I was introduced to Prog in the mid to late 70's. While I explored the albums of Yes, Genesis, Rush, Pink Floyd, I would be beside myself. My head would be blown, as I listen to the albums through Speakers and headphones...

Of course it's not just you, and it happens to all kinds of stuff, not just music.   You age, the music ages, sometimes the two grow apart.   That said, as a veteran prog listener I have taken long breaks from the awful stuff and later come back with a renewed enthusiasm.   In other words, don't sell your CDs  ;)

 

That being said though, I have always managed to find new bands that I get excited about, and if I keep searching, I always seem to find some great stuff that I get excited about, but sometimes that can take opening your mind to new sounds.  Also, many of the albums and artists that I didn't always like at first would grow on me with repeated listening, and the ones that took longer to grow on me are the ones that have been endearing to me the longest.  New bands that I discovered from 2000 - 2009 are now considered to be just as good as many of the one's in the 70s both in my life and in prog circles.  Examples are Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Kayo Dot, Primus and so on, so sometimes it just takes time.  Sometimes it just takes a willingness to take the time to give newer music the same chance we have given the classics.  And nowadays, you have to search through a lot more artists to find the ones that appeal to you. 

 

And Sometimes, our tastes change and adjust.  As Atavachron said, Don't sell your CDs.

Not really.

Certainly, there is the "first-time" effect that makes many things (not just music) special.

But no, music is as important to me now as it ever was. I love my favorite albums just as much, and I am finding new things to love all the time. I'm more of a rock fan than a prog fan these days, so that probably helps, and I also enjoy discovering "new" old music as well as new music.  I'm into lounge music, religious chant, lots of stuff.

Music remains more than entertainment to me. It is crucial to my well-being, helping me deal with anxiety and difficult times of loss. I'd be lost without it.

Live music on the other hand, I'm done with. I don't get into crowds of people or urban areas anymore. I just love recorded music.  Nor do I wish to damage my hearing further, I won't risk that. Hundreds of rock concerts over the decades have cost me dearly, as has playing in a band myself.  So stupid I was not to wear the earplugs. 

Also I have also lost some hearing and have anxiety, and music still relaxes me... I'm not sure I could stop listening, and still; love it.

I'm talking about losing the same enthusiasm, and excitement I had in hearing an album back when I was 15 to about 30.  

Maybe its as simple as applying more leisure time to just lying back and listening?

What's different for me is that most of the stuff I liked a lot as a teenager/young adult gets listened to with far less frequency, sometimes rarely or not at all, 30+ years later. 

And as others have said in this thread, it's not just music. It extends to other forms of entertainment as well. People go through life and their tastes change. I see it as a good thing too as it often leads to new discoveries and experiences but I do sometimes lament the fact that I can't just be perfectly content to listen to Rush or Kings X for hours on end anymore. 

This is something that I am totally different than most ... I'm a writer, and also do film and music reviews. 

As a writer of poetry, short stories and novels, I simply follow my "inner movie" and it has nothing to do with the outside world, as most of this work is "written" in my dreams, and any issues get resolved there, the next day or night.

Film and Music reviews, require a reasonable attention and knowledge to the history of the art form, something that many top ten folks fail to make use of at times when discussing "progressive" this or that. Something similar to this, because it is, like the best things in the history of the arts, something that often requires your ear tuning to it ... not the other way around ... a lot of the arts have been like this for hundreds of years, and often the current one is not liked but the old one is.

In my case, believe it or not, I'm all VISUAL ... all the arts trigger images and stories and memories and what not, and these (for me) are ageless and often way out there in nowhere land. As such, when you think about it, each time I hear this or that piece of music, a new visual comes up ... regardless of the lyrics ... it's as if the same story and song, now has a completely different back-set and lights in it, which creates a NEW experience for my imagination.

I have examples of this, and how vivid and real, some things can be. Check out my review of the WALL here on this site ... it is a comparative study between the original WALL and then the 2nd one that Roger toured ... and while it is a massive thing that all rock fans should see ... you'll likely never see another "show" that well represented, other than just a basic rock music with cheap lights ... that are not even in sync with the music at all!

All in all, I still cry when I hear ... When the Music is Over ... or Close to the Edge ... or Yeti ... or just recently on an Italian tour film I had never seen by AD2, they did "Apocaliptyc Bore" ... my theme song if you will ... and I cried again ... I know what it meant to me, and still does ... that will never die.

I get concerned when I think that people don't seem to enjoy things as much now as they did then ... maybe you don't have the joint or the acid with you, that helped so much of the music come alive ... but I have to tell you that I enjoyed the music a lot more without the joint and the drink, than otherwise, and that includes today.

I think, and I certainly show it you could say, that I have a soft heart for those days ... the "revolution" meant a lot to me, and the artists that VOICED our concerns were true to their spirit and they fought a good fight ... and eventually were still run down by the media. Today, a lot of that same media still looks at those days as hippies are dirty, the drugs are bad (like the medical and pharmaceutical is not!), and too many of this and that looked stoned, and we (sometimes) still think that it was more fun than now ... I have to tell you that at 68, I am having more fun than I did at 28 and enjoying a joint now and then until I quit it all some 40 years ago!

As a writer/artist, I would caution you into thinking that you are not as happy now, and that the music is not as exciting ... the music is still there ... your mind isn't, and your accepting of it then, is different than what you accept now ... and this is the main reason why silly stuff like bar room this and that, and insipid and "media deranged" kind of songs that made it big, were never my likes ... so all I had to look for ward to in life was getting drunk on Saturday Night and then have a headache Sunday Morning ... and that supposedly made the music better?

Maybe we just woke up ... from the things we didn't like, and the music was an escape ... well, music was never an escape for me ... it was the leading LIGHT along with all the arts ... and that means that silly pop song hits about bars and girls ... were not for me!

So what is it, that you are really missing? The music, the film, the art ... is all still there ... and the common denominator is YOU ... even GONG was telling us that!

Same as when I was a kid but I have a deeper understanding of music and music theory so that actually makes the listening experience even better.

But I'm definitely an 18 year old trapped in a 56 year old man's body.

Some of the old things still excite me when listening especially if it's been awhile since playing them...others not so much. I enjoy discovering both new prog bands and old ones I never heard of back in the day....mostly older obscure ones (1969-1979)..I'm always on the look out for those.

Someone just twitted yesterday on a list of krautrock albums ... and goodness gracious ... I have not heard about 6 or 7 of them at all ... but the list is off center ... it lists AD1 and ignores AD2 ... and AD1 was not quite a music group ... it was a nice trip on an evening with everyone getting stoned druming and playing ... and later getting laid, more than likely. (Here comes Phallus Dei in the next year!)

:)

Someone just twitted yesterday 

Personally I refuse to twit as long as Twitler uses it as his main means of miscommunication....

What's sad is when someone doesn't allow themself to evolve musically, still listening only to what they did when they were seventeen.  That's a shame.

I somewhat agree with you. Having limited access to new music (especially records back then) did also affect how we felt about an album. They were treasured like gold dust and had a bigger value than something that is neither here nor there.

Also, as we change mentally, we changed our perception of something we liked. For example, Pink Floyd to me was like an adopted family member for at least 10 years of my life. However, I now hardly listen to them at all, aside from anything new Dave Gilmore releases or DSOTM. 

However, the good news about the digital age, is that i am again excited about finding new music as much or even more so, as i was when i was young. The only difference is that i now have access to literally millions of artists to choose from rather than a handful at the record store or what the radio played. 

 

King Manuel wrote: In hindsight I admit I grew up really privileged being stuck in a corner of the world (Windhoek, Namibia) where it was very difficult to get hold of good records. Whenever I managed to buy of one of the few LPs (and later CDs) that every blue moon trickled into our local record store, it was something rather special. With a collection at home consisting of probably only 30 to 40 albums at that stage, every album was kind of a treasure and collector’s item. Nowadays with having access to millions of titles on the touch of a button it is hard to feel that excitement over a new discovery.

Totally.   Less is more, we're richer when we're poorer, and don't appreciate things as much when there is so much of it.

What you are touching on here is the times we live in.......A time of convenience. And music has also suffered from this, both the making of music and listening to it. For the most part music artists today don't plan, write, record, produce and issue albums like they did back in the day.

You basically answer your question by stating "...where we had patience to continue playing an album to get into it, now we only seem to give is a short time to capture the magic."

Bands nowadays create albums via email and the cloud, recording all the parts individually at different times and then mixing them together, rather than recording the music live in the studio where the magic happens as one cohesive group and feeding off each other as they play. What I tend to hear is wayyyyy too much perfection in albums today, too sterile and clinical and with no emotion.

This is not 100%, but certainly a heck of a lot more today than there ever has been, you are simply "hearing" these differences and your brain and body are reacting to it. For this reason I will never stop going to see live music, live music is where the emotion is because the band is playing together, at the same time and are feeding off each other and you can see their emotions coming thru. For sure back in the day I never wore ear protection, but for the past 5-6 yrs now I have been and it helps. My wife is vertically challenged, so we tend to go early so she can be upfront which means it is loud, but she can see .

It's also how you chose to listen to your music at home. I have a dedicated music room, and I don't bother anyone when I listen and they don't bother me. My full attention is on my music, I have a comfy sofa in front of my speakers and I smile a lot when I listen, as well as get emotional on occasion.

Your right though, we don't listen to music like we used to. Have you listened to all 4 sides of Can~Tago Mago without interruption and your undivided attention? It's pretty special......  

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: I have recently encountered older prog fans who have said that as they get older they find themselves liking heavier stuff(even prog metal)more. Has anyone else experienced this? I wonder how common that is. I'll admit that I was a teen during the height of heavy metal but not into it much at all then but I find myself getting more into metal and other heavier stuff over the past several years. I'll never prefer metal over prog but I find myself liking it much more than I used to.

With me it is rather the other way around. In my teens I was most of the times a metal head. The release of Dream Theater´s When Dream and Day Unite backj in 1989 exposed me to more progressive mucis. Not much later I was listening to Yes, Pink Floyd, Rush and Asia. Another Prog Metal band I got into during the 90s was Shadow Gallery.

Nowadadys I find myself listening less and less to the heavy stuff and also less to Prog Rock in generall.  Instead over the last few years I have explored othere genres and even started to love Country Music. Of course Prog is still regularly on my playlist, but not as much anymore as for example  five or ten years ago.

I was also a metalhead in the 80s, but the likes of King's X, IQ and early DT moved me into listening to more proggy music.  I then went through a very dark phase (Britpop/Indie), which I tried to like but didn't really (I try to forget that I did this!).  Eventually I got hold of Genesis' Platinum Collection and that opened me up to trying so much more prog!!!  But in the last few years I've gone back to trying a lot of metal, mainly newer stuff, and it's all down to trying Ayreon for the first time

That was bad luck, I enjoyed listening to much thrash metal, industrial, grunge and stuff in the 90s. Particularly after a brain shaped CD wrecked my car stereo and when I complained to Earache Records they very kindly sent me a large parcel of their releases .

Agreed ... and people today, even when discussing "progressive" or anything else, do not recognize, or even appreciate that the amount of money needed for a recording studio in 1970 was prohibitive to 90 out of 100 bands (probably more) and that meant ... that if you went to the studio, you better be rehearsed, and have your piece of music planned out and written and ready to record ... 

Of course, nowadays ... who cares ... you turn on your DAW, that you paid $49 bux for and then you post it on the tube and immediately say that you are a professional! I would like to suggest that 90 out of 100 of those DAW things are not great ... many are very good and probably a really good audition tape, but a "professional" this or that?

No way!

But you can find a lot of "self-made" folks out there, that started on their own garage, and "made it", by recording everything themselves, and learning the ins and outs of it all ... just look at Steven Wilson, selling cassettes for a band with a name ... a band that did not exist yet!

I am not as old as you, not nearly, but I hear you about there being so much to go through.  So what I have done is to simply reduce the new albums I explore to a trickle.  That way, when I do find something that really excites me, I get enough time to listen to it over and over. I just shut myself out of the FOMO syndrome.  There is going to be music I don't get to and that's ok.  What's more important is I am able to enjoy what I do listen to.

So among the good ones there were the great ones.

Nowadays every band or one-man band can record and publish their music and put it on bandcamp or spotify or the Tube. So you have to dig and go through much more mediocre music (well played and very well recorded, but mediocre music after all) to find the few gems.

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: I have recently encountered older prog fans who have said that as they get older they find themselves liking heavier stuff(even prog metal)more. Has anyone else experienced this? I wonder how common that is. I'll admit that I was a teen during the height of heavy metal but not into it much at all then but I find myself getting more into metal and other heavier stuff over the past several years. I'll never prefer metal over prog but I find myself liking it much more than I used to.

 

Interesting as I do like Haken , Animals As Leaders and occasionally some random Prog metal act. I never liked metal very much , not even Iron Maiden , but that may be more because of lack of information. I was ( an still am) a real prog snob so the term 'prog metal' (which never use to exist - it was either Hard Rock , Heavy Metal or Prog Rock) makes me want to take it seriously , so I do!

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

  - Worsdworth

   from  Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

   

Me too, I like Haken quite a lot and actually would prefer if Riverside returned to their more metal sound of ADHD. Although I have not been into DT as much but this has to do with the new material which is not resonating with me anymore.

I have always been into metal but not the thrashy stuff, Metallica was never a regular for me nor stuff like Slayer . NWOBHM was more my thang......Saxon, Maiden, Priest as well as Scorpions, Krokus.