How did you find Prog?

I've liked it for as long as I can remember.  When I was 3 my first favorite song was Mr. Roboto by Styx.  I liked the song mostly because of the video and the cool robots, but I think the song also intrigued me.  It's pretty cheesy now, but back then I loved it.

Edited by Gianthogweed - April 27 2009 at 23:46

I believe my dad awoke the prog-rock interest in me gradually during my youth. I vaguely remember going to a concert of "Träd, Gräs och Stenar" sometime a very long time ago. Later I was very into Kraftwerk and having listened to their krautrock-era albums, I discovered other krautrock-bands as Neu! and Faust (which I really don't consider prog-rock).

However, the real breaktrough came one day when the concert "Peter Gabriel - Growing Up Live" was shown on TV. Once again, it was my dad who recommended med to watch. 

I watched it and it really blew me away. Although this was in ~2004 and and much more complex kinds of music than PG had been out there for ages, i had never heard anything like it. You see, here in Sweden all the radio stations play standard useless commercial pop - and so that is all you know in that age (~13) unless you actively seek out something else or someone shows it for you. There's only one station playing different music - the government-owned SR P2, and because it plays much classical, opera and world music, it is often unfortunately considered a station for "old people". 

So I was blewn away by this "new" music. Sure, I had heard instrumental music and I had heard very strange and experimental music. But I had never heard just great and tasteful rock music with the concept of singing for a while and then just stepping back and let it be instrumental for several minutes. The concept of long songs with several different atmospheres, that last for a while and feels somewhat like a journey, rather than just a small pointless tune with a number of verses and choruses - it was totally new for me. 

So I started listen to PG for a while, actually believing he was original and diddn't at all realize his music in fact were just a simple, accessible take of a whole genre of wonderful music of the same concept. I read about him and learned that he appearently had been in some old 70's rock band before making his "art-rock" (or what it was called) solo-carreer. I assumed for quite some time that the band was nothing interesting, but one day when bored or something, I started reading a bit about Genesis. They apparently played something called "Progressive rock" which was said to be a kind of rock with tempo changes. 

Just out of curiosity about what those "tempo changes" could sound like, I downloaded "Dancing out with the moonlit knight". Whoa, quite some tempo changes indeed. Interesting, but that kind of hard rock was nothing for me really. But then I gave it another try and downloaded "Firth of Fifth".

Wow.

I had discovered the full potential of this concept of music making. This concept, which I already held to be the true way of making music, now had a name – Progressive rock. 

Just tanks to knowing the name of the genre it went along from there. A friend (a friends dad once again actually) played Close to the Edge (which I still consider to be the greatest song in the history of the world) and I got into Yes and from there I myself discovered ELP, Camel, Jethro Tull, Crimson, Rush, VDGG, Renaissance, etc, etc and later on the 90's era of Flower Kings, Tangent, Spock's Beard ...

Today I own almost 80 prog rock-albums and thanks to ProgArchives.com and Wikipedia I discover new ones every week.

I have the vinyl edition of Close To The Edge.  I span it one day.  I liked it.

A friend of mine knew I belonged to a few torrent communitites
He asked me to try and find Rick Wakeman - Journey to the Center of the Earth
I found it, downloaded it - and listened to it.
For some reason, I loved it and listened to it a ton of times over - thus began my search for more.
Ironically, my friend hated it and could not believe I liked it.
Later on, he also came to enjoy it - but at first I discovered Prog accidentally.
Kinda strange, but I'm glad it happened.

I dreamed of a fountain around which a piper modestly played a tune about the splendor of his music.

At a very young age, my dad introduced me to his favorite band, Genesis.  It's all I listened to from age two to ten, until he led me to other of his favorites.  Though I still consider Genesis to be my favorite band, I've found a whole world of progressive music since then, from friends, online archives and general exploration.  I'm actually really pleased with the way my tastes have evolved - especially in the last year.

I heard "Pull me Under" on the radio, back when I was in the Army. I loved it. I thought, it was Queensryche (sp?), at first. A few weeks later, I was on a field exercise, in the tent, and a friend let me borrow some of his cassettes. He had Images and Words, and I listened to it till my batteries were dead.

I've always liked heavy rock. My mom always tells me how I kicked to the beats when she was in rock concerts.
Also my parents used to play a lot of heavy rock when I was at the size of a thermostat.

My favourite song when I was a kid was Knockin' on Heaven's Door by Guns 'N Roses. I still remember vividly how I tried to tell curious girl my favorite song in the grade school. Not easy for 8-year-old finnish boy with no experience of the english language. "nokkin on hewens toor"

I remember hearing Deep Purple's Smoke On the Water before but when I was a teenager it totally blew my mind. Then I started to listen a lot of Deep Purple.

The next stage was Deep Purples Child in Time. I realised I like longer and more complex songs that takes you to a emotional trip. I tried to google and ask around, but didn't quite knew what to look for. Then my friend told me about Jethro Tull's Thick As a Brick and pointed me into progarchive.com.

I've just glanced these forums from time to time but mostly I've used the site only for finding music. Nowadays I don't listen to much anything else than prog.

Hey guys...I gotta chime in here if only to share my perspective, which is not that much different than yours really-but it's not to find other prog-vets here. I listened to the usual fare in Jr High (Sabbath, Beatles et.) but I was on a limited budget, and hadn't even discoveed FM radio yet. As I entered HS, I started devouring anything I could get my hands on (Beach Boys, The Outsiders, Peter and Gordon, Kingston Trio even Herb Alpert). I was raiding my parent's record player at the time and listening to what I could find. By the time I hit 15-16 and moved up to LA w/ my grandmother, I was hungry for something new. A teacher at Franklin High School in 1973 actually took the time to give me some stuff he was "growing weary of", since he was leaning towards Classical and Jazz. I remember he loaned me a copy of Saturation Point by Darryl Way's Wolf and Camel's 1st album. Not a bad place to start! He drove me up to Van Nuys after school one day to Moby Disc Records and bought  me a few albums. At the same time I discovered Poo-Bah Records in Pasadena, and they were playing everything! Henry Cow, Gong, anyhthing on Virgin Records and pretty out there stuff. From then on it was MY MUSIC and my self-exploration. 

I was fortunate to be in junior high when, I think anyway, prog was at its most popular. Queen was on the radio a lot, Another Brick in the Wall was played to death, and Rush was just reaching their Moving Pictures/Signals stage, which was accessible enough for radio. The Walkman hadn't come out yet, so I carried around a transistor radio. There was a fabulous progressive FM station out of Rhode Island back then, and that's all it took.

My first concert was Styx's Kilroy tour, but I always like Paradise better. I got into "alternative" music in high school, but still gravitated towards the stuff on the fringe- mainly Sonic Youth. I still loved Floyd and Rush, but they fell out of favor with my friends. I hit college, and hung out a lot with an older guy who got me into Crimson (I remembered hearing 21st Century Schizoid Man on the radio years earlier), Yes (I was into 90125 years earlier, but never really gave them a listen beyond that), Genesis, and all the rest.

Since then I've enjoyed watching "alternative" mix with prog, with Tool, and later DT and the others. It's been a great ride.