A prog fan's early days. And I do mean EARLY!

Summer's here, and that can mean only one thing. Thanks to upcoming holidays, I will actually have time to write some new stuff to ProgActive, and I am planning to do that in a pretty big way. Last year, my subject of choice was the top 20 Long Prog Masterpieces, which I started writing about on 17 June. That series was completed much sooner than I anticipated, on 8 July.

This year, the subject of ProgActive is much, much bigger and will most likely not be completed during the summer at all. I will do no less than completely cover this prog fan's musical journey from infancy to old age, in chronological order. I will cover all the significant songs as well as albums that I have managed to come across from mid-sixties to the present day, with (hopefully) meaningful insight and plentiful samples, both audio and video.

This year, I will not even attempt to create any kind of a "best of" list, with accurate standings for all songs and albums. I'm not saying that last year's top 20 wasn't accurate - I wouldn't make any corrections to it even now - but I do recognize the futility of going through my entire musical journey and attempting to somehow classify it with any king of a ranking in mind. Making high quality music is not, after all, a competition.

Also, I need to warn that not everything that gets mentioned here this summer, will be prog. This in spite of calling the blog ProgActive. There will be plenty of prog, but there will also be music that only borders that genre, and even music that has nothing to do with it. But naturally, and I guess you can call this a promise, those poor souls who do not appreciate prog will in places have a hard time going through the forthcoming blog entries. Prog will be the dominant musical genre here in any case.

So, without further ado, let's get started. I was born a little over 50 years ago, on 21 May 1963, to an exceptionally music oriented family. Even though I never shared any musical leanings whatsoever with my parents, I was obviously affected by the fact that in our home, radio was always turned on. Back then, there were actual programs and radio shows, but even then, music was playing more than half the time. I grew accustomed to it from infancy. And, while in my early years the music that was playing was hardly something I would have liked to listen to, there was always an occasional gem here and there. More often when sixties turned to early seventies. Finnish radio mostly played old people's music, but some rock and roll was thrown in every once in a while. Sometimes, even art rock of the time.

My musical memories began to gather in September 1965 when I suddenly noticed that I enjoyed a piece of music playing on the radio. The song in question was California Dreamin' by The Mamas & the Papas: the first of my favorite songs in chronological order. My first significant album came out only a couple of months later and started getting radio play. Not surprisingly, it was The Beatles, whose album Rubber Soul was released on 3 December, 1965.

One track in particular caught my attention. Michelle was my second number one favorite, following California Dreamin'. At the age of two and a half years, I was already interested in a beautiful melody and a relaxed, mellow overall performance. This is something that still applies: I have always been more keen on melody than rhythm, and more on peaceful quietness than aggressive noise. There are exceptions to that rule, but nonetheless it is the rule that mostly applies. No need to even ask if I am a Beatles person or an Elvis person. So don't. :)

The following year already became a small explosion of various musical masterpieces. Prog had not yet been conceived - and even if it had, it would probably have been a bit much for me at this age - but several artists published works that had an equivalent effect on me. Only a month and a half after Rubber Soul, on 17 January 1966, Simon & Garfunkel released Sounds of Silence which contained not one but two favorites of mine: the immensely beautiful title track, as well as the ethereally captivating April Come She Will.

The real stunner of the year was released five days before my third birthday. On 16 May, the Californian group Beach Boys released their greatest masterpiece Pet Sounds, which contained the undying classic God Only Knows. This is perhaps a slightly peculiar favorite of mine, especially considering my later development as a music fan, but I could already recognize a melody driven, exceptionally moving pop song when I heard one. A strike of genius from everyone involved.

The next song of 1966 that caught my attention attracted my more psychedelic side. In July, another American Jerry Samuels released the black comedy song They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haa! under the moniker Napoleon XIV. This release gave me new ideas about what one could do with music and a slightly sick sense of humor. And not very much music; mostly his imperial highness just talks. The overall effect was every bit as mesmerizing then as it is now.

Back in the sixties, artists recorded new albums in a way more rapid succession than they do now. So, even though only nine months had passed since the release of Rubber Soul, the Beatles already had a new album coming out. It was released on 5 August, it was called Revolver, and I enjoyed it even more than I had its predecessor.

One of my favorite tracks on Revolver was Tomorrow Never Knows, which already seemed to signal the coming of more psychedelic times. The Beatles were gradually changing from a pop group to something much more complex. But my ultimate favorite was another track on the album, which instantly became my all time favorite song until then. Even now it seems almost incredible that something this accomplished and great was released already in the late summer of 1966, with nothing even remotely similar to precede it. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Eleanor Rigby.

Following this, nothing really felt like, well, anything. Simon & Garfunkel also released another album in 1966, in the autumn, on 10 October. It was called Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme but I felt already at that time that it didn't quite match the magnificence of Sounds of Silence. The opening track, Scarborough Fair / Canticle, is a classic - granted. But the rest of the album left me wanting more of the same quality and that just wasn't present this time.

And this is where we will take a short break. We have now reached the end of 1966, and it wasn't until the following year that things really got under way. Psychedelia was the order of that day, and the first signs of true prog were encountered in the summer of 1967. In the next blog entry, we will reminisce Pink Floyd and one of the greatest debut albums ever made.