What Prog album is the most personally important?

Last week I created a poll between Rush's albums A Farewell To Kings and Hemispheres as both albums were personally important works to me as well as being musically important and felt that only other PA members could objectively pick the best of these two acclaimed albums. Would any members care to share with PA any prog albums that hold personal significance to them and why? (the why is totally optional.)


Edited by SteveG - June 30 2014 at 18:05

Besides the sentimental feeling towards Rush, the band that really got me into progressive music and started my interesting in older rock music, i would say The Mars Volta.

Maybe on the fringes of prog, but Kid A is probably the most important album to me. I remember one time, I had been participating in a composition workshop pouring days and nights into a thirty second piece. I was exhausted and tired of music in general. I explained my predicament to a friend and he offered to let me use his phone to relax and listen to music (I didn't have an iPod with me). All he had was the entire Radiohead discography. I listened to Kid A. Radiohead was already my favorite band and Kid A my favorite album, but this time I connected with their music like no other time in my life. I was inspired to put what I made aside, and write something without the limit of genre or standard notation (neither of which I am against, but eschewing it for the time being was helpful to me learning how to express through music). From this point on, I simply wrote music. I didn't draw lines between pop and classical, romantic and avant-garde, and simply tried to learn how to be an artist. I enjoy making music a lot more having had that experience with Kid A and still get inspired whenever I listen to it.

The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn by Pink Floyd. There's a lot of music out there I would not have gotten into, let alone enjoyed, had I not picked up this album first. It blew my mind the first time I listened to it and led me to get into more experimental stuff and material that was out of my comfort zone at the time.

The Wall methinks. I listened to that album incessantly for two years and it got me listening to music that was more intellectually loaded and with a wider array of styles.

Btw Steve, I moved this to top 10s and lists. If any thread asks for personal faves or just call on people to name/list a specific set of albums or indeed album, then it's here you post it

I would have to say that Yes, Genesis, and Tull albums from 1971-1973 constitute my musical core. Picking any one album, however, would be impossible.

Guldbamsen wrote: The Wall methinks. I listened to that album incessantly for two years and it got me listening to music that was more intellectually loaded and with a wider array of styles.

That was the first and only prog album my mom ever bought for me

she described it as being hit in the head with a board over and over again

Several but a few that come to mind for me are:

Yes-relayer

Porcupine Tree-Lightbulb Sun (very important album to me. I saw the tour but also I played it right before I moved out of my mom's house).

Marillion- Clutching at Straws. This album got me through some tough times.

As for Rush I'd say "hemispheres."

Edited by Prog_Traveller - June 30 2014 at 21:31

SteveG wrote: Last week I created a poll between Rush's albums A Farewell To Kings and Hemispheres as both albums were personally important works to me as well as being musically important and felt that only other PA members could objectively pick the best of these two acclaimed albums. Would any members care to share with PA any prog albums that hold personal significance to them and why? (the why is totally optional.)

Steve G,
I have too many, but right now Trespass comes to mind by Genesis, it's brilliant and gives me chicken skin (goose bumps).
Also the knife is one of my ultimate tracks but besides this all tracks are too good. hugs xxxxxx

Tarkus without doubt. I loved fantasy and Marvel comics and this music seems closest to those things. You could lose yourself in it especially with headphones. That created my love of prog rock.