with Prog. I realize that this may have been covered a few years back, but I'm too lazy to search...and since this place is fargin dead...

My introduction to prog could have been sooner than it was__About 20 years ago, I remember going to a guy's house who'd just got back from leave (we was in the Navy) and he'd packed up his stereo rig and some albums and shipped them from home to our base. His TT got damaged in transit, so he couldn't listen to his vinyl. He had almost every YES album on vinyl, had KC's In The Court Of The Crimson King, had a Gentle Giant album (it was the one with the octopus in a jar) and a bunch Allman Bros, bunch of old Floyd and other more mainstream stuff. Had his rig worked, I may have been initiated sooner. I know he wanted me to listen to KC cuz he heard me playing April Wine's version of 21st Century Schizoid Man.

Of course I had the Classic YES album on tape. I owned 'best of' tapes of a lot of bands. I had never heard PF's Animals or Meddle until I ventured to another guys house (again, in the Navy). He also had copy's of Kansas albums like Leftoverture and Point Of Know Return and Monolith. I had the Best Of Kansas tape, but man, what an eye-opener listening to these albums were. I decided then and there that I'd be on a mission to hear albums, and not religate myself to 10 or 11 song 'best of' comps.

But then I found this site, by way of the general board (what a bunch of hens they were). My first forays into Rave Recs was to ask about older, mainstream albums, like "where can I find a copy of _______?" Then I started reading about bands like Spock's Beard and Porcupine Tree and older stuff like King Crimson and Yes. It was actually a comp by HyFi that eventually sent me on a mission to buy all three 'Larks' era King Crimson CDs, every YES album from Time And A Word thru Going For The One. Then someone says, "have you heard Drama?" "have you heard Kansas' Masque?" Then I start doing my own searches and I would come back and ask you guys about stuff like Captain Beyond, Caravan, Camel, and on and on.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, you guys have cost me a small fortune...starting around 5 years ago.

So how long have you guys been proggin? Has it always been a part of your world? If so, is it becoming a 'been there, done that' for you yet? Will you always be a Progger?

Seriously though, I doubt I'd have ever come across 90% of my purchases of the last 5 years if all I did was listen to classic rock or smooth jazz, which is what I was doing in the '90s. Don't get me wrong, I like my jazz, but man, what a sad thing to think that the only new music in my house would be what someone else brought in to it. Or the occassional piece of mainstream pablum I might happen to like, every several months or so...yikes. I can't imagine a world where Sufficiently Breathless didn't exist.