Your first venture into the Prog Archives

A friend at work wanted some information on Grobschnitt. So I searched for him, found nothing much. And then he suggested to go to a site with prog music. He could not remember the name, said it was something with "archives". Found this place and I'm still here.

It must have been early/mid 2004 after I had a discussion with a friend about the Mellotron. I had just got access to the internet and searched on Mellotron. After a few hits on sites I came across the Ultimate Mellotron site. The site had a number of links to other sites including PA. The rest is history as they say.

I visited the archives for about a year and strictly used PA as a resource.Then I sustained some really nasty chemical burns on my legs from hydroflouric acid at work and was laid up for quite awhile and after reading everything in the house I got bored and my daughter said..."You should check out the forum of that prog site you like so much".

Well, I copied four albums of VDGG from a friend and was looking for some info about them. And I came across this site and really liked it. After some time I discovered the forum and started to frequently read it but was too shy to join it. Finally I signed to the forum but still couldn't make myself to post. One day I decided I have to break this shyness. I made about 50 posts that day!

Imdb forum for Pink Floyd's the Wall. I thought it was the best album ever, it totally turned me on to music, and then there was one thread on imdb where some guys discussed what prog was, as usual, and someone linked to progarchives. There you go.

I was simply bored at work - did a search on 'progressive rock' & was directed to this site, which had a 'forum'... "what's that?" I wondered (I've never been particularly interweb savvy ), so popped in, and there were a couple of others there, too (if I remember rightly, there were only a very few members in those days), one of which was Peter & the rest is history.

I've made firm friends here over the years & discovered many new bands (also introduced quite a few) - as far as how many hours I've been on this site since I first discovered it... I don't want to think about that...

Back in November-December 2004 I started being member down some forums I enjoyed - like Tangerine Dream's official one, Mike Oldfield's fansite one, Pink Floyd's unofficial one or Genesis's particular one (couldn't find a Schulze forum, can't find even to this day ).

Around Christmas time, over at the Tangerine Dream forum I discovered a concept topic old members have decided, months ago, to initiate. One topic of the entire concept (in total they were nine) featured a Tangerine Dream album vs. a Klaus Schulze debate (based on common or contemporary features), which included the possible of reviewing. So that, with some vacation effort, I had reviewed almost every classic Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze album.

Later on, I incidentally found Prog Archives to have Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze added (and to recognize the movement of progressive electronic). The chance of reviewing them not only in the Tangerine Dream forum, but also here, was something I couldn't resist. My first ever reviews, very short and very numb, are actually from that period - and I actually don't think of changing them.

After reviewing a lot of TD and KS, I decided to enter the forum, simply because I already had enough memberships down the forums I mentioned and wanted one more. For a few days, I randomly posted about 40 messages in different topics, plus an incoherent one, made of emoticons, in the Mariah Carey thread (thus, managing my debut in those of spam-topics as well ). But, for some reasons, I felt the forum was huge and diverse, even cold in conversation. So I abandoned it till (I had another nick, so I think that account of mine lies busted around, somewhere) February 2005, when I joined and I never ever left.

So, however awful it sounds, I didn't come for research (barely knew and listened to 20 bands that were in PA, at that time), I didn't come out of progressive dedication (classic and electronic still ruled those days, progressive rock was only starting to be a hobby genre, thanks to me becoming more open-minded) and, after totally getting in the mood of Mariah Carey and some small topics of great interest, I settled down for fun, for reviews and for a bit of prog knowledge.

Şi-am încălecat pe-o şa şi v-am spus progvestea aşa. 

Jim Garten wrote: I was simply bored at work - did a search on 'progressive rock' & was directed to this site, which had a 'forum'... "what's that?" I wondered (I've never been particularly interweb savvy ), so popped in, and there were a couple of others there, too (if I remember rightly, there were only a very few members in those days), one of which was Peter & the rest is history. I've made firm friends here over the years & discovered many new bands (also introduced quite a few) - as far as how many hours I've been on this site since I first discovered it... I don't want to think about that...

Exactly the same for me; bored at work, searched on prog rock and was led here. I signed up straight away. That was back in 2004. I've made friends here, with whom I've gone to gig's, gone for beer and curry evenings and generally talked prog nonesense with for some time now. I've discovered new bands through the archives, reviews and the advice on others, and generally have never got bored repeating the same inane rubbish on these forums for three years.

A great community. It's a pleasure sharing it with you all.

My friend was trying to find Maneige and told me that the free song here was awesome. He only came here for Maneiege, but I browsed the site endlessly until I decided to join.