Date of birth: October 1962, Wales, UK I was first introduced to progressive rock around 1972. My brother introduced me to the progressive music of Dark Side Of The Moon, Selling England By The Pound, Yessongs , In The Land Of Grey And Pink and Mirage. Not a bad introduction of bands's albums hey?
Of course Led Zeppelin was alive and well as was early Deep Purple. Living in South Africa at the time made the music becoming accessible about 3-6 months after European and USA releases so you can imagine the anticipation of new releases in the 70's without direct press releases, no web browsers etc. In a way the purity of progressive sound was influenced by the very nature of experimentalism being a novelty.
Hence in my opinion the unfair 'naive labels' dished out nowadays to this very important genre of sound.The pioneers and true masters of this genre in my humble opinion definitely have a deserved place with the elite classical composers of Bach, Mozart etc beacuse they had licence to be creative. After these early influences my musical tastes quickley began to include anything Genesis related, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Gravy Train, Jethro Tull, Traffic, The Strawbs and Mike Oldfield.
I also enjoyed other avenues of music especially the incredible reggae of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Van Morrison , Joan Armatrading and Manfred Mann's Earth Band to name but a few.The 80's continued to bring on some fine sounds.
I am quite passionate about the fact that most of the progressive bands evolved naturally with the times and had to adapt or die.During this evolution some of the band' s output especially Camel and Caravan was of high quality. Bands that emerged for me in the 80's are U2, Simple Minds, Talk Talk ( included on this site), World Party, Ultravox and The Waterboys.
And how could one ignore the incredible sound of Talking Heads? The 90's for me proved to provide more of the same from the old dinoasurs and fewer new great artists arrived on the scene. Seal being one of them.
New Order continued to deliver and without doubt Supertramp's last two releases brought out my love of the jazzier side. Times are indeed sparse for good new groups these days and I have to say I have looked far and wide. Only the wonderful Mercury Rev and Coldplay come close with the odd dabble from Flaming lips.
It is for this reason that I am now digging deep into the rich reserves that progressive sound has to offer and am enjoying listening to groups that I did not know even existed until I found this great website. I do not have much of a liking though for the prog metal sound of Dream Theatre and Tool and whilst I respect peoples tastes and the bands work ethic I do not think it is of the same quality of the groups from the late 60's and 70's.
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