Why Prog?

“Can You Tell Me Where My Country Lies?”, these eight simple words, the magic of Peter Gabriel’s vocals, and a kid with his headphones, that’s where it all started. It was a religious experience to fall in love with Genesis as a 6-year-old, thanks to my dad being a prog-rock lover since the ‘60s. That’s how I got in touch with New Trolls, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, ELP, PFM, and then YES, Kansas, Rick Wakeman (solo), and U.K. among many others later on. I would immerse myself into these records while being in a trance looking at those album covers, and time hasn’t changed the emotions that prog-rock still gives me; they’re still here, and wherever I go musically, I come back to my first love.

Then came prog-metal in the ‘90s and as a teenager, I would devour anything prog, and thanks to those bands I could go back and discover Rush, Marillion, Frank Zappa, and many other amazing artists.

As a singer, keyboard player, and musician in general, I don’t think there’s another musical landscape where you can express all kinds of emotions and translate them into modern music. In prog, you can dare, expand limits, and re-invent while bringing the audience to such different and cool places.

Why Prog?

My first instrument was the Magnus Chord Organ I got for my seventh birthday and I got serious about it right away, so my parents started feeding me a succession of Hammond Organs, gradually introducing me to the concepts of bass pedals, drum boxes, timbral varieties and most importantly, the headphone jack. I spent many happy hours joyfully trapped inside audio prisons of my making.

One day when I was nine years old, the most adventurous of the local stations played side one of the then-brand-new ELP album Tarkus. I had no idea you could do that with a Hammond Organ, and it was absolute love at first listen. The stuff Keith Emerson was writing and playing, combined with the way he was recorded and the aggression of the hard percussion sound on his Hammond reached to the deepest part of my being and took up permanent residence there. During that same year I heard Frank Zappa for the first time, and the one-two punch of FZ and KE set me off on a lifelong journey in constant search of the adventurous and the unpredictable in music.

I started playing guitar when I was 11 and tried to import the experiments that I was doing on the keyboard over to the fretboard. When I was 16, I taught myself every released Gary Green guitar part, which gave me important insight into the architectural arrangement aspects of Gentle Giant; from there my tastes just went further and further out.

Why Prog?

The moment I discovered Jimmy “The Cat” Smith when I was 10, I felt sure that I was destined to become an organist. After I heard Deep Purple’s Machine Head, I bought a Hammond organ and a Marshall amp, and somehow managed not to lose my hearing in the process! When I saw the band U.K. live in concert on May 30th, 1979 at Sun Plaza in Nakano, Japan, I knew my heart belonged to progressive music.

Playing in the top rock band in Japan wasn’t good enough so I moved to L.A. After I graduated school with courses in Jazz Keyboards, Composition and Arrangement, and Film Scoring, I started playing and recording with a wide array of artists in every genre of music.

It was in 1995 that I joined Spock’s Beard and my journey into Prog was set in stone and my fate was sealed. All I want to do now is to play organ with passion and wild abandon, play intense and moving and memorable synth melodies with my Moog and envelop people in the unmistakable sound of the legendary Mellotron, all while climbing atop my keyboards screaming, “Yeah! Look at me up here, I’m PROGGING!”

Why Prog?

I was lucky to grow up with a much older brother who was cool enough to be a big Genesis/Peter Gabriel fan, so before I ever touched a bass (or really knew what one was), I was exposed to that music. Granted, it was a lot of the ‘80s Genesis stuff, but there are still lots of “proggy” tunes on those albums, like “Domino” and “Home By The Sea”, and it all introduced me to music that went far beyond a 4-minute pop song. Being raised in a sleepy suburb of NYC, I fell into these epic songs as an escape from my otherwise boring high school life, and soon rounded out my prog collection with a ton of YES, Frank Zappa, Jethro Tull and Gong, amongst others. It’s so amazing to be able to finally learn how to play these songs that I already know so well as a listener, and to realize just what a huge influence all these bassists are on my own approach to the instrument.

Why Prog?

It was hearing “Lucky Man” on the radio when I was a kid, and Keith Emerson’s Moog solo during the outro just blew my mind. I asked my parents to buy me the record, but when we got to the store and found the ELP bin, as soon as I saw the cover of Brain Salad Surgery, I had to have it–even though “Lucky Man” wasn’t on it. I put it on and my mind was blown just the same; as soon as I heard Carl Palmer’s drum solo in “Toccata”, which incorporated synthesizer drums, it was settled.

From there, it was drums and all things Prog–ELP, YES, Genesis and King Crimson, followed by Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, Rush, U.K., Bruford, Dixie Dregs, Pink Floyd, 10cc, Happy The Man, FM, Camel, The Tubes, Utopia, PFM, Nektar, Triumvirat, etc. That being said, if you really take the word ‘progressive’ for its true meaning, then there’s the be-all and end-all of music for me: Frank Zappa, and my favorite band of all time, The Beatles.

And, Prog record covers were the best! As mentioned, it was HR Giger’s ELP cover that caught my attention, and undeniably, all of Roger Dean’s work for YES (and others); King Crimson’s In The Court…, Genesis’ Seconds Out, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side…, etc. And let’s not forget, Roxy Music’s Country Life!