penguindf12

I was born in 1989, so I think I'm one of the youngest here...

I was introduced to progressive rock by an accident, mostly. I had heard a few Pink Floyd and Rush songs coming from classic rock stations (mostly my Dad's doing: I listened to a lot of 70s stuff), and I always liked music with a deeper meaning to it. However, I didn't know that there was an entire genre that represented the handful of songs I enjoyed.

The first CDs I owned were fairly standard for a 10-year-old: Dr. Demento, Weird Al, and Linkin Park. No blatant pop, I've always hated it.

But I failed to notice the black album with the prism on it in the CD shelf until the spring of 2004...

It's an odd story how I came to listen to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." In my creative writing class at school, we were making an anthology of the class' writings for the year. Somebody suggested calling it "The Dark Side of Words.

" I never found out who it was, but I told them my Dad had that album and I brought it to school for the class to hear. It blew me away. So then I listened to it over and over; then I heard "The Wall.

" From that point on I knew Pink Floyd better than anything I had ever heard. But I thought they were psychadelic rock, and I actually did not find out what "prog rock" was until I looked at the "history of rock" chalkboard on the "School of Rock" DVD special features and found Pink Floyd listed under "prog rock." So I looked it up, found this site, and found a few albums I thought I might like.

My first experience outside of the Floyd was Alan Parsons Project's "Tales of Mystery Imagination," followed by the threesome of Yes' "Fragile", Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick", and Roger Waters' "Amused to Death." And from there I found more bands, more albums, all of them mind-blowing. They inspired me to learn bass guitar and join jazz band.

Hopefully I'll become good enough to get a band of my own someday. Anyway, enough about ancient history. My progressive rock albums I need not list here.

Every album I have I will review after I feel I have heard it enough times to truly comprehend it. I will often research the album endlessly before reviewing, so there's usually a big gap between when get an album and when I review it. Concept albums, especially, require intense study online.

Either that, or I'm just being lazy and forget to review. Really, it's a little of both. A major problem of being younger is that every year my tastes seem to change radically.

At 14, I listened mainly to Linkin Park, Weird Al, and Dr. Demento. At 15, I listened mainly to Pink Floyd, Yes, and Genesis (and other prog).

At 16, I listened to Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. At 17, now, I am currently enjoying The Residents, keeping an eye out for stranger things, and re-listening to the prog classics once more. So you can imagine the horror I have when I look back through my older reviews.

I also tend to write a VERY LONG review, so I don't do it much. This also compounds my horror of old reviews. Because I write them so long, it takes A LOT of time to update them, so usually I don't bother.

My favorite artists at the time are The Residents, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, Van der Graaf Generator, Frank Zappa, Mr. Bungle, The Mars Volta, and of course Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, etc.