First Prog Experience

My Father was secretly into jazz & wished he had been a drummer (Buddy rich & Gene Krupa were his hero's) so i in a weird way he laid down a thing of music being special and something you hold in your head and heart to get you through the mundane bits of life. in the early/mid 70's my older bro' went to boarding school and would come home with cassettes of Mike Oldfield, Rick Wakeman, Camel & Focus. He also talked of Stackridge, barclay James Harvest, Hawkwind etc.. I got talking to older boys at school (cos i knew a bit about the music they liked- this was good as they 'looked after me' when things got tough!) & eventually got to go to Camel, BJH, Peter Gabriel etc concerts with them. Then got involved in local bands, got involved as a pro roadie (for a very short period..) went to lots of festivals etc. Built up a huge vinyl collection & still collecting today. Seminal moments?.. Listening to the Enid play 'Region of Summer stars' as the dawn broke at Stonehenge... Camel, Lunar Sea live (about 78ish?), Hawkwind Levitation tour 80/81 (worked with 'em a bit) & the first time i listened to 'Farewell to kings' in a booth at a record shop in 1977. Theres plenty more but this ole Geezer could waffle for England Keep in (un)real, y'all

I would say that Prog music has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember, even though I didn't recognize it as "Prog"; it was just music to me. I'd known Thick as a Brick from a very early age and discovered A Passion Play around age 6 or 7. My dad was a huge Tull fan and would listen to pretty much all of their albums around the house....he even took me to see them on their Roots to Branches tour when I was about 3! I actually begged him to let me go and I loved every second of it!

Later on, I discovered more bands....particularly Pink Floyd and Rush...as well as some heavy metal and blues. However, something kept drawing me these bands I mentioned above, more so than the metal or blues groups. I even remember hearing Apostrophe (') from a very early age, leading me to discover We're Only In It For The Money at age 11 and to continue from there to grab up any and all things Zappa. Later, I discovered In Court of the Crimson King one night (ironically around the same time I picked up the flute) and eventually acquired all things Crimson, leading naturally for me to pick up nearly all of the ELP and Yes albums at my local Best Buy and buying all of the early Genesis and most of the Gentle Giant albums at amazon.com. It was later that I discovered this site, which oddly enough, had all of my favorite bands wrapped into one genre called "progressive rock", naturally encouraging me to collect VdGG, Magma, and an enormous amount of other fantastic bands.


Edited by Zombywoof - August 14 2010 at 10:52

It was in 1972, when a friend told me about Jethro Tull. I knew somebody who needed money and was selling the "Aqualung" album, so I told my friend, who suggested I buy it. I listened to it every day for 3 months. Then I went to a record store and found "Stand Up", got it, and became my favorite album of all time. After that, I heard of Yes, King Crimson, ELP, Pink Floyd, etc, and I truly believed I had found a gate to heaven.

omardiyejon wrote: wow, as far as i read you all look lucky guys whose at least parents were interested in prog music. my parents, unfortunately, are not even related with rock music, they always listen to some sh*tty turkish folk music or some arabesque influenced weird kind of music.

Xmas eve and yes fragile never will forget that moment

O666 wrote: I realy want to talk about this topic but I afraid. I'm sure after I write ANYTHING, Some guys attack to me and insult me without any REASON. I like to dicuss and I respect to opposite opinion but I cant undrestand why INSULT? See you next time.

Don't be afraid of me. I really would love to hear your experience and I will not be critical about it, since it's quite personal, and if it's something that brought you to be a pro fan, why would I do such a thing as insult you?

My dad loves Supertramp and to please him, I bought 90125 and Tormato. Then I discovered Close To The Edge and I said goodbye to pop music !

... "when i was a little pretty baby my mama got rock me..." hearing Tchaikovsky.

First pseudo -prog bands were Coheed and cambria and fall of troy. Someone showed me Dream theater, didn't really like.

I was on vacation in Florida a little over a year ago when I decided to get a guitar magazine from CVS. I then saw an article about Dream Theater that had an interview with John Petrucci about Black Clouds and Silver Linings. So that night I went on my dad's laptop in the hotel and downloaded the special edition, after that I kept on buying more Dream Theater albums and reading Wikipedia to understand more about progressive music and from there it just exploded. So now here I am, spending all of my money to add to my 70+ CD collection I have created in half a year.