how did all of you old farts on this board learn of many of the prog bands not played on the radio, some of the more underground bands, krautrock bands and what not, or italian bands, you know what i am getting at

you see, i have the intertron, what did you have?

Aaron

Some of the more popular bands I heard back in the 70's because my friends got me into them--Yes, ELP, Todd Rundgren, but later I got turned on to lesser known great bands via these:

Two excellent books by Richie Unterberger--"Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of '60s Rock", and "Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll" got me into a lot of older psychedelic stuff and from there early prog is not that far off.

Another helpful book was:  "Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychelic Rock" by Jim DeRogatis;

Two excellent prog rock collections:

The Rhino box set "Supernatural Fairy Tales" and "The Best Prog Rock Album in the World Ever"

These collections turned me on to a lot of good older bands, including Roxy Music (and Phil Manzanera solo stuff), Pretty Things, Hawkwind, Atomic  Rooster, Camel, Steve Hillage, Can, Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso, Faust, Van der Graaf Generator, and on and on. Then it was a snow ball effect. I'm set for years now!

It's an interesting question Aaron, because of course the internet, e-mail, PCs, MP3s, etc, didn't exist, and in the UK at least, there were very few radio sations playing "current" music.

On the plus side, prog was actaully quite popular in the early 70's, so you'd hear some tracks on the radio, or TV shows like the Old Grey whistle test. Other sources were borrowing friends albums, or listening posts at record shops.

My personal favourite was second hand record shops. I used to buy loads of cheap second hand LPs in the hope that I'd find a few gems. If I found a good one in poor condition, I could always "upgrade" it.

Pixel Pirate wrote: My best friend's older sister.

We're talking about introduction to sweet music here Pixie,oh..so are you!

Velvetclown wrote:

Great one,Velvet! When I saw the picture of Rob Halford with PAIN tattooed across his stomach I was thinking how much he'll enjoy that when he's 80. It's true what they say: Having a tattoo is the best way of telling the world you're an idiot without having to open your mouth.

Reed Lover wrote: Pixel Pirate wrote: My best friend's older sister. We're talking about introduction to sweet music here Pixie,oh..so are you!

I actually had a big crush on her and wished she would introduce me to all sorts of things,but alas,such was not to be.

Yeah,us proggers have to make do with... ahem...ploughing a lone furrow..

Reed Lover wrote: Yeah,us proggers have to make do with... ahem...ploughing a lone furrow..

I've never been farmer material anyway.

Man, surely The Wall. This albums was totally forgotten by my brother with the old vinyls. I found it, a friend of mine said to me: 'Man heard that one!'

I heard it, but, for a guy with 13 years old was difficult to understand that.

After came Thick As A Brick/Jethro Tull, The Tales Of Mistery And Ijmagination Of Edgar Allan Poe/The Allan Parsons Project, Ashes Are Burning/Renaisence and The Yes Album/Yes...

And after it... I became a slave from Prog Music..

Aaron wrote: how did all of you old farts on this board learn of many of the prog bands not played on the radio, some of the more underground bands, krautrock bands and what not, or italian bands, you know what i am getting at you see, i have the intertron, what did you have? Aaron

I prefer Holdsworth's Atavachron...............

To answer you question, by having DJs who were rarely personalities caring for themselves, rather aiming to put good music out on the air, without seeing/hearing boundaries. For all the late John peel's declaration all prog was bollocks before he died,  for 10 years his 2 or 3 hour shows kept me fed with a  wild variety of eclectic music. And then magazines like Melody Maker and the underground magazines like International Times and Oz - subsequent the excellent Zig Zag (which Mojo 20 years ater try to fashion itself on). Then being near colleges or unis or clubs who put on some very obscure bands (they were cheap). They also played headliners cheap as well!!  The (now) boring Kid Jansen (a Canadian in the Uk) playing 3 hours of anything after  midnight on Saturday on R Luxembourg. And it helped working on and off in a record shop through the end of the psychedlic period into the ealry 70's - and seeing the press releases and record trade literature...................... Then working in ENTS Committee when I went to University - one of the first to put on Be Bop Deluxe!.

Vibrationbaby wrote: I got into this crazy music just by being adventurous. I would go into record stores and just buy anything that looked wierd. After a while I noticed that I couldn`t go wrong if it was German. Roger Dean covers were also a good indicator and this is how I got into Greenslade, Midnight Sun, Babe Ruth and Budgie to name a few. I feel sorry for all the young guys who have been spoiled by the internet. Back then it was a challenge to discover the next "new" band.

Couldn't agree more. But I also had friends and acquaintances who enjoyed the same type of music, and I discovered a lot that way too, as we'd borrow LPs from each other or sit around together listneing to the latest on-spec purchase.

Also, the record department of the local department store had a lot of Prog LPs - they were big sellers at the time and available in mainstream stores in Rio and Níteroi - and the buyer could listen to LPs before buying, which I often did (that's where I discovered Greenslade, Triumvirat and Iron Butterfly and Mahavishnu Orchestra amongst others). As VB says, the Roger Dean covers were often a good indicator. I also used to pass a small record shop in Praça XV at the ferry station on the way home from school every day and would often browse through the LPs there and could also ask the attendant to give them a spin. We never seemed to find it difficult to discover new Prog and other rock - the stores seemed to have plenty of it in stock.

And later when I went to the UK to study, Melody Maker, NME and Sounds were, as plodder says, indeed a good source of information on all things Prog.

The main route in for me came from friends older brother who lent me Gentle Giant albums and told me to stop listening to that 'Heavy metal' rubbishfrom there I got a lot of hints from the 70's music press Sounds NME Melody Maker I would also just go into Reddigton's Rare Records and the Diskery in my home town of Birmingham and buy albums that looked suitably bizarre or interesting

    by the way I carried on listening to heavy metal anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MAYBE I'LL JUST MAYBE MY LIFE AWAY...........................................

Vibrationbaby wrote: I got into this crazy music just by being adventurous. I would go into record stores and just buy anything that looked wierd. After a while I noticed that I couldn`t go wrong if it was German. Roger Dean covers were also a good indicator and this is how I got into Greenslade, Midnight Sun, Babe Ruth and Budgie to name a few. I feel sorry for all the young guys who have been spoiled by the internet. Back then it was a challenge to discover the next "new" band.

Agreed ... there's really something to be said for having absolutely no idea what you're in for ... when I bought Selling England By The Pound, I was expecting a (more organic sounding) cross between Invisible Touch and So ... can you imagine that?!? ...

You also had to decipher the lyrics yourself ... and make judgements based on the cover art, track titles and track lengths ... a band photo showing four or five grubby, nerdy long-haired guys usually helped too

It's been a few years since I bought a CD without having even heard of the band ... the last three I can recall were Renaissance, Quintessence and Fotomaker (70's pop/rock) ... oh well two out of three ain't bad ...

Aaron wrote: how did all of you old farts on this board learn of many of the prog bands not played on the radio, some of the more underground bands, krautrock bands and what not, or italian bands, you know what i am getting at you see, i have the intertron, what did you have? Aaron

As one old fart, I was a young fart back then and Prog was still played on the radio, so it made things somewhat easy to get an introinto bigger prog acts. For more unknown, I used methods similar to VIBE but missed out on a lot of stuff.

A good deal of the hidden early 70's gems , I discovered in the early 90's through small record label such as Repertoire, Cuneiform , Second Battle , Musea, Mellow etc... Just got into their catalogue and recouped my infos with encyclopedia (fairly general ones at first) and then I discovered Borderline Books that are fairly exhaustive. Vernon Joynhson and Dag-Erik Asbjornssen have made the most complete books in British , American , German, rest of Europe prog dating from 65 to 75. If the Joynhson books are very factual, his description fairly acurate but rarely gives an extended review or opinion, Asbjornssen is IMHO highly trustworthy if you know how to read him and have read him lots. Some group/album Asbjornssen highly recommends is for me almost like gold. I made those Borderline Books my "livre de chevet" (night table book). But I am not certain Borderline books are easy to find now because the site disappeared last May.

In the mid-90's, I read GEPR before Gnosis was created and now the Archives to which I love contributing.

Older brothers and sisters and we organized with friends not to buy the same records. I have the impression that it was far more easier in the seventies to keep track of Rock in general.A new Genesis, Pink Floyd or Tull record was really a big thing.We changed a lot of records in class and and all of the bands were touring back then. There was nearly every week  a good concert.I saw most of the better known bands and the concert tickets were really cheap. I listened a lot to "In Between" and "RockIn" on WDR a german station who,played lots of Prog.  I don't remember when I heard the word PROG for the first time but for me it was just Rock back then. It is about 10 years now that I try build up a Prog Collection and thanx to Internet I found a lot of Information and people to share the Prog Virus.

Dick Heath wrote: To answer you question, by having DJs who were rarely personalities caring for themselves, rather aiming to put good music out on the air, without seeing/hearing boundaries. Dispite the late John Peel's declaration all prog was bollocks before he died,  for 10 years his 2 or 3 hour shows per week kept me fed with a wild variety of eclectic music. And then magazines like Melody Maker and the underground magazines like International Times and Oz - subsequent the excellent Zig Zag (which Mojo 20 years later tried to fashion itself upon). Then being near colleges or unis or clubs, who put on some very obscure bands (they were cheap). They also played the  headliners cheap as well!!  The (now) boring Kid Jansen (a Canadian in the Uk) playing 3 hours of anything after midnight on Saturday on R Luxembourg - T2, Lifetime, High Tide coming from that. And it helped working on and off in a record shop through the end of the psychedelic period into the early 70's - and seeing the press releases and record trade literature...................... Then working in ENTS Committee when I went to University - one of the first to put on Be Bop Deluxe!

And should have added: I also had this embarrassing and increasingly expensive habit of  following up on virtually every spin-off band, of favourite bands - e.g. Flash and Badger from Yes. Blind Faith (okay),  Airforce (oh dear), Derek & The Dominoes (yes!), Delaney & Bonnie (nope), Clapton solos (not many), Jack Bruce (lots), Lifetime(the one off was good) , Baker Gurvitz Army (mixed catalogue of music), from stemming from Cream in the 70's. Following the so-called 'rock family trees' worked better with jazz rock bands - Lifetime,  Miles,  MO, RTF WR,  Dimeola, Shakti - but by the end of 70's jazz rock had largely collapsed into staleness, jazz soul,  fuzak - and it needed the likes of Holdsworth and Metheny to do some thing fresh.

I like picking up 1970's - or just plain wierd looking compilation albums, then investigating the bands on those.

Late night radio used to be good - now it seems that only Radio 3 has anything truly interesting to offer in the small hours.

I got into some really wierd stuff at college, especially when I researched for my 1960's rock music paper - best assignment I ever had, although I must admit I wanted the "Supergroup" one. That went to a dork who presented on a U2 album, would you believe? Talk about a missed opportunity to talk about a REAL supergroup!

Er... back on topic, from reading around, I encountered references to great bands like the Great Society, the United States of America and Blue Cheer. From compilations I discovered Touch, Bakerloo, Quatermass, Mighty Baby, Juicy Lucy, Savoy Brown and the Edgar Broughton Band among many others.

And there was a really cheap compilation I picked up when I was but a teenager which included Gentle Giant, Procul Harum, Mannfred Mann, Uriah Heep, Status Quo and other groovy late 1960s - early 1970s music. I really dug the GG track - "On Reflection". I think that was the point of no return...

Aaron wrote: old farts Aaron

score points for calling old folks old farts, Aaron.

I discovered many great bands in the late 80's/early 90's through guitar magazine. They were always consistently ahead of the curve (to my tastes at least) compared to the "mainstream" music pubs (Rolling Stone, Spin, etc.). Dream Theater, Gentle Giant, King's X, and on and on. Many of my favorite bands I discovered in the pages of Guitar World or Guitar For The Practicing Musican.

Fitzcarraldo wrote: Vibrationbaby wrote: I got into this crazy music just by being adventurous. I would go into record stores and just buy anything that looked wierd. After a while I noticed that I couldn`t go wrong if it was German. Roger Dean covers were also a good indicator and this is how I got into Greenslade, Midnight Sun, Babe Ruth and Budgie to name a few. I feel sorry for all the young guys who have been spoiled by the internet. Back then it was a challenge to discover the next "new" band. Couldn't agree more. But I also had friends and acquaintances who enjoyed the same type of music, and I discovered a lot that way too, as we'd borrow LPs from each other or sit around together listneing to the latest on-spec purchase. Also, the record department of the local department store had a lot of Prog LPs - they were big sellers at the time and available in mainstream stores in Rio and Níteroi - and the buyer could listen to LPs before buying, which I often did (that's where I discovered Greenslade, Triumvirat and Iron Butterfly and Mahavishnu Orchestra amongst others). As VB says, the Roger Dean covers were often a good indicator. I also used to pass a small record shop in Praça XV at the ferry station on the way home from school every day and would often browse through the LPs there and could also ask the attendant to give them a spin. We never seemed to find it difficult to discover new Prog and other rock - the stores seemed to have plenty of it in stock. And later when I went to the UK to study, Melody Maker, NME and Sounds were, as plodder says, indeed a good source of information on all things Prog.

Curiosity and challange. When a musician leaving one band for another it was normal to research what was going on. Keeping track of line-ups was another way to learn more. The media in Brazil was pretty generous and did provide quite a lot of info on prog musicians. As Fitzcarraldo points out; the record shop at Praça 15 was well supplied and there was another one (My personal Mecca) called Modern Sound, and what they didnt have you could order. Talking to Mr. Miguel 20 minutes and you were the most well informed prog head on the block. By the way he (Mr.Miguel) is still there.....

Hords of kids walked the blocks back and forth with stacks of Lp's under their arms, visiting eachother and having sessions just listening to great music and enjoying the albums with friends. You dont se any of that today.

_______

Lunar