We've had a number of threads like this but I started in the old days being an old guy...started with bands like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Pink Floyd, Sabbath, Zeppelin, etc...and just went from there.  I liked more complex and weirder sounds...than the top 40. When I heard Crimson in very early 1970 at college ...it was awesome and tried to find bands like them.

These were so much more interesting than Engelbert Humperdinck, The Partridge Family and the sort of crap in the charts.

Then I heard From the Witchwood and Grave New World by Strawbs, and that was that. Hooked. For life.

It also may be caused by an manga and anime series called Jojo's Bizzare Adventure, the first season had characters such as Tarkus (referencing Emerson, Lake & Palmer album) & Bruford (referencing Bill Bruford the Yes drummer), and the ending theme is Roundabout by Yes. Also in the fourth season there are characters called Crazy Diamond (referencing Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd) Atom Heart Father (referencing Atom Heart Mother by PF) and of course Echoes (referencing Echoes by PF). These references go through the whole series it's now 8 parts long running since 1987, it's my all time favorite series. Perhaps these two situations both turned me in to prog but perhaps more strongly the second:)

It was just that I listened to a lot of music as a kid, and some of the records I had access to belonged to what one might call progressive rock (Pink Floyd, ELP, Procol Harum and Jethro Tull). This was because my sister and other family members had these on LP. But for a long time, only Pink Floyd really intrigued me even though I liked (and still like) albums such as A Salty Dog and Stand Up. I knew a little bit about Genesis, but only their 80's-90's pop production with Phil Collins on vocals, and it didn't appeal to me at all, and still doesn't.

For a long time I think I was somehow influenced by rock critics who didn't usually look at the genre with mild eyes, so I guess I had some prejudice despite my love for Pink Floyd. Otherwise I was more to art rock, folktronica, classic 60's pop/rock, singer/songwriter and things like that. Favourite artists included the Beatles, David Bowie, Roxy Music and Talking Heads, but also a lot of Danish singer/songwriter. But when I studied at musicology in Aarhus, some of my mates had a King Crimson cover band which I heard, and it intrigued me. They mostly played songs from the Adrian Belew period. And then, after reading an article about prog in an underground magazine called Geiger which discussed the genre more thoroughly, including the criticism of it, I began checking out some albums.

As an 11 1/2 year old I collected pop singles. I then discovered classic rock. One of those singles that I bought was "heat of the moment" by Asia which was probably one of the last ones before moving on to lps and cassette tapes but never thought much about who the musicians were and didn't know of any prog connection. I had heard of Yes because my dad had "The Yes album" (but nothing else by them)but didn't really know them that well. On my way to a local record store by bike I was going to pick up either the first Asia album or a Journey album. For some reason I wound up getting the Journey album(Escape). 

A couple of years later or so Yes put out the 90125 album and I bought that on cassette tape. By this point I was mostly listening to whatever was popular on the radio but mostly mainstream rock. I had stuff by Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Rush(signals), Def Leppard and also a little bit of new wave like Duran Duran and a Flock of Seagulls. I was also starting to get pretty big into Led Zeppelin around this time.

At some point I discovered my cousin was big into Genesis and I found out he also liked Yes(this was before I bought the 90125 tape though)so I eventually got more into Genesis after I realized they were similar to Yes. It was sort of a gradual process. I even had one or two Genesis singles from the days when I collected 45s(no reply at all and man on the corner I think; I might also have had abacab but don't remember). I didn't hear the album Abacab until much later though. 

Around mid to late 85 I started to play guitar and someone(maybe my ex step mother)bought me a guitar book. This book had sections on various guitarists one of which was Robert Fripp. King Crimson was mentioned of course although I also knew about them from my cousin(same cousin I already mentioned). The first KC album I got was "islands" and I hated it so much it almost put me off from the band for a long time. I eventually got some others though and started to realize how good they were even if they were a bit weird at times. I also had a rock encyclopedia book(I think also a gift from my ex step mother)which mentioned bands that I already liked(Yes, Genesis, etc) as being "progressive rock" and so at that point(85/86)there was no turning back for me. I still liked other rock forms(especially classic rock)but prog rock was my favorite(still is). A few years later I discovered the prog underground through magazines which led to catalogs which led to a whole other rabbit hole. By the time the internet came along and by the time I got on it(late 90's)I was reading about people discovering bands I had already known about for ten years or so. 

So that's it. Yes and Genesis were the first two bands that started me on this journey with King Crimson right after them. My brother's friend was big into Rush which led me to get into them more and my uncle was big into Pink Floyd so I got to hear all their old albums from him. 

Hope You didn't get invisibly touched by genesis   

small baby prog steps 1974-1976 as I went from being an 11 year old to a 14 year old

The Sweet---> Queen---> The Who--->ELP

I knew I wasn't interested in standard guitar based rock music so needed that extra colour that was apparent with bands that used some electronics. I could hear it in a track like Fox On The Run (wonderful intro) while Queen -Seven Seas of Rye was another step. That piano and drums combo is wonderful. Then I heard Baba O Riley and we were cooking on gas. The drums, piano and electronics all come together. Once I got to ELP and Tarkus I was sold. However I never had a wide interest in prog outside of the main players until the internet came along. What was it with all these Gentle Giant and VDGG fans lol. 

Although when I was a teenager, I liked, 'Long distance runaround' but that was about it.

Jethro Tull was definitely the gateway band for me though, not Yes. 

I wanted to listen to other 70s bands after listening to Deep Purple, Rainbow, Zeppelin, etc. for so long, and I remember thinking about Tull, "Hm, this sounds kind of odd, but I like it." and then came the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd and Kansas. Then Yes, Gentle Giant and Camel. And then Genesis. I hated Genesis for the longest time, now I think they're one of the best prog had to offer.

Finally, it was Jazz fusion and Zeuhl. And most other prog genres.

I also saw that performance on Midnight Special and was hooked on Genesis!!  I was already a huge fan of Yes, ELP and KC at the time, but only knew about Genesis from music mags like Circus. 

This is the actual performance, it was magical!

I'd say I finally consciously embraced what was natural for me about 2008 when I finally picked up Yes "Fragile" CD at Newbury Comics in Boston. Then came "Close to The Edge" and "Tales From Topographic Oceans", and the rest was history. I was already a jazz nerd so add rock to that mix and I'm SOLD!

 I just knew what I was hearing on the radio in the 80's wasn't that good, there surely must be more to music than 3 chords and a drum machine at 120 beats per minute. I was about 14 years old when the desire for stronger more complex music became needed for me to fulfill my needs and most of the stuff on MTV and the radio was utter crap, designed to make money not to fill my artistic needs. SO I broke out of the chains of commerce and set my music spirit free, Progressive rock just happened to be the vehicle for me. 

I can see why people turn to underground jazz and other things they aren't getting from the media. Even still today I think the music played on radio is crap, they wouldn't know a good prog song if they fell over it and that's a damn shame because I believe progressive rock really has a huge potential market. Most people surely couldn't be that dumb to settle for what's on just whats on radio ... surely not. 

I admit part of the appeal of progressive rock was to go against society and be my own person, but I really do love it.      

So, born in 1958, by the age of 8 (1966) I was a regular listener of am radio on my small hand held "Transistor" radio. This exposed me to a plethora of Pop and Psychedelic music of the time. The obvious hits from such bands as The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin as well as songs like Crimson and Clover, Spirit in the Sky, Venus. Although I really wasn't up on the names of the bands.

But it was probably the Crazy World of Arthur Brown's "Fire" (1969) that was the first really progressive tune to catch my ear. Of course I had no idea who it was but I knew the song and loved it. A year later, at the age of 12 I remember hearing a song on late night FM radio out of Detroit that was amazing and had this really cool ending where it was like some one had unplugged the turntable. Again, I never heard who it was so had no idea of the band's name.

A few month's later at a summer "Drop in Centre", as we used to call them, basically the local high school cafeteria that was open to kids during the summer, I heard the same song being played on the stereo in the cafe. I located the album cover, a dove fluttering it's wings and on the back side a person's head. Yup, ELP's first album.

Hooks firmly planted deep within my psyche. I've been a devout ELP fan and Prog Rock fan ever since.

Much of this resembles my experience(which I already posted about) although I was never as vehemently opposed to radio music as you seem to be(I still think there's good music played on the radio but the problem is much of it is overplayed). I also bought 90125 first then classic yes then got into other stuff including KC like you did at probably around the same general time period. For the most part though I was never that much into what was being played on the radio back then(the current stuff I mean). Some of it was good, some of it was ok and some of it was just pretty unbearable. However, I typically don't have anything against mainstream music per se. 

The thing is most people just haven't been exposed to prog. There are a lot of people who like non mainstream music but they just don't know(or haven't been exposed to prog). I think at this point most people who are going to be into it are already into it(well at least those who are over 25 or so; younger fans might still be exploring new music). It's something that you kind of have to find out about by accident since you typically won't hear about it through friends, family, the mainstream media(tv, radio, etc)or the internet(unless you go searching for it).

My parents had a big influence, which is weird, because they weren't really very interested in music. My mother was keen on exposing me to all kinds of influences, and once she decided that we should watch Yellow Submarine. I was 7 or 8. I think. I totally loved it and was an absolute Beatles fan for two years or so. Already liked their later work more than the earlier less psychedelic/progressive stuff. However I didn't get into much else at that age except Abba and Boney M. When I was 12 in 1979, my father played Manfred Mann's Earth Band's Watch in the car, and that totally blew me away, all these instrumental parts and what the guitar and the keyboards did, plus there are some cool melodies on that album. It impressed me even more than the Beatles and I decided, this kind of music it is for me. Funnily my father didn't even know what that tape was, it was just flying around in his car, and he told me it is Elton John, which actually was on the other side of the tape. He must have had some interest when he was younger, he had some good albums like Aqualung, ELP Trilogy and Welcome Back my Friends, Deep Purple's Fireball and some Novalis, but he wouldn't listen to this stuff anymore, so I basically took them over. At about the same time a very good friend of mine got into Pink Floyd through his older brother and we discovered them together. Another friend was into the more melodic side, like Supertramp, Barclay James Harvest, Alan Parsons Project,  end 70s Genesis. I started to do research on my own and discovered the Germans and the French, Tangerine Dream, Eloy, Can, Amon Düül II, Gong, Magma...  We had some good exchange, I wasn't alone.

An anecdote is that when I discovered Pink Floyd and more progressive stuff at 12 or so, I decided that I should grow up and ditch the Beatles. I sold all their albums to buy Manfred Mann's Earth Band  and the like. Biggest mistake ever, I'm back to the Fab Four.

Benefit

Link:  http://prognotfrog.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow - http://prognotfrog.blogspot.com/

Which is awesome, because it has SO much rare material, and very diverse genres - just the thing for a real Prog nerd as myself! 

Eventually i got my lil´bro into prog, and he very oftens thanks me for doing so - and i usually tell him that i am just grateful and happy that i can share this wonderful music with my close family!

Cheers! - Songtoad (Saint Lawrence)

In terms of rock, all I knew before 74, was Beatles, Stones & Tull (Stand Up & Aqualung).

That year, Harmonium's debut album took French-speaking Canada by storm.

Then in September 74, the record shop next to the school had the Crime Of The Century  album in the vitrine and I just had to listen to it. Next day, I brought it home and never looked back.

Up next in the next few months were DSOTM, ITCOTCK, 5è Saison SEBTP, ITLOG&P, TAAB, etc...

I came from classic rock; with my dad we listened to a classic rock radio station that still exists; he knew Zeppelin (IV), Creedence, Doors, and through him I was a fan of all those as well.

In the summer of '89 or '90 I think it was.. I listened to Pink Floyd 'Wish You Were Here' song. Then one day at the local mall we passed outside a music store and I asked my dad for two bucks to buy me the whole cassette.

That cassette went round and round every morning at the car's stereo on the road to school.

At first I rewinded the tape every time to listen only to Side 2's 'Have a Cigar' and 'WYWH' but slowly, 'Shine on You Crazy Diamond VI - IX started creeping in each time for longer listens  : )

After that it was all friends (school class mates) with older brothers that lent me cassettes and then CD's. One that also went round at the car was 'Thick as a Brick''s original cassette. Another one I remember fondly was the double cased Lamb Lies Down on Broadway on CD; that was a beauty .

In pre-internet era, and after the fact (70's) it was all through friends for me. Rush and Marillion came from two other class mates respectively. My mother and grandmother gifted me Rush's 'Chronicles' double CD for my 15th. birthday . King Crimson from yet another particular class mate, Joaco (Joaquín), that came from another school. One day I went to his home after school and he showed 'Discipline' to me on CD on his house's receiver-style stereo. I was stunned; borrowed it from him the same evening and took it home. It was '94.

Zappa came at the University through another school friend, though not the same class, that was also there with me. 

Finally, Mahavishnu, PFM, Maxophone, Caravan and Renaissance came through a friend's older than us friend, that had a massive CD collection and was kind enough to lend to us.

The crazy thing besides being totally in the wrong generation of this movement is that my Mother introduced me to the music and as we know, this genre is heavily dominated by a male audience. 

I had been given one of the portable CD players and the first CD I ever tried it with was 'Presto' by Rush. The start of that song has light percussion followed by a really loud riff so it scared the bejeezus out of me. 

My mum had started buying CD versions of old vinyl records she grew up with including mainly Rush and Genesis so they were the two of the bands I listened to growing up in school. So whilst everyone was listening to the boy and girl bands that dominated the 2000s, I was getting lost in crazy concept albums like 'A farewell to kings' and 'Selling England by the Pound' which made me come across as very weird to my school peers. 

By the time I got to high school, I then discovered the next generation of progressive bands like Dream Theater, Tool and Porcupine Tree, continuing down my road of highly idiosyncratic musical taste and was glad to finally meet people my age at university who shared a similar love of this kind of music. 

I am very grateful to my mother for introducing me to all the music. 

1980s brought an interest in listening to the radio. Back then it was WMMR and WYSP in Philadelphia, both classic rock stations. They had a fair amount of prog on both of them, though they never used the term "prog." These were the two stations that introduced me to Yes, Genesis, ELP, Rush, Jethro Tull, and a host of other bands that bordered prog. Generally I started collecting vinyl by acquiring the most recent albums by these bands and then actively seeking the rest of their discographies going backwards. I had four record stores to go to back then in my teen years while in high school. Two of them were chain stores: Wall to Wall Sound and Sam Goody. The other two were used stores of which I can't recall their names anymore. Both used stores had a decent number of live bootlegs and one of them was a 2 1/2 mile walk which I made every Saturday after picking up my weekly earnings from the supermarket I worked in. 

Off to college, and little time to pursue such frivolous fancies (and not enough funds either). By this time I was buying cassettes because vinyl had practically disappeared by 1990. I do recall discovering the newsgroup rec.music.progressive around this time, though I didn't read that much and never contributed. After graduating and finally finding employment, I now had some spare cash to check out stores. Mostly kept buying the new releases from the dinosaurs (though they were far removed from prog by this point) and finally transitioned to CDs. 

I credit Magna Carta Records as the source that brought me back into the prog world, after a brief foray into electronic music and gothic rock. Those tribute albums they released in the early 1990s introduced me to new bands I had never heard of before (Cairo, Magellan, Enchant, Shadow Gallery). From there, it led to the GEPR, then Spock's Beard and The Flower Kings, to trips to Record Connection in Ephrata (which still exists), Black Planet and the HMV on Yonge St. in Toronto, Outer Music in Manhattan, and eventually to Prog Archives. 

^Yeah, WMMR and WYSP like you said played all those bands. I even heard King Crimson on wmmr occasionally. I lived in both the NY and Philly area during the 80's but the Philly area was a bit better for prog on the radio although WNEW in NY probably wasn't too far behind. 

On wmmr you had for headphones only which would play stuff that sounded good on headphones. While a good chunk of it was prog they didn't call it that like you said. They played Pink Floyd, Yes, Alan Parsons Project, Supertramp, Moody Blues, Robin Trower and on and on. Aside from for headphones only it wasn't too uncommon to hear the lesser known Yes songs(going for the one, siberian khatru, perpetual change, etc)as well as Pink Floyd's "echoes." I even remember hearing King Crimson on there a few times(epitaph and the title track to "court"). 

WYSP(which is now a sports station)had Ed Sciaky's progressive radio show. I remember this in the late 80's but it might have been around earlier. The focus was on what he called "the progressive era" which meant anything from the late sixties to the late seventies or so. They didn't play any current prog music but then again there wasn't much that surfaced(above the underground)at that time anyway. This show was the first time I ever heard the band Crack the Sky. This was in early 1989. I remember going to the record store to buy their latest album("from the greenhouse")but they only had it on vinyl and I wanted the cd so I had to order it on cd. They called me a week later or so and I picked it up. I moved to NY shortly after and remember I had the crack the sky on one side of a  tape and Gentle Giant's "octopus" on the other. My prog days were well under way. Anyway, I remember taping stuff off that show and had interviews with Jon Anderson, Steve Howe and stuff from Renaissance. I don't remember what else though.

There was another radio station in the mid-1980s that used to have a show late at night that played electronic music, like Tangerine Dream and stuff similar to that, often bordering on new age music. I remember listening to it through the summer when I could stay up later. Unfortunately I can't recall the station name.

I left Philadelphia in 1989 when I had to complete my studies at Penn State's main campus. I haven't been there in a couple of years. Most of my trips to Philly over the last decade have been for genealogy trips to cemeteries. Almost all of my ancestors at one time or another came through Philadelphia, so a lot of them are buried in and around the city.

As for the whole album thing I'm not sure. That might have been WMMR. Neither station really went that deep into prog(except maybe the Ed Sciaky show)but they still played a lot more than you will typically here these days. The only exception I can think of recently is on the classic rock station wmgk which had a free Yes ticket give away one weekend one year and so called it their prog rock weekend(that was in maybe 2017 or so) where they played one or two prog songs at the top of each hour. Judging by the facebook page there wasn't really all that much interest in it. I think most people who typically listen to just classic rock don't care much about prog or just don't understand it. Oh well. I did hear them play "21st century schizoid man" on it though(I don't remember what else) so that was kind of cool. I take it you don't live in the Philly area anymore?

I left Philly in 1989. I only visited to see relatives, but almost all of them are either gone or moved out themselves. Now it's the occasional cemetery trip for genealogy.

Maybe not the appropriate place to ask this but just out of curiosity where do you live now(what state or country)?

Good to see another "younger" person on PA! I'm 1988! 

I'm not that far from Philly. I live outside of a little town called Bellefonte, in central Pa.

Oh ok. I know a guy(fb friend in fact) who is a teacher at State College(and lives around there too). I would run into him at Rosfest(when it was still in Gettysburg). However, he was lucky because his drive was probably at least 50 percent less than mine was(I'm in lower Bucks just outside Philly).

I saw that the youtube video for Karn Evil 9 (I didn't know it was just 1st Impression part 2 yet) was 30 minutes long and I was utterly confused! I figured, whatever I have plenty of time. I decided to listen to it, and 30 minutes flew by rather quickly, and I was really puzzled. I didn't recall any of the song we were playing in class in the song I just listened to! I also didn't really like it a whole lot. I thought it was nonsense. I decided to give it another play, and I started to recognize it a bit better. I also liked it a bit better.

Throughout the week I grew to LOVE Karn Evil 9, and I was able to hum the first 12 minutes from memory. Then a bunch of months went by, and I was still listening to Karn Evil 9 almost on a daily basis, and then I saw on the youtube recommendations a song called Tarkus also by ELP. I decided to give it a listen, and I didn't really like it. It was even more nonsensical than Karn Evil 9. But again, I decided to give it another shot, and then another repeat, another loop, and before I knew it I utterly loved Tarkus too! After that I would listen to most all ELP discography, and I liked most of it a lot! I heard that bands like Yes, and Pink Floyd were regarded as better prog bands than ELP, but I was so narrow minded that I refused to listen to any other Prog because I liked ELP so much that I didn't want to change my mind on that. 

By the time I graduated high school I listened to so much ELP that I was starting to grow tired of prog. I was working at a carwash one afternoon during the summer, and I heard Roundabout on the speaker (I didn't know it was roundabout at the time). At the very beginning of the song I recognized it as "From the Beginning" by ELP since the guitar bit is the same. But then I was very disappointed to hear that it wasn't one of my favorite ELP songs. Then I heard the next bit after that which I recognized as the: To be continued meme. I was astonished! So I went home afterwards and listened to Roundabout, and I loved it immediately. I know that I betrayed my promise to ELP, but at that point, I had already heard all of ELP. That's where I started listening to Yes, and I recognized Yes from Owner of a lonely heart (I was and still am a pretty big 80's pop/rock fan). From listening to most of Yes, I branched out to a couple of different bands such as King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Jethro Tull, Camel, and a small amount of Genesis (I don't particularly like Peter Gabriel's voice).

That's where I really grew to like Prog as a larger genre, and not just ELP. 

Also in regards to my last sentence there, anyone want to share with me the best examples of Peter Gabriel's voice and explain why he's a good singer? I just don't get it, and apparently he's regarded as the best or at least way up there as far as prog singers go.

Yes, Gettysburg isn't too bad a drive from here. The slowest part is through Camp Hill on Route 15. I never had a chance to go to Rosfest. By the time I found out when it was, it was either sold out or I had a prior commitment. It's been a long time since I was in Bucks County. I have an uncle that lives near Doylestown. 

I actually lived in Doylestown at different times when I was younger(much younger). It's a nice town. There's actually a really good record store there called Siren Records. It's one of the few places in the area(another is Positively Records near where I live now)that sells vinyl and cds. 

I have it more or less written in my outdated bio.

 

I remember Camel and Renaissance as being the first two bands that really introduced me to prog. I used to buy their albums as soon as they arrived in the record stores without even needing to hear the album first. It wasn't until going online for the first time in 2010 that I heard Caravan and Canterbury Scene music for the first time though, as well as discovering 1001 other artists and bands I'd never heard of before.

I only just realised that's a side-on photo of a dog's face in your avatar.