First prog song: Dark side of the moon, blew my mind but I can't really listen to it anymore

First major prog song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcxw0UFyxi0" rel="nofollow - trilogy by ELP. I absolutely loved keyboard solos, so I loved keyboard solos in songs like https://youtu.be/V9Yq5m9eLIQ?t=263" rel="nofollow - this . I had recently heard Dark Side and decided to try find more music like Any Colour You Like. Found ELP - From the beginning, it was alright so decided to listen to the albums main song Trilogy. Revolutionized my music taste more than any other track. Insane chaotic synth solo that I'd never heard before. never heard 'transitions' in music, which I later learnt was called prog.

I really smashed ELP after this for the next 2 years. Found Canterbury scene, fusion, classical jazz, classical music etc after discovering prog. My favorite track atm is currently Mumps by Hatfield, or Visit to Newport Hospital by Egg.

It's worth noting that I discovered prog in 2013 and have been on a prog bender ever since. My dad was born in '63 but hates prog and general w**kiness, he was in a somewhat popular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyphWbOZJK8" rel="nofollow - NZ Punk band in the late 70s early 80s. Not really popular, wouldn't expect anyone to know them but people occasionally do. Lately my Dad has been listening to some of my records and he is beginning to like Prog, but typically only modern stuff. Hates the hippy stuff, which in my opinion is my favorite era (1969-73) :(. He really just grew up in a time where Prog is not popular, as did I.

50's

20's 

teens

40's

30's

70's

Well said

:)

Count yourself lucky, I've never met a prog fan in person full stop. It just never reached New Zealand. All the people like my parents and people my parents age were not even 10 when the Prog era was almost over in 1972 or so. I'd love to meet any prog fan of any age to discuss music, hopefully one day I find one!

Do you know why I arranged these age groups in this order?

No offense but probably not much of a music fan either(in general). A lot of people just aren't really that much into music and that's ok. 

Actually, she loves music, specially opera and music with great vocals, like Broadway musicals. I think the long instrumental parts in prog is not her cup of tea, and though she doesn't dislike it, is certainly not her favorite thing. 

I think most people get bored with the long instrumental parts unless it's by Pink Floyd or Rush. For the most part it's something that doesn't appeal to most people(even most "real" music fans). Us prog fans seem to be outliers among music fans. But there are other reasons too such as bands who sing in foreign languages, unusual or intellectual lyrics, singers with high voices, complexity(time changes) and just sounds(including instrumentation) that you don't typically hear in normal rock. I made that comment though because a lot of p eople just aren't hardcore music fans. They are casual listeners who maybe just mostly listen to the radio and just aren't really that into it. I would say maybe 20 to 30 percent of adults are music people and the rest are just casual at best.

Yes, you make a good point indeed. It seems that most people prefer a short piece of music, mostly with a good dance beat and a catchy tune. Prog, likes jazz, classical, etc, is music to listen to. Of course you can dance to anything if you want to, but in general, you won't get people dancing to a long piece from yes, King Crimson, etc. 

Well said

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDBykpSXsSE" rel="nofollow - LINGERING DEEEEEEEEEEEATHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Saw them live, can confirm you can dance well to this prog.

Only if you're dead obviously 

In that case, I guess you could do the zombie stomp to Dead Can Dance.

I'll take that as a no. It's in descending order. The ones at the top have the most fans and the ones at the bottom have the least(based on my observations of being a prog fan for over 30 years although this is how it currrently seems to sit). 

Within a few minutes, one of the lads had pulled up a YouTube video of "Close to the Edge" on his cell phone, and they dug it!  Very impressive for 16 year old kids! 

Am I the only one bothered by the grammar mistake in the thread title?

I hadn't noticed the apostrophe was in the wrong place until you mentioned it but it's not a catastrophe.

When I saw ARW play in Dayton there were some youngsters screaming "We love Jon!!!."

There is hope!!!

When I said the apostrophe is in the wrong place, I meant it should be in "20's" and not in "fan's"

Interesting. Do 50's people enjoy prog. My mum and dad are 50 and them and all their friends like old punk, new wave, radiohead smashing pumpkins, that type of stuff.

Well, it's because younger people tend to be more internet savy and because of that are more easily able to discover new music(new to them anyway). I could be a little off on that and they might be a little lower but for now I stand by it. Plus they have parents and even grandparents who might have been into prog. 

Not a bad assumption to be honest. I found Progressive Rock out completely by my own accord after wanting to hear more groovy synthesizer stuff. 

It's kinda weird, as a kid I hated all forms of rock except blink 182 and Linkin Park and I listened to lots of rap and hip hop because of my brothers. I discovered prog in 2013 and got more into musical theory in 2014 and started taking my organ/piano lessons seriously. 

These days I denounced genres that are harmonically simple, like most pop/rap/hiphop/EDM. I just don't like it. You won't catch me playing my organ without it plugged through Wah, Chorus and Fuzz. Thanks Emerson, Stewart and Ratledge.

Well, it has been a while since I have posted on this site, but I am a 25 year old female and I am a huge prog fan. I have been really big into prog for probably the last 6 years or so. I love to collect vinyl and I have been slowly amassing my favorites. Phil Collins and Genesis were my gateway into the wonderful, weird world of prog and I have been a huge fan ever since. I honestly never heard of prog before until I read on wikipedia that Genesis were considered a progresssive rock band, so I told myself I needed to find out what this "progressive rock" was.

Now, that I have a vague notion on what this genre of music is because lets be honest, people are always arguing over what is and what isn't progressive rock. I especially love the symphonic side of prog but I have since gotten into the RPI genre, some zheul, some avant, some jazz fusion, neo, etc. Now my tastes are pretty eclectic.

So yes, there are definitely younger people who are into prog, however, I have to admit I haven't met many people my age who are such huge prog fans as I am. Sure people seem to like Rush and Pink Floyd but that is the extent of many peoples' knowledge of progressive rock.

Well, for the younger people anyway. I'm sure most people over 40 have at least heard of Yes, Genesis and Jethro Tull and if they are big music fans in general then probably King Crimson also.

 

People tend to get into music during their teens, whereas the musicians they are getting into tend to be about ten years older.

 

 

 

Yep. Unfortunately that seems to be the case. I'm not(and I'm sure you're not either) referring to younger prog fans though. If the younger folks get into prog and within a few weeks they don't know about Yes, KC, Genesis, ELP, etc then they aren't paying attention or just focusing on prog metal etc. In the past(say past ten to 12 years or so)whenever I have seen a younger person in public and talked to them about their Yes t shirt it almost always turned out that they found out about them through their parents. I think many younger folks who have heard of Yes probably just think of them as "just another classic rock band" and the same thing with Genesis. Their loss.   

Exactly. Those in their 70's typically got into music from the fifties or sixties. Since prog was not on most people's radar in the 80's or 90's most people who were teens in those decades(30's and 40's now)did not get exposed to prog which is why they are towards the bottom of my list. Not that there aren't any of course but I would guess most of them that are into it now kind of discovered it online much later and and had an aha moment("oh Rush are prog?" "Oh Dream theater are considered prog rock? I better check out this thing called prog rock."). That kind of thing. Typically there has to be some kind of "bridge" that takes someone from casual fan to knowing what prog is then to becoming a fan. I guess you can think of it as a two steop or three step process(depending on where and how they start). Those who already are fans of Yes, PF etc growing up have a headstart but they still need to dig deeper to be prog fans. These days the term "prog" is pretty ubiquitous in music circles it seems so it's probably the easiest it's been to discover prog since the seventies.

Honestly, you summed it up perfectly. I also never had heard of Prog before, but I loved the music and wanted more. And just like you I travelled into the weird side worlds of prog and found even more new music.

I haven't met any prog fans aside from prog death metal fans at Opeth, and the guy at my local music shop likes modern prog like Plini, King Gizzard etc. I haven't really heard these bands yet. It's taken me years to get through all of the classic prog acts and their spin offs.

Being 70 != being able to search the internet for an obscure forum about obscure music. 

Maybe :P. Most people 70+ aren't so good at the internet.

Prog fans in your 70s

Prog fans in your 20s

Prog fans in your 50s

Me: Prog fan in her 30s 

I would suggest, as an old foggie, that music appreciation, has nothing to do with tastes and what you like and don't like ... listen to or don't listen to. If you love music, ALL of its aspects will color your imagination, however, in this day and age, the whole thing is so commercial that finding someone that doesn't care about this or that ... is not a surprise ... but one could state that their ability to enjoy and listen to music is very limited, and might die away completely as they get older ... not like many of us, that went out got the albums, and still collect the music ... and I have no problems listening to new stuff whatsoever ... which makes me want to comment ... that it's not "music" that many folks are really listening to!

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: I'm curious as to how prog fans in their 20's listen to music. I doubt it's on cd so is it mostly vinyl, streaming or downloads?

When I was a teen, CDs were still in, so I certainly got in the habit of buying them. I remember I could go somewhere like Best Buy and they'd have CDs from mainstream prog bands - Rush, Yes, ELP, Dream Theater, etc. I remember iTunes coming out when I was in my early teens, but I always thought the idea of buying a single song was kind of dumb... If I liked one song from a band, why wouldn't I get the whole album to find more songs that I liked? I could buy the full album from iTunes, sure, but it costed about as much as the CD, so what was the point? Then again, I'm 27, so people in their early 20s may have had access to streaming earlier in their life.

I still prefer buying CDs, but these days it's harder to find a store that sells them, let alone the stuff I want to listen to. Getting them shipped from online can get rather expensive.

If my neighbor is an example, then I would say, he does not listen to music ... he just plays the songs he likes, and I'm not sure that "music" has anything to do with anything at all. 

And he does this via his friends, and the suggestions he gets from Google or somewhere else in his smartphone ... but for you and I ... the thought that Google, or Microsoft, or Apple can decide what you should listen to?

That's when I want to throw up! Ad Nauseum!

 

I know vinyl is trendy amongst some 20 year olds (and has been for a while since I noticed students snapping up some of my old vinyl at a jumble sale) but my 2 sons listen to music, go to gigs etc but don't own a single CD between them (not counting the Bob The Builder single that I bought for them about 20 years ago).

I'm 25 and have been a prog fanatic since I was 18. Much like BunBun, my gateway into it was listening to my dad's classic rock collection which naturally contained a lot of Rush and Pink Floyd, and upon reading on Wikipedia that these apparently belonged to a genre called "progressive rock" I decided to immerse myself into it as much as possible. Nowadays I don't really listen to either of those bands anymore and while I still very much love a lot of the more "mainstream" symphonic groups such as Genesis, Yes and ELP, I'm usually not too interested in new music that tries to emulate that style. Most of the prog I currently seek out tends to gravitate towards the more harmonically and structurally complex regions of the Canterbury and RIO scenes, often verging against jazz and modern classical.

I've been happily collecting CDs for eight years now but I've never had any interest in vinyl because I think it's too expensive and too impractical in terms of space and durability.

I can answer this from my own personal experience! YouTube (and probably Spotify, but I don't use Spotify) is excellent at recommending music. I'd always play games and let music play in the background and it would autoplay into recommended songs. I LOVED keyboard solos and would listen to songs with them, and it eventually took me to prog.

I have a vinyl collection worth quite a bit, I bought all the prog classics and then some rare LP's like Egg, Flower Kings Stardust we Are (which seriously was about $120 because it's out of print).

I don't really listen to vinyl so much though, I just love the collection. YouTube is my go to and I discover music through that platform.

Don't use apostrophes for plurals, only possessives or contractions ("what is" becomes "what's")

Yes:  "Prog fans in your 20s" 

No:  "Prog fan's in your 20's"  

And so forth.  

Any further infractions and we shall take down this website.  

Best, Anonymous.  

 

I'm just about old enough to have heard of all of those bands., although I'm not sure about Ange. 

I'm not overly familiar but Ange were a French band similar to early Genesis.

That sounds promising. I'd probably like Ange if they sound like early Genesis.

That will depend on how you feel about vocals sung in French. ;)

BTW, I have two daughters, ages 17 and 15. About 4 years ago took them both to see their first concert, by an incredible local band called ProgNation. In addition to a few original tunes, the band played spot-on covers of King Crimson (21st Century Schizoid Man and Court of Crimson King, if you can believe it), Pete Gabriel, Moody Blues, Genesis, Yes, ELP and other classics. I figured if they didn't like the songs of one group they might like another. They liked ALL of it, and after the show met the band who were very kind to us. In fact, it was guitarist Chris Cudo's birthday and my kids got a piece of birthday cake!

Anyway, about a week later we were in the car and I was playing an ELP compilation I'd made. They loved Lucky Man, From The Beginning and Take A Pebble, but then Tarkus came on. I figured that might be a bit too much for them so after about 30 seconds I switched to the next song.

My oldest daughter yelled at me. "What are you doing? I loved that! Put it back on!"

Probaby the proudest moment I've had as a dad.

BTW, ProgNation (from Cleveland) have reformed as Cuda/Schief/Cuda playing all-original (and fantastic) music. As soon as a CD is recorded I'll try to get it on ProgArchives. They are really great. Opening for Nektar next week and for Brand X in April.

Long live prog!

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: Also, and I could be wrong(and hope I am)but it seems like most younger fans(20's)either aren't into or don't know about the somewhat lesser known older prog bands such as Barclay James Harvest, Eloy, Triumvirat, Starcastle, Strawbs, Nektar, Greenslade, PFM, Curved Air, Happy the Man, Grobschnitt, Banco, Earth and Fire, Ange, Finch, etc etc.

Very often when progressive rock is mentioned on the internet or TV one will hear how the 1970s were the golden age and no new artists of note cropped up afterwards, so if anything it makes more sense to me that people who are new to the genre and want to explore its lesser known exponents would first gravitate towards bands from that era rather than bands who are currently active. Personally, I love Triumvirat, PFM and Happy The Man; I think Curved Air and Banco are okay; I don't really care about BJH, Eloy or Grobschnitt; I know of Strawbs, Nektar, Greenslade and Earth & Fire but haven't heard anything by them.

You're right that most modern bands aren't as good as the classics (that's my opinion, it's probably a bit of rose tinted lenses though).

This is my favorite album of all time and it came out in 2008, Swedish band making Symphonic Prog pretty much like Yes, but with Beach Boys styled 5 layer vocals.

This album is considered the best album of the decade (2010s). It came out in 2018 and it is an excellent homage to classical 70s prog.

Liked it when I was 15 too

I know what you mean, I now listen to a good balance of new bands and music along with classics but it takes years to just get through some of the big classic bands but oh well, it's nice to know that there will always be new music to discover.

Yea, if a person is a prog fan then they tend to be up on not only the classics but also some of the newer groups despite their age. Also, it most definitely is their loss if they think these groups are just like other classic rock groups. I know some people hate using the term prog rock or progressive rock, but I think it is good because then it can help people discover more music in the vein of yes and genesis or whatever because I wouldn't know even an eighth of the groups I now know if it wasn't for this site.

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: I'm curious as to how prog fans in their 20's listen to music. I doubt it's on cd so is it mostly vinyl, streaming or downloads?

Mostly through streaming whether it's spotify or youtube. I mostly buy my music on vinyl though, and sometimes the occasional CD. I do like boxset CDs like the Flower Kings Kingdom of Coulours or Blue Effects complete collection. It's a nice space saver on the shelf lol.

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: Also, and I could be wrong(and hope I am)but it seems like most younger fans(20's)either aren't into or don't know about the somewhat lesser known older prog bands such as Barclay James Harvest, Eloy, Triumvirat, Starcastle, Strawbs, Nektar, Greenslade, PFM, Curved Air, Happy the Man, Grobschnitt, Banco, Earth and Fire, Ange, Finch, etc etc.

Lol I see a pattern where I keep responding to your posts. Anyways, I am happy to say that I am into most of those groups. I'm a huge fan of Eloy, Triumvirat, Ange, PFM (my 3rd fav. group), Banco(own 8 of their best on vinyl including their newest release), Nektar. Just started listening to Greenslade about 2 weeks ago and now I'll need to hunt down their first LP. Happy the Man might be my fav. American prog group based on their first 2 LPs alone. Haven't heard of Grobschnitt and Earth and Fire, so now I'll need to listen to those at a certain point.

Anyways, I didn't start out with any of those bands as I'm sure most didn't but thanks to this site I have gladly gotten into them.

I 'discovered' Rush through Guitar Hero and grew to like them from that. But I also went through a phase in my teens where I was obsessed with Deep Purple - Machine Head. Not sure if it counts as prog, but the loads of ideas packed into each song and the great musicianship pulled me in

Rush and early Queen were my gateway drugs into becoming a serious prog fan (not that early Queen and Rush aren't prog, just that they're shared by the umbrella of classic rock which is what got me into music). From there it was Yes, Floyd, and Dream Theater, and later on Genesis, King Crimson, PFM, Jethro Tull, ELP and on and on.

Anyway, hi! :)

ditch the prog.. and the women will come.  Prog is for old farts who are already married for years and years and ain't getting any anymore 

Like most anyone I tend to listen to what I like but have worked for many years usually with kids half my age.. usually supervising them at work and once they found out I was really into music they'd turn me on to stuff they liked.. and I'd do the same with stuff I liked. A nice give and take..  they rather liked my open-mindedness. 

My tastes obviously are much more inclined to modern progressive rock.. ie.. not modern prog rock.. but have never equated my tastes to being statements on quality. I've enjoyed much of what I have heard outside of modern progressive music.  I'd never sit at home and listen to things like Hip Hop.. but it was fun to occasionally listen to at work with coworkers  

Not sure where people get these ideas from. Women want a guy who's not a wuss and not afraid to talk to them. They don't care what kind of music you listen to.

Not me. I like some old school rap though but not so much the newer stuff. I do like "newer" kinds of music though such as indie and some pop stuff. I also like alternative but that's hardly new anymore.