Frankly, I'm worried. A few weeks ago, I happened to catch the first instalment of a radio documentary on Pink Floyd and now I want to buy a copy of the band's 1971 opus, Meddle. Nothing wrong with that you might argue - classic-era Floyd - but this whole scenario is causing me concern.
First up, the documentary was broadcast by Radio 2 on a Saturday night, and I listened to it against a backdrop of the girlfriend cheerfully making cynical jokes about cardigans and slippers. Second, back when I was a studiously bored teenager in the 1970s, the consensus was that punk would destroy Floyd and their progressive rock ilk, leaving music free to be dangerously young. In short, I'm fearful that my Floyd fixation, inspired by some rather fetching guitar lines from Dave Gilmour, is a sign of encroaching middle age.
If so, I'm obviously not alone because the list of progressive rock sites at Google is bewildering. The Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock, for instance, features a huge list of (mostly obscure) bands and artists; while the Progressive Rock Radio Network, has copious links to web stations.
The web is the place to turn if your life-partner and friends can't understand your obsession with long, boring guitar solos and songs about elves. In Floyd's case, a good place to begin is the massive list of links at the Pink Floyd Web Index.
Here, you'll find a "Pink Floyd Yellow Pages to the WWW" with links helpfully listed under such categories as album title, band member and so on. Alternatively, you could start with, the official site for Echoes, the band's best compilation.
Tastefully animated, this reassuringly reveals that Echoes is a "carbon neutral" product: "What that means is we've measured the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the production of the CDs, and enough trees have been planted to reabsorb the greenhouse gas." Well, it's better than rock stars spending their money on cocaine and guitar-shaped swimming pools.
Completing the triumvirate of British prog rockers that conquered the world, Yes and Genesis have a strong web presence. The official home of Yes is particularly impressive, with its mix of news, streaming media and sites for individual band members. The online home of Genesis is similarly shipshape.
Trouble is, there's something too corporate about these destinations, as if confirming the oft-repeated observation that prog rock is music for Home Counties boys who grow up to become accountants. No, for real fun, you need to get out to some of the more obscure sites.
It's out there that you'll find the website-cum-cottage industry that is Marillion. Without ever threatening to repeat their success of the 1980s (when Fish, was still the band's vocalist), the band seem to be making a living by directly communicating with fans. There's a lesson here and, paradoxically, it's the punk lesson about doing what you want and not giving two hoots about the mainstream.
Elsewhere, Camel, Curved Air, Gentle Giant and Gong are just a few of the bands with their own pages.
For all its ludicrous excess, prog rock also threw up some genuine heroes, such as King Crimson's Robert Fripp, who welded technology, technique and what he called Frippertronics to take the electric guitar into whole new areas (it's Fripp who provided the distinctive guitar melodies for David Bowie's Heroes).
Go to fan site Elephant Talk, for a collection of self-deprecating postings from the man himself: "Think of me in the worst terms you may, knowing that the hardest judgement at which you might arrive falls far short of the actuality."
Similarly, the fabulous space rock of Germany's Can emerged from prog, while polemical and political Robert Wyatt), got his start with Soft Machine. As for Van der Graaf Generator), there's an argument for them being the most underrated band in rock history.
But maybe the best investigation into the weirder end of prog rock is to hunt through the enthusiastic LP reviews of obscure lost classics contributed by fans to Julian Cope's Head Heritage site. And if, after all that, you still think prog's dead, have you listened to Radiohead recently? I mean, really listened?
