How did you find your way to Prog?

^ What a great story Beau.

For me it was the usual story of being introduced to prog via my mates and gradually growing to like it. The chords always did it for me. Nothing like a good prog chord to get the blood pumping.

^ This what I admire about fans of prog who arrived later on the scene. In the 60's and 70's, prog was everywhere. It was new and exciting, and readily available to most. During the 80's and 90's you REALLY had to look for it as hardly any radio station seemed to play it. It also almost never appeared on TV so I have full respect to the latest generation of prog fans.

You guys had to want to listen to prog and go some distance to get it.

Beau Heem wrote: This question has been in my mind for ages; How are ppl introduced the world of progressive rock? Obviously, there are two very different categories, when it comes how prog has gotten to us 1. Those alive (and thinking) in the late 60 early 70s 2. Those yet to be born or just too young to listen to music at the time. At 11 or 12 I had heard and listened to Bohemian Rhapsody repeteadly, on and on again, just because I couldn't understand how such a piece could ever have been made...

I fall into the former. So underground, British blues boom and some psychedelia sneaked up on me in the late 60's, and readily accepted as being more adventurous than the 3 minute or less pop. Also enjoying  a lot of the classical music and the jazz around (especially Dave Brubeck Quartet, who used strange time signatures, infused classics with modern  jazz), I guess I was subconsiously waiting for pop and rock to take off at tangents from the conventional and be more complex.  So originally progressive music (note NOT rock) covered anything from the Moody Blues to Canned Heat's electrified delta blues - in other words  rock was being hybridised for the first time with other musics or treated in radical new ways, and so literally progressing into something new. As far as I remember the term progressive music  became progressive rock early in the 70's, with the genre being categorised by King Crimson, Yes, Nice (subsequently ELP), Van Der Graaf Generator, Soft Machine, (the Yardbirds spin-off) Renaissance, and to a lesser extent (and in deed largely forgotten nowaday) the Californian band Touch (keyboardist Don Gallucci had invented the Louie Louie riff when with the Kingsmen, several years before). The Moody Blues as one of the first (that is with hindsight) with a prog album, and set a target easily exceeded by those who came soon after. Tull and Genesis were slightly behind these. Floyd had to resolve their 'psychedelicness' and the loss of Syd Barrett before shifting genres. With the term progressive music consigned to the waste bin of popular music history, so to did separation of heavy rock and blues rock - remember Deep Purple up until In Rock were perceived as a progressive music band. Jazz rock was there too, especially with Soft Machine,  Miles Davis and the associated spin-offs (in chronological order): Lifetime, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return To Forever and then later Headhunters and Weather Report, giving you rock hybridised with a variety of jazz.

And so  to Bohemian Rhapsody - I heard this the first day the Night At The Opera album was released in the UK (bought by a friend, a then consumate Queen fan) and cringed - I'm one of those who enjoyed Queen's heavier rock of their first albums and hear for instance the progressive rock in Brighton Rock (sans electronic keyboards). However, Bohemian Rhapsody seemed to me to be a parody on prog rock - now I hear the joke having lightened up in 30 years but it is still a parody.

Dick Heath wrote:  So originally progressive music (note NOT rock) covered anything from the Moody Blues to Canned Heat's electrified delta blues - in other words  rock was being hybridised for the first time with other musics or treated in radical new ways, and so literally progressing into something new.

Ah. This should be obvious, but apparently it's just too easy to forget, not having lived that era myself...

Dick Heath wrote: And so  to Bohemian Rhapsody - I heard this the first day the Night At The Opera album was released in the UK (bought by a friend, a then consumate Queen fan) and cringed - I'm one of those who enjoyed Queen's heavier rock of their first albums and hear for instance the progressive rock in Brighton Rock (sans electronic keyboards). However, Bohemian Rhapsody seemed to me to be a parody on prog rock - now I hear the joke having lightened up in 30 years but it is still a parody.

Beau Heem wrote: [QUOTE=Dick Heath BTW, Weather Reports' I Sing the Body Electric  was one of the records that I also was very fond of at the age of 14, going through my fathers vinyls...

Interesting. One reason I don't include Weather Report amongst the first post-Miles Davis jazzrock bands, is that I found I Sing The Body Electric  influenced by Miroslav Vitous and Wayne Shorter's  free jazz  - btw was this the first album  or did a double live Japanese release by WR predate?  - I wasn't hooked on WR until the period of Sweet Nighter and Tales Spinnin' (my first WR purchase), when Alphonso Johnson was giving the band a more funky sound. That's why I find it odd that Miroslav Vitous released Magical Shepherd around 1976, which was  atypical of his normal LP releases - but a personal favourite. This might be called  a Herbie Hancock album of jazz funk (Hancock provide the lead on electric keyboards) but with Jack DeJohnete, of all people, supplying funky drums...