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 So, who _is_ the guy behind the screen? Obviously, I'm a big fan of all different sorts of music (with my tastes leaning towards the progressive nature of things). My first "exposure" to rock music was growing up - my dad force-fed me Led Zeppelin IV, Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell and Sly & The Family Stone records (ahhh, vinyl). Although I never really listened, I dug the beat and was instantly hooked. My parents have stories of me around 4 or 5 huddled around my dad's stereo via his headphones, listening to whatever was on the radio. My first real idea to "progressive rock" came at the hands of my sister, who played for me the self-titled Genesis record when I was 10 or 11. I was hooked. I started getting as much Genesis as possible on cassette as I could - but not knowing anything other than what was on the radio, I thought they were the only band playing this kind of music (Of course, she also played me Metallica's Masters Of Puppets and I said "ewwww! I'll never get into that!"). During high school, I slowly found out about other progressive bands (Rush comes to mind immediately) and the explosion of alternative-rock (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Faith No More, Helmet, Soundgarden, etc.) forced me to rethink my musical tastes. In college, I found out about the internet, and that changed my life forever. Slowly I began to realize that there were other bands playing this kind of music and there were other people that were into it! Needless to say, my collection began to grow at a rate that I'm still unable to explain! In 1996, I started to toy with the idea of creating a website regarding my musical tastes - and that's where the idea of Erotomania came into place. The name, as most of you [should] know, comes from the instrumental track from Dream Theater's 1994 release Awake. Originally it was just an idea for me to put together a few discographies, get some news on bands I was into, etc. etc...but as you can tell by reading this, it's exploded into what you see here today! In October of 1998, I decided that Erotomania, although a snappy title, didn't quite fit the description of what I was offering on the site [read: a lot of emails saying "where's the porn?"] so I decided to change the name something that fit a little better. Hence ProgScape was born. No, at the time I didn't know about the Baltimore festival - but at NEARfest 2000 I got approval from Chris Lamka (the guy who put on the first two ProgScape festivals) to use the name. To me, it's a title that defies description - sure, it's progressive, but there's another side to it (quite like the bands on this site here). My tastes run the gammit of rock - from Pantera and old-style Metallica to the Foo Fighters to Jellyfish. In fact, the sounds of Steve Winwood grace me as I type this very sentance. Because my tastes are so varired, having a site that was one-dimensional didn't work for me. This is all purely a hobby for me, but it's one that I enjoy doing (and sharing). I can only hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy doing it. - mike.
Useless Facts:
Mike's Essential 30 (in no particular order): |
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