How did you find Prog?

This has to be the 55th time I've repeated this line, but...

I'm an old fan of Thrice. I was just seeking out some more music which made use of more than one time signature and didn't beat me to death with verse-chorus every track. Biggest turning point had to be Thrice's "The Abolition of Man", which led me into prog metal. Also didn't hurt that a friend of mine kept trying to get me into death metal and kept striking out until he sent me Atheist's "Mother Man".

I grew up on a variety of music (mostly British Metal, P-Funk and late '80s/early '90s Rap), but my oldest brother had some albums by Klaus Schulze, VDGG and Zappa which I liked a lot, in '82 I first heard The Dreaming by Kate Bush which really blew me away. All this time I didn't know prog (or symfo as it was called in Holland). I kinda liked Marillion then. in the mid-90's I first listened to early Yes which I liked. later with P2P-downloading (shame on me!!) I discovered GG, Magma, The Flower Kings and a whole bunch of others, ending up buying a lot of prog-CDs (as a result of downloading no less!!!!). I've always tried to expand my musical horizon and taste in any direction although there is still a lot of music that I'll probably never like, like modern R&B (as in Rubbish&Bullsh*t rather than Rhythm&Blues) and most other stuff that's on dutch radio. 

Born in 1981, my earliest memories was putting on Tubular Bells at the age of 3. Of course I didn't know what prog was back then. My dad had a good collection of classical music, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, you name it, so I listen to that as well.

Then at age 7 I discovered In the Court of the Crimson King. I was totally blown away, of course, but still I didn't know that it was prog and was soon discovering Nintendo, so video games, and video game music were my only preoccupation.

Then when I turned 12 I got into metal, with Black Sabbath and Pantera. During my high school years I got into Thrash metal with Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth. Then Death metal with Death, Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse.

At 17, now in college, I got into Black metal with Dimmu Borgir and Emperor. At 20 I got into prog metal with Dream Theater. My roomate was into Pink Floyd so I got into them as well, through The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon, but I wasn't really a fan until I heard Wish You Were Here, Animals and Meddle.

Back in 2001, I made a search for King Crimson on All Music Guide and noticed they were called progressive rock. So I searched for similar bands and I impulsively bought Yes-Fragile, Jethro Tull-Aqualung, Rush-Moving Pictures and Genesis-Selling England by the Pound all simultaneously.

Then in 2003 my aunt told me to check out Gentle Giant, so I went and bought Octopus. Then in next few months I got the first three albums. It was only when I first heard In a Glass House that I was hooked on Prog rock.

In 2006 I found Prog Archives, and I discovered the Italian and Quebec prog scenes of the 70s. I'm currently discovering the south american scene and some obscure english 70's bands. Still very much into metal of all sorts.

I "converted" my mom and dad to prog. My parents were born in the 50's, so of course they were aware of some of these bands, but they were not huge fans of the style. That's where I found out that my dad was into Jethro Tull and my mom liked the first Crimson and knew about Genesis quite a bit. I got my mom into Locanda Delle Fate, PFM, Bacamarte and Maneige. That's pretty much where I'm at, right now.

perennial_quest wrote: Born in 1981, my earliest memories was putting on Tubular Bells at the age of 3. Of course I didn't know what prog was back then. My dad had a good collection of classical music, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, you name it, so I listen to that as well. .

Edited by Alberto Muñoz - November 13 2008 at 14:28

I saw a picture of Mike Portnoy's Siamese Monster kit in a issue of Modern Drummer and the first thing I thought was that it was a piece of pretentious BS that anyone would make a kit like that for themselves (at that time I hadn't seen Terry Bozzio's kit yet ;-) ). I saw he was in a band called Dream Theater, but didn't really give the article a second thought.

I was a huge metal fan. Metallica, Megadeth, Sepultura, Tool, etc were pretty much all I listed to. So one day I was looking through the metal CDs in the record store and came across Dream Theater. At the time I browsed the MD article I didn't realize that DT was metal (if I had actually "read" the article I may have, stupid, stupid me :-P) So on a whim I picked up DT: Awake just to hear this drummer. I will admit that at first all I could hear was this screetching singer, but the music behind the singer totally blew me away. I think it was the very next day that I picked up Train of Thought. Being from a metal background, ToT blew me away even more. By the end of the month I had picked up everything I could find by DT.

Then one day I was searching for DT info on the Internet because I was hoping to find more bands like them, and came across ProgArchives.com. My first thought was "What the heck is prog?". In my first few days of browsing PA I came across Opeth, Porcupine Tree, King Crimson, Orphaned Land, (thank you PA for the streaming MP3s, so I could get a little taste of each). This site really opened my eyes to the really great music that's out there. I find new stuff to listen to almost every day.

BTW my views about MP's kit have changed since I originally saw the article, I'm only being honest about what I thought at that time. But my views of James Labries voice on Awake hasn't changed though.

Wow, this takes me back.

I didn't know of the term prog-rock yet, but I found Yes - Fragile and Uriah Heep - Demons And Wizards in my dad's vinyls and realized that I liked this kind of music a lot.

I was very surprised and amzed with the eccentric (I felt at that time) sound and beat.

Before, in many cases, the radio let me know a lot about music, including progressive rock.

 

Recently I have friends with great knowledge of rock and mine is increasing by discussion with them.

I'm so looking forward to the discussion.

Thanks, my fellows!

Q6 wrote: I sort of grew out of rock into prog. I loved guitars but found most rock fun but lacking in substance. I was also partial to a bit of classical and loved bands like ELO who mixed genres. ELO progressed to Yes and then the story grows on..., Nowadays I am still being introduced to bands by friends and I find myspace is a great place to source new bands.

You're right ,too bad Rupert Murdoch owns myspace.But since he doesn't care about music we like,he leaves bands alone.Many bands like Morkobot,Danava,White Hills,Turzi,Acid Mothers Temple or Aqua Nebula Oscillator are worthwile(if you dig psychedelic stuff)

88 melter wrote: 88 melter say  perennial quest 's story is a good example of the current generation of prog fans. I appreciated seeing the progression, no pun intended, from one music to the next. Dates and years, even!  In some ways he is more adventurous than I am, and I am a professional musician.

I remember, back when I was about 14 or 15, having a lot of trouble getting into death metal. It was all noise and yelling for me, until I had a revelation with Brutal Truth's first LP. The same happened for black metal, I had trouble with keyboards in metal (I guess I wasn't ready for prog back then). And the same went for 70's prog.

My point is, I sound very adventurous today, but everything was gradual, hence the years and ages I mentioned. It took me quite a few listens to get into extreme metal to the same degree that I needed a minimum of 10 spins to get into Genesis.

Alberto Muñoz wrote: perennial_quest wrote: Born in 1981, my earliest memories was putting on Tubular Bells at the age of 3. Of course I didn't know what prog was back then. My dad had a good collection of classical music, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, you name it, so I listen to that as well. .   WOW did you remember what was you doing at 3...   I remember very few of age 4

Well the thing is I moved into a new house at age 4, and I clearly remember putting on Tubular Bells a year before, in our old appartment. Of course I don't remember the details of my childhood, but music-wise I am able to recall quite a bit. Music has been the most important part of my life, so putting things chronogically is easy for me. As for discovering Crimson at age 7, that cover art alone leaves an undelible mark in your brain.