Hi all, I'm a newbie to the board and I'd like to introduce myself. Lunar (short for Lunarscape !) I'm from Rio de Janeiro Brazil, and an MD.

I grew up at the American School here in Rio and graduated high school in 74. My very first contact with Prog Rock was through Yes, ELP, Genesis, PFM and Focus. Allthough we had to endure the "american kids" playing Allman Brothers Grand Fun Railroad and Led Zep at the most around school.

Prog tunes had more to do with me then, and now, so I keept to my favorites Yes, ELP and Focus. Due to my european upbringing and having quite an inteligent crowd of similar frends, we made a huge effort to keep up with the European Prog scene from the early seventies. Our fathers were allways traveling to Europe and had dozens of records listed to bring home to us starving kids. This lead to a quite impressive mainstream collection and we shared these albums with eachother so nothing was left behind. I remember the joy in opening the first Rick Wakeman solo - Henry VIII's Six Wifes, after having listened to Tales From Topographic Ocean at least 1000 times. (LOL). But the true thrill was always to find a new band with similar Prog Lines, so Camel, Triumvirat, Trace, Curved Air, Hawkwind, Banco, Le Orme, Marspolis, Refugee, Lokomotiv and please bear with me; cant recall all fo them. King Crimson, Nektar, Eloy, M.Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Iron Duke ( a danish Prog Rock trio ) and Druid and Lindisfarne from Ireland. At that time we called them all PROG ROCK. L.Zep, Uriah Heep, B.Sabbath and Deep Purple were in the HEAVY METAL category and the rest was offcourse POP. Matters are more simple when you are young ! Then we foound out that some of the Prog Bands had a slight jazzy-freestyle influence and others were dominated by classic music, so Camel, Focus and Mahavishnu Orchestra was sorted out from the pack and Genesis, Yes, ELP and PFM was stashed with the classic Prog Rock. (Pink Floyd was hard to classify, since some of the stuff was pop, most of it was blues and some was 'experimental" and could with good will be classified as genuine Prog Rock. We wouldnt dream of the pschycoldelic label and symphonic rock was unheard of (these classifications was made up by some idiots much later, probably guilt ridden critics being paid off to kill Prog Rock in the reviews).

What really matters is that the sound of Mellotrons-Hammond-Chorus-Rickenbacher Bass-Fender Guitar and a Fast Drummer still gives me "tingles in the groin"

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Lunar

A hearty welcome, Lunar!

Good to have you on board!

  So, classic prog gives you a "woody," does it? Maybe you shouldn't sit on the speakers, with all those bass vibrations, like that....

Lunar and Pixel are "old" friends of mine and It´s great to have them both here !!!

Clowns ??  Where ???

Yo homes, dis new guy iz smart, wha?

Very thoughtful and articulate!

I too find all the sub-categories to be needlessly complex, highly subjective, and often really stretching it. "Progressive metal," indeed!

Still believe that jazz fusion is a sub-genre of jazz, too, & doesn't really belong here....

Where are all the other jazz fusion artists like Al DiMeola, Jeff Beck (Wired, Blow by Blow), etc?

And "folk progressive?" Ha! That's really traditional/Celtic music, no? If the category is to persist here, where are Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, and more than a hundred others I could name? (note: I don't want them here -- just as I don't mix Ponty, PFM, Pentangle and Purple on my own prog compilations. Such a disc would -- for me -- be jarringly schizophrenic (quadrophrenic?) by nature.

The whole "what is prog" thing, as I've said many times, is very subjective! "I know what I like...."

Rant over -- I'll just continue to review the albums I find here as music (that I may or may not like), first and foremost....

Time for bed!  Evil Archives Forums, you've sucked me into your gaping maw again!

Yes they´ve learned the hard way

Yes both of these guys are very Intelligent individuals !!!

Welcome Lunar

As a newbie myself I can say that (so far) everyone here is well worth knowing.

Lots to see and talk about here. 

Welcome from Swinton, Manchester - England UK.

I'm a systems analyst - pleased to make your aquaintance and obviously recommend IQ and Twelfth Night......

Welcome Lunar!

Notice you dont  mention Rush, very disturbing!

I am very disturbed... so watch out

Bem vindo, Lunarscape. If you graduate from High School in Rio in 1974 you'll remember Rádio Eldorado FM (Eldo Pop) Estereo 98.1 MHz? Que saudades! Tanta música boa. No DJs and extremely rare adverts. Progressive Rock heaven! I listened to it from its inception (was it 1971 or 1972, can't remember) and spent hours listening to all the classics uninterrupted.

Velvetclown wrote: Sorry Pixel, but I´m engaged to Peter and as long as he behaves.......

!  You must have me confused with Trixie Weatherbell, VC!

How were the cucumber sandwiches?

Reed Lover wrote: I am very disturbed... so watch out

I can vouch for his being (ahem) "disturbed." 

Did he show you his backyard bombshelter yet? (He got the plans from l'il Pee Pee....)

Thanks all for the warm welcome, now James; after reading the whole CIVILITY thread, I'm pretty much familiar with the clowns here LOL. By the way, I had the laugh of my life reading that one....

I always knew that something was cooking in the Pixel-Velvet area, and I'm pretty proud to tell you that my early upbringing in Denmark has some use here...

When I mentioned the main flux of what we listened to back then, it was back then...I didnt want to bore anyone with any long snobbish list of obscure -never heard of wonderful bands from Kazakisthan or Bolivia for that matter. (Remember that none of you, and absolutely NONE of you except from 2 board members have EVER heard of THE SOUNDCHASER PROJECT, It cant get more obscure than that ! LMAOF )

Fitzcarraldo ( one of my favorite movies ) You are absolutely right, Radio Eldo POP was the very best I've ever heard in terms of radio, and as a matter of fact I still have 2-3 Maxwell Chrome Tapes (C-90) with stuff on them that I dont know who are playing...Well I did identify Amon Duul and some Hawkwind tracks....The radio was put up by the O Globo network in order to experiment with FM broadcasting in the beginning of the 70ies. The military dictatorship at that time was also interessted in keeping the youth away from politics so great music on stereo was all we cared about at that time. The Radio Jornal do Brasil had a one hour program in the afternoon "Musica Contemporanea" with the brand new releases from England (mostly bought in from aviators flying between Rio and London.) It was here where I heard "Echoes" for the first time and nearly had a fit...Man, that was sometinhg I had to have ! ! ! Their last broad cast was Klaus Shultzes TIMEWIND. A few years later I became friend with the President of the Brazilian Tangerine Dream Fan Club, and since he recieved tapes from recent concerts and pre-release albums, I nested in with TD and today I can say that its what I listen to on a daily basis. BUT to balance off I need some Hawkwind too LOL. Of the newer stuff I can deal with some Echolyn, and for more easygoing moments it will be Pendragon ( I know....I know  )...How much time did you spend in Rio ?

Now as for RUSH...not really my cup of tea, no matter what kind of tea ! ! ! But guys, dont take me too seriously (h***, I've just been to Jamaica !)

Hey Pixel, I found Harvey Sommers FENG SHUI CDs at the Seven-Eleven store at my local gas station.

But please don count me in on discussions on Spocks Beard or Porcupine Tree ! LOL

Harvey Summers albums in a 7-11?! I'm impressed at the standard of convenience stores in your neck of the woods!.

And as for Soundchaser: Still love the first album and waiting eagerly for the next..

Lunarscape, I left in the mid 1970s to go to university in Europe and have only been back once to visit my relatives (I’m half brasileiro), but still keep in touch with them and friends. You can listen to some vinhetas do EldoPop and some history of the station at the following Web site which I found recently:

http://www.radiobase.hpg.ig.com.br/eldopop.htm - http://www.radiobase.hpg.ig.com.br/eldopop.htm

There is even a play list (seqüências). Maybe from that you can find out what some of the music is on your tapes. Your tapes may be of historical interest to Luiz Carlos (see one of the pages linked from the above page).

By the way, your choice of bands is excellent (so far ). Tchau.