Dotoar

Hm, my first encounter with prog must have been Pink Floyd, without even knowing it was prog. It was when I was 16 or so, maybe 17 (quite late), and I had got a handful of vinyl records from my brother, two of which were "Dark side of the moon" and "A collection of great dance songs". I was instantly hooked on DSOTM (of course) as well as on songs like "Shine on you crazy diamond". Shortly thereafter I burned a copy of "The wall", but I was still to be initiated to the whole concept of prog rock.

My second encounter was Rush, still not aware what "prog" was. It was further into my senior high years and I was heavily into hard rock like Zeppelin, Purple and all that stuff and had heard of that 'power trio from Canada with a legendary drummer", so I blindly bought a couple of records ("2112" and "Fly by night") and once again, I was hooked. The title track off "2112" just blew my mind and I thought it was just great that they had the nerve of putting a 20-plus minute song on an album.

My third encounter I think was Jethro Tull, still not aware of whatever "prog" meant. It must have been about a year after finishing senior high when I borrowed a couple of albums from my other brother, "This was" and "Thick as a brick". If the lengthy Rush pieces were awesome, then how great was it that Tull actually made a whole album out of just one 43-minute song! And it was shock-full of all these tricky passages as well. Now that I think about it, I actually bought the "Aqualung" album during my senior high years, but I never got into it back then.

My fourth encounter was still about a year ahead, and not until then I started to become aware that there was a style in its own rights that was called "progressive rock", with bands like Yes and Genesis doing these lengthy complex songs not suitable for the faint-hearted average listener. Swell, I thought and bought "Close to the edge", "Relayer" and "Tales from topographic oceans" and the transformation was complete.

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