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tezoatlipoca t1_iu4fpd5 wrote

Started off as a Rush fan and one of my coworkers (at the record store) said "oh, you like Rush, well you'll love Yes. Oh and King Crimson. And here, try Genesis" You mean like Land of Confusion? "PPffffff. No, that's new Genesis. You want OLD Genesis." Why is Peter Gabriel wearing a flower on this? "He was the original singer for Genesis" whoa. Mind blown.

As he's listing off the bands, he's literally pulling vinyl out of the bins and making a stack of albums for me to listen to. Tales from Topographic Oceans. Selling England By The Pound.

And thus my decades long descent into progressive rock began. I feel like I handled it better than Dean. No Floyd Holes.

Should point out that we worked at an indy record store. We were like the kids in High Fidelity. "I like Billy Ocean". Nooo, what you really want is this. and this. and this. No, put down the Lionel Richie, try this James Brown. And we opened the merch all the time to listen to it, then put it back in the shrink wrap. We were kindof asshole music snobs, but the best was when they came back the next day raving about something we recommended to them and then they ask what else we'd recommend.

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duomtl OP t1_iu4ghu2 wrote

That sounds awesome! I used to work at a video game store with a buddy and we would pull the same sort of stuff off lol. It must have been a great experience though!

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tezoatlipoca t1_iu5by1s wrote

The boss bought a new anti-theft system - the one with those little puffy white stickers? So we closed Sunday-Monday, got paid overtime for two whole days to put little puffy white stickers on literally everything. We were nearly done when one of us accidentally discovered that if you squish the puffy sticker it doesn't work.

Turns out there are two foil sheets in the sticker - one pillar puts out a high frequency sound that causes those sheets to vibrate and emit a different sound that is picked up by the other pillar. Squish em together they don't vibrate.

We showed that to the boss. He stares at the sticker for what had to have been 45 seconds... looks at each of us. "What do you want to keep that secret to yourself?" Oh, how bout $1/hr raise for all of us? (this was a long time ago, more like $3 now) "Done."

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Garfield-1-23-23 t1_iu594mp wrote

As a teen in the early '80s I was so into Yes that I refused to listen to any other band unless they were connected a la six degrees of Kevin Bacon to Yes via common musicians. So King Crimson was OK because of Bill Bruford, Peter Gabriel was OK because of his bassist Tony Levin who was also in King Crimson, Vangelis was OK because of Jon and Vangelis etc. etc.

My local record store owner knew about this fetish and one day called me out for it, saying I was fucking stupid and missing out on a lot of great music because of it. He was of course totally right.

Edit: I just remembered that one of the bands he turned me on to was Big Country, which at the time had no connection at all to Yes. Ironically enough, they later did a collab with Kate Bush who had later on sung on a Peter Gabriel song.

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tezoatlipoca t1_iu5a6i5 wrote

Having said that, Six Degrees of Yes kinda covers most bands from the 70s and 80s.

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Garfield-1-23-23 t1_iu5ao6n wrote

It's surprising how many weren't, though, even progressive bands. Pink Floyd wasn't connected, nor The Who (they may be by now, or maybe I missed the connections back then).

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tezoatlipoca t1_iu5cet1 wrote

Pink Floyd -> David Gilmour -> Kate Bush -> Peter Gabriel. :)

Got nothing for The Who tho.

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Garfield-1-23-23 t1_iu5d11u wrote

Huh, I knew David Gilmour "discovered" and produced Kate Bush, but I didn't realize he sang backup on "Pull Out the Pin". You would have improved my teenage years!

Now do Tangerine Dream. I listened to them but for the life of me I can't remember what the connection was. Those guys just never played with anybody else.

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tezoatlipoca t1_iu5e7vh wrote

He also produced several tracks on her debut and plays guitar on a few including Rockets Tail (cmon you recognize that Gilmour guitar wail immediately) which happens to be my fav. KB song. I dunno if its Gilmour or that really phat Fairlight CMI sound. Urngh.

No musical connection but Froese was friends with Bowie and Iggy and Eno. Franke did the music for Babylon 5? Thats all I got. Naw, the Krautrocke scene tends to be fairly insultated.

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Garfield-1-23-23 t1_iu62mgb wrote

Everybody was friends with Eno - even me back in the '90s, briefly. I was writing a piece of music composition software and sent him a beta copy and we interacted via email for a while.

I love "Rockets Tail" but I'm ashamed to say I never noticed that it was Gilmour on guitar although you're right it's obviously him. I think I was too discombobulated by the shrieking Bulgarians.

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