Here's a question that should spawn a variety of different answers. How did you, fellow forum users, become progheads? What was the reason for you to dive into this not-so-obvious ocean of music and what made you stay? Did you discover prog by yourself or did you inherit this good taste from someone?

I'm curious to see what stories there are.

Heard a lot from local students when I were a small lad. A very unique house on a street that was not a street and a lot of foliage, pathways between houses and everyone playing this ultra interesting music.. Tull, Crim, Floyd, Moodies, Stones, Cream and The Who... at different houses. And Kindergarten.

Odd child.

;)

Prog is prog is prog for my ears. I just go heavier or lighter depending on my present mood and tastes! One day that could be Captain Beefheart Trout Mask Replica, the next it could be Death Individual Thought Patterns. Then Yes Close to The Edge. Then Gorguts Obscura. Then Henry Cow, lol.

At about 11 I had a tape with ELP Trilogy. It really started then. 

Later, groeing up I started playing guitar and I was mainly into blues and country/finger picking plus some Italian singer-songwriters and a bit of PFM/Orme.

My passion for prog exploded when I discovered Meddle and most of all, Atom Heart Mother. The connections with classical music did the job. At the end of the 70s I discovered Heaven And Hell by Vangelis, then Rick Wakeman, Yes and so on.

I never liked Genesis too much, even now, so I wonder whether I am really a proghead or not.

My musical life story, grossly oversimplified:

I discovered radio when I was about 13. I quickly got bored with top-40 pap and found a station that played anything from the Moody Blues to the Mothers, from Harry Partch to the Incredible String Band. One evening I heard the Nice's "America," and that was it: this was what I wanted to listen to.

Years passed, radio got stupider, I lost touch with friends with similar tastes, and I pretty much abandoned all forms of rock for classical music, with some Celtic, bluegrass and other oddments for variety. I'd occasionally check in record shops to see what Robert Fripp and Steve Morse were up to, and that was it for the last quarter of the 20th century.

Shortly before the turn of the century I finally got online and discovered an active prog rock community there. That awakened my dormant interest, and here I am at PA.

A neighbor played me "Musical Box" and the entirety of Trick of the Tail (It was relatively new at the time).

I've been a prog freak ever since.  Even more since around 96-97, since I rediscovered newer prog. Numerous festivals and 1000's of CDs later, here I am.

I grew up listening to the music they were playing in the early 70s, the Beatles, the Stones, Hendrix, The Who, but also Genesis, ELP, Yes, KC...

The first Prog album that made a deep impression on me was Tarkus, and that's why it has remained a favourite ever since.

Hi,

Same here ... but I suppose that we could say that the Beatles and Rolling Stones helped, however, at the time, in Brazil, I was also hearing other things that were tremendous and I liked them a lot, from pop, to the local stuff to classical ... it was all excellent and has a great history, that we will not even try to look at! Same with a lot of other countries, although NONE, get a chance at a history of it all like Germany and England!

All in all, the new things by the Beatles were far out and by 1967/1968 I got into the California scene a lot, and was well versed and familiar with the great bands of the time. The Midwest, in America, did have some far out things, although we never consider CHICAGO progressive, but in those early days, they were far more "progressive than most bands around, specially with the longer cuts showing some excellent music and composition.

By 1970, I was already aware of the European scene, and my sister (for example) already had Alan Stivell (she played harp for the SB Symphony) and Aphrodite's Child ... and a couple of other things from Italy, although I thought they were mostly pop music. 

It all really "broke" in 1972, when Guy Guden, in one night played SEBTP, A Tab in the Ocean and Tangerine Dream (Phaedra) ... and I have never lost the flavor for appreciating new music, and specially experimental and improvised materials, of which I already had some taste of from the SF scene which was full of it in those early days, until the whole thing was ruined by the media. Before 1972, I already had Yes, ELP, PF and JT in my collection.

I have never left behind many sounds from Europe ... they still are too intelligent and far out for my ears, and I have never, also, succumbed to the malady of top ten numbers and favorites, something that I don't think belongs in a place about progressive music ... but that's another story.

Sounds like my childhood. I also had older siblings that  looked after me, turned on to lots of me different music & yes, occasionally smoked various plant based substances with their friends. 

 

It's good to see you back again, Grumpy.  I haven't seen you around here since before Christmas, and on the subject of Christmas, I haven't seen Father Christmas since December last year either.  

Like Steve G  I go back a long way >50 years...started with the usual bands like The Beatles, Stones, Jefferson Airplane ,Doors, The Who, Traffic, Procol Harum, Moody Blues...then one day I heard Crimsons' Court and the rest was history. Started seeking out unusual music like that....

Trilogy for me too. It was from my mom's record collection.

Most of my friends at school were into metal which was a ok but a bit heavy for me. Then one day around 1979 my friend lent me a copy of “And then there were three”, and I was hooked. Within a year I had the entire back catalogue of Genesis, was getting into Yes and Floyd, and just kept branching out from there.

I went to Uni in 1982 and there were quite a few Neo prog bands touring around like Marillion, Pallas and 12th Night, also bands like Steve Hackett and Rick Wakeman toured the universities, got to see Genesis a couple of times, Jethro Tull too. I had tickets for the 90125 tour but missed the gig - never did get to see Yes again.

This topic comes up every now and then on PA, but I think its been a while. I gave some too-long answers before, going thru my music stages; the short summary of that is:

1) Friends in Jr. High introduced me to Rush-- for about a year I listened to almost nothing else; wore out a cassette with 2112 on one side and Moving Pictures on the other.

2) In High School, friends introduced me to 80's Yes. 90125 was a music staple.

3) In college started checking out 70's Yes; listened to almost nothing else for about a 6-month period.

4) Post-college: found out what "Prog Rock" is, discovered Renaissance, 70s Genesis, and other bands on Prog Rock radio, found PA and other websites, started collecting a lot of Prog rock.

5) Became a Prog DJ,  and continue to collect A LOT more Prog Rock to this day. So I'm a total "Prog Head".

And like a lot of others here, I listen to all types of music, but Prog Rock is by far my favorite type.

It was still a gradual journey into becoming a prog fan though. I was still mostly into classic rock and whatever was popular. Led Zeppelin was my favorite band. However, my cousin was a big fan of Genesis and to some degree Yes also so that helped me get more into and discover this thing called progressive rock but I don't think my cousin, who also liked King Crimson, used the term progressive rock. I didn't really take that term seriously until seeing it mentioned in a guitar book that had Robert Fripp in it. I also had a rock encyclopedia that mentioned progressive rock and first heard about a few bands that way. I gradually got more into Yes and Genesis and started to discover their back catalogs and also started to explore King Crimson even though I almost gave up since the first album I heard by them was "islands." By 1986 or so I was a fan of progressive rock bands but was mostly limited to the most obvious ones. My step mother's brother, who was a musician and dj mentioned to me a band called Gentle Giant and I eventually bought three friends and Octopus by them(this was late 80's).  Before the end of the decade I discovered prog mail order catalogs(such as the laser's edge) and the rest is history. 

Prog was growing in the underground at this time even before the internet due to cd reissues and these mail order catalogs. Although I wasn't into it you also had progressive metal popping up. I eventually discovered progression magazine, got sidetracked by alternative while in college and took a break fromm prog in the mid 90's but then rediscovered it before the end of the decade due to rediscovering my old prog catalogs and then also first got online and discovered prog that way after seeing a prog website mentioned in a book I bought called the progressive rock files. I soon started going to prog festivals and got more into this genre online and the rest as they say is history. 

my parents were hippies and listened to all that psychedelic stuff, including prog and Krautrock (a friend of them was in the army and stationed in Kaiserslautern; he sent them all these Krautrock albums). they took all kinds of drugs, and the house (we lived in a hippie commune) was always filled with sweet smoke. they were at Woodstock with me when I was 8 months old; my parents and I can be seen in one scene of the Woodstock movie. we lived in Oakland, just a bridge away from the center of the hippie movement.

my mother played some piano; she was my first piano teacher

I was hooked from the opening Mellotron chords.  The rest is history.  

To be honest, it was not till after my first marriage ended that i re-discovered Prog and rebuilt my record collection and started going to gigs again.

I just like music.

Rob (aka Skeletor!) good to see u here Bro.....Working on any new music??

told too many times before:

For short:

Stand Up age 6 (in 69)

Beatles & Stones - age 9

Crime of the Century in 74 the second day of its release (age 11)

Prog floodgates opened the next day: Crimson, Genesis, etc...

Always a pleasure to see you!

I am always working on music, even if I don't have an instrument in front of me!

I can tell you the next Epignosis album has been titled The Way Things Were.  It's looking to be about twelve songs or so.

I hope you are doing well and even thriving in these times.

I went outside to perform my nightly basketball drills under the lights of our driveway when brother Brian opened his bedroom windows (which were over my basketball "court"), placed his "big" audio speakers into his window boxes, and started blasting Uriah Heep's Demons and Wizards--playing the album the whole way through--while I worked out. I was, from that event on, a changed person.

Three years previously, I had heard someone in a local band play the portamento strip on a keyboard before playing their cover of this new hit by Grand Funk Railroad called "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)" 

A year later I was coerced by my "wild" friend to go to a community-wide dance for middle schoolers. While I tried avoiding the usual conspiratorial girls, I found myself sucked into the performances of the live band(s?) up on stage. I remember them playing theatric versions of "Maggie May," "Stairway to Heaven," "Locomotive Breath," and "Aqualung."

Other than that, in the 1960s, my mother was a Beatles fanatic and dad a Latin pop-jazz nut (mostly Herb Alpert and Sergio Mendez).

I wouldn't call myself a proghead either. I'm a music addict where prog rock takes on a prominent role in this addition. When i hear words like proghead it sounds like a fan who is only emerged in that one particular genre.

I'm a proghead but also a metalhead, jazzhead, classicalhead, electronichead but definitely not a Deadhead. Sorry Jerry Garcia

Rednight wrote: It all started with hearing my brother's 'Tull records as a young nymph in high school. Then he took me to their 'Passion Play concert in '73. Then my friend across the street turned me onto PFM's Chocolate Kings and Genesis' 'Trick' around the time of their release. From then on, it was all downhill.

a nymph? nymphs are female; the male equivalent is a satyr

I think I have some natural affinity to music though; thankfully, for instance, I've always have had good hearing and intonation too, so I think it was 'natural' to delve further in music complexity. Also comes to confirm this my interest in the guitar since I was around 11 years old.

The rest is a matter of taste maybe.. I've always liked 'retro' and sci-fi things (not for being 'retro' obviously but is what I truly like).

I discovered prog a bit by myself. I'm the oldest of my brothers so it couldn't have coming that way. Neither by radio, tv, friends or school mates at that pre-internet, pre-cd era. One summer we heard 'Wish You Were Here' song, among others, all along with a group of friends. Then back home we passed outside a record store at the local mall and I asked my dad for 2 bucks to buy the cassette (something I rarely did, but this one deserved it.. ; ) ). Needless to say, at first I didn't like or understand the rest of the album, and always was rewinding side 2 to hear Have a Cigar and WYWH. But then 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part VI' started slowly creeping in each time... : )

The next original cassette that went round and round at the car's stereo on mornings on the road to school was JT's Thick As A Brick, that a friend lent me from his older brother.

From there it was all exchange with class mates, and they in turn with their older brothers. That way came Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, ELP, Rush and Marillion. It was already the CD era. Jimi Hendrix too.

Later, already at university in the late 90's, came Zappa, PFM, Maxophone, Gong, Mahavishnu Orchestra through friends, and I had a glimpse of the less known stuff: Caravan, Renaissance and the like. Gentle Giant. Return to Forever (RIP Chick ) I knew from the last years of school and somehow rediscovered it later, along with Weather Report.

Perhaps like Hermaphroditus he was more than what he seemed to be. 

^

"Not that there's anything wrong with that."

All good my friend....Keep me posted on when The Way Things Were drops so I can buy it.

Cheers Brother...!

Certainly not an inheritance.  Maybe prodded in that direction by some friends as I was getting into rock. 

It so happened that through my prior background in Indian music, I made some not so obvious connections to prog.  Connections that only people like me who listened to the same composer and also got into prog seem to be aware of.

Listen to the intro of this track and you can hear at least some resemblance to something Genesis would have done circa SEBTP (particularly some sections of Cinema Show).

So...when I heard Firth of the Fifth for the first time, it felt like coming home to me.  I didn't know before then that there was a whole style of rock that borrowed classical sounding licks and appropriated them in rock. I was delighted because as much as I like straight up rock, the variety and unpredictability of prog along with it being strongly rooted in a conventionally melodic foundation (speaking only of symph prog here) evoked for me the music I had been listening to all through my formative years. 

It was bands like KC or Gentle Giant that took more effort on my part to crack.  Likewise the first exposure to old Metallica was a shock to me, but an exciting shock. That was the kind of music I had to adjust to.  But Genesis/pre-TFTO Yes was like listening to the music I had always loved but in a different language - English. It's also why I found stuff like Canterbury easier to get into than prog metal.  Prog metal required adjusting to the sonic palate (and also shutting out the biased thinking of 'true' metalheads according to which any innovation is 'selling out'), but the classic, melodic 70s prog was so comfortable to get into for me and yet also fresh and different in many ways.

-The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert on TV. Not prog per se but close enough for me.

-A close relative moving near by. He had some Pink Floyd, Genesis, Deep Purple, etc. records I could listen to and borrow. 

-Realizing that the local library had a collection records and that you could borrow them. 

Not unusual for 1959 births. Many bands of the period had something progressive in their music, so time was on our side. I remember I found a single by Ekseption: Feelings with Italian Concerto as the B-side. I liked side A and fell in love with side B. The next sign was in March 1971 or so, when A Girl Named You by Supersister entered the charts.

In June 1972 I heard Pink Floyd for the first time (Relics) and this marked my final conversion to prog.

It was a wrap.