How did you become a proghead?

siLLy puPPy wrote: I ordered a special cocktail and drank it for 40 days and 40 nights and then i went to a cave in Peru and mediated on Frank Zappa album covers for an undisclosed amount of time. Once i emerged i loved all things prog and then i shed my skin and grew a new exoskeleton.

Isn't this how we all got there?

I'm totally a proghead! But I can't remember how I became one.

BaldFriede wrote: I wouldn't exactly call myself a proghead; there is too much other music I like.  ...

BaldFriede wrote: I wouldn't exactly call myself a proghead; there is too much other music I like. I got into this music via my brother Frank, who is exactly 10 years older than me. He usually had to babysit me because my parents both worked, and he always had a lot of friends around who smoked hashish and listened to all sorts of weird music, including prog, but also hard rock, blues rock, free jazz or classical music (very often the weirder compositions of classical music). Lots of Krautrock too.

Edited by Argo2112 - February 12 2021 at 09:46

Grumpyprogfan wrote: When I was born, one of PA's all-time greatest albums, Kind of Blue was playing. That was all it took.

Greetings to all with my first post here.  A thread with this title seems like as good a place as any to start :)

I guess it was inevitable that I'd end up in Prog, I was always most attracted to music with decent music-value.  Even as a very young child, I took in the more Brian Wilson-heavy songs from Dad's tape of the Beach Boys' 20 Golden Greats as much as, if not more than the straightforward ones.

My first exposure to Prog was probably watching in black-and-white and hearing in FM stereo, what I now know to be Renaissance performing "Ocean Gypsy" on a TV/Radio simultaneous broadcast some time in the 70's.  I was maybe 8 years old and hadn't even got my first radio yet. It was only after the arrival of the internet and Napster in particular, that I found out what that song was from the phrases that I could still remember from so many years previously.

Popular music was large in my young life from 1978 to about 1985, back when a lot of it was still properly musical.  Genesis' "Turn It On Again" in particular stuck with me (I remember Simon Bates on Radio 1 playing it at 33rpm by mistake on one occasion!).  But the one song that kick-started my journey through Prog was Jon & Vangelis "I Hear You Now" in 1980.  Hearing it on the radio resulted in the purchase of the Short Stories album.  A cousin and her husband were into prog, told me who the singer was, and gave me a tape of Tormato (along with Duke and Then There Were Three for good measure).  I pretty much never looked back.  As soon as I got to Uni in 1987, my fate was sealed as I heard so many recordings of decent bands I'd never heard of, with second-hand record shops full of every one's back-catalogues.  I think I got more of a degree in music than the Economics that I was supposed to be studying! 

These days I'm well served for discoveries by a combination of Newprogreleases and Bandcamp, which takes me into all sorts of strange corners of the Progsphere.  I've been very pleased to find that a lot of them are already reviewed here on PA and feel it's about time that I made some input also.  I'm currently listening to a quite accessible, but definitely Proggy album with enchanting female vocals in a native Mexican language and loving every minute of it - "Dual I" by Aly - which I heartily commend to all open minds with inquisitive ears :)

Ah..the new members always ask the same questions that have been asked before....

Edited by dr wu23 - February 12 2021 at 11:07

octopus-4 wrote: At the age of 3 until i think 7, I had a turntable and I was used to spend days playing the 45rpms of my elder brother and sister. I can remember to have listened to Animals, Creedence Clearwater Revival and also classical music. In particular a LP of Chopin. At 8 I was schocked by 2001 A Space Odyssey, and other than Strauss I understood that music could be challenging thanks to Ligety. At about 11 I had a tape with ELP Trilogy. It really started then.  Later, groeing up I started playing guitar and I was mainly into blues and country/finger picking plus some Italian singer-songwriters and a bit of PFM/Orme. My passion for prog exploded when I discovered Meddle and most of all, Atom Heart Mother. The connections with classical music did the job. At the end of the 70s I discovered Heaven And Hell by Vangelis, then Rick Wakeman, Yes and so on. I never liked Genesis too much, even now, so I wonder whether I am really a proghead or not.

I was listening to mostly metal when a mate at school lent me (forced me to listen to) Rush - Caress of Steel. At about the same time my sister had heard Dark Side of the Moon and passed that on to me. Another mate was a massive Hawkwind fan, so I started listening to them too.

I started out with English invasion bands and started hearing early psychedelia, which I found quite intriguing.  Then I drifted into hard rock, until I realized I could air guitar most of the solos the first time I heard them.  I realized I needed something different.  Prog was that something different, even though I did not realize it as being prog at that time (not sure 'prog' existed yet- it was art rock I believe).  It wasn't until I discovered Prog Archives that I realized just how much of the music I liked was considered Progressive.