What are your Progressive Rock Roots?

[Elric68]

When I was a very young boy (8 years), I used to listen to my dad's Genesis records, especially the songs "Firth of Fifth", "Ripples", "Many too Many", "Squonk".

A few years later, he made me discover Hawkwind ("Live Chronicles"), Pendragon ("Not Of This World") and Marillion ("Script For A Jester's Tear"), then made me listen to Jazz-Rock (King Crimson, "USA", Return To Forever). These are my roots.

[Sven]

Born in 62, I grow up with "Pop" or Beat music from the local radio stations SFB, RIAS, AFN and BFBS and the classic music I heard at many weekends I spend with my grandpa, a very enthusiastic Hi-Fi-fan.

From him I get my first tape-recorder, a Telefunken Magnetophon 98. So I started to record many SF-radio plays. There I had my first contact with prog music, as background music for these radio plays.

Absolutly fascinating for me were f.e. Pink Floyd's "Remember a Day" or Hawkwind's "Silver Machine".

In the early seventies, RIAS 2 started a weekly show, every Monday from 10:00 to 10:30 pm - "Musik - Tendenz Progressiv".
A short introduction by one of the two DJs and then one complete side of a LP.
I would simply say: That changes my life.
They play any styles of prog music, from Klaus Schulze to ELP, Popol Vuh to Brain Ticket, CAN to Beggars Opera etc.

Until 74, when I enter the highschool, I spend my money for tapes and SF-/Fantasy-paperbacks (what I still collect), then I get more pocket money and I started to collect LPs.
My first one was Kraftwerk "Radioaktivitaet", many other follows, most of them Prog.