HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS!
Hard to believe it’s been 15 years since Prog magazine launched. I’ve been a reader since the first issue was unleashed with‘Pink Floyd & The Gods of Prog’. Progressive rock is a music that’ll never, ever go away.
Nearly 20 years ago, I discovered bands online ranging from Magma, Van der Graaf Generator, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Le Orme, Hawkwind and Marillion. It was basically like finding rare items that were often under the radar and never got played on the classic rock radio stations.
So once the first issue of Prog came around, I became aware of bands like Blood Ceremony and Astra from the Rise Above label; it proved that the genre had resurrected in the beginning of the 2010s. And one of the artists I really championed of course is Purson’s Rosalie Cunningham.
Frank Zappa once said, “Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny.” It’s the same thing with progressive rock music. I remember some of the samplers that, , , and . It was [about] going beyond the big names from Genesis, King Crimson, ELP and Yes.
