Hello Everyone

I am new to the Forum, but not so new to Progressive Rock music, which I have enjoyed since the beginning of the seventies when I was a young person living in a small English town close to Birmingham, England.  We actually had record store in the town and I still remember spending hours with my friends, reading and studying the back of albums in the shop's pretty large section of rock and progressive rock music and buying the odd one or two from money I had saved up from doing part time jobs after school and weekends.  I must have been about 14 or 15 at the time.

Sometimes on a Saturday morning we would take the bus into Birmingham city center and go to a huge indoor/outdoor market where there were a couple of record stores with massive collections of albums that were not available at the local store.

I remember we used to buy different albums to each other which allowed to later borrow and listen each others collection.

Birmingham City Center also has a Town Hall where back then they used to hold concerts on a Friday night.  Therefore often we used to catch a bus after school on a Friday to Birmingham to see a concert and catch the last bus back after the concert.  A lot of the band's I saw in the concerts also influenced my taste in music and what I bought.

I was fortunate to see several bands at the Town Hall some of which nowadays are considered pioneering progressive rock bands, Just to name a few:  Gentle Giant (Their in a Glass House Tour), Magma (a couple of times, 1st time when they played Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh), Camel (around the time of Mirage, a couple of years later I saw them in Germany playing Snow Goose and in Brazil around 2002/3 when a Nod and a Wink came out), Mike Oldfield (at the time when he created Tubular Bells and a little later he toured with a larger group of Musicians to play Tubular Bells). Gong, Man and Budgie where a few others that I remember seeing there as well.

I guess the music you listen to as a young person will influence your music taste throughout your life.  This certainly seems the case with me.  Here are a few of the albums that I listened to a lot back then, which certainly have shaped what I enjoy and listen to today (not necessarily all prog as defined in this forum):

Yes - The Yes Album

ELP - Pictures at an Exhibition

Camel - The Snow Goose 

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III

Magma - Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Deep Purple - In Rock

David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World

Genesis - Nursery Crime

The Who - Tommy

Van der Graf Generator - Pawn Hearts

Roxy Music - Roxy Music

Jethro Tull - Aqualung

Over the years I have also enjoyed listening to other bands from around the world, especially from eastern Europe.

Btw... for the last 20 years I have lived in Alabama and I have yet to find someone that would listen to prog music other than Pink Floyd or Genesis (as long as it is Phil Collins's Pop Genesis :) )  Here it is all Southern Rock or Country Rock, so I have to spend my time listening to music through headphones :).

Best regards

Nick

As a matter of interest, how did you get to move to Alabama from Brum?

Actually while in Brazil I found out how passionate they are for their rock and progressive music and it was there that I started to find cd's from other countries particularly South American, East European and Italian which previously I had not seen or heard much of at all.  So that sparked a whole new interest in finding and listening to music where previously I was limited to just to English, American and West European.

I remember picking up and listening to Solaris  http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=1238" rel="nofollow - Nostradamus Book Of Prophecies  in Sao Paulo, and that kicked it off for me.

Welcome.

Welcome aboard.

Please keep your head and arms inside the moving train wreck at all times.