Greetings fellow proggers,
I thought I'd drop a note to say hi, as I'm new to this forum and it's
great to find a place where people can say things like "Octopus and A
Passion Play" without even mentioning the bands and people know what
you're talking about (as someone here said in listing his favorite
albums).
I've been listening to prog bands since 1975, when I started an album
collection in earnest. My playlist from back then would contain all the
usual suspects most of you are probably familiar with: Giant; Yes; Tull;
Floyd; ELP; Renaissance; Genesis; PFM; plus many others.
I must say, I took alot of heat back in the day for listening to prog (we
called it "art rock" then, to the extent we gave it any label). I had
only one good friend back then that "got" all this music. The farthest
anyone else would go would be to listen to "Bloody Well Right" off of
Crime of the Century, and maybe a little I Robot. Gentle Giant was out
of the question. One of my friends in 1977 had somehow acquired King
Crimson's Court album, and he asked me if I knew it. I'd had it for two
years and told him so. "Well, it blows", he vehemently yelled at me, and
promptly donated his copy to me. Apparently "Moonchild" was just too
much for him; and not even the more accessible "Schizoid Man" could grab
him.
A little bit of trivia that might interest some: it turned out that
during my voracious first three or so years of building up a prog
collection, some of my album choices were indirectly influenced by the
band Saga. As it happened, my good prog friend at the time was the
younger brother of two members of Saga (who actually weren't quite Saga
yet). I was living an hour or so outside Toronto, where my prog friend
lived, and his older brothers were feeding him music suggestions, and he
in turn gave me recommendations and sampled albums for me. It was
certainly by this chain that I first heard of Gentle Giant, King Crimson,
and PFM.
A few years later, in early '78, I had an umarked cassette tape of the
first Saga album before it was released and of course got a promo copy of
the first album. When I went to college in southern Illinois that fall
of '78, I donated that first Saga album to one of the local radio
stations that played "good" music at the time (WTAO, in case anyone might
remember those call letters). For quite a bit of that school year, they
often played the tracks "How Long?" and "Humble Stance" (and "Ice Nice"
here and there).
Other prog I just found for myself, sometimes taking a gamble just based
on the cover art. I stumbled upon Renaissance's "Scheherazade" in a
dinky general store in 1975 and bought it just because the cover looked
interesting; it turned out to be one of my faves (although on the whole I
would put Turn of the Cards slightly above it). Mostly, I would load up
on prog on trips to Toronto. We used to go downtown to Sam The Record
Man, where many of the albums were $4.44 at that time. I'd usually come
away with 3-5 solid albums each trip in this way. I remember getting
Tull's A Passion Play for even less than that then. Here and there I
would hear prog-related stuff on the radio, and that put me onto a few
things...notably I first heard Parson's Tales of Mystery in this way, and
snapped it up at Sam's in '76.
I probably bought my last prog album in late '79 or '80, when the whole
genre just seemed to have fallen off the map. I remember hating
Genesis's Duke, and Gentle Giant had died for me with the Missing Piece
(maybe even Interview, but I think that's controversial). My musical
tastes were changing a bit anyway, and from 1982 to about 1992 almost all
I listened to was classical music (literally...I was a bit rigid then,
but have since loosened up...). I suppose prog partially set me up for
this. Compare Yes's "Cans and Brahms" and Renaissance's "Cold is Being"
(that's pure Albinoni there).
In the last few years I've had a bit of a personal prog revival, and started listening to and re-evaluating alot of the old stuff. So what do I really like now? Well, Gentle Giant isn't the be-all-to-end-all that it was for me back then, although they still rank high for me, in particular, In a Glass House. Lately I've been playing huge amounts of Yes's Relayer, Genesis's Selling England By the Pound, and Tull's A Passion Play. I've been listening to these albums for so long and have so many memories bound up with them that it may be impossible for me to separate out the musicality from the sentimentality.
I will say that Tull's A Passion Play strikes me now as a true masterpiece...Thick As a Brick is a fantastic album, don't get me wrong, but the creativity and ingenuity of Passion Play makes it a real stand-out for me now. I've been listening to this since 1975, and my opinion that it is Tull's finest has not wavered in that time, but it strikes me as even more so now.
The brilliance of Relayer also strikes me again. Probably due mostly to the wonderful "Gates of Delerium", with its frenzied rise to a climax, then the quiet and beautiful last few minutes. I also see "To Be Over" in a new and different light. It has a more subtle beauty and balance that I didn't always see.
What else lately? A lot of Foxtrot and Nursery Cryme, both of which have tremendous passages, but Selling England By the Pound would take the Genesis cake for me. I thought it was great when I got it in '78, and now I can hardly stop playing it (oh more fool me). Also, some U.K.; Starcastle's first album; Parson's Tales; and of course, alot of Pink Floyd. I know Dark Side and Wish so well I don't need to hear them anymore hardly....but Echoes, lots of Echoes.
A few other tidbits. I started to transfer some of these albums onto cd using a USB turntable I borrowed (google Ion USB turntable, if you're interested). That way, my original albums are sort of portable between players....a few crackles here and there are a good thing, as they remind me I'm listening to a copy of my original 30-something-year-old album. And it saves a bit of wear on these lp's.
Also, I've collected some vintage audio from the '70s, which I like to play this stuff on. Back in the day I was using a Pioneer SX-535 receiver, and I was able to pick one of these up cheap (as well as some old Marantz). For me, my prog pleasure is increased by listening on equipment (mostly) made in the '70s. You can get alot of this fairly inexpensively.
Final note: here are the prog concerts I remember attending (highlights):
1975 Pink Floyd, Hamilton, Ontario (They played ALL of Dark Side, took a break, then played ALL of Wish, took another break, then played Echoes...."dream" concert or what?)
1976 Gentle Giant, Massey Hall, Toronto
1976 Renaissance, Massey Hall, Toronto
1976 Rush, Massey Hall, Toronto
1976 Starcastle, Massey Hall, Toronto
1977 Gentle Giant, Chicago, IL
1977 Rush, Chicago, IL
1978 Jean Luc Ponty, Carbondale, IL
1978 Brand X, Carbondale, IL
1979 Jethro Tull, Carbondale, IL
1979 Heart, Carbondale, IL
1980 Frank Zappa, Carbondale, IL
See you around,
Pete.
Edited by dotnetpete - March 22 2007 at 22:28