How did you find Prog?

Ten years ago or so, when I was thirteen and had just gotten a broadband connection, I downloaded (yeah, I was a menace to society back then!) a collection of the songs in Guitar World's top 100 guitar solos list. I quickly started to appreciate songs like Aqualung, Time, Lazy and Zoot Allures, all of which I had only heard the artists' names. Still there were two songs that totally blew me away, namely 21st Century Schizoid Man and Starship Trooper. When I noticed that all these songs were actually sorted under the same genre, I quickly began to dig for more but got scared off by the experimentalism (I was only 13) and it wasn't until I found this page a couple of years ago, that I started to dig really deep. My girlfriend must hate this page with all her guts! 

A bunch of my friends listen to prog and always hyped about how good it was. So naturally I checked it out. I started with Protest The Hero, worked my way to Mastodon, and yeah. This is all very recent by the way. I just started listening to prog and Ive definetly fell in love with it.

natewait wrote: My dad recognized that I was a big music lover when I was a young teenager as I became fascinated with the Beatles and several other more modern rock bands. He took me aside and said he wanted to show me his favorite band, and he put on Octopus by Gentle Giant. I was blown away immediately and my dad was thrilled and proceeded to play me every single Gentle Giant album. After that, he moved on to Yes and finally Genesis....

My dad recognized that I was a big music lover when I was a young teenager as I became fascinated with the Beatles and several other more modern rock bands. He took me aside and said he wanted to show me his favorite band, and he put on Octopus by Gentle Giant. I was blown away immediately and my dad was thrilled and proceeded to play me every single Gentle Giant album. After that, he moved on to Yes and finally Genesis.

But, I still thirsted for more prog and really wanted to know if there was prog being made nowadays. After a search on amazon, I discovered the supergroup Transatlantic. I found out that it was formed by members of four different popular prog bands, so I decided this would be a good place to start and downloaded a song from each band. I downloaded "The Glass Prison" by Dream Theater, Some Marillion song, I don't remember now, "I Am The Sun (Part 1)" by The Flower Kings, "Thoughts" by Spock's Beard and finally "Duel With The Devil" by Transatlantic. I showed my dad these songs, and he was particularly impressed with The Flower Kings and Spock's Beard, so we went out right away and bought "Back In The World of Adventures" and "The Light" at the local record store.

My dad got busy and we weren't able to listen to these albums for quite some time, so I went and borrowed them to listen to alone and I was blown away. I proceeded to get every album by both these bands, and went from there to become the huge Prog fan I am today!

Hi all!

As weird as it sounds, I learned about modern Prog at the biggest and most commercial retailer for electronic goods in Germany (from an anonymous worker there).


Well, I actually had listened to the 70's staff all my life. My dad got me started. I just always thought: old=good, new=crap.
Before 2003 I had never bought any Cd recorded after 1982. I didn't know the stuff I liked was called prog, or that there was more of it.


In 2003 I accompanied my sister to the Madonna Cds at our local Saturn store. Right next to them, there was a mini-pedestal with "Impossible Figures" by Magellan on it. The album was declared a "Special Recommendation" in big, bright orange letters and had several arrows pointing at it.

The album's cover art was very unusual and its case looked like a small book. So I picked it up and listened at a sampling station, where you can play 30 seconds of each song. 
My first thought was that this sounded exactly like the good old 70's albums  .

At first I was convinced someone had made an error . I mean, good music has to be at least 20 years old !

Confused I opened the book-like album and found a small brochure from Insideout Music, a german progrock label. They seemed to promote a certain style of music and had a website.
This stuff was actually new!

My sister remembers the day and tells me I went a bit crazy at this point . I embarrased her by repeatingly shouting "someone is making good music again" at her and all the people around.
(Well of course I wanted to inform everyone! They hadn't recognized yet!)

She calmed me down and I decided to check out the other bands in the brochure.
The next one the shop carried was "Testimony" by Neal Morse. And guess what - that was a "Special Recommendation", too!
Following the alphabet I found Spocks Beard's "V" next and went to listen again. My sister had a really hard time getting me to leave the shop.

I bought all three albums that day and loved them all.
I was really enthusiastic for the next 5-6 days. I immediately phoned my dad and several friends to tell them that some guys had started to make good music again. Naively, I was convinced a great revolution in music was imminent .
After all, I'd found on the net, that V had cracked the german top 40 album charts two years earlier! And now this two great albums were the "Special Recommendations" at Saturn!!! And some guys were making good music again!!!!!

I actually planned to help the movement along . I tested on my mom  which song on "Testimony" she could stand (she hates prog). Then I bombarded local radio stations with requests to play "Sleeping Jesus".
Of course they ignored me (,though I still think some songs on Testimony are radio-compatible).

Starting with the Insideout webpage, I found some prog ressources after my big discovery. I learned that good music was never dead. Later on, some links lead me to PA.
While I'm happy to have discovered the variety in prog today, I was still disillusioned when I first realised there would be no revolution .

Several weeks later -when I had some money again- I went back to the local Saturn for some more music. I had to realise that they normaly carry practically no current prog Cds. There were no recommendation signs to be seen either.

I asked around and learned that they had had this concept where the employees in turn recommend there favourite new releases. It was limited to the local store and abolished after only a few weeks.
The employee who had dared to highlight the prog albums didn't work there any more. It's a pity, I would really have liked to thank that guy.
(To this day I sometimes wonder if he left there or was fired because of his recommendations .)

So, I discovered modern prog due to a chain of coincidences:
That recommendations concept, the one proghead working there, my sister liking Madonna (rather than something starting with another letter), Impossible Figures having a cover I really like, and Insideout Music putting these brochures inside their albums.

Just imagine - whithout all these things coming together I might never have found out that good music is still recorded today.

In my closet

^ The saz taksimi guy.  Oh well, enjoy that Steve Vai song.  I kid.  Besides, you're in France and I'm not, which sucks for me.

IGNEO1991 wrote: I got onto prog through my father... im only 18 years old, but when i was looking throuhg my dad's vinyl collection i found some amazing bands such as king crimson and many weird canterbury scene bands like national health and hatfield and the north... i thank my dad .. without his collection i would possibly be listening to some crap stuff right now like coldplay :P. But i somehow think that prog music naturally clicks in with a certain individual.. meaning that they are naturally musically adventutous and artistic, thus aquiring prog music as an interest becuase i origionally wasnt a fan when i was about 12-13 but when i grew slightly older the genre grew on me.

I love this kid!  Welcome!

I found Prog when I was 11  because of my brother. One day he  bought an Mp4 and he always listens to dream theater and other bands, then one day he sang a part of Spirit Carries On and suddenly when I heard the melody and lyrics I did liked it very much and I get addicted to Dream Theater  and as time went by  I gradually appreciated progressive music, then finally the start of this year I discovered a lot of progbands like Yes, Spock's Beard, Genesis, Gentle Giant etc...

It started with me talking to my brother about something rather. We got into the subject of umm... anyways he said something along the lines of "Hey Eddie check out this weird album name, 'De-loused in the Comatorium,' it's in our iTunes library." I believe my sister got the album from her friend, whose brother belonged to a small, local band, listing its influences as The Mars Volta and Modest Mouse.

I seem to recall it not being played once since being imported onto our computer, which changed quickly. I was drawn to the esoteric, surrealistic cover, and by the weird names of the songs and the band name, The Mars Volta. I was hooked by the eary-sounding intro to the first song, Son et Lumiere. I was drawn to the musical complexity and energy in this album.

In fact, The Mars Volta was the first band I became fascinated enough with that I wanted to research and dissect their image, their influences, and their ultimately, their music. Had much of the earlier music I'd been listening to (ie. The Killers, U2, other alt. rock bands) been as good then I might be devoting more of my musical time towards it. And in turn, I might not be here.

I became intrigued with the genre progressive rock from then, but I didn't know much of what it was about, being such an ameteur in the musical world (this was a whole ten months ago). I decided I'd use a Pandora account to learn a little more of what I was listening to, and to find bands similar to what I liked.

Meanwhile, I was still researching progressive rock, and I foud it useful to use sites such as this and Wikipedia to learn a little more everyday. Which is what I do, and as a result, I think I'm more equipped with the knowledge of music for my own good at my age.