Tell Us about an Album That Took a Long Time to Grow on You

When I was first getting into progressive music, I had no problems enjoying most of the better known bands (YES, Genesis, Camel, ELP, etc) on first listen.

But then, Gentle Giant's "Octopus" was recommended to me. I had no idea what to make of it. With all that counterpoint, complex vocal harmonies, dissonance, mixture of Medieval and contemporary classical, etc, it was a real head scratcher. 

After a few attempts to get into it, I put it on the shelf for a few months. I kept hearing what geniuses these guys were, so I finally gave it more chances.

Now, most of their catalog are "desert Island" material for me. 

Since then, there have been quite a few more bands, mostly on the avant garde side of prog that took a while to grow on me. Henry Cow, Thinking Plague, Magma, are a few examples. 

Music From Big Pink.

Yes. It’s true. I was very late to the party.

Even though I was very familiar with "The Weight" I had never heard any other songs on the album. Eventually I bought the LP in ’72 because I heard "Chest Fever" on the radio and thought Garth Hudson’s organ wizardry was just too cool for school. So basically I listened to those 2 tracks and nothing else. I tried. I really did. But those other songs were just ’too folky’ for my young-buck-with-a-head-full-of-mush tastes.

6 years later someone asked me if I had the album and mentioned offhand that it was one of the greatest albums in the history of rock. When I replied that I had only listened to those 2 songs on the album I received an incredulous stare followed by several moments of silence. "Go home and listen to the whole album. Now. Please. You have no idea what you’ve been missing."

So I did. It was like an epiphany. And the rest is history. Today I have 4 versions of the album: MFSL vinyl, MFSL gold CD, Japanese vinyl and Japanese SHM-CD. I think I’m covered.

surprisingly, it took me a while to grasp nirvana's nevermind--when i first heard it, it sounded overpolished and overtly commercial, as if to sanitize a punk band for mass consumption. i still have issues with the production (much preferring the rawness of in utero), but the songs are brilliant.

Neil Finn - Dizzy Heights

In Search of the Lost Chord by the Moody Blues was a tough nut to crack. I could never get past side one. I gave my copy to a school chum. Years later in the late night on The Mighty Met KMET I heard lyrics Timothy Learys Dead (The Legend of a Mind)coming from the FM station and I loved it. I knew it was The Moody Blues and I knew their catalog but had never heard this and I assumed it was a song from a new album but they didn’t have anything new out.
I remember I never played side two of ISOTLC and I asked a friend to spin it one night and there it was and the whole album made sense and fell into place