How did you find Prog?

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!

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....

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.

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! 

the song "Shevanel cut a flip" when i was younger i went through a metal scene and stubled upon that song and they had an awesome jazz breakdown i almost sh*t bricks when i first heard it.

and also peter gabriel was another driving force

Believe it or not, I got my prog tastings from the influence of my friends as a teenager. (I still am one)

Who says that young people today listen to only crap, eh?

Tengent wrote: ... My initial interest in prog started out with art rock I believe. I remember looking up art rock, thinking it was the genre I so desperately desired (rock inspired by paintings-art), and being dissapointed. I checked out prog's wiki page, but things like "diverse song structure" and "odd time signatures" really set off my OCD. I avoided prog for a while, until I came across a band called Yes. My friend sent me a video on Youtube called "And You And I". It featured art work by Roger Dean.. I was very fascinated. Artwork inspired by music. I then began looking up more on this genre. My love for prog grew and grew, and it still is.

Tengent, you and the other young'ns in this thread give me a thrill and a smile every time!  Prog on!!

I got into Heavy Metal with Iron Maiden. From there I started to explore and got into Power Metal, and from there I got connected with Symphony X. I liked it. From there I heard about this awesome band called Dream Theater and their amazing guitarist. And from there it was simply a fall through the rabbit's hole. Orphaned Land, Amaseffer, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Rush, Arena, YES...

Bands like Yes, Kansas, ELP, Pink Floyd, Rush, Marillion, Genesis, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac etc. were all very popular radio bands when I was growing up. It really wasn't until later, when things like *alternative* and *hair metal* became popular, that we looked back and started calling some of our favorite bands prog. That's what we listened to - along with disco. It wasn't really prog back then. It was just Good Music that many of us loved.

Well when your born in Canada Rush automatically becomes a major part of your heritage so i expanded my musical horizons from there