A middle aged FOB from Norway signing in. I've been enjoying the sound clips from this site for years now and discovered quite a lot of new interesting prog that way, so I thought it'd be nice to join the forum.

My musical preference is the old school prog (if such a thing exists) and hard rock, but I enjoy a lot of other styles as well, for instance british folk rock artists. The key thing for me is a good melody, interesting chord changes, and intricate rythms, if at least two of those elements are present, I prick my ears up. But then again, sometimes a great melody with a good lyric is enough....

Favourite artists from the past: Gentle Giant, Genesis up to 1978, Yes (though some of their stuff is weak indeed), Jethro Tull, Rush (not Vapour Trails!!!), Spock's Beard pre "Snow", Purple, Transatlantic, Thin Lizzy, XTC, Richard Thompson, Fairport Convention + the great Steves and Al's: Hackett, Morse, Howe, Vai, Ray Vaughn, Holdsworth, Lifeson (yes, I do play guitar, surprise, surprise).

From the present: The Flower Kings + Roine Stolt, Pain of Salvation, KINO, Porcupine Tree, Kroyt (great Norwegian band), Echolyn, Glass Hammer (love The Inconsolable Secret), some Opeth, some Enchant

I've stopped listening to: Marillion, IQ, Kaipa, The Tangent, Fish, instrumental prog made by keyboardists and guitarists from Dream Theater, ultra fast guitar players with no musical ambition except showing off technique (the list is endless and the music bores me to tears, Vinnie Moore is worse than Britney!)

'Nough said!

Welcome to the forum.

I like your past and present musical tastes.

But one question...why did you stop listening to Kaipa and The Tangent???

Hello fellow proggers and thanks for the warm welcomes.

To your question Progtologist (cool nick btw, have you been listening to Enchant??):

I used to love Roine Stolt's stuff, I mean really love. When I discovered Flower Kings, I couldn't believe my luck, and that such a wonderful band even existed in this time and age. So I bought all the cd's and for a while I listened to little else but The Kings. I also tuned in to Roine's side projects and got both Kaipa and The Tangent, and tried really hard to like them. But they leave me wanting. Why? Because Roine is not composing the songs. Neither Hans Lundin of Kaipa or Andy what's his name of The Tangent has the same creativity or sense of melody that Roine has, imo.

But the saddest part is that I think Roine has lost some of it, too. Adam and Eve was a big disappointment, just a couple of decent tracks, the rest is mediocre at best. These days Roine tends to write more "bluesy" melodies in his songs, and I don't find that very appealing or original.

But hey, that's just my opinion, not a fact of life.

uffe