I saw them get booed off the stage opening for AC/DC on the Razor's Edge tour.

Tough gig. A band too far ahead of it's time for those fans, I suppose?

I forgot about King's X, great band and a big influence on my guitar playing. Ty Tabor is awesome...

Yeah, I'll say. King's X's timing to hit the big-time was either a little early, or a little late. I remember picking up on the band since they were mentioned as being similar to Rush, as just a footnote to a Geddy Lee interview around '89. I love Doug Pinnick's bass sound and his overall approach - very unique. They are fantastic live.

Context is everything. Back in the early 80s, I saw The Clash open for Eddie Money open for The Who. The stadium sized crowd loved Eddie Money (somebody who I always considered to be a waste of good oxygen) and booed the Clash off the stage. Considering the demographic and the time though, it wasn't a huge surprise.

I saw somebody on FB during the last Superbowl say something like "imagine how blown these people would be if King Crimson did the half time show" as if the reaction of your average football fan would be "man ... where has this band been all my life". My immediate thought was ... they would hate it. They would hate it strongly.

i guess im just naive but i would think real Who fans would embrace the Clash and take a long hot cattle prod to Eddie Money. Eddie Money. im gonna go puke now just for saying that name again

Certainly The Who crossed genres. This was around 1981 or 1982 though. The Who and Eddie Money were big radio acts while The Clash were considered punk and punk was still on the outside and many who listened to it were labeled "freaks". The venue was a football stadium with a capacity of around 80,000 not including the field and while The Who pulled in all manner of listener, the commercial radio crowd were the dominant presence and certainly the most vocal in ousting The Clash before their set was over. Eddie Money was painful to bear but it was a general admission show so coming late wasn't an option

Back then I listened to some punk and rode my skateboard inside of empty swimming pools. I was like a double freak

the Who were such punks when they came out. "Talkin 'bout my Generation"...

Desert island six pack.

Eberhard Weber - Little Movements
Allan Holdsworth - Atavachron
Miles Davis - We Want Miles
Jerry Goldsmith - Star Trek motion picture OST
Wynton Marsalis - Black Codes form the Underground
Squarepusher - Damogen Furies

This list will be telling for anyone who knows what my own music sounds like. I wasn't "born in the wrong time", I just didn't have parents who understood how important keeping up on current music was.

I love a lot of prog rock, including Porcupine Tree, but it tends to be the stuff where the songwriting is actually good, and the musicians aren't just wanking off.

I got my first record player when I was five (1985). My favorite first records, many of which I picked out at Rhino Records in Los Angeles (yes, it was an actual record store) included:

The Dave Clarke Five -- Greatest Hits
The Searchers -- Greatest Hits (I also had a single off of their 1979 comeback album, which is fantastic)
The Beach Boys -- The Beach Boys Love You
Ricky Nelson's Greatest Hits (TWO of them)
The Cars' Greatest Hits
The Police -- Zenyatta Mondatta
The Police -- Greatest Hits
The Rolling Stones -- Between The Buttons (I loved this album)
The Seeds -- The one with Pushin' Too Hard. (Yeah, I bet my mom regretted keeping that one because I used to play it REPEATEDLY).

We also had things like the first War album, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Seatrain (the second self-titled album), Marvin Gaye...

By the late 80's, we finally got a CD player. I listened to the radio a little bit, mostly KROQ. I heard The Cure a lot, didn't think much either way. There was also some Michael Penn and a good dose of War-era U2. We had a U2 album: Rattle & Hum.

The first CD I ever bought was The White Album, in 1988. "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" made me laugh (because I was like 8 years old). The second CD was probably the soundtrack to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Then we joined Columbia House and discovered the joys of accidentally buying Eddie Money's Greatest Hits, but also buying Who's Next on purpose. I liked the first Bon Jovi album, but that was from the library so I had to give it back.

Meanwhile, I continued to acquire nifty "old" music, including:
Paul Simon -- Graceland
Pink Floyd -- Animals
Al Stewart -- Modern Times
Every Weird Al Yankovic album

but if I'm honest, most of my Super Mario Bros. 3 time was spent listening to:
Billy Joel -- Storm Front.

Occasionally, though, very occasionally, I would hear something that was actually current. I was only a couple years off when I heard the first Crowded House album. I went ice skating a lot, so I heard a lot of Fine Young Cannibals and Michael Penn. More importantly, my mom's roommate got Green Thoughts by The Smithereens from the library once, and that ended up leaving such a lasting impression that ten years later, I just decided to go looking for it on CD. Damn,Pat DiNizio's let himself go...

By my middle teens, I had discovered Iron Maiden, Scorpions, and UFO. But I also started to get into "modern" music. My picks from this time would have to be:

Weezer (blue album. It's all we had)
Oasis (What's The Story Morning Glory)
Supergrass: I LOVE SUPERGRASS! I Should Coco and In It For The Money are still very important to me.
Radiohead: OK Computer was a great introduction to them, but The Bends is their best album.

Was I also listening to ELP, Yes, and King Crimson, and Zappa? Um, I play the stick, dude. Of course I was listening to them. But my favorite album to listen to while playing wipE‍ '​out" on my Playstation was Yes' 90125 and Drama. And I was a huge fan of Asia's first album. And the first Buggles album is probably one of the great unsung pop albums of it's era, bridging the gap between New Wave and Synthpop (I'm currently writing a proposal for a book on The Age of Plastic). Basically, Geoff Downes is GOD.

Oh yeah, in 1997, in addition to enjoying OK Computer and Supergrass, I found a nifty little second hand music shop in Tacoma called 2nd Time Around. Their understock was $1 for 10 records, so I would load up my backpack with albums like:

Sparks - Propaganda, Big Beat
Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age of Wireless (still an incredible debut album)
Billy Joel - Glass Houses, The Stranger
Cheap Trick: Cheap Trick, In Black and White, Dream Police

I also started downloading a lot of music off of Usenet, which is how I discovered the prog band FM's album Black Noise, Todd Rundgren, and
In addition to the above, the intervening years gave rise to a period of fascination with pub rock artists like Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Brinsley Schwarz; Powerpop (The Shoes, Jellyfish, Dwight Twilley, The Raspberries, Badfinger), and many more besides.

Ultimately, I like *songs*. Most of what prog guys do isn't songwriting, it's composition. But the best of the early prog guys were writing songs, they just strung them together to make really long songs. In the end, I'd rather listen to The Bevis Frond, because when Nick Saloman does a 20 minute song, he doesn't hide the fact that it's self-indulgent, and I don't feel like he'd mind me skipping over it to get to one of his absolutely sublime pop songs.

Speaking of self-indulgent, this has been an incredibly self-indulgent post, and if you skip it, I, like Mr. Saloman, won't be offended.

Prog
1. King Crimson
2.Yes
3. Trey Gunn
4. Fripp/Sylvian
5. Necter
6. PFM
7. Hawkwind

Singer/songwriter
1. Peter Gabriel
2. Sting
3. Bruce Cockburn
4. Taj Mahal
5. Eric Bibb
6. Keb Mo
7. Bonnie Raite

World Music
1. Issa Bagayogo
2. Basakou Koyate"
3. Habib Koite'
4. Trilok Gurtu
5.Jon Hassell
6. Daby Toure'
7. Fela Kuti
8. Tony Allen
9. Don Cherry


Jazz/Jazz Fusion
1. Joe Zawinul
2. Weather Report
3. Miles
4. George Duke
5.Herbie Hancock
6.Billy Cobham
7. Sixun
8.John McLaughlin
9.Marcus Miller
10. E.S.T
11. Coltrane
12. ALice Coltrane
Nguyen Le
These are some of my favorite things!