories about how younger folks get into prog. I know usually it's through the internet(somehow)but I'm always curious to hear who the gateway bands are these days for the younger folks. I get the feeling that aside from maybe Pink Floyd or Rush it isn't going to be Yes, Genesis, ELP, KC or JT but instead will be bands and artists like Ayreon, Devin Townshend, Opeth, Steven Wilson or whoever else is branching out to a wider audience that is still considered prog. Not sure if younger folks are still getting into prog through Dream Theater though.

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: Yeah, I don't disagree with most of what you say. I'd say at least 50 percent of prog fans are over 40 with maybe 40 percent being over 50 but it's actually difficult to say exactly. Most younger prog fans do seem to be mostly into prog metal if they are into prog at all. Other than that they like Pink Floyd and Rush but Yes(and the other older well known bands)seem lost on most of them. I would say the biggest age gap though is people in their thirties. There seems to be fewer prog fans in their thirties than any other age range. My opinion is that it's because most people get into music when they are in their teens and that would mean that those in their thirties would have been in their teens in the 90's which is when the fewest number of people were discovering prog(imo)(Dream Theater might be one exception of a band that helped people get into prog in the 90's though). There's even more people my age(40's) who got into prog in the eighties than in the nineties because Floyd, Yes, Genesis and Rush were all still very big in the eighties. In the nineties it was less obvious and with the exception of Rush and Floyd the fanbases of most of those bands decreased in the 90's. All imo of course.

1972ish, I was browsing through my dad's LP collection and found one with no words on the cover, just a photograph of a cow. (Atom Heart Mother is still my favourite album today.)
I got into Pink Floyd immediately, previously unaware that songs could be longer than 10 minutes.
After that I wasn't especially into progressive music, but liked a few obvious things such as Tubular Bells and Autobahn.
Later I discovered experimental music of various kinds, and started listening to bands not considered prog like The Residents and Throbbing Gristle. Eventually, more than forty years after my childhood incident with the cow, I decided to give prog a proper listen, and here we are.

I actually have this posted already but - 

Blacksword wrote: I guess you could take it back to 1978 when I first heard Jeff Waynes War of the Worlds. It had a similar effect on me, aged 10 or so, that The Wall did when I was about 13.

That pretty much sums it up for me too, although I was 8 when I first heard WOTW and around 14 when The Wall came into my world.  It would be many years before I became a "proper" fan of prog, in fact it was The Platinum Collection by Genesis that really opened my ears in the early 2000's, but in between I got into IQ (Menel-era initially), Dream Theater and King's X, without really knowing that I was enjoying "prog".

In the early 80's I was loving, well, 80's music (and still do!!), late 80's it was rock and metal mostly, in the 90's I went to Uni and went through grunge and Britpop (what was I thinking with the latter!), before that Genesis best of truly pushed me down another route...

These days I still listen to mainly prog, but symphonic metal has also eaten into me, mainly female-fronted, such as the mighty Nightwish, Within Temptation, Evanescence, etc.  Plus Devin Townsend Project.

Prog on...

I'm particularly curious to hear about how those who are twenty somethings and younger discovered prog. I know it's much easier to find out about prog these days because of the internet but I'm curious about the this band led to that band kind of thing(actually not just with newer stuff but in general).