I remember still being an atheist when I procured my first copy of ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery when it came out in 1974.  I had spent my middle school years saying that I was an atheist, for reasons not completely clear to me in retrospect.  It was probably partly because I had read Erich von Däniken, and was very taken with what would eventually become known as “ancient astronaut theory.”  It was probably also partly because I was just rebelling against my perceptions of the small-town midwestern Methodism in which I was raised.

But whatever else it might have been, I’m quite sure that it was partly from listening to Greg Lake sing “The Only Way” (on Tarkus).  In other words, it seemed cool to be an atheist.  My mother (who was certainly no atheist, but was quite open-minded), instead of trying to convince me to abandon my supposed conviction, warned me that I would need to be aware that openly discussing this could lead to VERY negative reactions from others.  Fairly wise advice, given that I was just coming out of junior high school, and was already frequently persecuted for being a “queer” (i.e., I read a lot, was overweight and bespectacled, was not at all athletic, and had only recently put together the broad outlines of the whole “birds and bees” thing).

It was into the midst of that ostensibly “cool” youthful atheism that ELP’s recording of “Jerusalem” was dropped like a dirty bomb.  It remains THE single ELP track that can almost immediately liquefy my spine and reduce me to a puddle of awe.  Here was Greg Lake, singing about Jesus (albeit in England).  I was not previously familiar with the poem or its hymn setting.  Since becoming familiar with the hymn, my sense of the near-perfection of arrangement and of sonic texture has only been confirmed.

The reverberations of “Jerusalem” followed me through high school, which is to say that they followed me from my “cool” atheism of early adolescence to the Bible-thumping obnoxiousness of my later adolescence.  What were some of those reverberations?

One was that savory but unsettling phrasing, “dark satanic mills.”  Even after I dove head-first into fundamentalism, the sense for the importance of darkness haunted me.  It was only much later that I actually found believers in God who seemed willing to approach it.  Most notably, Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn would later grab at the same region of my heart, singing about how we’ve “got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.”

Another reverberation was the triumphalist feel of the song, which was delivered with such arresting aesthetic sincerity, while also being…  I don’t think that the word ‘ironic’ quite covers it; that’s the word that comes to mind right now.  The building of a New Jerusalem has seemed so central to Christianity, both as I have at times rejected it and at other times embraced it. The sort of Christianity that I drifted into over time (Anabaptist/Mennonite) questions the triumphalist, empire-building feel of some major streams within Christianity more broadly.  Thus, I still listen to “Jerusalem” and hear this resonance as a friendly one.

A third, and (for purposes of this post) final resonance is that the darkness of these mills (I didn’t know at first what “mills” were being referenced; I still can’t hear the song with the emphasis on that word) desperately call for something that is not darkness.  This is now how I understand the “religious” feel of “The Only Way” as well as of “Jerusalem.”  Perhaps this is part of what made Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready”–released earlier, but not on my radar until a bit later–another revelatory listen.

No, I’m not going to present some kind of argument that this music should push you in a certain direction religiously (or spiritually, if you prefer).  I share this vignette from my path, hoping that you might nod with understanding, remembering and treasuring the resonances that such rich music and poetry have had along your path as well.

A huge thanks to the ever-creative and witty Progarchist, Mark Widhalm, for designing this. Hoping to make t-shirts soon.

[Ed. note–I’m thrilled beyond words to share webspace and writing space with Alison.  She’s been one of my favorite prog writers for a long time, and I’ve found through correspondence she’s as spunky and witty as she is kind.  So, thank you for joining us, Lady Alison.  The pleasure is all ours.]

It never ceases to amaze me to this day how very few ladies love prog. Even in these “enlightened” times, it still seems as though we continue to be an endangered species but well worth preserving.

Though there is a thriving private Ladies of Prog Facebook group, here in the UK, the physical and spiritual home of prog, there is a relatively small group that make up the Sisterhood of the Prog. We all know each other, we get on really well together and we all share a passion for a very diverse range of bands.  From conversations I have had with fellow lady proggers, it seems that IQ and its offshoots are a particular favourite along with Frost*, It Bites, Steve Hackett and of course Rush (though the debate still rages on as to whether they truly are a prog band).

My  long standing joke is that there is never a queue for the ladies’ washroom at concerts: in fact at the classic Transatlantic concert at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London two years ago, I would guess there were less than 100 lady attendees among the 2,000 strong audience.

So I can only go by my own personal experiences of prog which started longer back than I care to mention and can be traced to a chance meeting with an older man on a family holiday in Majorca. I was 12: he was 15 for the record. He was  a huge fan of Curved Air who had just announced their arrival through their debut sensation Air Conditioning and on the strength of that, my first record purchase was Curved Air 2 from the proceeds of six weeks’s baby sitting. It was simply the whole package which appealed – that classic edgy sound with Darryl Way’s haunting violin and Sonja Kristina’s sultry singing being the real appeal.

So while my school friends getting steamed up over David Cassidy and assorted Osmondpersons, my prog world became full of astonishingly beautiful men with long hair and languid features who played just as spectacularly as they looked.  I also had a platonic male friend into prog who played me Meddle by Pink Floyd after which I wrote a very long prose poem based on Echoes involving a stranded submarine and astral projection. How I wish I had kept hold of it.

Along came Fragile and suddenly, life made perfect sense. Here was the music on which to build the soundtrack of your life. So I  retreated to my bedroom for the best part of three years to listen and learn from this extraordinary music, and tuning in every Saturday afternoon to Radio One for the weekly gospel of prog according to the Rev “Fluff” Freeman. He even wrote me a letter starting “Dear lovely Alison”  after I sent him an essay about the virtues of Patrick Moraz joining Yes.

So the foundations were set in prog stone in an early age, crystallised by going to see Yes for the first time on the Relayer tour and the subsequent seven or eight times in the various permutations. They will always be my prog torchbearers because of the way they have fused so many styles and influences to produce something totally original and memorable, well, at least until before June last year but that is another story.

There have been some long intermissions since because life does have a habit of getting in the way but the prog ideology within was always there, albeit temporarily snuffed out by circumstance.  However, Yes have always been there when the going got tough. I do remember listening to The More We Live/Let Go from Yes’s Union album and crying for the first few times I heard it because it reminded me of where I wanted to be rather than being in a very destructive marriage. And when that marriage broke up, Jon Anderson was there with In The City of Angels to tell me it was all going to be okay through Top of the World, For You and Hurry Home.

So prog has saved my life, restored my sanity and informed my reality every step of the way since.

In conclusion, how do I explain this eternal love of prog? Easy, really. The best music takes you on a journey and offers an experience which is both personal and profound. It lets you decide what you want it to be and every definition you give is right, because there is no wrong. It is all down to perception and interpretation, and the wonderful musicians who provide it never tell you how you should think or feel while listening to it. That makes all prog fans free thinkers who find their own level in the music and then celebrate it with other aficianados. It is a totally unifying force of expression.

And there is so much more. Without Sonja Kristina, I could never have had an early perception of what it means to be a liberated, independent and creative female. Without Jon Anderson, I could never have understood and interpreted the wonders of life then re-arranged them into a lifelong philosophy. In his words  and part of my mantra, “I count my blessings, I can see what I mean”.  And in Keith Emerson, and I shall keep it clean, I got to appreciate the more physical side of prog – and at last I finally got to see him with Lake and Palmer two years ago. That is now more or less the full prog set seen live.

Prog has been my life, my philosophy, my fun and my passion. That I can write about it now is a dream come true and also getting the chance to finally meet some of the legends that make it. It has been so influential in shaping who I am and the way I think. And so far as I am concerned, prog rock chicks will always like it over 20 minutes long with a three weird key changes, an undanceable time signature  and an organ solo. My case rests!

[N.B.  This was a comment that appeared for approval, and I was so taken with it, that I thought it would make a great post.  Hope you agree.  And, welcome to Erik and a huge thanks to you for taking the time to write]

by Erik H.

I’ve been waiting to find time to answer this post, now I finally have it. I can state, with great precision, the time and place that the prog gene became irrevocably encoded into my DNA (or awakened from dormancy, if you will): June 23, 1979, approximately 9 PM to midnight, Rupp Arena, Lexington, KY. I was a few days past my 15th birthday and had in my hands one of the presents I received – a ticket to see Yes in concert. They were touring in support of Tormato and on their 10th anniversary. The stage for the show would be ‘in the round’, a revolving stage at the center of the arena.

I knew very little about Yes at that time. In school, a month or so prior when the concert had been announced, some friends there had assured my I should go and that it would be worth it. I casually mentioned to some in my family that I would like to go, and it was taken as the hint it was, resulting in the ticket I later received. Still, I hadn’t really sought out to listen to any Yes prior to the night of the concert and knew very little of what we call ‘prog’. Unbeknownst to me, I actually had one prog album in my collection by then – ’2112′ by Rush, but I nevertheless did not know much about any genre of prog. I just knew I liked that album without wondering if there was more music like it.

So off to the concert I went that night, not having any huge expectations other than to enjoy myself and have a good time listening to a band play some music. You could say I got much more than I bargained for, in a good way – and in a life-changing way. Simply put, I was blown away. This wasn’t just a rock band, and this wasn’t just a rock concert I was witnessing, it was something completely on another plane. While I was unfamiliar with their catalog at the time, I clearly remember them playing ‘Future Times/Rejoice’, ‘Heart of the Sunrise’, a great acoustic guitar solo by Steve Howe, and the dreamy harp/organ section of ‘Awaken’. It was quite apparent that these guys were significantly more talented than most other rock musicians out there, and quite apparent that the guitar, bass, and keyboards were particularly unique relative to any other music I had ever heard. Thankfully, this would only be the first of six times I would have the pleasure of seeing Yes in concert.

Leaving Rupp Arena that night, I was not just impressed, but I was *hooked*. Within a year I had every album between ‘The Yes Album’ and ‘Tormato’, and was anxiously awaiting the release of Drama (although saddened that Anderson and Wakemen had left by then). But Drama impressed me quite a bit as well.

During the same period, I became familiar with some of the other popular progressive rock bands of the time, acquiring albums by Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, ELP, and more Rush. As the years went by, my search for more progressive rock led me to some of the neo-prog bands of the 80′s and into the back catalog of other 70′s prog bands I had previously missed, such as Gabriel/Hacket-era Genesis, Rennaissance, various solo works, and so on. And in the last decade plus, thanks to the internet, I’ve run into the happy problem of discovering that there is more prog out there than I will ever be able to listen to in my lifetime.

There is plenty of other music that I like and have listened to over the years outside of prog. But prog is still unequivocally my first musical love and will remain so until the day I die, and I can trace it right back to the fateful Saturday night in Rupp Arena.