First Prog Album

It's hard for me to say for a couple different reasons:

(1) Albums were shared among my family, and not just my parents and siblings, but a couple aunts and uncles and a grandfather, too (well, although that grandfather didn't collect rock, but still...).  I also had music teachers who were regularly giving me albums to take home and listen to for extended periods of time.  Add to this that I was a music fan going as far back as I can remember--and I started taking music lessons when I was only six years old--and it's difficult for me to remember who owned what and when (when because albums that music teachers let me borrow, for example, I gave back but then often bought it for myself at that point).

(2) I don't consider there to be any sort of clear distinction between psychedelic music and prog, and I think that stuff like the Grateful Dead, later Beatles, Amboy Dukes from at least the second album on, etc. are clearly prog.  This aspect is exacerbated by the fact that we were buying all of this music when it came out--I was six years old/I started taking drum lessons in 1968.

Re the stuff that would non-controversially be considered prog, though, I knew all of the following when they were new: the Nice albums, Zappa from We're Only in It for the Money (I heard the earlier albums by 1969/1970), Jethro Tull pretty much from the start, ELP from their start, and I knew the first three King Crimson albums and Genesis' Trespass by early 1971, the first three Yes albums by mid-1971.

The first prog album I listened to with full consciousness that was prog was Genesis' Selling England by the Pound, and I absolutely fell in love with it. Well, I guess I began my rampage with the golden specimens. One of prog metal's finest record and one of prog rock's greatest, respectively.