When were you infected by Prog?

It was the "Undercover Man" from VDGG's "Godbluff". At that time I was 7 or 8 years old. My father would like to play with me in my room and turn on his Matsush*ta Hi-fi system. Heh, I remember it clearly even after so many years. Ironically, VDGG which led me to discover prog, actually, are of no interest for me now.

I was infected by prog in 1971 at age 15. "In The Wake Of Poseidon" by King Crimson is what specifically did the damage. I had a collection of progressive rock albums that started with Crimson and branched off into things like....Rare Bird, Greenslade, Gentle Giant, Curved Air, Guru, Guru, Tangerine Dream, Mort Garson, Beaver & Krause, Gong, and Zappa. I had a great love for bands like Jethro Tull, Genesis, and ELP however, I was more drawn to the obscure underground bands from the progressive rock scene in Europe during the early 70's. Popol Vuh, Jade Warrior, Mike Oldfield, and David Bedford held my interest for many years. I greatly enjoyed Vangelis and his years with RCA records. That was very magical Vangelis. Various recordings of his seemed to cross over into the progressive rock style just as much as they did with electronic music. It was a great experience discovering these artists and purchasing their albums from vendors in Europe. It was a difficult task to find recordings such as these in the analog age but the mission to obtain them all became an interesting adventure.

Like most, I was probably familiar with prog before I knew it was prog. But the album that probably opened my eyes was "Once Around the World" by It Bites, when I was around 18 in 1988. A good album to start with I think because It Bites are quite quirky and not too demanding, so the music was quite accessible but still more sophisticated than most other popular music at the time. I can remember playing it for a friend of mine and him describing it as "Progressive Rock". I was unfamiliar with the term even though I had listened quite extensively to Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. But even now I don't really think of those bands as "Prog" although they were all certainly "Progressive" if you follow me. My friend described Progressive Rock as music with "long songs.." with "complex structures..". What came to my mind was Dire Straits...but what did he mean?

Anyway I was intrigued to acquaint myself more with this music labeled "Progressive Rock". I gave Marillion a go and also Rush, but these two bands seemed worlds apart. How could they represent the same scene? It wasn't until I left home for Art College in Portsmouth that I truly discovered what Progressive Rock was all about. My land lady's daughter had moved out leaving behind her record collection. Here I found the classic Yes albums - The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge. Learning to know and love the music that they contained opened up the doorway for me.