Hello everybody, my name is Sergey, 25, I'm from Israel (I was born in the former USSR and came to Israel with my family when I was 10). I haven't got any musical training and I don't play any kind of instrument unfortunately. The first time I saw this site was a couple of months ago, and I come here and check the new reviews almost every day.
I'm not sure that anyone is interested, but I'll still tell you about my experience with prog and other kind of music. No one in my family was a big music fan, and I started to have interest in music when I was 14 or so. My first rock album that I've bought was "The Wall", and I liked it a lot. Then I went "back in time" and bought PF previous albums. I guess I was a big fan of the band as a teenager, and I remain such one. My favourite albums were "the piper" and the "Ummagumma" live album. I think my most favourite piece of music was the last part of "A soucerful of secrets" (from the live album). I played that part thousands of times. I also bought the Syd Barrett box which included his 3 cd's, and I was hooked to it. The music itself is raw and simple, but the atmoshpere is amazing, and Syd sounds so sincere in these albums. I have now all the PF stuff since the beginning until "The final cut", except some rarities maybe. I also listened to some of the late 60's-early 70's stuff, like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Bowie, Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and others.
But despite having so many Pink Floyd stuff, I had only a few other prog music cd's. The most mentionable is the first one by King Crimson, I guess. About a year ago some guy showed me an Israeli site about progressive music which included a long biography of Pink Floyd and other prog bands. It was wery well written, and I read about other bands, like King Crimson and Yes, and my interest was growing. Another guy I knew suggested that I'll buy "Red" by KC, and I did just that. After 3-4 spins, I realized how big this album is, and it's still my favourite, as you can see by my icon. In the last year, I bought around 50 cd's, most of them are symphonic prog. I want to say what I think of every band, if I can.
King Crimson - I have their 7 cd's from the 69-74 period. I really like the Broford/Wetton era, all that 3 albums are fantastic, especially Red. I really like "In the Court", but the 3 others are not as good (in my opinion of course), though they have some great moments. I want to buy "discipline" and maybe some other albums by the band in the near future.
Gentle Giant - a fantastic band, I really enjoy listening to them, I have all their albums from " Aqcuiring the taste" up to "Interview", and I'm going to buy their live album very soon. My favourite GG album is "Octopus".
Genesis - the first album by the band that I bought was "Selling England...". I didn't like it at first because I wasn't expecting to hear that kind of music, but I understood their greatness later. I liked "Foxtrot" and "Nursery Cryme" even more than SEBTP. I have also "Trespass", the live album from 1973 and "The Lamb", but the last one is laying in my bookcase, waiting to be discovered. The post Gabriel era of the band doesn't appeal to me. I listen to Genesis very rarely in the last couple of months for some reason.
Yes - I have 4 albums by the band, and I don't think that I'm going to buy others in the near future. I think that "The yes album" is nice, "Fragile" is very nice, "Relayer" is a masterpiece and one of my favourite albums (good thing people told me that it needs a lot of spins to understand this album, became otherwise I think that I would give up), but I don't like "Close to the Edge" too much. If I could remove it from the top of the best prog albums of all time I would do that, but I can't. I'll tell you why I don't like it: the title track has some great moments, but some of the quiter parts are really annoying. I can't stand "And you and I" - Jon's voice is really annoying there, and the last track is pretty boring. Of course, it's my opinion only and I respect others who have different views about this album. I will never buy "Tales" because I am 99.9% sure that I'll hate it and I don't want to waste my money on a double album.
Camel - I have their first 4 and the "Live Record", it's very "user friendly" music, but it's too mellow for me, the only Camel album that I still listen to sometimes is their first.
ELP - I have their first 4 studio albums. I can't say that I hate them, but I don't like them either. It's nice to listen to "Tarkus" or "Karn Evil 9" sometimes.
VDGG - I have "H to He", "Pawn Hearts", "Godbluff" and "Still Life". I have a very hard time getting the music. There are 2 songs that I really really like - "Killer", "Childlike's Hope...", but I'm struggling with the rest of the material.
Jethro Tull - I have "Aqualung" which I think is great, "Thick as a Brick" which is fantastic in the first 10 minutes, but the other 30 are slightly worse, and "Songs from the wood" which I listened to maybe once because I didn't now that this is more a folk album when I bought it, and it's not what I like at the moment.
I have around 10 other prog cd's, those which I like more than others are "A tab in the ocean" by Nektar, "In the land of grey and pink" by Caravan and "Zarathustra" by Museo Rosenbach.
Well, that's all for the moment. I just want to say that this is a great site, and the option to download songs is awesome, I think that at least 10 of my albums were bought because I liked the track which I downloaded from that particular album from this site. The only thing that bothers me is that some guys write reviews about albums after they heard it only once and didn't understood it. Oh, another thing, as I said, "Close to the Edge" is on top here and it shouldn't be, but hey, I listen to prog music only for about a year, some of the guys here listened to prog when it came out in the early 70's.
Btw, I bought today 4 albums - the 2 Anglagard albums, MDK by Magma, and "Pictures" by Island which I heard is great. I bought them in the "Wayside Music" store on the internet, never bought from them before, I hope that they are reliable.
Now that really is all for me, sorry for the spelling mistakes, and if you have any comments of suggestions for me, you are welcome. Maybe I'll write some reviews in the future, but definetly not now - It's 2am here, I'm going to sleep now.