ProgRockin'

Some reviews and things

2011-10-31T16:21:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, I'm also a reviewer at Seaoftranquility.org. I'll try to make a better habit of cross-posting here, but here's what I've done so far:

  Consecration: .avi

  Brooks, Chris: The Axis Of All Things

  Ilium: Genetic Memory

  Fantomas: The Director's Cut Live - A New Year's Revolution

  Isis: Live V

  Einvera: In Your Image

  Francesco Atrusato Project, The: Chaos and the Primordial

  The Book Of Knots: Garden Of Fainting Stars

  Pluto and the Planets: 360º of Wonder

  Bohren & der Club of Gore: Beileid

The DIY of kicking clouds

2011-09-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many people know about Cloudkicker or it's mastermind Ben Sharp. I think that's mostly because he's avoided the usual routes for releasing music, and in fact avoided many of the reasons people write music and join bands in the first place. He releases music when he feels like he's done with it, sometimes a few songs, sometimes a dozen. He writes, records, plays, and programs everything himself. It's all instrumental, but not anything like Joe Satriani or Planet X. The music gets often lumped in with the Djent music movement, but I think that sells it short. There is a lot more melody and atmosphere here than I think your typical djent band puts out.

Cloudkicker releases are available for free download via the Cloudkicker bandcamp site. Yes, everything really is free, but throw the guy a few bucks anyway. We need more music like this. Ben was kind enough to answer a few questions via email. I got some insight into the Cloudkicker process, and found out what airline cockpit voice recordings have to do with metal music. Ben also dispensed with probably the only advice you need to live a good life. Want to know more? Read on…

1. How long does it take to write and record a typical Cloudkicker song?

It really depends. I've written songs in hours and over the course of weeks.

2. Do you write one part (like a guitar part) all the way through, or do the different instruments leap frog each other as you go?

I write from the beginning to the end, usually starting with a guitar riff or idea, and then I just doodle around until I find what I think should come next, and so on until I feel like I have something that I can call "finished".

3. I checked out your equipment blog post. Even though you are working "in the box" you use a Vox Tonelab rather than guitar plug ins. Any particular reason?

No not really. It works, that's about all the reason I have.

4. Your equipment list doesn't include any synths either. Do you use any, or is everything guitar generated?

I've used a piano synth in maybe one or two songs, but 99% of everything is guitar generated.

5. The song titles on Beacons seem to tell a story. At least they do to me. Was that intentional?

They're all excerpts from airliner cockpit voice recorder tapes.

6. Your releases vary in length from just a few song to what most people would call a full album. How do you know when you're done writing and it's time to put it out there?

If I have a handful of songs and I put them in some order and listen to it all the way through and feel like it works, then I'll do it. If not, I'll hold off until I think it does. Not very scientific, I know. With Beacons, I set out to make something more along the lines of a full-length from the start, so I knew that's where I was trying to go with it.

7. How do you go about making the art for each release?

For everything before Beacons, I tried to make something that I felt represented the music well. I'm not very good at making art like that though, so on Beacons I had a friend of mine do the layout...sort of. He came up with the idea but then didn't do anything and I ended up doing it anyway.

8. Everything has been instrumental so far, any desire to add vocals in the future?

Meh, not really.

9. You've always posted your music online for free, basically relying on the kindness of strangers for any monetary support. Was this an easy decision when you started Cloudkicker?

Yeah, that's how Cloudkicker started. I never expected to make any money off this, so it's really surprising that I have.

10. What do you think about file sharing and the future of music in general?

Don't care. People are going to do it anyway. I personally haven't bought a CD since 2004, and I think it's bogus that somewhere, sometime, someone would say to themselves "I wish I could listen to this music, but I don't have enough money." That's just me though. As for the MUSIC INDUSTRY, well, lots of industries are struggling right now, either they'll figure out how to adapt or they won't, I don't see it as that big of a deal.

11. What's next for Cloudkicker?

I'm working on an EP at the moment. I'm aiming for somewhere around 25-30 minutes and I'm almost there, so maybe in November or December you'll see something.

12. Any new music you're listening to these days?

Yeah kind of. I've been rediscovering some older stuff that I had sitting dormant in my itunes library. Like the album El Cielo by Dredg. So, so good, but that's probably almost 10 years old. I've been pretty outspoken about my enjoyment of the newest Sufjan Stevens album The Age of Adz, and I was listening to that exclusively for basically the entire month of April. I've been dabbling in Radiohead, El Ten Eleven, Pinback, The Appleseed Cast, and lots of other random things that pop up on Pandora and shuffle. When I get to the end stages of making an album or EP or whatever, I tend to listen to that a lot, making notes and generally being critical, so I'm not really "into" any one thing right now.

13. Anything else you want to add?

Don't be a jerk! Not you, just in general.

Good advice, thanks Ben!

AT&T stole my tape

2011-01-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

Happy new year everybody!

Just ran across an interesting article and wanted to share, since I think it had an impact on recorded music. Apparently Bell Labs had invented the answering machine, and the magnetic tape to go with it, in 1934. Fearing that it would hurt the telephone(?!) AT&T shelved it for 20 years. Imagine how recording and music might be different if artists hadn't been stuck with the limitations of recording directly to records in the 30s and 40s. More evidence, IMO, that innovation and invention must always be free and open.

http://io9.com/5699159/how-ma-bell-shelved-the-future-for-60-years

An instrument to end the war of strings

2010-09-27T13:47:00.001-07:00

The fretted harp!

12 strings exist since quite some decades. On those every string has a second one, an octave higher, except string 1 and 2 which are simply doubled. They have a very rich sound, but playing them is not different than usual ones.

Then came 7 strings, 8 string and 9 strings to add more scale. Also 5 string, 6 string and 7 string bass guitars aren't that uncommon anymore.

In stage 3 the chapman stick and warr guitar and nowadays the stringstation rule.

So, being Stringray, I gotta find some more strings!

The idea is simple: attach a fretboard to a harp.

1. playability:

But how can one play that if not standing in fron of it, with your back to the audiene, constantly movin up and down and showing them your fat ass?

So, you still had to play it like the harpist does, from both sides. For achieving this, a normal fretboard is imposible. But there's still a way. At first, -yes- double the amount of strings. Every string must have its twin, sitting behind it. In between the string layers would be steel bars that carry the steel frets, one on each side of the bar, so each of the twin strings can have frets.

Advantages:

good playability, a pretty cool looking artist, and --- MORE SRTINGS!

2. Tonal set up:

The harp is constructed to transport the strings' frequencies to the sound body on both ends, so it's quite tricky.

Now attaching frets brings of course the 'problem' that it will always produce 2 notes, one on the upper and one on the lower end of the string.

There's only one way to gain control over this. The fret distances must be set in a way that a harmonic is always given. Both ends of a string must be in harmony in every given scenario.

That also gives options. Since there are many strings in similar tonal range, you can have different string set ups for different dual harmonic scales.

Advantage: nobody will ever be able to play this.

3. Construction:

Who?

I swear, if you ever build that, I will not die until I've learned to play it!

The flagship loses its captain

2010-09-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

So Portnoy calls his quits?

I'm not shocked. Not this time.

I'm saying for a couple of years now that the band needs a break to charge their batteries of creativity. Now Portnoy, the band leader, is the one who does it while the rest doesn't. That's quite a surprise as I always thought it was MP who sailed the band into those commercial sell out shores. So was it the other way round and MP simply saw that they were going the wrong way and tried to get back on the right track? We will see.

It will be interesting who will step into his shoes as there aren't too many out there who could replace him, and I bet quite a number of them won't even try to compare themselves to him.

On the other hand the best times of DT in the past have always been the ones when they had to replace a member and merge new creative aspects to their musical identity, so there's hope that DT now find another spark that brings them back to their old strength.

Let's see what the future will bring.

The (public) library vs. the (private) RIAA

2010-07-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

In another in a seemingly endless series about the present day music industry, I had a new thought cross my mind. Not new information, but maybe a new metaphor to apply to the recording industry situation. I've make reference before to the idea that massive record sales of the 80s and 90s are an anomaly, not the norm, for music as a consumable product. People have moved on the DVDs and Tivo. I've watched in amusement for the last few years as the RIAA tries desperately not to accept this.

I have visited the Littleton public library several times and it's an excellent resource for a smaller library. While browsing the stacks last week I was reminded of how many hundreds of books are released every month. Even if all new book releases were stopped today it would take me decades to read everything in the speculative fiction section alone. It applies to music as well. Online radio like Progulus lets me get a good sample of a lot of music. I enjoy most of it, and I could never afford the money or time to actually buy all of it.

So why keep writing books? Well, for authors it may be a mix of artistic compulsion and a job. For publishers, they hope for the occasional huge hit, but they can also publish books in moderate quantities and not put a lot of money up front. With new digital options, there's almost no production cost at all beyond paying the people who worked on it. It's similar to something I read about Jazz back in college, that Jazz labels considered a record successful if it sold 20,000 copies. Make your money back, make a small profit, and move on the the next gig. The RIAA can't tell the difference between success and MASSIVE HIT EVERYBODY PARTY! No one should be pressured not to write a book, paint a picture, or record an album because it won't make someone else rich.

After a book or any creative is done, it enters the culture at large. Whether 10 people or 10,000 people read it, it's there to be used. Libraries now also have a lot of music and movies. Libraries are storehouses of culture. It's a place that holds a record of a people and their creativity. Storytelling is one of the few things left that humans do and animals don't (as far as we know). As an artist, I am more interested in being part of the creative conversation and part of the cultural record than in diluting my intentions to make money.

Do authors lose money when people borrow a book from the library rather than buying it? Sure, it seems obvious. But, as others have ably written, obscurity is far worse an enemy to art than whether or not people get it for free.

For the Ones Who Will Succeed

2010-05-05T08:31:00.000-07:00

Topic: Methods of success.

"The night was hot... wait no. The night... the night was humid. The night was humid. No wait, hot... hot. The night was hot. The night was hot and wet, wet and hot. The night was wet and hot, hot and wet, wet and hot... that's humid. The night was humid. The night was dry, yet it was raining."

That's a quote from a funny scene in Throw Momma From The Train where author Larry (Billy Crystal) has a case of writer's block and spends days trying to come up with the opening line of his new book. It's not too far from the truth though. Staring at a blank canvas and trying to come up with the next work is a bit like the zen student trying to understand zen. One must capture little bits of their fleeting imagination in a real and finite form, and once the first line of music is written or the first brush stroke is applied to the canvas everything else must come from that. Moving toward a finished piece is a series of diminishing possibilities the last few notes are placed which fit only into that one work and no other.

In my last blog, I wrote about how and why musicians and bands often fail and quit. In this article I want to discuss the other side of creating music, and that is to discuss some methods and tools for success and staying motivated.

It's important to know that music is and has always been written by ordinary folk in their own place and time using tools that were readily available at their disposal. Our point of view and the starting materials that we use are a product of the world we live in. For example, the temples of Angkor Wat would not have been created if the 12th century Cambodian's didn't have a knowledge of sculpture and masonry and a strong passion in Hindi Buddhism, and and the Death Mask of Tutankahman would have not been made if early Egyptians had no belief that it wouldn't be needed in the afterlife, didn't have a large supply of gold, and hadn't developed the necessary skills to create it. We are not compelled to build similar things today because our set of beliefs and level of technology have changed. What the modern form is to us comes from our own realities and personal frame of reference. Todays 12-bar blues form of music would have made as little sense for Bach to write into his secular music as it would be for us to try and write a six-part fugue into a blues song today.

Furthermore, it's quite rare for a musician to invent a new music form right out of thin air. More typically a new or perfected form of music is born out of existing styles from the present day. For example, John Philip Sousa wrote military marches mostly because he grew up in a military environment and his father played in a military band and he later joined the Marine Corp and conducted his own marching band. His life experience taught him the marching band style and how to write in it, and hence the majority of his musical output was writing in this form and he ended up defining the style for future generations. By the same token Chopin didn't invent the marzurka but he perfected and defined it by writing 58 of them. History is full of cases of people who start out by following an existing style and then later breaking out of that mold to create a new style or form. It's the great ones who make the next set of rules for the generations that follow, and follow they do. There have been countless modern progressive rock and metal bands today who have followed in the footsteps of Dream Theater because they are inventers of the modern form we use today. There are a handful of other bands that are heavily borrowed upon which I won't name here. This strategy helps us gain a foothold on what we want to accomplish and where we take it from there is up to us. One of the problems with this is, as I addressed in my last blog, is that many bands end up quitting before they find their own voice so we are left with a lot of bands that are unoriginal copies of others.

Up to this point I've made the case that music is written by ordinary people and have refrained from using the 'T' word... "talent". We've all probably seen the videos of the 5-year old drum prodigy or the 10-year old who can play 64 notes a second on a guitar, but how many times do we hear of them going on to become productive musicians? I want to state right here and now that talent is indistinguishable from hard work. There's always going to be the rare band who can put out an amazing record on their first try or the musician who comes along once a generation who is far away superior to everyone else. But for the rest of us talent only goes so far. Think of the race between the turtle and the hare. The hare got a faster time off the starting blocks but in the end it was the turtle who dedicated himself to task at hand and ended up winning the race. I once read an interview with Al Dimeola where he said that when he wanted to learn how to play the guitar the first thing he did was to memorize every scale at every position on the neck. It's said that the difference between an amatuer and a professional is that the amatuer practices until he gets it right, and the professional practices until he never gets it wrong.

I've mentioned before that it's very difficult to write music or produce art in a vaccum. For this reason it's a good idea to become involved in peer or critique groups or to make friends with people who share similar interests. These groups not only give you a venue for your work, but also valuable critique on your progress. Fortunately today there are many different groups available widely on the internet via MySpace, MP3.com, forums, and many other places where feedback can be almost instantaneous. Porcupine Tree and Ozric Tentacles both got started by distributing free cassette tapes of their music for people to hear. Of course, having a record deal in hand can be a great motivator. But most prog labels want to hear the finished product before they commit to anything.

In addition to peer support and critique, all artists need a good and constant dose of self-editing. When Van Halen recorded their first album they recorded something like 20 songs and only used the best 11 for the album. Unfortunately many artists feel that every idea they come up with is a good one and should be slapped on plastic and sold to the fans. But even with critique and self-editing artists might feel misunderstood when there is a lack of interest in their work, and some have even taken on the faulty notion that lack of interest in their work is a necessary form of self-persecution for the sake of their art. But the truth is that artists must produce a large amount of mediocre work that nobody really cares about much in order for them to produce those few works that really soar.

Another popular technique to get yourself started and maintain momentum is to work within a theme. For example, pianists will sometimes try to write one work in each key. In photography one of the popular trends is to do a "photo a day" project or a Photo365 diary. Another example is photography groups that set up themed contests with a different subject each week. There are many variations to this, but the general strategy is to avoid writer's block and stay motivated by always leaving a little bit of something unfinished to come back to. You can set measurable goals such as writing and recording one complete song each month such as what Mindflow did recently with their "365 project". Also, artists who remain students of their medium are often more motivated because they experiment with the new things that they have learned.

A musician or other artist must at some point come to terms with making music for themselves as opposed to making music for others. Consider what happens in a "sophmore slump" which is a common occurance for bands. A band might begin their musical career with a sense of self-purpose, taking their time and enjoying what they do for just themselves. After they reach a level of notoriety they might to begin suddenly taking themselves "seriously", or worse yet freezing up because now have a whole new audience of fans that they must write music for. After the success of their first album they are now under pressure from their management or label to produce more of the same work as before, but different. Try making a conscious effort to do that sometime! All of the motivations have changed as a result and it's no longer a matter of creating for the sake of enjoyment. The only way to overcome this is to realize that good music comes out of making your music for yourself and nobody else.

Musicians are also constantly evolving and changing. There is the notion for them to believe that their past work is not up to par with their current work. This is a good thing and a sign of progression as an artist. An artist is a bit like a boat moving forward through the water and creating a wake in its path. The wake spreads out behind the boat and eventually disappears back into the water. Like the boat, an artist is constantly moving forward, speeding up or slowing down, changing directions, and the displacement of what they do creates a wake that remains and dissipates behind them. Another aspect of growth is that there are usually long periods of stagnation followed by rapid quantum leaps in understanding and inspiration. For example, as a photographer I started out pretty much like everybody else to learn the technical basics such as aperture, depth of field, dynamic ranges, flash techniques, etc. My first attempts would be to try to create photographic records of particular scenes. A short time later I came to realize that my pictures in print were never the same as what I originally saw. So my next leap in understanding came for me to learn how to predict how what I saw would look in print or view things with a "photographic eye," as they say. Later on I began to realize that my pictures weren't so much creating a photographic record of what I saw, but were in fact creating geometric figures out of subjects on a 2-dimensional space. After that I began and learning how to form these shapes in a visually pleasing way. A final moment of understanding for me came when I began to see how the borders of the print were also creating geometries within the image. Once those kinds of revelations have been realized they cannot be "unseen" and I from each point forward I could never look at a photograph in the same way as before. I'm sure there are probably other insights coming down the road too that I have yet to understand. But for each leap there was also a diminished sense of pride in the work I had done before. My point is that growth as an artist is an inevitable and desireable result of totally immersing ourselves in our work. We should take that path wherever it leads us even if it means acknowledging that we have already created our best work, because it may very possibly lead to even more growth and understanding down the road.

I mentioned communication in my last article. This is perhaps the most difficult thing to get a handle on because an individual artist often has little control over the actions of his peers and is totally dependant on them. Very often the pool of potential bandmates are fairly limited within a region, so people get stuck with one another for lack of any better options. Success in this fashion often comes down to luck of the draw. The one recurring theme to success I've seen over the years is that bands make it clear to eachother that they must have a strong work ethic and must each bear a share of the workload. Set certain times during each practice session to just work on new material, share new song ideas and critique them. Make it a rule that each band member must bring a new song idea to each proactice session, etc. Band members must be able to critique eachother in an open forum without creating conflict. Very often one band member grandstands or tries to control the others. This is not conductive to a good working relationship. Good communication is really the key to success. Band members can be a great internal source of motivation, though it's also still a good idea to seek critique from outside groups as well.

Creating the few works of ours that really soar are the result of a complete understanding of our medium, hard work, building on and correcting ourselves from our past failures, and most importantly staying motivated to continue in light of all the challenges in which we are confronted with.

Open letter to Roger Waters concerning ticket pricing

2010-05-03T13:29:00.001-07:00

saw that screen capture of the ticket pricing for the northamerican "The Wall" tour:

Sorry Mr Waters, 500 $$?

That makes 3 1/3 progpower europe festivals, or, in other words, I could see 51 bands playing live, each of those playing 100 x more notes than you do - for the same amount of money.

I've been to the show on PF's Division Bell tour (yes, I know it is another band...) I've payed 69 Deutschmarks back then which would compare to 120 Euro as for today. I've had a surround speaker array in my back that easily blasted my ears, while the music, that came only from the stage PA wasn't nearly at the volume one has in a living room. Every time such a surround ambient came up, the music was unaudible.
The upmost lighting happened inside an area that was covered on three sides (obviously to keep the remaining sunlight away) and I was too far on the side to look into. At half of the show we went to the area opposite of the stage because we wanted to see the lighting and it was very many lamps, but nothing impressive one would expect from a "psychedelic band".
All I could say about the waste of money: I saw (not) Pink Floyd live (really?).

I saw Tool on their 10.000 Days tour for 43 Euro, and probably the only bass player who manges to play a 5 minute song per feedback only (on purpose, of course). The band was overly awesome, the sound was absolutely perfect. The lighting was a multimedia show with 4 video screens on stage, a custom made rig of lighting that appeared like a spaceship, tons of laser cannons and and and.... The band had to have a 15 minutes break, that was needed to load the next pack of lighting data into the RAM. It was a 3 dimensional multi media performance as psychedelic as can be. I was stoned without taking any drug.
PL can be proud for the rest of his life for such a giant birthday party!

again.... 500$$?

...

To The Ones Who Have Failed

2010-02-09T06:35:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in the city, somewhere in the room,
a silent man, a work undone, a plan that went astray.

Somewhere in the limetime of a yearning reverie,
Words have lost their meaning on the fragile stage of fame.

- Sieges Even

This is the first in a series of articles I wanted to write about the state of making music today. In this article I want to look at a few of the reasons behind why bands break up and musicians quit. Progessive bands today seem come and go at a steady pace. For every band who releases music I can't begin to estimate how many bands have disappeared before they produce anything tangible. In music it takes a considerable amount of time energy to develop the technical skills required to write and record good music. Those who would care to make music today had better take note of those who came before them because most who have tried, quit.

I've been practicing art in one form or another for most of my life and have hit roadblocks and gone through dry spells along the way. We often leave our work unfinished, put things off, and we get frustrated. Bands break up, musicians stop practicing, artists stop producing art, photographers stop making pictures, and the list goes on. To explore why this happens I want to look at some of the obstacles that get in the way as musicians go about accomplishing their work. I think it's important for us to understand why making music today is not easy.

Musicians differ from most other artists like painters, sculptors, poets, photographers, and writers in that they typically must form a band in order to practice their art. For them good communication and interpersonal skills are essential in the exchange of ideas between the band members. But sadly it's an area where many musicians are lacking and can be a source of friction. Let's face it, people can be downright nasty with one another. They can be egotistical, selfish, socially withdrawn, narcissistic, stubborn, or have many other negative traits that create barriers to effective communication. In addition to that band members may can have differences in their beliefs or religions, political ideology, level of perfectionism, or on the use of drugs. Human beings are just often times conflicted. But if we were all perfect, there wouldn't be much point in making music in the first place because writing music about our flaws is often what connects listeners with their music.

Developing the skills necessecary to play an instrument takes time, and those who take up the challenge must sit and practice alone for countless hours. For this reason it's a task best suited for the introverted. After all, the socialites would rather be out with others than sitting in a room by themselves. It's a sad irony then that lots of these people who have taken the time to get good at playing an instrument have insufficient social skills to work effectively as a part of a team in a band. I'm generalizing here. There are probably lots of cases of introverts being good communicators. But generally speaking it's not the case. According to Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen, "People with introverted personality traits feel overwhelmed more quickly than extroverts do - especially in group settings." In any case, I'll cast my ballot that human conflict is probably the biggest reason why bands break up.

Aside from communication, unrealistic expectations might play a part in why bands break up. Imagine for a moment a young new band who are eager to write and release a record. After a great deal of practice, toil, and expense they finally create a finished product. With great excitement and anticipation they send off their CD to some reviewers, radio stations, music stores, and of course friends and family. Then they wait... and they wait. After some time they may find their original expectations were unrealistic because sales of their work are only coming in at a trickle. They did not gain the notariety they expected, or maybe they received some less than flattering reviews. They may be discouraged at having gained only a small fan base. The harsh reality of the situation is that for a new band with a new album there is no good reason why anyone should deeply care about their music except for the band themselves, their managers, and perhaps their close friends and family. Why should the listeners care when there are hundreds or thousands of others CDs out there just like it that they can choose from? The listeners have not witnessed first hand everything that went into it's creation. But these young bands have a certain degree of naivety and might start to question themselves and whether they made the right choices when they made the album. This scenario is probably an all too common pitfall for a new band and an easy excuse for them to break up.

Let's talk for a moment about a much deeper topic. Fear. There are many reasons why fear might have a bearing on why bands quit. Making music or any art is a very self-revealing activity. A musician must bring forth the skills that they've developed over the years and are typically expected to reveal some very personal feelings in their lyrics. This makes them vulnerable. It's natural to be uneasy about how their very personal work will be received by others. They might have an underlying fear that they aren't good enough or as good as others. It might seem to them like making music comes much easier for others so maybe they are just faking it and aren't 'real' musicians. Making music is hard after all, and they're just ordinary people. They might even begin to fantasize that these other bands that they look up to are extraordinary or have some kind of magical gift from which all of their work flows out of them effortlessly.

Statistics show that young drivers of motor vehicles are much more apt to get in accidents. These drivers are new to the rules of the road and are a little unsure of themselves and how to control their vehicle in a variety of situations. As a driver matures they learn, hopefully through more trial than error, how the car behaves and how to effectively anticipate and avoid hazards. As musicians writing music we begin the same way. It's only through lots of hard work that people can hone their abilities, omitting what doesn't work and sticking with what does. It's also called style. The only way to make good music is to start making music and lots of it. Ansel Adams once said that no good photographer is worth his salt unless he has 10,000 bad negatives under his belt. The problem is that we often fault ourselves for our mistakes and use it as a reason to give up.

But what if, as in the previous analogy, the rules of the road kept changing? We now drive on the other side of the road. Stop now means right turn only, yellow light is go, you must stop for all turning cars, and the rules kept changing all the time. You could try and stick with the basics but each time you drive your car you make mistakes and you begin to doubt your ability or even wonder if you really know how to drive a car at all. It sounds silly but it's an even worse situation when you write music, especially progressive music, because there are no rules. It's a stifling affair and it's easy to see why there are so many 'clone' bands out there who are following the rules of others instead of inventing their own.

Another big factor is when musician's lose the venue or audience for their work. For me this was the day I went to college and I moved away from my bandmates and friends. All of the reasons I had for making music were suddenly gone. I did continue studying music in college and eventually received a music degree, but getting a college degree for many art and music students can also become a loss of venue. After carefully cultivating their talents with hard work, peer support, and critique over four years, graduation day comes and they are suddenly left all alone in the world trying to make a living. It's very difficult to write music in a vacuum with little support, encouragement, or feedback from others.

Bands might also quit when their vision doesn't meet reality. Artists have vivid pretty imaginations and it can be frustrating to have the perfect idea floating around in their heads that they can't seem to bring to life. Its's a constant chase trying to form reality around the visions from their mind's eye, but the reality is the mind's eye is always faster and better. As a result they might convince themselves they will fail before they can finish so they give up trying.

Lastly, people quit because they get bored. Part of the joy of creating something is learning how to do that something well and to explore all of the avenues to achieve technical perfection. It's a sad fact then that once we master the medium and it's time to get busy, we lose our motivation and quit.

When people suddenly stop making music or art it's often a subconscious act. That is to say they don't just decide one day "that's it, I'm finished." Instead they lose motivation, postpone, and delay. It may be after some time before they consciously realize what has happened, but by then it may be too late. There may be little motivation left to try and go back to where they were because they might have already move on to something else or grown out of it.

With all of this adversity, is quite remarkable that some bands can stay together, or importanly they have learned how not to quit. Many bands can get along together quite well and have learned how to get beyond their past mistakes. They have accepted who they are with all of their flaws and still continue to plod on despite whatever differences they might have with eachother. They realized that their job is to make music and not to care so much about what others might think. Rush is still together after 35 years and 19 studio albums, J. D. Salinger continued to write novels until he died at age 91, Monet was painting water lilies in his 80's, and Ansel Adams pursued photography until his death. Learning how not to quit. That's the key.

In Praise of Small Groups Within the Prog Community

2010-02-03T07:26:00.000-08:00

Clive Thompson wrote a short article in the Feb 2010 issue of Wired Magazine called "in Praise of Online Obscurity" where he talks about how social circles begin to break down as they increase in size. He says that in small groups people are more intimate as they are part of a community where they can contribute and express their feelings and ideas openly, but in larger groups they become just another member of an anonymous mass. The article got me thinking about just how valid his points related to the various prog circles on the internet.

He writes:

"After all, the world’s bravest and most important ideas are often forged away
from the spotlight — in small, obscure groups of people who are passionately
interested in a subject and like arguing about it. They’re willing to experiment
with risky or dumb concepts because they’re among intimates. (It was, after all,
small groups of marginal weirdos that brought us the computer, democracy, and
the novel.)"

In a related research study, it was determined that 150 friends is upper limit on what the human brain is able to simultaneously keep track of.

I frequently visit certain small forums dedicated to prog music where people discuss new and old releases, give short reviews, and alert others to good bands that they have recently found. The interesting aspect of all this is how close-knit the communities are and the wide variety of people within them. Friends in these groups can be musicians, record labels, graphic designers, album reviewers, management agencies, web site representatives, and of course fans. The importance of these communities is that there's a feeling of togetherness where they can speak out with relative impunity and the rest of group will listen to what they have to say. When a hotly anticipated new release comes out everybody weighs in their thoughts on it and the people who made the CD are right there to read the critiques. These groups function as a think tank that can effectively sort out the good and the bad, so they become a self-correcting influence on the people within the group who are making the music.

Another interesting aspect of these small groups it that people in the group become advocates of certain bands and act like their personal promotion agency. From what I've observed it's an amazingly effective way at getting the word out about new music, more so even than the various web sites dedicated to reviewing CDs. I think a person is more apt to take the advice of a friend they know and trust over others on other web sites who they don't. I have little doubt that I have increased the visibility of some bands and even helped a few get signed by agencies or labels as a direct result of my own posturing in some of these groups.

If there's a downside to all of this it's that within these small groups there's a familiarity between members and they tend to view newcomers as outsiders. Depending on the person's background it usually takes a long while for somebody new to gain enough respect within the group for people to start calling them a friend. Another potential downside is that these groups tend to be somewhat rigid in their ideals, so the focus of one particular group is often for a similar look and sound.

It's interesting to think about how these small groups might play a role in how music is written and composed. From my experience some of the most creative and unusual music was created in a relative vacuum of outside influence, while 'popular' music generally must conform to a larger community/industry standard. The prog world is filled with thousands of niche bands with their own unique sound. I think a good deal of the individuality of prog music comes as a direct result of the bands interacting with a very small number of influences and supporters.

Follow up on the future (I call shenanigans)

2010-01-30T16:06:00.000-08:00

I'm going to address now the massive logical fallacy put forth by the music (and movie) industry. Illegal downloads are taking money away from them and out of the pockets of the creators. They want the public to think that if everyone who downloaded an album or a movie didn't do that, they would buy it instead. I can only speak for myself, but that's bullshit. I reserve my movie dollars for very few things I really like. I go to the big screen for something like Star Trek. I'll buy something I really love, like The Shawshank Redemption. If I download, the most I'm doing is taking a dollar away from Redbox. And I use Redbox, too (see below to see what the MPAA thinks of Redbox). Or I go to the library. At least half of my cd collection is either copied from friends or bought used. No money to the RIAA there. Of the music I've acquired from friends, the library, or otherwise not paid full price for, I'd say most I would have never purchased at all. These days I'm doing a lot of online radio listening. I hear tons of music I like but I'll never buy. I throw a little money in every now and then to help my favorite independent stations, but that's it. Let me see if I can summarize my point:

It's not a matter of buying vs stealing. It is a matter of experiencing vs not experiencing.

I'd also like to take a moment to give a shout out the the original, old school, grandaddy of us all "analog" Torrent site, the Library. (with special nods to public, college and high school libraries)

Just a few more tidbits for thought on my posts about the state of the music industry. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has been raving, like the RIAA, about how illegal movie downloads are killing the movie business. The MPAA has even opposed cheap services like Redbox despite the evidence showing just the opposite. So how can the MPAA say downloads are hurting when, yet again, 2009 was a record year for box office profits. This during the worst economic climate since the Great Depression.

If movies and music are analogous, why hasn't the music industry seen increases in the same way? Several likely reasons:

Many studies including this one have shown that illegal downloaders spend more money on music than those who don't download. Other studies show that digital sales are increasing. So why is the RIAA in a twist? Music is too expensive. $12-15 for a cd and $1 or more per song download are just too much. And studies are backing this up. For some reason, rather than charging what the market will bear, the music industry has picked artificially high prices. The consumer is finally catching on and deciding they don't want to pay that much for a cd. If you want people to pay that much, you have to give more than a little plastic disk.

The way we deliver music is outdated and being replaced by a system we don't fully understand yet. Brian Eno made the fine comparison of records to whale blubber. Oil replaced whale blubber as fuel. Cars replaced the horse and buggy. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes. We make ice in our own freezers rather than having it delivered. Technology moves on. In some cases the old ways die out, in others they adapt to new niches. My desktop computer would fill the room if it still had tubes, but many a guitar player would be lost without a tube amp. You can still ride a horse and buggy, but you do so for fun, not because it's the best way to get around.

People just don't like music that much anymore. It's a hard pill to swallow but I think it's true. I'm forgetting where I read or heard this, but it's related to the Brian Eno remarks. In the history of music, the multi-million album sales and heaps of money thrown around in the 80s and 90s are an anomaly, not the norm. Operating an industry on that scale wasn't sustainable. Video game sales have outpaced music for a few years now, and have passed home dvd sales. Internet, cable, satellite. There are so many sources for entertainment and information. Music is going to have to accept that it isn't on top of the heap anymore.

So, back to the artist. What do I think? I think I make art and that's a lot better than not making it. I'd feel sympathetic towards those who can't make a living anymore in music, but so far I haven't found any examples. I'm not entitled to make a living at music and neither is anyone else. I'm not entitled to anything but the right to make art. Hell, even Ray Alder of Fates Warning had a day job during their heyday. I have a job so I can make art. On one level, only making a small part of my income from my art makes me an amateur and not a professional. On the other hand, being free to make whatever art I want, when I want, to make myself happy, means that I am successful. And being successful in my art makes me happy with what I have to be happy with.

(is it perhaps ironic that these people are watching television and not listening to music?)
(slightly related, I link to Techdirt a lot. A great read for tech/copyright/what's next/that's a dumb law info)

About Tastes, Arguments and Judging - grrroOOOOOoowwwwl it OUT!!!

2010-01-24T13:45:00.001-08:00

"And you should get more into growlers... just ignore the growling if you want, there's usually lots of dynamics in their music!"

This is a posting by "Blueprint", and has been agreed by "Ayreonaut" on the forum of Progpower Europe as a final comment to my ppe reviews. I want to memorize Lamneth's article Tribalism in Progressive Circles.

What I can say about the growling is that it is not my favorite art of expression. I am listening to growlers since a couple of years, and it will never be my preferred vocal technique. There are some I can enjoy pretty much, and some I cannot stand at all. I divide them in four categories:

1) The expressive ones - Used to create a sonic vision of something evil in a story to be told, such as Amaseffer use in their outstanding prog metal bible soundtrack epic trilogy. I love them one hundred percent.

2) The atmospheric ones - used alternatively to clean vocals for creating a dark or evil atmosphere in genres where guitar alone (or even with keyboards) cannot achieve it. Why not? If it turns out any good...

3) The "for-the-sake-of-it" growlings - In the beginning there was the growling, the came the lyrics. All music gets written around it so the growling has a base to float over. I dont' have any sense for it, there is no beauty in the music for my music analyzing neuronal patterns.

4) The production enhancing growls - Now we have produced a very strong album, but what can we do to improve sales results? We should bring some growling in, that will attract the other half of the metal fans as well. I call them - like they are meant to be - evil. Evil commerce.

So, what happens if those cookies come along when I'm tuned in to progulus radio? I get tears in my eyes (1), just let the music play and wonder if and how it will please me (2), press the mute button because the music bothers me (3) or consider the band being lost to the deeps of capitalism (4).
If it fills the air at such a genious festival like Progpower Europe, I have a great option: I walk through the door and do the second thing I came for: talking to some of the great people I have the opportunity to meet.
Concernig to Blueprint's idea of just ignoring the cookies, well, I can't. At least unless one offers a growling filter implant.
But all in all, Blueprint is right, many bands really do great music, and the fact that I can't stand the growling and therefore will not listen to them is a tragedy.

So much for my statement about cookiemonster vocals. I will not say silly things like "I hate people shouting at me this way" or something like that. There is this one thing in man that has no reason: taste. It is the way it is, and one cannot say why. In this human here, a strong growling intolerance is given. but hey, it is my taste! I don't actually am against it on purpose! I just don't like to hear it. I would never say it is a bad thing because of reason xy. Bad for me in person only because I miss some great instrumental work, but I will never tell anybody to not growl unless he/she were in a band I've founded.
Lamneth complained about one who said that Opeth are killing the death metal genre by bringing in some clean vocals. Well, I bet it was a young one who's overly supportive to that genre so he doesn't want to go beyond it one little step. It was an opinion, nothing more. A person with a rather narrow range of taste. That won't make this person a bad guy at all. I bet if I meet that one, we could have a great time together.
We here are proggers. We love this kind of music and support it in all ways we can. In common we share tastes. Even if we have sort of tribalism, which I tend to call differences in taste. Is that bad?
If I made friendship only with proggers here in Munich, where I live, I would be a rather lonely person.
Imagine a person that is highly intelligent and smart, has a high class job that makes him a 1st class income, but is straight to the ground and simply a great friend. And then you find out he's a country fan. Would you turn your back on him and call him a moron? I don't think so.
In the nineties there was a great guy being sound engineer at the studio where I worked. We were hanging out in bars and street cafes pretty often, simply having a great time. one day we began a discussion about how a good radio show would have to be made, how much variety it should have, and all that kind of ideas. It took some two hours and we agreed in simply every aspect, until we came to the point where we started to name bands to be played. We've found out that I was the metal guy and he was a straight to the heart hip hopper. Man, that was a laugh!! But we've remained good friends and spent plenty of great time together until life tore us apart 10 years ago. I still think of him often.

All we people on this planet have different tastes and should respect each other's. Some 25 years ago, when I was into jazz (among other genres), I turned and walked away because of the elitism of the jazzers. In the here and now I experience the same elitism in prog fans and gotta shake my head.
Intelligent music - being open minded - convert the sheep to prog - no hope for the morons ... I hear and read terms like these way too often in the progressive corner. Are we really that better than the rest of the world?
The doctor who saves your live loves classical
The bakerman who produces your bread loves marching music
The farmer who grows your vegetables loves country
The constructor who built your house loves trip hop
---> All morons? Not worthy?

Stop the elitism! Stop evangelizing! Or you are the moron...
Yes, play your preferred music to people you like. But when they ask you to stop, then stop. Respect their tastes.
Taste cannot be controlled, neither can it be manipulated. Gladly! If that were possible all our governments would do it. A horrible scenario.

The 5th Season - a diary, Day 3

2010-01-21T14:24:00.001-08:00

My friends must have felt my suffering and saved me some hot water for the shower on this Sunday morning. What a difference, brain starts working, body is ok, the day will be a good one. Except, again I got up too late for breakfast in the progpower breakfast room. Bummer. In the years before I've always been the first one getting up. That role belongs to the Brits this year. But I can rely on Dario. He's still asleep, though he was the first one in bed. Hope he'll be doing better today. Out in the courtyard, the circle's up. Aaah, I'm at home. Jeroen comes along and joins, he's managed to get some food, by simply asking the staff if there's something left. Guess they were unable to leave a young guy hanging out hungry. But there was no coffee left. I offer some espresso and his eyes start glowing. " Isn't it spoiled, having your own espresso maker in a hotel?" he asks. I agree, but it's convenient too. And then he says it's quite strong. Oh my. Would somebody complain about a Porsche being a fast car? Gary says to someone "We're not Brittish! We're English." Oh yes, I've heard Simon talking about having been in Europe last year. Separatists they are. What? someone needs coffee? Ok, I'm back into our room. Too much action for Dario to keep sleeping.
I gotta care for the beerbox and the bottles, so I'm heading towards the party room. 2 closed bottles are standing there on the floor, right at the wall. Oh my, those poor devils were unable to open them? I had no idea that is seems almost impossible to the rest of the world to open a German beerbottle.
Whoa, the room still is a total mess! I guess staff really are waiting until we're gone before cleaning up. And quite some Oktoberfest beer left! Are they as picky concerning beer as we Germans are? Or are they kind enough to not drink all my beer? I decide for the second option. Although... really...? Nah, they're a nice bunch of guys.
I placed the beer in the middle of us and hand out some. I say something about being old. "No you're not old, you're retro" says Jeroen. Shall I feel flattered? I guess so. He tells us that his Finnish roommates locked the door last night,
and he had to find a free room for sleeping (without finnish snoring...) Next time I'm gonna put up a big sign: spare beds at room number xxx.
"Who was the headliner today?" "Evergrey". "Evergay" shouts a Swede. "Nevergay" says Dario. Kalle has an Oktoberfeest beer, looks at the label and says "wow, half a liter of beer with 5,9 % alcohol on my way to the venue. This may become a hard day!"

The little trail starts slowly, and outside the castel Seventh Wonder are standing on the street, waiting for the car. I hear myself saying something like "Hey, last chance to thank you guys for playing for us." "Thank you", "No thank you, you were a great audience", "have a safe trip", "have a great festival finale", etc, etc. Bands are happy being with the fans and - of course - vice versa, and everybody has a smile on his face. This somehow sums up the whole festival.
A couple of bands use the Sunday for their travelling, so they're back to work on Monday. But instead of less people at Sjiwa, there are even more than yesterday. It seems that many Dutch people just come for Sunday, the final day. (Do they all avoid the grunting Saturday?)
"You know, Wojtek does a documentary about progpower" says Gary. "He interviewed the boss of the castle and asked him how much damage progpower would cause every year. That guy said that in all these years there was nothing ever damaged. The big damages always happen at the annual lawyers congress." That reminds me on last year, when Simon said "These are all sissy-boys. So many metal heads and nothing happens. I like to smash somebody just to see what's going to happen." "They all listen to intelligent music, why would they do silly things" was Gary's answer. I once again must grin about 'intelligent music'. Music can think?
The schedudle says that Evergery are gonna do an acoustic set during the big break. Never heard of that band...

Knight Area is the band that shall warm us up today. A rig with four keyboards plus a mobile one. Hehe. A real prog band. Indeed they are old school proggers and know how to play a powerful gig. The more I listen to their gig, the more I'm surprised. What I've heard on their cds was sounding like the usual prog rock, nothing in special. The way they put power into it on stage now really amazes me. Not only can I start into Sunday afternoon on a lower gear, it really is great to see and hear this music played with so much passion and power even at an intermediate volume an opener is doomed to. Folks, bring that sound to tape on your next recordings and I'm one of the first to buy it!
I look around at all the people in the next break. The usual "Hello Baarlo", so often said to welcome the audience, seems so wrong here. A 'hello Munich' has always been ok at a concert in my hometown. But here and now, counting so many nations, England, France, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Uruguay, Amsterdam, etc. etc. - ah, here's one from Baarlo: Rene! 'Hello Baarlo' somehow excludes way too many people in this case. Last years joke, done by the Atrox dudes, "hello Africa", doesn't seem all that wrong, compared to welcoming Baarlo. Maybe Atrox were welcoming one single person by accident last year.

Prospect from Slovenia is next. The ones from Slovenia, don't mess them up with any other band Prospect.
And the pace goes faster. A bunch of young power metal guys are heating up the hall. They have pretty much routine for their age, act and play good. The music itself isn't all that spectacular, standard song structures, nothing special in time signature, the songs are all more or less equal, they don't want to step too much out of their band sound, it seems. The vocalist seems to be a Metallica fan after all. At least if you count all the metallica-esque uu-aaaa's he sings at the end of his lines. But the performance is great.
Next break, something happens on the road. Something very big is coming along. Some grab their cameras and are on the road. A tour bus appears. A really big one. All Evergrey, Evergay, Nervergay and Evergery would have enough space in there, even without the need to argue about sexual orientation. They come from Sweden but the licence plate is from Berlin. Strange... Dario tells me why so many bands put out thier thanks to Mattias: he does their cover arts and booklet design. That guy is such a great artist? I gotta visit his website whem I'm back home. And Dario's gone... I chat quite some time with Nick and Robbie of Day Six. They take the opportunity to show signals of life. Their new album has been finalized, and they're doing a show to promote it. Still no label, bummer... I advice them to contact Scout, the progulus station master. He seems to have quite some contacts and could be of help. Dario appears and tells me that Evergrey's support band is on the bus either. Well, they're on tour. Though he's right, it must be a strange situation for them to not play at progpower, now that they came along. Davids words from yesterday come to mind. "Support bands have to pay for being part on the tour, and that can cost - depending on the tour - up to 25.000 Euro." What the hell are labels there for, if not for promotion. What do they actually do for all the money they take?

Enochian Theory are some other English ones who are in Europe now. They play at our continent for the first time. They've been celebrated as the new Tool. I wouldn't say so. Their music has quite some influences from Tool, but, have you ever been to a Tool concert? But they're nice to see. I tend to abbreviate the band with 'E.T.', because the bandleader is the weirdest guy I've ever seen on stage, in a charming way. I'd call him the jester next door who happens to play and grunt some metal. The bands weirdness is that they are a trio of guitar, drums and bass, but have long atmospheric synthesizer passages in their music. That comes from a sampler which they call "The Lost Orchestra" and claim it being a band member, and so it happens that the guys are sometimes standing on stage for several minutes without playing any note, but waiting until the sampler has played its part. Some people might argue that this is no 'power' in performance, but I still like the performed music, and as I told Patrik, I don't need the posing anyway.

Big break. we're a bit uncertain if we should have dinner or stay at Sjiwa for Evergery's acoustic set. But none of us is actually a fan of fast food, so the decision is easily made: the new pizzeria. It's quite near, and we hope that we actually get some food there. We've seen people at the other pizzeria hanging out there for 1 1/2 hours without getting any food. Let's try it out. We come closer and already see Marcel in there at the window, waving at us. While taking seats, Simon drops a staple of progulus flyers on the table. Marcels friend tries to build a house of cards with them, and... of course.. fails. I told him it would be impossible, that actually made him try it... Marcel is so nice translating the menue, and we have some Dutch pizza. The place is cool, service is rather fast and professional. The pizza is, well some of the better Dutch food... Dario was eating rather fast and manages being back right in time, while we older ones don't wanna eat in a rush. We're back just in time to see the second half of the

Evergery accoustic set. I once experienced Evergrey playing at the venue next door, me doing a nightshift, listening to the sound that came into my suite through the window. That sounded like someone forced Englund watching his children being tortured for 90 minutes. Now here playing this accoustic set, Englund shows all the vocal skills he can offer, and I'm highly impressed! Wow! But the keyboardist playes piano on a keyboard, and in the last song the guitarist even plays a solo on his electric. I want my money back! Hehe...

After a rather short break it's time for Neverland to play. They are the turkish band Dreamtone, expanded by Greek lady Iris Mavrakis. Turkish and Greek? That seems impossible, as those nations hardly live in peace due to historical reasons. And that is the reason why they're doing this collaboration. Trying to show their people that music can put people get together and and live with love and harmony instead of hate.
I like the music pretty much, the integration of Turkish folk into prog metal. But the show doesn't do it all that good, somehow it's all a bit too much improvised, the integration of Iris Avrakis and Dreamtone some how doesn't really work out for me, the performance isn't as seamless as it should be. Both do their thing good, it just remains being in pieces somehow.
Back out in front of the venue I hear a lady say "That was a German accent!" She indeed sounded a little offended, so I try breaking the ice by starting a small talk. It seems to be all over the world that people don't quite like the ones beyond the next border, for whatever reason, and it's the same here. It starts good, she tries to escape her prejudice, but after a while we both notice that she doesn't manage to do so. Tom Englund does his own study about Dutch fastfood, and the look in his face tells me that his insight is similar to mine... well, in the end there is something in your stomach and that is the most important point.

In the meantime the stage looks quite different. Huge backdrops cover the amps, and all you can see is the drums.
I'm not keen on listening to growlers, but I decided to give every band a chance, and Hacride from France are another bunch of those. It looks like they've overestimated the festival and did a bit too much for their stage appearance with those backdrops, but in the end I like it, is simply looks good. And their performance is stunning! A pretty big surprise. It is an absolute tight thing, just imagine Zero Hour on growls, and you have a close idea of what they sound alike. I'm blown and doomed to stand the cookies. What does Gary do now? He's moving very close to the stage. He never did that before. He's right in front of the PA, wouldn't go just directly in front of the stage, knowing that everybody behind him couldn't see anything.
All of us seem to agree on Hacride being an outstanding band. Nobody has anything bad to say about them, even us cookie-haters. This might be the biggest surprise this year. I bet they've found dozens of new fans.

Evergrey of course have their entire equipment with them, and they of course are going to use it. And it means... the first and only delay this year. Not only do they change some symbals, a snare and add a second guitar cabinet, everything does change and has to be mic'ed, checked and adjusted. Some are already angry about it. I am with the band. If I were a drummer and had the entire set with me anyway, I would wanna play it. Perfection where perfection can be achieved. 15 minutes delay isn't all that long for such a big action, and not as annoying as some people seem to find it.
And now: This years headliner begins the show!!!
Compared to all others, rather loud I must say. After the first few songs, he himself starts talking to us. "Hello Progpower!" (good, you know what I mean, man.... hehe) "Thanks for comming, thanks Rene and staff, thanks Mattias!" (THEY too??? I MUST check is website!!!!) And on it goes. A bit louder! Englund's typical melody line, shouted out at highest possible power. Damn about techniques, bringing some soul into words -> crap; shout man, loud! The pain! The torture of your children! "We're a fucking loud shouting metal band!" Yes, the tech rider's right.. "Are you tired on this 3rd day of progpower?" he asks. "Well it's the 18th day of our tour!" My brain streams out thoughts about that now rather quickly, and I find myself thinking that this was quite arrogant.
You hero play one show each night, do a little party afterwards, get into your hotel-bus and sleep until 2 pm, do a sound check at 5 pm and a 90 minutes gig a 8 pm each day, and in the meantime you simply waste time. While we do listen, party and bang to the 15th band, do party with them until 4-6 am, try to be at the breakfast buffet at 10 am at least and sleep only little. Yes, you're my hero!
Man, I really needed to think that.
They again get louder, and I would say we reached the 125 dB right now. My, the headliner can do it I guess. Despite the real great performance, I will never be a fan of them. It's too repetitive, and all the whole music is written around the 'typical' Englund-shout-of-pain. It's all the same, and almost everywhere in their songs. Annoying for me, but absolutely important for their fans. Their trade mark if you want.
90 minutes: end of show. after only a really little break, probably 3 minutes: encore. 105 minutes: end of encores. Precicion landing. 2 hours, 120 minutes to do, 15 minutes delay, 105 played. perfect. If you're the organizer. Their fans should complain about the missing 15 minutes. But they don't. Yes, the accoustic set, but that was seperately announced. Andromeda, the fairly unknown band did fulfill the 2 hours, but none of the more successful bands. That's how the world ticks.
I simply agree that progpower needs these headliners that bring audience. The festival couldn't be without them. My headliners were other bands, but I'd end up with huge debts. Rene does a great great job in finding and booking bands and making the festival a success.
Thank you Mercenary, thank you Evergrey! You don't need progpower to promote yourself, you just came because you wanted to. Thank you so much for supporting us! And: I never would have seen you live otherwise.

Sunday night, hanging out with the guys outside the venue. Festival is over. I got one coin left in my pocket. Hey it's a five! Another round of beer! The final party in the basement is gonna start now. Hmm... it's the party where all, and I mean all(!) are gonna party. Including the staff. But I'm worn out. I want to go back to the castle. I feel guilty for not wanting to party with them all, they deserve notice.
But I am ...hmm wait... a retro. It was enough music, I don't want to listen to a dj now, indeed quiteness is due. And I lack power. I join the Swede (Krister I think...) on his way back to the castle. No party there, oh wonder... I grab some beer from our room, sit down in the courtyard and enjoy the silence.
What a weekend! I was quarreling quite much, because the band selection wasn't really the best I could imagine. But There were quite some bands who kept me listening to their entire set, bands I've never expected to want to listen more than 2 songs. All the great people I have met or learned to know. Progmetal fans simply are good people! Noone who becomes agressive, overly drunk, pretentious or anything. Whoever you talk to, it is always a great experience.
After 20 minutes I can hear the noise of the main street. Wow, ears didn't suffer that much and are back to normal already. Another beer and I have enough peace and quietness to come to an end. One year ahead until it's gonna happen again. Equal which bands are gonna play. Rene, can't you just organize a spring festival as well?
And while I fall into slumber, Marcel, the pater familia himself, is taking over as there still are stories to tell:

Whereas Ray took the time to rest his head before his journey back to the German lands, some of us stuck around until the early hours of Monday. Here’s my account of what happened after Ray went off, because I feel you guys can’t miss out on that!

As has been said in Ray’s earlier blog posts, the Progpower Europe after parties are a thing of legend; hardly ever will you find such a blend of (mostly European) metalheads of all shapes and sizes having fun in more ridiculous ways. A prime example was what happened to a visitor, who later got branded as the local nut job. This particular individual managed to waddle in on the festival in previous days, but on this last day he was mostly found in the basement of the venue. The basement is where usually people end up to have a breather, a good cup of coffee and a game of foosball and it seemed that was just what this man had in mind, because shortly after his arrival that day he was rumored to have fallen asleep on one of the comfy couches. Throughout the day people kept talking about the guy that fell asleep in the basement and just wouldn’t wake up. Even during the loud music that started off the after party, after Evergrey finished playing, he wasn’t phased and snored on happily.
A long story short: people ended up jumping off the table and body checking the man and it wouldn’t wake him up. After that people proceeded to decorate him with material from a box that was fetched from backstage somewhere. A marker was fetched to make an artwork out of his face, which was promptly signed by the creator. Perhaps the worst that happened to him was that at one point one of the volunteers of the festival lined up a smoke/dry ice machine with his face and turned the machine on, resulting in hilarity amongst the onlookers and louder snoring from the victim.

All in all the poor local drunk woke up from his slumber when the basement

exploded to Metallica’s rendition of “Three Little Piggy’s”. René, the main organizer of the festival, and a few others (myself included) managed to convince the guy that he needed to go home and proceeded to escort him up the steep, concrete steps leading up to ground level. All the while making sure that he wouldn’t fall backwards, because that would’ve surely cost him the few brain cells he had left after drenching his brain in alcohol earlier that day. René promptly locked the door behind the guy after he left, making sure he wouldn’t attempt to return and scale the stairs by himself.

But the ‘human Christmas tree’, as the man would be called by many, wasn’t the only thing that made the Progpower after party a unique, hilarious and enjoyable experience. The reason for this is the fact that even though normally people would be embarrassed to let themselves go as badly as they do, at the after party all inhibitions seem to have been left at the door. As Ricard (Barcelona, Spain) remarked upon his return to his home, “I believe I have left my inhibition genes in Holland”. Metalheads were seen dancing on tables, singing along to Dutch slager music and going all-out during the most ridiculous songs. It’s most definitely something you have to have seen at least once in your life, something you will never forget and an event that will have you return for more the year after.

The morning after, after everyone has had their breakfast and several pints of coffee, hangovers are nourished in the castle courtyard, where all the regulars and new members of the Progpower Europe family gather together for one final time. New friendships were forged that weekend and sealed with the exchange of contact information, and promises to return and buy each other beers the next time around. Plans are made for next year, a wish list is made and highlights are discussed before one by one everyone turns to their mode of transportation and makes their way to their respective homes.

I would like to thank Ray for an awesome account of this year’s festival, and I hope that his telling of the story made a lot of you enthusiastic enough to order your weekend package deals for next year’s Progpower Europe. The twelfth edition of the festival looks to be another amazing festival, with current six bands confirmed, nine more to come and, even though some of the announced bands are already amazing, the headliners are still to come!

I hope to see you all next year at Progpower Europe XII in Baarlo, the Netherlands! I’ll buy you a beer! (or at least give you one from the stash at the castle :P )

- Marcel/Cello

Classical Fusion?

2010-01-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

If you've never heard of him before, I would like to introduce you to the music of Bear McCreary. You might better know him for his writing of the score of four seasons worth of the 2000's remake of Battlestar Galactica and the upcoming 2010 Caprica series. I loved the series and part of what I loved about it was the excellent score.

According to wiki, Bear McCreary worked under Richard Gibbs to make the score of the original 3-hour Battlestar Galactica mini-series. Gibbs' played keyboards in Oingo Boingo in the 80's along with Danny Elfman. Gibbs opted out of writing music for the regular Battlestar Galactica series, so the duties fell to Bear to write the music who did so all the way though the end of Season 4. He also wrote the score for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

I'll try and explain what the music sounds like. Imagine tribal drums pounding to a beat along with acoustic guitar and middle-eastern sounding melody, at first with a gritty saxophone and then joined in by a bagpipe. Or imagine a minimalistic Philip Glass sting ensemble meets up with a celtic flute. Or a full orchestra joined by bass guitar and dramatic percussion. Some of the arrangements he uses sounds crazy but it works for me at a very emotional level. Some songs are sad, some dreamy, some are hauntingly beautiful, others dramatic and powerful. The reason one could label this fusion is because of the conglomeration of many different musical styles all colliding together into one body of work, though the technical term music like this is post-modern. One of the tracks that drew me into his music in the first place was a song called "Something Dark Is Coming" which could best be described as Porcupine Tree-ish. Season Three even has a interesting rock track that is a deconstructed version of Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower." Is it progressive? You bet.

According to Bear's website: "His Galactica score has been described as "sharp and sensitive" (The Wall Street Journal) , "a key element in establishing the show's dark, complex tone," (The Hollywood Reporter) and "rich, raw, oddly stirring... kick-ass and powerful as hell," (E! Online). It "fits the action so perfectly, it's almost devastating: a sci-fi score like no other," (NPR) . Seasons One, Two, Three and Four of his best-selling Battlestar soundtrack albums have rocketed up the Amazon.com Top Music Sales Charts, reaching the #1 sales spot in both television and movie soundtrack lists, many weeks prior to their releases. The most recent album, Season 4, cracked into Amazon.com's Top 5 Music Sales and charted in the Billboard Top 150."

I don't know exactly where one should start with all of his CDs because the are all excellent. They are all great but Season Four gives you the most bang for the buck because it contains two full CDs of music.

The Future You Were Waiting For (part 2)

2010-01-11T21:22:00.000-08:00

"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Thomas Jefferson had a lot to say about copyrights and intellectual property. In fact, Jefferson and James Madison laid the groundwork for our copyright laws. There is a good snapshot of what they did and what the result was here. They were clearly concerned that the flow of ideas should always remain free. Even the compromise they agreed on to allow exclusive ownership of an idea or invention clearly states that it has to have a benefit to the society. Otherwise it should not be protected. Should an inventor make money from his invention? Sure. Should a giant company take an invention away from an employee and give that person no credit while they make money and keep innovation away from everyone else? Hell no.

So what does this have to do with music? Music is ideas is the form of audio art. For centuries musicians made a living at it by being orchestra players, teachers, and composers. J.S. Bach, essentially the foundation of western music, would have been unemployed if not for the church and rich patrons. Like today, a lot of performers and composers struggled to make ends meet and had jobs other than music. Technology has changed but it is still a struggle for the people making music. What has changed is technology. With the advent of the piano roll people didn't have to see live music or play it themselves to hear it. And, pretty much from the beginning there were people who took advantage of the artists to make money (not always, some composers like Scott Joplin were very successful). You, the industry, waived just enough money under our noses to make us think we needed you. And not much changed until the internet. The long, tall wall the music industry built had finally been cracked. For real, and they weren't going to be able to hold back the flood this time. We didn't need the gatekeepers anymore. Actually, we never did. We, the musicians, could go right to the fans.

I go back and forth about how I feel about illegal downloads. I hate the industry, but I still feel it's wrong on some level. Superstars are so big they aren't hurt by downloads. Small guys like me benefit greatly from the exposure. As long as no one takes credit for the writing or the recording, fine. I can see the mid-level getting squeezed hard, as seen by Lion Music's recent news post. I can see how someone who just barely made a living at it could be hurt. I've never actually made a living at it. But I'm not opposed to new business models, including free. The business model we have now sure isn't working.

In the argument against illegal downloading the loudest point against it that the industry shouts about is that downloads hurt artists. This may sound bold to some, but I am telling you that is a bald-faced lie. Don Passman wrote a great book on the music industry. His section on a standard deal (with LA recording studio, well known producer, lots of bells and whistles) can be summarized thusly: Band A sells 500,000 cassettes (my copy of the book is from 1997) at 10.98 retail price. Woohoo, lots o' cash... right? Well, after the bands pays for all the bells and whistles the label insisted on, they go home with $58,000 at the end of the year. That's before taxes and before it's split between all the members of the band. The record industry had NEVER been about the artist. So all the labels and men in suits and all the big stars who toe the company line can go the the kitchen, open the fridge, and grab a bottle of STFU. You never spoke for me.

Where does this leave me now? Pretty much where I've always been. Relatively unknown, plowing ahead because writing and recording music is like breathing to me. I can't not do it. All of my solo music going forward will be available for free download. My electric instrumental cd already is. Donate if you feel like it, if not, enjoy the music anyway. I'm working on another acoustic cd. It will be free. If I have a physical product to sell in addition to downloads, I will offer you something way cooler than just a shiny plastic disk. You don't owe me anything. I owe you for being open to listening to me.

I haven't yet spoken to Chad and Brad of Strange Land to see what they think the band's future approach should be, so I can't speak for them. We've always been independent though and will continue to be so. (An important note: distribution is an entirely different animal than a record deal). But for me, sharing my ideas with you is far more important than any monetary gain someone else can make off me. Ars gratia artis.

Tribalism in Progressive Circles

2010-01-11T06:11:00.000-08:00

"As I experience certain sensory input patterns, my mental pathways become accustomed to them. The inputs eventually are anticipated and even missed when absent." - Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I've often wondered about why there are subgroups within the prog movement who endlessly complain and berate other people within other prog subgroups. There are some in the progmetal group who don't like classic progrock. There's some in the progrock group who don't like anything classified as metal. There's those from both groups who dislike fusion, and undoubetly fusion lovers who dislike prog, people who don't like instrumental music, neo-classical, female-fronted bands, zeuhl, deathy growls, avant garde prog, shredders, and the list goes on and on. If there's any truth today in prog it's that it's hard for all of these subgoups to get along and accept one another, and I think I know part of the reason why.

The progressive rock movement was born out of rebellion. In the late 1960's the baby boomer generation rejected the ideals of their parents and formed their own unique 'hippie' culture, set of radical beliefs, mannerisms, way of dressing, and most notably for us their own form of music. We can listen to their music today and is still very much relevant but I don't think we can still share that feeling they had of all belonging together in a way that gave them their sense of purpose. On a related note to my discussion in Colorado and regions of the Soutwest US today there is a subset of the population who live what is called the "Western" lifestyle. They are pretty easy to spot. They predominantly buy their clothes at Western clothing shops, wear cowboy hats, Wrangler jeans, leather boots, listen to country music, drive pickup trucks, eat their own kind of foods, and attend rodeos. I'm generalizing of course. But acceptance to this group of people is fairly straightforward. One simply has to adopt their principles and mannerisms in order to belong.

For whatever reason these subgroups are formed, whether through a desire to rebel, sharing in a common cause, or a need to fit in there is tribalism at play here. This being the unique set of norms each of carries with us to in order to belong to whatever subgoups we feel connected to. In the past I've included myself in many of these different groups with friends, musicians, photographers, schools, and professional organizations. Today there are endless clicks within the prog genre who have each created their own set of norms, what is acceptable within the group and what isn't. Those who do not adopt the same musical preferences as the group are viewed as outsiders to that group. Undoubetly within these groups there have always been the code-enforcers who are quick to point out others within the group and are all to happy to ridicule or berate them if they violate the accepted norm.

Let me throw out a few specific examples to drive home my point. My first example is probably one of the most divisive today in prog circles, and it has to do with the use of death metal or "cookie monster"-style vocals. I was reticent the first time I heard them and probably would have rejected them had it not been for the constant prodding of a friend of mine to listen to Opeth and the fact that I had read somewhere that Mike Portnoy loved Opeth's Blackwater Park album. It's ironic that the push that was needed for me to get over accepting the vocals for what they were had practically the opposite reaction among Opeth fans when the Morningrise CD first came out. Fans of the band at the time were upset at the band for "ruining" their death metal by including clean vocals in the music. In both cases the listener was forced to make choices that affected their own set of beliefs on what music should or shouldn't sound like. Some countries like Holland and Sweden seem to more readily accept this vocal style than other countries, so culture may play a role.

My second example relates to a few years ago when I made the decision to remove 5-10% of the music from the Progulus Radio library. I removed many power metal, classic rock, AOR, and heavy metal albums that I felt did not contribute to my vision of what a progressive radio station should be. After protests from a few of the listeners I did end up adding back some of the music that I had originally taken off. I did this because I realized that I had been following my own set of tribal norms and predjudices. Right or wrong this tribalism is is an unavoidable part of life. Even though I felt it was the right thing to do, I acknowledged the fact that my own views differed from that of other listeners. That is not to say that I'm ready to start adding back non-progressive albums like was done before, because tribalism does have its place and the line has to be drawn in the sand somewhere.

Progulus Radio today has a very wide range of prog subgenres, perhaps more than many listeners are accustomed to. I think this variety is one of the reasons that Progulus Radio has such a hard time attracting new listeners. The radio station that a listener is seeking must fit within their own predetermined set of ideals or else they are quick to lose interest. The now defunct UK70's radio station is a case in point. As their name implied, they played all old 70's UK progrock bands and they had a huge following. Likewise other internet radio stations today with a more focused playlist have many more listeners than Progulus Radio does. That's not a good thing or bad, but it does show how certain stations resonate to a greater or lesser degree with certain groups of listeners.

I would like to point out here that even with all the bickering and lack of acceptance within the subgroups in the prog genre, the listeners at Progulus Radio are some of the most open-minded people that I know. There will always be disagreement, but the jovial nature and willingness for people to get past their differences makes the radio station something special. We do get the 'tagboard police' on occasion who are quick to point out what they feel does or doesn't belong on the radio station, and that is fine because now we know the reason for it. Personal taste in music is affected by many factors, and tribalism and acceptance by peers is probably only one facet of it. Just like Data from Star Trek said: "your neural pathways have not yet become accustomed to our sensory input patterns".

My album of the year

2009-12-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

Well, 2009 has been another interesting year for prog and progmetal. I looked back at my top 10 list of 2008 and there were only 2 or 3 albums that had any lasting appeal for me. So I might even call 2009 a resurgence of sorts for me but it's possibly all relative and at the end of 2010 I'll feel the same way about 2010 that I do right now about 2009.

There has been more than a few CDs that could easily be contenders for the top spot on my list, but I'm always keyed to a newcomer that seemingly comes out of nowhere and knocks my socks off. This year I chose the Israeli band Edgend's album, A New Identity. Hats off to Lance/Nightmare Records for finding and releasing this album.

The scope of this album is what grabbed me from the start. It's epic and magnificent in breadth. References to Symphony X and Adagio are obvious here. The bands treads a delicate balance into the neoclassical genre that is epic without being too cheesy, instrumental without being too much shred, and symphonic while keeping it heavy but while also avoiding the typical galloping drum pitfall of power metal. There are so few bands who can find the right balance, and Edgend does it perfectly. Symphony X raised the bar on the neoclassical genre but it took them 5 albums to do it, and Edgend comes close to matching this mastery right off the bat on their debut!

There's great talent at work here on the instruments, most notably in the keyboard and guitar work. The singer sounds to me like a close match for Adagio's old singer Readman. Highlights on the album are Revelation and A Chosen Truth which are both very catchy. Also Voices/Out of The Equation (A New Identity) make an excellent ending to the album and both songs flow together as a single song. My only nit with this album is on the production side. The guitar tone lacks clarity, especially during the guitar solos. The production issues are serious though. I'm just a bit of a stickler when it comes to guitar tone and I thought it could have been done better but it doesn't decrease my enjoyment of the album. The production of the album itself is quite clear with a good balance of keyboards within the music.

Considering this is the debut CD from the band, I hope Edgend have many more great albums in their future and will eventually release a masterpiece like Symphony X's 'V'. As a new avid fan of the band, I can't wait to hear what they do next.

A couple of stocking stuffers for the guitarist on your list.

2009-12-17T06:18:00.001-08:00

There are a couple of guitar-oriented albums that I come back to time and again which I would consider essential for any guitarist's collection. There are guitarists who are well-rounded with their own unique styles and exhibit total mastery of their instruments. These aren't "shred" albums, but they are the result of people who have studied their craft and practiced endlessly and the results are timeless and always keep my attention:

Joel Hoekstra - Undefined and The Moon Is Falling: Joel assembled a great cast for these albums, with Virgil Donati on drums and and bass by Ric Fierabracci. Joel covers a wide range of styles throughout both albums with a reserved flair. The songs are well crafted and Joel lets it rip unabashadly at times. Other times he has a sense of humor. I'd have a hard time choosing between these two CDs. Undefined is a little "lighter" and more diverse, while The Moon Is Falling is a bit more thematic and stylized.

Brett Garsed - Big Sky: Brett has played with more artists and bands than I care to count, but he has only put out one solo album. It's interesting that this album also has Ric Fierabracci on bass. Every note on the album seems well thought out and perfectly placed. "Brothers" in my opinion is one of the best songs written recently for guitar. There's a emphasis on dissonance and resolution that shows how good songs are crafted. Brett is the guitarist's guitarist.

Cosmosquad-Squadrophenia: Jeff Kollman plays guitar and he shows on this CD that he's one of the finest guitarists on the planet today. While Brett Garsed and Joel Hoekstra are smooth and refined, Kollman is more gritty and biting and makes me think at times he is some strange homunculus of Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. I love Kollman's guitar tone on this CD. Add Shane Gaalaas on drums and Barry Sparks on bass and you have the perfect power trio.

Tak Matsumoto-Hana: Most people outside of Japan have never heard of him, but the truth is he has over 10 solo albums and he plays in the band B'z which a very popular band there (according to wiki they have sold over 78 million records in Japan). I have not listened to all of his solo CDs, but I love Hana and heard from a colleague who has heard them all that Hana is his best solo CD. What's great about this album is it's so different. There are lots of Eastern-sounding melidies combined with a more traditional Western-sounding solo album. Tak is not one to play flashy on this CD. What you get is a beautifully written set of songs. There's also a really great rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" on the album.

Interview with JT Bruce

2009-12-15T19:08:00.000-08:00

JT Bruce is a composer and guitarist from southern California who has released 3 albums of instrumental music. His music can best be described as cinematic. Sometimes prog metal with crunching guitars, sometimes symphonic with spaced out synths, always painting an image in sound. These can be downloaded from his site for free, or you can order a cd from him (totally worth it for the artwork). In addition to music, JT is a visual artist, film maker, and animator. You can download music, see some of his art and watch some film clips at his site http://www.subjectruin.net/. Please do donate if you like what you see and hear.

Sometime after Universica, his newest album, was released I asked if he would be interested in doing an interview with me. He was kind enough to say yes and now that the physical cds for Universica are ready to go, I'm ready to post the interview.

He took the time to expound quite a bit. I think his answers are very insightful and show a great sense of humor. He's part of the young, new generation making prog music for the sake of the art, and one who pretty much entered the business knowing that file sharing and free music would be the new norm. He's got some great thoughts about the plusses and minuses of free music on the internet, getting on with your creativity, and he gives the best advice ever about what to do if someone knocks you down.

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1. What or who got you started in writing and recording your music?

I never really liked popular music growing up. As a kid, I had very confused tastes and bought a couple cassette tapes to be cool, but I never really enjoyed the music for what it was. It took me until 7th or 8th grade to find an interest in old heavy metal and punk, which in turn inspired me to learn guitar. After picking up an instrument, it didn't take long for me to realize how formulaic and homogenous most mainstream music is. This really fueled my desire to make something different and new.

My musical horizons exploded in high school. I started listening to prog and got my hands on a lot more obscure music that really resonated with me. I was still very interested in the guitar and I floated around between a lot of different guitar teachers who never did much for me. I wanted to learn about the mechanics and underpinnings of music, why things sounded good or bad, and how I could learn to write my own material. They mostly just taught me how to play Metallica songs, then collected their money as I left.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I met an awesome guitar teacher who took me to the next level when he made me realize that I wasn't a guitar player, I was a composer who happened to play guitar. That was the epiphany I needed to start writing and recording my own music.

2. Do you have any specific sources of inspiration?

I've been making movies since I could pick up a camcorder, and I've played video games for as long as I can remember. Music is a very large part of both of these. The influence these two storytelling mediums have on my life has a profound effect on my music. I like to combine this cinematic sensibility with the sounds and attitude of progressive music.

3. You play all the instruments on your albums. Is there one that you consider your main instrument?

I've played guitar for a long time now, and it's definitely my primary instrument, but as I said before, I consider myself more of a composer than a guitar player. I'm actually not a very good guitarist in terms of shredding solos and nosebleed riffing. Probably a better way of saying things would be that I use the guitar simply to express musical ideas.

4. You've done instrumental music thus far, any desire to do a vocal record?

I started writing The Dreamer's Paradox with the intention of singing on it myself. The entire album was very intricately planned before I even started recording. I recorded a lot of preliminary vocals during the initial sessions for that album, but I developed a massive phobia of my own voice almost as soon as I began. Months later, the lyrics and vocals were scrapped, the music was completely different, and my plans evolved so heavily that the final version of The Dreamer's Paradox only vaguely resembled my original plans. Vocals never entered the picture on Universica, but I wouldn't completely rule out vocals on future material.

5. You give your music away for free under the Creative Commons license, with a gentle request for donations (go donate people!). Why give your music away?

I'm going to combine questions 5 to 11 into a big section on free music, how I got involved with it, and what my thoughts are on the subject. Hopefully your questions will be answered in the process :)

6. You were ahead of the curve for free music. Your first album was done in 2005 and Radiohead released In Rainbows in 2007. What gave you the initial idea to go with free distribution?

7. Did you try going the more standard commercial route first or did you go the free route from the start?

8. Did you ever pursue a label or distribution deal, or did you set out to be independent?

9. You've released 3 albums now. How do you feel about the online free distribution? Has your view of it changed since your first album?

10. Did you have an idea of what free downloads would be like or certain expectations when you started?

11. How has this business model fulfilled or changed your expectations for the business side of your music?

In 2005, I was an unpopular 18 year old college freshman with a CD full of weird music that nobody listened to. Rowdy teenagers living in the anarchy of college dorms want to listen to 4/4 pop rock and remixed hip-hop songs. I'm not putting this music down, but I'm preaching to the choir when I say that progressive music is pretty far off the radar to most people.

I decided on the free music route when I realized that I didn't have any other choices. I got a lot of blank stares when I showed people my music. They just didn't know what to think. I didn't (couldn't) play my music live. Nobody wanted to buy CDs. Record labels were almost certainly not interested in this stuff. So I gave it away for free.

My thoughts at the time were to focus on getting my music into as many ear canals as possible, so I released Anomalous Material under a Creative Commons License and crossed my fingers. The idea was to spread this stuff around like a disease and see who got infected. I took it as a given that I wouldn't be making any money, but by maximizing my exposure, things might develop into something better somewhere down the road.

I was shocked to find that people were downloading Anomalous Material, and even more shocked to see that they were liking it. I clicked refresh on my statistic pages like a drug addict taking another hit. Every time I got an email from someone about my music, I was floored. So I decided to write another album with hopes it would be even bigger. And it worked! The Dreamer's Paradox began to log downloads on dozens of sites spread across the internet and the globe. Advertising revenue trickled in at an embarrassing rate, and a handful of generous people donated some money or asked to buy hard copies of the albums. This was very surprising to me. I thought, “Why would people pay for something that they could have for free?” I was still making practically zero money, but at least people were listening, and it was an awesome feeling.

By the time I released Universica, I had a certain amount of expectations about how it would propagate across the web. I'd release it on my own site and a few others, and I would send out e-mails to people who'd contacted me about the previous albums. It would take a couple weeks for the word to get out, then it would start showing up on torrent sites, reviews would start popping up, and then I could sell CDs and make some money. But this isn't what happened.

The initial reviews were stronger than the previous albums, but it didn't take off the way they did. Around a year later, Universica was finally getting caught up with the other two, and by the time I printed CDs, they were selling at a very slow rate. During the time between Dreamer's and Universica, I let my footholds slip and a lot of the work I had done to promote my work had eroded out from under me. This was my first big experience with how fickle the internet can be.

In my experience, the free music scene has been invaluable. Without it, my music would simply not exist. At the same time, I feel like I've reached the limits of what it can do for me. The internet is a sea that must be sailed aggressively and persistently. It's a full-time job and if you let your guard down or stop putting in an effort, it's very easy to fade back into obscurity.

12. As the web changes the way we interact there is a trend to getting more personal info about everybody. Your website doesn't give out a lot of information about you. Is the mystery intentional? Are you looking to just let your work speak for itself?

I'm definitely not trying to be mysterious in the way that many bands do. I'm usually vague in my personal info just because I hate writing about myself. It isn't about me anyway, it's supposed to be about the music!

13. I noticed that a Google search for you doesn't turn up myspace and wikipedia as the top results as it does for most bands. Most of your first three search pages are places to download the music. Any favorite websites among those you've used?

To be honest, I think MySpace has a collection of the ugliest, messiest pages on the entire internet. I haven't used MySpace in a serious way since I was 16. And I'm certainly not notable enough to get an article on Wikipedia!

My favorite websites for getting my music out there are Jamendo and Last.fm. Both sites put a lot of emphasis on the artists and are generous in sharing ad revenue and royalties.

14. Aside from the music you're also involved in illustration and film. Do you compartmentalize your work in these areas or is it all part of a continuum for you?

I love combining music and images (images and words?). As I said before, there are a lot of cinematic influences in my music. I write the scores for all my films and frequently use music from my albums on film projects. While I focus on one medium at a time, in the end they are inseparable for me.

15. When you're working on music, does it come in bursts of inspiration or do you take a steady, constant approach to writing?

When I'm in hardcore music mode, I try to write a minute of music every day. More often than not, it's complete unusable crap. But as we can all relate, there are times when the creative floodgates seem to open and all the good ideas come flowing out.

For me, creativity is like inertia. It's very difficult to get a heavy object moving, but once it's moving, it's very hard to stop.

16. As essentially a solo act doing a band project, do you have any urges to form a band or play out?

I played in a band in high school, and while there's nothing like getting up on stage and rocking out, I just don't think I could form a serious band. The way I work is usually too idiosyncratic to involve other people. Music is one of the few things in life I take seriously – it would be far too much fun being in a band for me to take things seriously!

17. Being a guitar player myself I have to ask, do you have a favorite guitar? Any essential gear you can't live without?

I'm really not a big guitar geek. I've only used one electric guitar on all three of my albums, my Gibson SG. She's a little banged up, but I love her to death. The rest of my equipment is cheap, but functional. I've always been a firm believer that it's not your software or equipment that make good music, it's the ideas you can bring to life with what you have.

18. Any advice for other artists and musicians who might want to follow the same business model you have?

I'm hardly qualified to give out advice, but the only reason anyone even knows about my music is because of my persistence. If somebody knocks you down, you stand back up, kick them in the nuts, and keep on going.

19. Care to share your opinions on the state of music in general? The industry, the way people consume music now, etc...

Despite the doom and gloom projected by the record industry and the fuss about how file sharing is stealing music away from artists, I think the global music scene is thriving. Never have we lived in a time where the technology to write and record music has been more advanced, embraced, and accessible. When anyone can write and record a song, creativity explodes. The opportunity to make music is no longer available to only a select few, and as a result, all of the old business models are failing. But while the record labels are crumbling and the music magnates are desperately clinging to their riches, the power and freedom is returning to the artists. I couldn't be happier about the direction music is taking.

20. Are there any questions I didn't ask that you wish someone would? Now is your chance to take over the soapbox.

I just want to say thanks for the opportunity and the very insightful questions. Support the music you love!

The future you were waiting for has already happened (Part 1)

2009-12-14T13:36:00.001-08:00

When I joined Strange Land 11 years ago, the music industry still worked the way it had, at least during the history of rock music. Ever since I had picked up the guitar the dream was to write and record some songs, build a fan base, get discovered, signed, rich, and famous. Pretty early on I figured out the rich and famous part was unlikely, and that is was more important (for me anyway) to be true to my artistic vision. I'm sure I could have done something more commercial with the intent to make money but I never would have been happy.

In 1999 we released our first 4 song ep. I found this new thing called mp3.com and uploaded music to it. We did pretty well, with our song Foundation reaching number 4 in their prog chart. Now, imagine how long ago that was. I was using dial-up. If you could shell out for it and you didn't live out in the country (like I did) you could get a DSL. I was recording the band on my Powermac G3, recording to a whopping 10 gig external SCSI hard drive (Tech aside: My choice of backup back then was a SCSI DVD-RW drive that used cartidge-loaded dvds. I still have it, and the G3 - with a G4 chip - but I haven't powered them up in years). I didn't even have a real audio interface, I recorded into the computer via the stereo line in. If I remember right we recorded drums and bass at the same time. The drums were mixed at the board and tracked in mono. What was I thinking?! But it worked and it was a good start. Hell, I released my first acoustic album in 1999 on cd and tape.

Still, the 'make an album-build local fan base-play shows-get signed' model was still the norm. It was pretty much an all-or-nothing idea. You either broke big, even for a short while, or you languished in obscurity and faded away. MP3.com and other early online avenues were just a little extra, a new way for indie bands to reach people but not to break out big. All the mp3s were 128k bitrate, I can't recall if you could do any better. By the time we released Anomaly in 2001, CD Baby had been established and it was a great way for indie bands to sell cds. Napster was around 1999-2001 (before its shut down and subsequent resurrection) but I never saw the point in using my dial-up connection to download crappy sounding mp3s from really popular bands I didn't like. Whatever you think of the fallout from Napster and all the lawsuits, the period of the late 90's and early 00's marked the beginning of the end of the industry as I knew it. Cable internet and faster DSL use spread. Some indie musicians figured out the best ways to capitalize on this but as far as I can tell most of us were still thinking of the internet as an add-on to the old ways of doing business. The internet was like TV. Consumption was passive. There wasn't even much real advertising then. You just put your web site up and hoped people would find you. And they did. But that was about it. I think in 2001 we were only slightly more likely to get an email from a fan than a phone call or a letter.

The INDUSTRY (worthy of all caps here) was already jumping all over this, like they do with any new technology. (sarcasm) Like the good gatekeepers they are, they stepped into the hero role once again to defend helpless but creative bands, gullible but well-meaning consumers, and the thousands of people whose jobs were at stake from the record producer to the guy sweeping the studio floor (/sarcasm). First recordable cassettes would doom the industry. Then it was recordable cds. Then mp3s and file sharing. It never occurred to them to examine the way they were doing business. Were they releasing good music? No, they stumbled on Nirvana and then signed every other band in Seattle that wore flannel shirts. Somebody manufactured a hit with Brittany Spears so they went out and signed every young woman they could doll up like an All-American Lolita. Did they think that maybe $15 or more wasn't a good price for a cd? No. (Food for thought: a mass produced cd costs $2 or less to make. Most major label deals pay less than $1 to the artist after recouping costs. Where is the rest of this money going?). So they drag their heels, kick up a fuss, and blame everybody else for their perceived woes. The truth is, the music biz was still doing pretty good in the early 2000's. But, the music biz emperor had no clothes. Instead of trying to figure out how to use new technology to their advantage, they tried to kill it. And then came myspace. And iTunes. And Rhapsody. And bit torrents. And Facebook.

(to be continued)

Prog Muggin'

2009-12-11T23:24:00.000-08:00

Just thought I would share this one...

A month ago my son asked if I could write a list of some of the bands I like.

Then yesterday I was presented with the mug shown in the picture. It is not a work of art, but considering who made it, I will definitely be using it.

For your notice, the text has been burned onto the mug, so it is wash resistant.

If I was drinking coffee, I suppose I would be drinking Progolatte from now on.

The Rise And Fall Of Prog, Part 2

2009-12-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

In my last essay I discussed some evidence in the Progulus Radio data that shows a general decline in the number of highly rated albums over the past few years. As promised I did take a closer look at the data.

Let me begin by stating that others have made a valid point that my statistics only reflect the popularity of certain artists and albums by the listeners of Progulus Radio who are a distinct group of proggers and may not reflect the tastes of others within the prog genre. Prog music by it’s nature was never meant to be popularized like traditional music. We are all creatures of habit, and what's popular on one prog radio station might be vastly different on another, or people' personal listening habits, or other prog groups or forums groups. I personally enjoy listening to many of the obscure and offbeat albums and the extremely wide variety of music that this genre offers. Musical tastes are a very personal thing, and the true progger should look beyond what is the flavor of the day and use the statistics only as a guide relative to their own personal tastes.

When I took a closer look at the ratings and play data, I did find a general decline in many stats from about 2005 onward. This includes the total number of albums released each year, the number of highly rated albums, and the amount of song play for albums released on a certain year. The problem is that I'm not really sure what it means. Since this is the first time I've studied the data at this level I feel like I've only taken a snapshot of a dynamic system. The song rating and airplay stats are constantly evolving and changing over time, so it's difficult to say with certainty how things will look a few years down the road. I know that personally I often find myself re-rating songs differently than when I first heard them.

My study did find one certainty though. The number of albums per release year on Progulus has steadily been on the decline since 2006 as the next graph will illustrate:

This seems to indicate that the industry has considerably downsized recently and may continue to contract. We may find in hindsight that 2005-2006 were the peak years for the third resurgence of prog. Additionally, by correlating data between the number of releases per year and the number of highly rated releases, I found a connection that suggests that the more releases that are put out the more highly rated ones we’ll have. But sadly since the proliferation of new albums has been steadily decreasing since 2006, I think we need to accept the fact that we're not going to have as many great CDs per year as we have been graced with in the past. On the upside though I think the state of the industry is still a good one. There are many good artists who contiue to realease high quality albums so we should be all thankful for that. Interestingly the average song rating has increased slightly since 2006.

As a footnote I found the last graph pretty interesting and wanted to share it. This graph is shows the number of song plays per artist ranked from #1 downward:

This graph from left to right shows artist #1 with the most plays, followed by #2, then #3, etc. While it’s not really related to my discussion of the decline of the genre, it does show the loyalty of the listeners to a select group of artists. I wanted to integrate the graph but I guess there's not an easy way to do this that in Excel. It does look like about 90% of all the airplay on Progulus is from 500 artists of the 2,000+ total on the radio station. That is to say about 90% of all the artists could be eliminated with very little overall impact on our typical radio play.

Statisticians out there may find the following information handy:

Artist Airplay (number of song plays by artist):
Mean 121.6476075
Standard Error 7.551491308
Median 32
Mode 1
Standard Deviation 374.998269
Sample Variance 140623.7017
Kurtosis 594.2007154
Skewness 19.18907909
Range 13069
Minimum 0
Maximum 13069
Sum 299983
Count 2466

Album Airplay (number of song plays by album):
Mean 78.22503259
Standard Error 3.219954059
Median 43
Mode 11
Standard Deviation 199.4033084
Sample Variance 39761.67939
Kurtosis 2261.137573
Skewness 42.19692306
Range 10893
Minimum 0
Maximum 10893
Sum 299993
Count 3835

Update 14-Dec-09:

Since it has been asked for, I've included the following graph which correlates the number of good albums relative to the number of total albums each year:

The 5th Season - a diary, Day 2

2009-12-06T13:34:00.001-08:00

Rememberance is a "soft skill", especially on such a weekend. I know that some things are in different order as they happened, but I can't bring the proper order up anymore. Anyhow, it was a great day!
Dutch readers who are proud about Dutch food, better do not read the part where I'm eating a burger. That may be misunderstood as an offense, although it is not meant to be one. Some people might have a laugh reading it.

Hello world...
...
hello room...
...??
...what room are you?
Ah...
... hello progpower!
It's cold in here... Ah, yes, the broken window...
I better get up slowly... well that works good, no headache it seems. Good. Ah, Dario found his bed last night. 10:30 am already, I bet I'm gonna miss the progpower breakfast. Bummer.
Hmm, shower. ... we don't have a washroom in here, there is a shower room at the other end of the corridor. Going down a hotels corridor in shirt and pants is a new experience. I turn on the shower and wait for hot water. And wait. And wait. Oh no! Cold shower! Yikes! In '07 we've had boiling water, that was ok, but cold??? That won't get my body started. Ok, after shower's done, I go back to our room with the same mess of a brain as before, and do the rest of my personal hygene there, as quietly as possible. I'm glad I took my little electric espresso maker with me. Though the Dutch coffe is way better than the German one, espresso is even better anyway.

I can't manage to control my body properly, I'm unconcentrated on everything, can't focus on things... Where and when did I find Gary and Simon? But luckily no headache. :D
We're walking around in the little "park" and check it out a bit, while Gary starts picking apples from a tree and eating them. We decide getting some food and a coke at the supermarket in Barloo for breakfast. Gary takes an apple with him, seems he's found a new love. In the supermarket I'm feeling misplaced. Us among so many normal people that do normal things in life. Back at DeBerckt we find a nice place and start 'breakfast'. Breakfast and coke on the table, Gary adds his apple. Suddenly a bottle of Jack Daniels is there. This is the reason for getting the coke. Why not? That may help on my hangover, so I blend my coke with it. Staff seems to have an office behind that door there. A man comes along, looks sceptically at us and enters the door. He didn't say anything... thanks god. I get out in the courtyard again for a cigarette and walk around a bit, walking on clouds... A few proggers are hanging out, in a small circle. I notice that there are no "normal" people there. There used to be families making vacations in the last years, but not now. Seems like the castle is all ours. Hehe! A van is standing there, and on the drum cases inside there are A.C.T. labels. A band's bus. ...Wait... A.C.T.? Just a moment... they're not on the schedule. Strange. Anyway, I'm too lazy to think about it. Or better, I can't...
We decide that it's already time to wake up Dario and prepare for "the walk". Waking up Dario was easier than expected. He gets an espresso and Gary's beloved apple.
The walk to Baarlo is refreshing, and soon I'm touching ground again. We go the new way the other regulars showed us yesterday, through the park, where Gary starts picking up nuts from the ground and eating them. No wonder that he grew so big.

Arriving at Sjiwa, there are way more people there already than I expected. I check the schedule, check the time and - damn! We've missed

Akphaezya! What a pity, I really was ooking forward to hearing them. I want to drive a nail through my brain. "You've missed Akphaezya!" is everybody telling us. "Awesome band, they were great!" Is what we continuously hear. Bummer. Well time to relax outside a bit and have another coffee. The catering booth in another one than last years'. Great, hopefully their food will have some flavor at all. At least their wagon looks way more professional. They seem to be from a local junk food company. That gives hope.
gluffyguts coems along, parying already, and tells us that Jamie still hasn't shown up. She wasn't in the room last night. Weird...

So the band we proguli start the day with is Vanity, a Polish one. I'm stunned because these guys are really young. Are they really old enough
to prog? hmmm... At least they are not another Riverside clone. Indeed, listening to them, it seems another jewel is growing there. They manage to combine old school prog with todays metal uniquely. And with some parts in their music they go back into the 60's some times. ...And a few beats later they growl. Although the vocalist should take lessons. The clean vocals don't turn out good, that gives me shivers. Badly sung melodies and cookies, that is nothing I'd support, but due to their instruments-work, I stay and listen to their set.

After Vanity I find a place at a table oustide. A regular comes along and offers me a beer. I say no. Oops, he reacts like that was an offense! I tell him that I want to start the day slowly, and that he understands. Exactly five minutes later comes Gary and gives me a beer, somehow making certain that I gotta drink it. The regular almost had a laugh about how firm I am. So much about having friends, hehe.
Gary, Simon and me decide to go to the bar that is pretty close to the venue and have some ear rest. Chaos Divine is a band I don't care much about anyway. Entering the bar, some black t-shirts are already there, and one raises his glass and says "Ray, you gotta taste this beer it's sooo tasty!" Johan and the rest of Andromeda. It takes approximytely one minute until I have a set at their table. Gary and Simon take place at the bar. I tell them to join us, and they sit down at the other end of the table. Some five minutes later they're back at the bar. One cannot help the English ones...
A voice mail comes in... Munich friends telling me that they're in a beer garden and ask if I join. No, I won't... it's a bit too far to go....
"We're not playing any venue under 115 dB, because we're a lout shouting metal band!" is on Evergrey's (if I remeber right) tech rider, tells me David with shaking head. I have to laugh.

Back at the venue, people begin calling me brave. I'm curious and wand to try out the new caterers. I look at the menue, but have no idea what food they offer. Sometimes Dutch is absolutely unintelligible. Knowing that we are from 15 nations, I would translate the menue into english at least... Well, so I order a burger. And have a hard time not shouting at the guy to not do that! Yikes! He takes the meat and puts it in a fryer! As if it were a french fry! Oh my god that will be an oily burger! After the meat is fried the burger becomes complete, yes with onions please, and... it has a tiny little bit of flavor. They did put a little bit of flavor into the meat. That's better that the other caterer. But it's only the meat that has some flavor. Not the bread, not the sauce, even the onions have no flavor. It is no wonder to me anymore that all the vegetables in our German supermarkets do not taste at all. It all comes from the Netherlands, and now that I'm studying Dutch fast food, well it seems that the Dutch actually do not want to taste anything. They probably even fear flavor. They must have spent loads of efforts in removing flavor from everything one can eat. (But would you please be so kind and eat all the vegetables yourselves instead of exporting it to people who love flavor?)
Dario somehow looks sick. Not like a hangover, more like having a cold...

Seventh Wonder is next. Number two of my faves. It is quite hard to listen into the wall of sound, which is a pity. Their whole gig is somehow lost for me because in their music it is essential to hear all the notes. All the vocal layer disappear, I can see more people than just the frontman singing. They do a pweful mshow from start to end. I see an awesome performence, but it doesn't make me enthusiastic anyhow. Gary and Simon are totally overwhealmed.
Fluffy calls the singer gay. Some other ladies say that too. If you can sing perfectly and are handsome, you can't have a lady who loves progmetal?

Nahemah is another for-the-sake-of-growling band. Those bands sound is always good enough, you don't need to follow so many notes. Anyway, I'll never become a fan of growlers. Time to get outside and chat with people.
On my way out, someone hands out flyers, oh, it announces a Day Six concert. I turn around, looking at who's handing them out, and see the bassist of the band. Simon is already sitting at a table and it doesn't take long until Gary joins.
No, I don't need to listen to every band because they're just playing. I also wanna chat with people. You can complain about crappy German roads and construction areas, Dutch beer, the windy, almost stormy weather, prog, straight metal, everything. The guys of Vanity come along, handing out loads of their promo for free.
Dario looks even worse, and he also feels worse. He blames it on yesterdays long night and announces that he'll go to bed directly after the show. Guess I'll have to care for the octoberfest beer alone tonight.

Mercenary start their show with loads of power, they do know how to act on stage. In the beginning I like their gig pretty much. Three great vocalists in the band, and the approach and the sound are quite good. I get bothered a bit becaue they distract their awesome singing with growling that is spread in over and over. When they play their 5th song, I see that their song structures are all equal, no stepping out of the system please. And the speed shredding parts in all tunes are always on the low B of the 7th string. If someone stole them that note, the whole band would collapse...
While being out for a cigarette, Patrik, the guitarist of Cloudscape, tells me how he and their vocalist Mike happened to collaborate with Marel Coenen, how he likes Mercenary's powerful appearance and about German road constructions.
Back to Mercenary, the fix song structures begin to annoy me. Suddenly the show has ended. After 90 minutes. All headliners had been announced to play for two hours. If you're Mercenary you don't need to care about what you've agreed to in the past it seems. Hmm, I shouldn't be unfair.When Rene announced them, he mentioned that they signed in because they like the idea of the festival. Seems they normally are too big money-wise, but liked to support it. Now, playing a shorter set than agreed, is weird. What a way to trade music.

Back out in the "ear recovery area" I again hear a couple of complaints about the sound. I decide to stop complaining myself. What tough job is the engineer doing anyway. 15 bands on one weekend, 30 minutes of time to disassemble an assemble band gear and do sound check between every band is quite a hard job, I shouldn't complain about it all the time. Gladly there's somebody doing the job! And we haven't had any delay so far.

Time to check the new design of the club in the basement. The sound of Pagan's Mind "Osiris Eyes" just starts when we enter the club. Wow, the sofas are free! after the entire days of mostly standing on concrete, the sofas do so well. Dario couldn't go without a glimpse of the afterparty and keeps hanging out with us. More beer, chatting loudly, listening to music (though more relaxed)...
After an hour Dario leaves, the Brits leave half an hour later. In the meatime the party gathered momentum. I chat with all possible people. Master Of Puppets gets played. I had no idea that this is probably the core for most prog metal fans. I'm stunned. I'd think of Rush, Styx, Fates Warning, Queensryche, and, of course, Dream Theater as prog metal core bands. But Metallica? Johan started playing air guitar, and it looks like he really knows every note in it. All the rest is dancing and shouting "MAS-TERRR!"
While I'm at the urinal, I hear someone saying "ZERO HOUR??" I look at my t-shirt when Jeroen's face shows up between mine and the wall, telling me that ZH have been the best band last year. I agree.
The party becomes even hotter, and it's a mass movement. Everybody's dancing with everyone, I'm inmidst a mass of people, and the mass controls my movements. Some lady'S daning on a table. Staff seems drunk too meanwhile. Beer orders and any others constantly fail, everybody disagrees on the pricees they're telling. Every order ends up in an argument.

I decide to rest a bit before the party will continue at the castle. So I go the way back to the castle alone. And miss the right road. That's not where I wanted to go. I go back to a place I do know and try again. And miss the way again. DEAR GOD! How stupid am I? How many times did I go that way in the past??? I go back all the way to the venue and start the walk for the 3rd time. And finally find the right road. After a while someone behind me says "Hey!" I turn around and see another one walking alone. So we walk together. Another guy from Germany. He wasn't attending the last two years, because he din't like the line up. Our tastes must be pretty opposite.
Arriving at the castle, all the others are alrady there. They overtook me, no wonder about that. I go to our room, trying to get the octoberfest beer out there quietly, but fail. I make a lot of noise. Nobody even moves, they're sleeping deep.
On my way to the party, I find some people, asking for one of those beers. They look Turkish. And like they desperately want a beer. Of course guys! Take some! And I bring the beer to the party. "Ah the octoberfest beer!"
Andromeda show up. Johan tears his throat skin while imitating high pitched metal screams. I guess I got it, he wants to tell us that he finds those vocals ridiculus. The beer got placed in the circle's mid, and Marcel sits on the box. Seems like he's one of the few who can open German beer bottles.
After another hour of partying, I gotta call it a day (or should I say night? It is almost day again...)

When bands are loosing it

2009-12-06T10:59:00.000-08:00

I think most of us regularly go through the motions of eagerly awaiting a new release from one of your favorite bands, just to find it to be a rather moderate achievement or an outright disappointment. Sometimes we loose patience with a band and more or less give up on them, expecting nothing from them that would deserve our attention.

Why write about this topic? Don’t we just get over the disappointments and get on with it? There are after all plenty of other bands we can depend on to deliver what we need.

It is true that we turn to other sources, but if you are like me you never really get over the past. Once awed by the talent of “your band”, you tend to crave more of the same, and if you don’t get it, you wait, hoping for the day when they will take themselves together and bring back the “sound” of their former glory.

Reality check: Are the bands in question really getting worse in means of quality or did something happened to our perception of them?

Yes. Most bands are getting worse, either for real, or in relation to our expectations.
It is a known fact that great quality and innovation instills equally great expectations, expectations we tend to let grow regardless of how well a band keep churning out good quality music. We always expect or at least hope that “the next” album will give us as many, or even more, exciting moments as its predecessor. So, for a band to stay “on top of the game” they constantly need to outdo them selves. Maybe this seems unfair, but that is just how it works, music is above all entertainment, and if it doesn’t entertain its existence is moot.

So basically there are 2 ways a band can “loose it”:
1. The quality of their music it truly getting worse
2. Their talent has stagnated, enabling them to keep the level of quality, but produce nothing new that challenges or surprises the listener.

To back up my line of thought, lets look at some examples.

Dream Theater
Problem: Stagnation

This used to be my all time favorite band. What’s up with these guys? Here you have an orchestra whose members can be counted among the best of the best when measuring their talents on their respective instruments. They are in the club of the few that have fronted or even pioneered a genre (only counting those that have some level of public success). Unfortunately they seem content in doing what they do, and leave it at that. Their last time they really innovated was with the “Scenes from a memory” album. Everything since then has, broadly speaking, been more of the same.

Pain of Salvation
Problem: Quality

My first introduction to POS was "The Perfect Element" and “Remedy Lane”. Never before had I heard music and lyrics that carved a piece of my heart like that. The effort put forth on those two albums would be hard to maintain….as has been proved. Their last regular albums “BE” and “Scar Sick” were a huge disappointment to me, and the latter even features one of the worst, in my opinion, songs of the year (Disco Queen).

Neal Morse/Transatlantic
Problem: Stagnation and Quality

When it comes to creating real epics Neal is a mastermind. Lately though, his involvement has been rather 'its hard to put my finger on it, but it feels like something is missing’ish. Not too many years ago Neal made a decision to make Christianity the central part of his message, since then it seems like he has lost some of his genius. He never makes bad songs really, but they are just not as good as they used to be. I’m not sure how big a finger print he has on the latest from Transatlantic, but the trend seems to be similar…

Queensryche
Problem: Quality.

What can I say? My favorite “late teenage” heroes seem to have lost their soul…completely. I don’t know where they play, but it’s definitely not a band I hear in my “now frontier”. This ex-band is simply as close to zero as you can be on my care-o-meter. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little…..or maybe not. Just take a listen to anything released since “Promised Land”. As a side note: Try to listen to one of their recent live albums and notice how Geoff has to go low on some notes that caused him no problem s earlier.

You could say that all this is not important since the mission of most band members is NOT to do what you like, but to do what they enjoy…playing their music. That is true to some level, but since I have invested time and money in their music, which helps them (I hope) to keep their dream alive, I feel I have the right to complain when I’m disappointed.

Now to the tough question: When a band fails to deliver would it be better if they just called it quits? I’m not sure, but sometimes it feels like the only justification for some bands to still exist, is to milk the cow for all its worth.

The Rise And Fall Of Prog Part 1, A Study Of The Essential Album List Of The Last Decade and Beyond

2009-12-03T07:14:00.000-08:00

I started this project with a simple goal in mind. I wanted to create a list of all the most essential prog CDs of the past decade. So I started looking at the most highly rated albums on the Progulus website year by year as rated by the listeners. First here's a bit of background: As each song plays on the radio station it has the opportunity to be rated by the listeners on a scale of 1 – 5. Progulus get about 3,000-5,000 new ratings every month from the listeners. Over time the number of ratings on a song build up and a representative sample of the overall average rating of the songs are gathered. While I think we can all agree that most listeners of Progulus Radio listeners are prog fans, there is a pretty diverse range of tastes within that group which I won’t get into here. But when you pool together all of the votes over this wide group of listeners, the average ratings begin to become significant over time and we can begin to find albums that appeal to a larger cross-section of listeners.

To create the essential album list, I selected only the albums with more than 50 total votes with an average rating >4.5. As the data started to fall out, I noticed a few interesting things. First, the total number of albums that met the criteria was less than 150 between 1999-2009, and furthermore the total number of these highly rated albums between 1991-2009 is less than 175. That is much a lower number than I expected. There were only about 25 essential albums in the decade of the 90’s. Second, and far more startling to me, is that the trend in the data suggests the rise of really good prog albums has already peaked and is now on the decline! When I looked at the total number of highly rated albums on a year-by-year basis, I found a bell curve in the data that peaked around 2004-2005, but with 2007 being a particularly good year in prog that seems to stand apart from the data.

The number of highly rated albums does appear to have fallen off significantly in 2008 – 2009. I personally had noticed before this study that 2006 and 2008 were particularly dull years for the genre, and this data set does seem to confirm that. One other possibility to explain this data is that listeners have 'heard it all before' so they are tending to rate new albums lower than they did in the past. I don't think this is the case though, because the rating system at Progulus has only been active since the beginning of 2008 so all of the ratings are coming out of a relatively short two year span of time.

I'm not sure what this means for the future of the genre, but I think that the data should raise a few eyebrows among us dedicated prog fans. I know that I've personally seen a number of threads in various forums suggesting that prog is a dying genre and albums coming out recently are not as good as they used to be. These frustrations seemed pretty relative to the tastes of the listener at the time but now this data might also shed light on their frustrations.

The number of highly rated albums do not seem to related to the volume of new releases each year. For instance 2006 had the largest number of releases on our station (over 200), yet was a pretty poor year for good albums. I need to look more closely at the ratio of really good albums vs. everything else on the station from year to year to see if it's changing or remaining pretty much constant. I’ll continue to study the data and report back again with any other correlations I can find. In the meantime, here’s my essential list of prog albums between 1991 and 2009. Enjoy!

Best albums released in 2009 (subject to change as more late-year additions become available):

Dream Theater-Black Clouds & Silver Linings
Guilt Machine-On This Perfect Day
Gösta Berlings Saga-Detta Har Hant
Indukti-Idmen
OSI-Blood
Ozric Tentacles-The Yum Yum Tree
Redemption-Snowfall On Judgment Day
Riverside-Anno Domini High Definition

Best albums released in 2008:

7for4-Diffusion
Amaseffer-Exodus: Slaves for Life
Ayreon-01011001
Circle II Circle-Delusions of Grandeur
Evergrey-Torn
Everon-North
Karmakanic-Who's The Boss In The Factory
Opeth-Watershed
Pendragon-Pure
Riverside-Reality Dream
Seventh Wonder-Mercy Falls
Shadrane-Temporal

Best albums released in 2007:

Age of Nemesis-Terra Incognita
Allen/Lande-The Revenge
Animations-Animations
Anubis Gate-Andromeda Unchained
Circus Maximus-Isolate
Cosmosquad-Acid Test
Dead Soul Tribe-A Lullaby For The Devil
Dominici-O3 A Trilogy - Part 2
Dream Theater-Systematic Chaos
Kamelot-Ghost Opera
Myrath-Hope
Nightingale-White Darkness
Phideaux-Doomsday Afternoon
Porcupine Tree-Fear Of A Blank Planet
Poverty's No Crime-Save My Soul
Pure Reason Revolution-Live At Nearfest 2007
Redemption-The Origins Of Ruin
Riverside-Rapid Eye Movement
Rush-Snakes & Arrows
Sieges Even-Paramount
Spheric Universe Experience-Anima
Symphony X-Paradise Lost
Thought Chamber-Angular Perceptions
Threshold-Dead Reckoning

Best albums released in 2006:

Beyond Twilight-For The Love Of Art And The Making
Dream Theater-Score - 20th Anniversary World Tour
Freakeys-Freakeys
Frost*-Milliontown
Odd Logic-Legends Of Monta Part 1
Pyramaze-Legend Of The Bone Carver
Seventh Wonder-Waiting In The Wings
Silent Voices-Building Up The Apathy
Tomorrow's Eve-Mirror of Creation II - Genesis II
Tool-10,000 Days
Vanden Plas-Christ.0
Venturia-The New Kingdom
Wolverine-Still

Best albums released in 2005:

Beyond Twilight-Section X
Circus Maximus-The 1st Chapter
Ghiribizzi-Pan'ta Rhei
Indukti-S.U.S.A.R
John Petrucci-Suspended Animation
Kamelot-The Black Halo
Lalu-Oniric Metal
Magic Pie-Motions Of Desire
novAct-Tales From The Soul
Opeth-Ghost Reveries
Overhead-Metaepitome
Pagan's Mind-enigmatic : calling
Pallas-The Dreams of Men
Porcupine Tree-Deadwing
Presto Ballet-Peace Among The Ruins
Redemption-The Fullness Of Time
Riverside-Second Life Syndrome
Shadow Gallery-Room V
Sieges Even-The Art Of Navigating By The Stars
Stride-Imagine

Best albums released in 2004:

Ayreon-Actual Fantasy Revisited
Ayreon-The Human Equation
Blackfield-Blackfield
Dead Soul Tribe-The January Tree
Dream Theater-Live At Budokan
Dreamscape-End Of Silence
Evergrey-The Inner Circle
John Petrucci & Jordan Rudess-An Evening with...
Jordan Rudess-Rhythm of Time
Karmakanic-Wheel Of Life
Nightwish-Once
Pain Of Salvation-BE
Pain Of Salvation-12:5
Pyramaze-Melancholy Beast
Riverside-Out Of Myself
Sylvan-X-Rayed
Threshold-Critical Energy
Threshold-Subsurface
Trans-Siberian Orchestra-The Lost Christmas Eve

Best albums released in 2003:

Adagio-Underworld
Andromeda-II = I
Arena-Contagion
Atmosfear-Inside The Atmosphere
Dead Soul Tribe-A Murder Of Crows
Derek Sherinian-Black Utopia
Dream Theater-Train of Thought
Evergrey-Recreation Day
John Arch-A Twist of Fate
Opeth-Damnation
OSI-Office of Strategic Influence
Poverty's No Crime-The Chemical Chaos
Star One-Live On Earth
Sun Caged-Sun Caged
Tomorrow's Eve-Mirror Of Creation

Best albums released in 2002:

Dream Theater-Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
Lacuna Coil-Comalies
Nightwish-Century Child
Pagan's Mind-Celestial Entrance
Pain of Salvation-Remedy Lane
Porcupine Tree-In Absentia
Spock's Beard-Snow
Star One-Space Metal
Superior-Ultima Ratio
Symphony X-The Odyssey
Threshold-Critical Mass
Vanden Plas-Beyond Daylight

Best albums released in 2001:

Adagio-Sanctus Ignis
Ambeon-Fate Of A Dreamer
Beyond Twilight-The Devil's Hall of Fame
Dream Theater-Live Scenes From New York
Jordan Rudess-Feeding The Wheel
Savatage-Poets And Madmen
Stride-Music Machine
Symphony X-Live On The Edge Of Forever
Threshold-Hypothetical

Best albums released in 2000:

Ayreon-Universal Migrator - The Dream Sequencer
Ayreon-Universal Migrator Part II: Flight Of The Migrator
Fates Warning-Disconnected
Koyaanisqatsy-From The Yearning To Burst - The Perpetual Circle
Maximum Indifference-The Transmutations of Supposed Angels or Beings that were once Girls
Pain Of Salvation-The Perfect Element I
Planet X-Universe
Porcupine Tree-Lightbulb Sun
Spock's Beard-V
Symphony X-V: The New Mythology Suite 2000

Best albums released in 1999:

A.C.T-Today's Report
Balance Of Power-Ten More Tales Of Grand Illusion
Dali's Dilemma-Manifesto For Futurism
Dream Theater-Scenes From a Memory
Liquid Tension Experiment-Liquid Tension Experiment 2
Opeth-Still Life
Porcupine Tree-Stupid Dream

Best albums released in 1998:

Ayreon-Into The Electric Castle
Liquid Tension Experiment-Liquid Tension Experiment 1
Pain Of Salvation-One Hour By The Concrete Lake
Symphony X-Twilight In Olympus

Best albums released in 1997:

Dream Theater-Falling Into Infinity
Fates Warning-A Pleasant Shade Of Gray
IQ-Subterranea
Pain Of Salvation-Entropia
Spock's Beard-Beware Of Darkness
Spock's Beard-The Kindness Of Strangers
Symphony X-The Divine Wings Of Tragedy

Best albums released in 1996:

Lemur Voice-Insights

Best albums released in 1995:

Ayreon-The Final Experiment
Dream Theater-A Change of Seasons
Savatage-Dead Winter Dead
Symphony X-The Damnation Game

Best albums released in 1994:

Dream Theater-Awake

Best albums released in 1993:

None

Best albums released in 1992:

Dream Theater-Images And Words

Best albums released in 1991:

None

Music Without Borders - Interview: Farzad Golpayegani

2009-11-20T23:34:00.000-08:00

Farzad Golpayegani is an Iranian born musician, composer and visual artist. His music seamlessly blends progressive metal and rock with the traditional sounds of the music of his home country. He is also a visual artist and graphic designer. He has released 3 cds so far and another is in progress. Due to the difficulty in getting his music to the wider world from Iran, all of his music is available for free on his website. Farzad has also just relocated to Istanbul, Turkey. Hopefully this will give him more to share his music with the world. He was kind enough to do this email interview with me just after his move. Please be sure to visit his website.

• Your music blends Iranian influences with western-style prog and metal. Was this natural for you to do?

It had been my idea since I started to compose my own songs. Personally I enjoy many different genres and I have tried to blend my favorite styles including Iranian traditional and prog metal to achieve my own style. I won’t say it hasn’t happened before but I’ve tried to give an Iranian taste and spirit to this type of metal music.

• What is the reception of your music in Iran like?

Unfortunately there is no space for musicians like me. Because metal music has been totally banned in Iran for years. I have had some concerts and releases in Iran but they were about 5 years ago. Even though my songs are instrumental and also have Iranian elements I still don’t have permission to release or perform them.

• Do you play your music live? How is the live experience different than the studio for you?

For couple of years my only chance to have a concert has been playing abroad, which is a bit hard when you live in a country where always there is difficulty getting a visa. That’s why I recently left Iran for Turkey, to maybe have a better situation.

• Do you have a favorite piece of gear? Something you can't live without?

Well, I’m used to get the best result that I can with a minimum of equipment. I have record most of my songs with a low level quality instruments so it doesn't matter to me. The only thing is that I prefer play with a 7 string electric guitar other than usual 6 string.

• Talk about your musical influences, who inspires you? Are there any newer bands you really like?

I always enjoy discovering new bands and there are many different artists that I like but maybe more interesting is when I’m inspired by a completely different song or artist other that metal ones and then its influence comes to my metal works.

• Do you have a regular practice routine?

Actually no! Because I’m busy with different activities and play instruments like electric guitar, steel and nylon acoustic guitars, bass guitar and violin, or work on my visual projects like painting and graphic design, but I usually focus on one of them at a time.

• Describe your writing process a little. Do you use notation? Do you write with other people or do you work alone?

I don’t have a regular process. Sometimes I start composing and sometimes I get an idea for a song while I’m improvising. Also I usually use notation when I need a another player other than me for a record or a concert. And I also write my songs alone, but I always enjoy jamming and cooperation with other artists. I always have some jamming and improvisation parts with my band at my concerts.

• Your website says your next album will be all acoustic. How is that coming along? What led you down that road?

At the moment that record is mainly finished. I always have had some fusion songs or parts in my record but this time I wanted to make a complete record in this way. Maybe some who were interested in my previous records will not enjoy this record as previous ones but I will also have new audience with different taste by this record. Composition of the instruments in this record is: Steel and Nylon Acoustic Guitar, Resonator Guitar, Bass Guitar and Violin. And I have used acoustic guitar with about 6 different tunes within the tracks.

• You've written music for video games, what was that like?

It was a good experience. Since my works are instrumental I can write music for games, animations and films easily and I really enjoy it. By adding some bonus tracks and different versions I will prepare these two game soundtrack projects as two complete records of mine. The historical theme of “Nader’s Blade” and ancient theme of “Garshasp” have been close to my own works, the difference is the epic feeling that I added to them and I used a different orchestration (different instruments).

• You have formal training in visual art, does your art influence your music and vice versa?

Of course. For me working on music or visual art is like saying a same thing with a different language. There are the same rules, elements, motifs, feeling etc, but only in a different shape. I have in mind to start a series of performances like what I had in “Intergalactic Music Festival” (2006) in Amsterdam. It will be like playing back the rhythm tracks of my songs while I play the lead guitar parts, with video art on display during the performance. This idea helps me to perform musically and visually in the same time.

• You've decided to release all of your albums for free. Why is that?

There were not any chances inside Iran for releasing my records and also other options like digitally releasing wasn’t looking good. So I decided to release them for free so at least reach a larger audience. It’s so hard to release the records that I’ve spent years to complete for free and not have permission to go on stage. It leads to not to having any financial profit from my records, but I still love to work on my musical projects.

• There is a hidden track on your album "Three," a really wild take on some classic rock and metal songs. You've given them a real personal sound. How did that come about?

From the beginning I never have been interested in playing cover songs, until I found a bit more of my own style at my third record. I prefer the cover songs that the one who is playing it gives it a personal touch. For me playing a song from another artist in the exact way that it is, is of no value. Like a fake painting (reproduction) that is painted with so much talent, but still is fake! Having character is more valuable than just having talent to play a song. In that hidden track I wanted to use tracks from musicians that have made my vision when I started to play guitar. It was like a respect.

• Anything else you would like to say to our readers?

I hope to have the opportunity to make many gigs and concerts and to see those who like my songs around the world, and also have a better situation to make progress in my music.

Thanks so much to Farzad and do check out his site. I hope his move will mean more music and more shows. Maybe progressive music is the key to world peace.

New Blog Layout

2009-11-15T04:14:00.000-08:00

If you are reading this you would have noticed that I have changed the layout template of the blog. The new design is easier to maintain and expand and also looks more clean. It features 3 columns (except at the top of the page), which means you don't have to scroll so much to see the links and other stuff in the sidebar.

Hope you like it.

If not, let me know in a comment to this article.

Who do you think you are?

2009-11-03T12:51:00.000-08:00

Progulus listener Zaii recently commented in the forum:

Does anyone else get bored of new Prog Bands saying things like "for fans of Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree and Opeth"? It's always the same few massive Prog bands and most of the time they actually don't sound anything alike. It would be nice if they named a band they actually do sound like. I have become so disillusioned by people saying such things that when a band claims to sound like DT, yes and PT for example I immediately become very skeptical and assume they are a not particularly talented group who are just trying to draw in as many listeners as possible by claiming to sound like the biggest band they can think of. When was the last time someone said "sounds like Karmakanic" for example???

This got me thinking again about the difficulty of finding your own sound and also finding a way to tell people what you sound like. You want to be accurate, but you don't want to confuse people. Zaii also made reference to a band that's been spamming the Progulus tag board. Spamming will make people mad to begin with, but they also claim to sound like Dream Theater, Rush, and Genesis. They aren't even close. I think it's bad form to try to ride someone's coattails in a deceptive way. If you say you sound like Rush and you don't, I probably won't take the time to find out what you so sound like. I'll probably forget all about you.

Sometimes descriptions of bands are written by their label or promoter. In this case you'll probably hear an accurate comparison, but it will also be of the biggest bands. This is pure marketing, meant to catch the most ears. This isn't necessarily wrong either. I think you do need to speak your audience's language. Once after a Strange Land show one guy in another band (a well known guy in this area) said "Man, you guys have that Kansas thing down!" I know it was meant as a compliment, and I took it as such. But I also said to myself "Huh?!" I'm the only member of Strange Land that listens to a lot of Kansas, and they really are a generation before us anyway. But the guy who gave us the compliment was a little older and probably stopped listening to anything remotely prog in 1980. When people hear something unfamiliar the brain needs to find a place to put it. Sometimes the closest match isn't that close at all. Do we sound like Kansas? Well, more than we sound like Barry White. When I have to describe Strange Land to non-prog fans I'll say Queensryche, Rush, King's X, maybe Living Colour, maybe Dream Theater (if they're metal fans). Listeners of commercial hard rock radio will know some of those bands, and the comparison isn't inaccurate. If I start talking about Pain Of Salvation and Fates Warning I usually get blank stares.

Another problem in describing my band is whether or not to talk about influence vs. inspiration vs. emulation. We are influenced by Devin Townsend, Echolyn, Dead Soul Tribe, and Nevermore but I don't think we really sound much like those bands. Sometimes I want to make the comparison though because I've been inspired in some way by such a band even though I'm not copying their sound.

So, back to Zaii's point, and knowing your audience. If I know I'm talking to the prog crowd I can mention all of the above bands and more obscure ones. It's hard to make the comparison to the lesser known bands, there are so many and such variety. Strange Land is influenced by Fates Warning, but its later material. We are influenced by Queesnryche, but mostly Rage For Order through Promised Land.

It is a mistake to compare yourself to someone you don't sound like. I think it's also a mistake for younger bands to say "for fans of" when they aren't ready or are not up to snuff quality-wise. If I say "Strange Land sounds like Symphony X" and we don't, you'll be annoyed. If I say "we're influenced or inspired by" then we still might grab your attention. There is too much emphasis on being the next [fill in famous name here] that bands are unwilling to let time and word of mouth work. I find it better to sound like me than to not sound like someone else but say I do. Unfortunately, in the marketing world, "I sound like me" doesn't cut it. So many bands try to say they sound like whatever you like.

Be A Pro

2009-11-01T16:03:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like good customer service. I even think it's worth paying a little more for great service. In the world of the performing musician, good customer service is contained in being professional. And by professional I don't mean making a living at it. I don't mean any particular level of technical prowess on your instrument. I mean common courtesy. I mean doing what you say you will do. I mean not behaving like a dumbass. One definition from Merriam-Webster: following a line of conduct as though it were a profession.

For the second time this year Strange Land ventured south of the border to Illinois. We played on the north side of Chicago at the Redline Tap. Cool place, good food. Big thanks to Progulus listeners Iceman and Falcon and their friends and family for coming out.

For the second time this year, a show in Illinois was partly hosed because other bands didn't show up. Click here for the scoop on the previous show. This time there were five bands booked. One cancelled a few weeks before the show. Two more were total no-shows. No call, no excuse, nothing. We were expecting to play a 30 minute set. We played for an hour. The other band that did show, Seeking, was cool. Glad to meet them.

But what kind of a moron do you have to be to just bail on a show with no notice? I've seen other examples of not being pro. Chewing out the sound guy. Wrecking the venues property. Being rude to the other bands and to the staff. Getting drunk and making a fool of yourself. Sorry, but acting like a "rock star" doesn't make you one. I know I'm weird but I've never thought it was cool to behave like a typical rock star. The closest I think you can be to getting away with it is when you actually are a rock star with millions of dollars and a team of lawyers. Even then, I'll still think you're an ass and your behavior isn't cool. You'll just be better equipped to not care and get away with it.

We are probably the most punctual band in the state of Wisconsin. I feel bad if I show up five minutes late. We treat the sound guy with respect. We thank the venue and the other bands we play with. We thank the people who came to see us. That's pro, and that earns us the respect of venues, sound guys, bands and fans. That gets people to buy cds. That gets us invited back to the venue. That gets us invited to open for national acts. That gets other bands to trade shows with us. And that is why we are entering out 11th year as a band. One measure of success in my mind is survival. We've made it 11 years, 3 albums, and dozens of shows because we've outlasted so many other bands. One of the biggest keys to our survival is our commitment to being pro.

The 5th Season - a diary, Day 1

2009-10-31T15:08:00.001-07:00

While writing this I find out that it is quite a little Lord Of The Rings what I wanna tell about just 3 days. Well it is indeed a 'shortened' version and I decided to do one article per day. But I want to bring this down to "paper". So, if you're really bored one day, feel free to actually read the whole thing. :-) Well, here it is:

Friday morning at 7 am. Into the car.
The box of Oktoberfestbeer is there, good.
Promised it to the regulars.
One hour later, at the other end of town we pick up Dario (aka ProgressiveLunatic, aka LordPL) and FluffyGuts. Could have been 30 minutes to go, but some Al Qaeda guy was mumbling something about not wanting beer and an Oktoberfest in Afghanistan, so half of the city, around the Oktoberfest, became a high security zone. We had to go a long way around that... Anyway, we're at the highway now.
At the end of the road, our road, a weekend with 15 progmetal bands and people from 15 nations are waiting! Though the line up is a bit weaker than on the last two festivals, exitement has already taken control over me.

Fluffyguts is a girl from Australia, she popped up at the ppe forum, looking for assistance to trip from Munich to ppe. There was a free seat left in our car.
Gerhard (gdantell) said he might show up on short notice when his business trip will allow it.
Robert (Atomic) was checking out if he could join some 10 days ago, but found out that he hasn't any more work-free days for this year. Bummer.

German highways are a mess, half of the entire way is under construction and it takes us more than an hour longer to cross the border at Roermond. We tried to avoid the Friday afternoon rush in Venlo and decided to hit Barloo from the south, and find the road to Baarlo filled with a massive traffic jam. We leave the road and take the long way around it, navigating with a map on my lap. That's not easy in the Netherland, they have a rather strange idea of where to put signs on the road and where not. If we had to rely on the signs I guess we would have ben completely lost. Fortunately the truck in front of us is from Venlo, and considering that it's Friday afternoon, we guess that guy is heading towards home. The roads we pass sometimes are so small and designed in a way that we're expecting a dead-end several times, even though they're labeled as main road in the map. We find a road sign that leads to Baarlo - thankfully.
It's a quater past four when we reach the castle, our accommodation. Casteel DeBerckt is kind of a hotel and they have a deal with progpower, everyone who orders a package deal for progpower also books bed and breakfast at the castle for a pretty fair price. And it is indeed 'bed', not 'room'. They simply fill their rooms with progpower people, noone has his own room there. If you come alone, you'll end up sleeping in a room with absolutely unknown people, unless you told the progpower staff who you wanna join rooms with. We did that.
When we enter the courtyard, a couple of black t-shirts are already there, sitting in a circle around some beer and an ipod with speaker application, with - of course - Devin Townsend playing. The regulars. When they gather, they are mostly always making a circle. They see us coming, with the box of beer, and welcome us, shouting out "It's the Geeermaaans", raising their beer cans.

At the entrance of the castle they have exposed a room plan this year, but the lady who welcomes us still is confused because Fluffyguts is in a different room than Dario and me. We help her in pointing at our names on the plan. I should mention that they don't have a reception at the castle, you just get in and wait on the corridor until some staff comes along. Something like the castle would be impossible in Germany, a hotel without a reception, only functional furnishing that lacks any kind of design, no bar. I know, Dutch hotels are different to the ones I've ever been anywhere else. But still, the castle is a great place.
Entering our room we find Gary (Cyberfloat) and Simon (jimmyjoint) hanging out, just as expected. The Brits always go into their room and only get out when they're leaving the hotel. Ok, Let's hug! It has been an entire year. Before I can pull off my jacket Gary is holding a bottle of Jamesson under my nose. Ah dammit, let the party begin!
Wait, six beds in our room? Weird... looks like they've messed up the reservation and we're having spare beds. And one window is broken. Wait... there were two people in the room, a window is broken, three empty bottles of beer at the table. Not two, not four, but three. Hey guys did you....?

Grabbing all we need for the festival, print of booking confirmation, torch (2 km to walk back at night, no lights on the road...), we go down to the courtyard, make the circle of the regulars a little bigger and thankfully receive some beer. Finally, the travel is over. Hanging out, chatting and relaxing. Marcel tells me that they don't know which rooms they're in. I talk about the exposed plan, but he says that some are still on the road or even in the air. I don't get the point, but don't want to get into it too detailed now...
After a little while it's already time to get up and leave the castle. We stand up... and stand... and stand.... I start walking slowly, Dario wonders about it and I say "it's time to get this thing moving". That helped. Slowly the trail of the black t-shirts is heading it's way. Watch out Baarlo, we're comming!
A car is speeding down the road and almost hits 2 of the black t-shirts. Fool, it's progpower, don't you know you ought to use another road?? Another car aproaches, more carefully. When it reaches us, growling from inside, hands out of the windows. They'll be there faster... cheaters!
Simon, Gary and me are not talking much, as usual. Dario, as usual, talks. And talks. And talks. Glad he does. He's doing the talk for us all...
We reach Baarlo, reach the venue and pass by. We're heading towards the great chinese restaurant right before the show starts. A tradition. It simply is funny seeing them being scared behind their desk when the long haired mob of black t-shirts arrives, aproximate 30 of us. We cross the mainroad 20 meters beneath the traffic lights. We're proggers. Using the traffic lights would be mainstream, wouldn't it?
At the restaurant, the cheaters are already there, Asians are praying, the bigger tables get occupied by the regulars, we're adviced to use the next one. We thankfully sit down and Gary stands there... crying. What's up? Oh, it's four seats and we're five. He prepares himself to sit alone at the next table. Damn poor guy. We decide to mess up this whole place and Gary takes his chair to our table, at the front end of it.
Gary used to tell me about chilly festivals, chilly chocolate, chilly jam etc through the entire year. Now while eating chinese food, they all do stop chewing, breath in, reach for beer, drink, breath again, start searching for little red vegetables (paprikas?) in this delicious dish. I don't really think it's hot at all; I even added some chilly sauce to it, and still... too mild, European... well...
After a very delicious - mild - dinner and some chat we gotta leave, queue up at the counter for paying. Another mess at the restaurant. And it takes quite long, although nobody had else then buffet and one or two beers.

Going back, crossing the main road, but at the traffic lights. Huh??? Why that? Oh, ah, our English friends are leading the trail...
We aim the festival. Walking through Baarlo. Church bell rings, windows get closed, some kids are taken off the streets panically....
[soundtrack advice: establish this cut with a harmonica melody in 9/4 and add a dramatic church bell to the cut]
WE HIT IT!!!! The holy place! The venue! Sjiwa!!! (On all other 362 days of the year it's just the local youth club...)
At the entrance we queue up again. His holiness Rene, the man who organizes this every year, hands out the tickets personally. And that's quite due! It's a ritual. You hand over the ticket confirmation, Rene browses the stack of envelopes for your name and hands out yours. You receive it humbly and your prog aura expands to the measure of our planet and blesses entire mankind withing 5 seconds. And collapses back to a little bigger than normal size. Woossshhhh
It's strange somehow. After such a tight day I'm finally at the venue, and still I don't feel like having arrived. Next task is exchanging. You gotta give them Euros for some kind of Sjiwa currency, some plastic coins. They won't give you beer or anything for real money. Ah yes, the beer. small one is 0,2 liters, big one 0,4 liters. I tried to tell them that, where I come from, a big beer is actually one entire liter, but they never seemed to have any use for that information....
A small - very small - beer in hand I'm at the merch stand, the guy welcomes me and we chat a bit. Being here for the third year, even he already knows my face. I want an Andromeda t-shirt, size M, so I better get one at the beginning. No. They don't have one. That is always a problem at the end of a year he says. Almost pissed, I feel like shouting out to all bands "make more of the most common sizes!!!!!!!!!" Well, I take L then, telling myself that L is good in winter.
No band has played yet but I already have a merch bag. Including a progpower poster. Hehe...

Cirrha Niva is the band that starts this years festival. A dutch band that already has their 5th album out. I did not know about them before they were announced for progpower. Their music is dark, a bit depressive, but aggressive. No grunts - thankfully - the singer is a shouter, not taking much care of hitting the proper note for the sake of shouting, but he's never out of key. Their music is nothing special, pretty generic in style, though most bands do grunt in this genre.
I takes a bit until I notice that there is no bass player. He couldn't come, so they taped the bass and now play to the 'tape'.
The sound is not good. It's hard to seperate the instruments, the bass track is so silent, yes, unaudible for long sections of their gig.
The bands stage approach is a bit stiff, yet uncertain, but we, the audience are too. It seems we all need a bit of time for settling. Musicwise a good start of the festival, they do a good job in warming us up.
In the break I'm finally relaxed and do some talk here, some there.

Cloudscape is the second band. Number three in my personal favourites of this years bands. I like their style of "Sweden metal goes prog". They go on stage and just start, whithout any need of warming up. Some little feedbacks occur, from the drum mics I suppose; but these are just a worms guesses. The mix changes drastically for several times, suddenly the drums are completely off the PA. The engineer must have drastic problems. During song three engineer seems to have everything under control, but...
Why is it always at progpower that the drums are too loud and the guitars way too much in the background? I mean, we're celebrating a metal fest after all. Remembrance back into 2007, when the gig of Circus Maximus sounded like prog rock.
I'm at the wrong place, gotta go closer to the stage. Yes, in row four the sound is quite ok. (most of the time at progpower there is enough space to be wherever you want to)
The band puts quite some energy on stage. They're having fun playing for us and Mike Andersson is a great frontman, good good show! Sound... not good, sounds pretty 'cloudy', as if Devin Townsend were on stage.
Despite the sound and "Sweden prog metal" I liked their gig.
When they're done, the thank you goes around. Thank you band for playing, thank you folks for listening, thank you Rene, thank you Matthias... (Thank you Mattias? A couple of bands last year did thank him as well. That's weird...)

Talk of this break is the sound. Everybody wonders if the new loudness policy causes this, maybe it's not solvable to produce a good sound at lower levels with this FOH/PA. Fact is, everybody's complaining. Last two festivals haven't been too loud in my opinion. I don't understand this policy, as most people use ear protectors anyway. I tell myself to get arranged with it. I have heard so many crappy sounding gigs in my life, I have learned how to listen concentrated and enjoy a gig.

Headliner of tonight is Andromeda. If someone asks me for a good example for prog metal I point at Andromeda. Dream Theater? Who?
... I find a good place in row two. Nice sound here, I can hear the drums unamped, sounds way better than what the engineer offers. All other instruments and vocals come from the PA and surround me, I'm in a cloud of notes. Many notes! And all coming pretty fast and continuous. David Fremberg is one of the very few who sing on stage exactly as in the studio! Most of the biggest vocal heores in the world can't achive that. They got my body, my head, moving within the first tune, and that won't stop until the gig is over. I never bang head on 4/4 bands, time signatures and overall rhythm must be complex for me. But then I can't stop, I never bang on purpose. I'm wrenched, pushed and hustled in a centre of a continuous box barrage cloud of notes. Thomas Lejons drum breaks are absolutely insane, he is up in my Walhalla of drummers for now and ever. The entire band is. I'm blown! Looking around me I see that the others are too. Everytime someone is extra-impressed by some musical madness, looks around and looks into anotherone's eyes, a hug is next, we front-rowers do bang heads and hug. Marcel, the regular, is air-drumming. Another song is over, another little rest, suddenly the floor is playing techno. Ah, right we've been warned. Local teenagers are having a disco party in the basement. Must it be really that loud? No respect, these kids today. Woooooosh the Andromeda train goes on....
And then they're finished. What? Ah ok, two hours are already over. Thank you, thank you, thank you band, thank you audience, thank you Rene, thank you Mattias. ("He was at progpower from the beginning and did not miss one festival, for eleven years long!")

I feel like I wanna go home. This weekend cannot get any better. what a massive musical event did I experience right now! --- Nah, hey the entire weekend just started, man! Even though there will be no better band than this, it will be fun.
I turn around and look for the Brits - ouch my neck! I can't find them. We go outside and hangout there a bit, smoking, chatting, drinking, the Brits are gone. They left during this ultimate gig? Nuts....
Fluffguts comes along. Haven't seen her since we arrived at the venue. She's having party already. Good! :D
Local kids ocupy the basement, so no afterparty there tonight. The trail of the black t-shirts is heading towards the castle. Passing the local pig farm and an ugly smell we consider shooting some ham for breakfast but give up because we have no weapon. Not even a drum stick...
After a refreshing walk and talk - hell my neck still hurts - arriving at the castle, someone comes out the door and says "hey we gotta find a room where nobody's sleeping, someone sleeps in our room." Confusion... But the gods of prog are kind to us. Rene arrives on his bicycle, has loads of beer, grabs them beers and quickly dives into the downs of deBerckt.
We hang out in the courtyard, confused, not knowing where, what's going to happen. suddenly, on the second floor, there's music, loud music. Some of the regulars climb up the wall and enter the room through the window. When Dario and me come in, the reagulars already made up their circle, but there's place left at the table. David, Fabian and Johan of Andromeda are sitting there, and some more people. Fabian gives me a beer, we hang out, talking loud, because the music - Devin Townsend, what else - is quite loud.

Second row from left to right: Fabian (hidden), David (bald), me, Dario, Johan, and, hmm... was it the drummer of Cloudscape?
Hard to tell almost a month afterwards...

I tell Rene that I find the people of Baarlo cool. They simply bear the annual progpower without complaints and even help people wo are too drunk. Rene says that many of them just like the fact that something's happeing in Baarlo, and the few who don't go on holidays.

Progpower afterparty... drinking, talking music, listening... all are equal. No high noses, egos or something. Being the headliner, the festival master or just someone. We're all here for the same thing and we shall all be happy being together.

I find our British friends in our room, Simon the snoremonster and his endless attempts of trembling the house down.
Five snores and the Friday is no more. over and out.

Identity Crisis

2009-10-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about my identity lately. Specifically, should I have chosen a stage name years ago when I started playing out after college? I'm not getting mobbed by fans and I have my privacy. But there is obviously a conflict between my life as a musician and my personal life away from the stage. Lately it seems the more I express my private life the more damage I do to my music life.

I am a guitarist, bassist, singer, and percussionist. I am a composer. I am a recording engineer. I am an artist. I am a designer. I am a traveller. I am a friend. I am a son, a cousin, and a nephew. I am a skeptic. I am an atheist. Did those last two taint your view of all the previous ones? I wonder if there are some parents out there who would complain to their kid's schools if they new that the music teacher was using music in the classroom written by an atheist. Probably a few, never mind that I've only had instrumentals published so far and I wouldn't advocate atheism in a song to be bought by a school.

Still, I am who I am. People will either accept me or not. If you decide not to like my music because I'm an atheist, well, I can't change that. Music is music and I've found many religious songs beautiful. Especially in the classical world (like Ave Maria by Bach/Gounod). Creativity will find its way in the world, filtered through each artist's experience.

I think instead of separating the private from the public, I'm going to be bringing them closer together. Music is my life. I've never felt like I needed to do something as compulsively. I breathe, I eat, I play music. It's not something I can't do. I feel like I should focus on that and just shut up about everything else. I have to be 'me' to the fullest to be satisfied with my music. But music is not my life. I am more than just little black dots. I can't be creative without experiencing life. I think Neil Peart of Rush said it best:

Back in April of this year, just before the Snakes and Arrows tour, I did a TV interview for the Canadian music channel, MuchMusic. The cameraman placed the interviewer and me in the rehearsal hall, in front of my drums, where I had been laboring for several weeks by then. Some of the interviewer’s questions seemed to angle toward a certain starry-eyed view of my work, especially the touring side of it, and I tried to explain to him that I didn’t consider touring, or even drumming, to be my life.
He seemed perplexed, and to appraise me as clearly jaded and cynical, because his next question was, “When did you start to feel that way?”
I paused to think for a couple of seconds, then was glad to feel the mental light bulb illuminate a true and clear answer. I was able to answer honestly, “About a month into the first tour, in 1974.” That really was when I started to feel that touring was “not enough,” and turned to reading books as a way to make more use of the days and nights.
Partly out of sheer contrariness, but partly out of a desire for context, I often refer to playing the drums, with deliberate disrespect, as “the job”—hitting things with sticks. Obviously it means much more to me than that, and has been a central focus in my life. But still, it seems rather sad to hear anyone say that their work is their life.
Not family and friends? Not reading and writing? Not hiking or cross-country skiing or birdwatching or motorcycle riding or swimming?
Just work?
I don’t think so.

Thanks Neil.

Catharsis

2009-09-25T12:35:00.001-07:00

subject: CD Baby loves you

"Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, August 25, 2009.
We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh...
We miss you already. We'll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return."

This is the standard confirmation mail of CD Baby when you order something there. One month later I send them mail, I thank them for all the love and ask where my cd is. - Nothing... no answer...
Money gone but no Strange Land CD for me, just a love letter....
Put my picture off the wall guys. You don't like the way I look at you and I hate staring at you while walking by and laughing in my face.

Edit:

Day 35 --- an e-mail came in, almost a week late. They messed up the shipping adress. I wonder who's gonna pay for the second copy. Me or my Strange Land. I wouldn't have a problem with a second purchase, just for supporting Sean's band. (for any other purchase it would make me angry of course...)

note to self:
That's not fair, stringray. Every other band would have to give out another hardly produced copy! Treat them all equally and support any amateur band fully!!! grrrr...

Edit 2:

Day 39 --- another shipping has been confirmed by e-mail.
Sean has found out that they revamped their web site and some things still seem to operate improperly. Well, bugs happen....
The global 3 letter shipping company does not report non-delivered mail and seems to simply thrash it. That's a new no-service to me.

Edit 3:

Day 70 --- nothing arrived. I give up.

I'm going to do a second purchase once Sean has the cd available at the German independent distributor. They never annoyed me.

Sean was so kind to provide me with mp3s in the meantime, so I can at least listen to the music whenever I want.

Great cd Sean!

Edit 4:

Happy ending!

Guitarsean did send me another copy. And some extras, a magnet with the cover on it. You know those magnets you put on the fridge or something. They also managed to sign the booklet even though the cd was sealed. Those wizards!

I love reading the credits and Seans thanks - section. I'ts an ode to the progulus listeners...

Teaching my kids some (musical) values

2009-09-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

Da-da-Daa dada daDaa da-da-daa da-daaa

If you didn't already guess it...this is my 17 months old son mimicking a famous guitar sequence of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water". Apparently he picked it up while his older brother (9) was seeking out all versions of this song he could find on YouTube. I don't know how he got to hear this song, and I'm not much into this band, but it made me think...maybe this could be the start of something wonderful. Yeah, I know that statement is kind of cliche, but nevertheless I feel that I am on to something here.

Let me explain...My son has had a MP3 player for some time. Initially I put 15 good, somewhat popular songs on it, that he listened to for a while and then probably forgot about. Then he asked me if I could put 'Smoke' on it so that he could listen to it without the computer, cause his mother was getting a little enough of co-listening to it, and was thinking that his computer time was getting a little excessive. I told him "sure" and suggested that we also found some more material, since he was already bored of the 15 songs already on the device. What I didn't tell him was about my "evil" plan to slowly introduce him to "real music". This is something that has been in the back of my mind since I got kids; to "help" them discover music that is inspirational, entertaining and appreciated rather then just being the background noise of their lives.

Now, given the task of filling a MP3 player with music, what would you put on it? If the only requirement is that it should be good music, should you choose the things you like yourself or would it be fair to choose from all kinds of genres in order to give the potential listener more choice? Well, I'm not ashamed to say that I will try to instill in my son a taste for the music I prefer listening to, and I don't find that selfish in any way. You see, something that can bring people together more than anything else...is music. And I can think of no better cause than cultive the relationship with my son. If his potential love for jazz or classical music is to suffer because of that...so be it.

So I accidentally copied 2 songs onto the player with the names of Mystery Train and Sunrise on Mars (by Transatlantic and Threshold). Only 2 since I didn't want to scare him too much with unknown songs. You know the thing with kids, you just have to listen to the popular stuff to be cool. His reaction? Well he didn't care much about Threshold, but surprisingly he thought that Transatlantic was "way cool". Sad for the Thresholders, but great for my son. I like Threshold, but I still consider them to be only a few "measures and signatures" from mainstream. Transatlantic is on a completely different level. It is true that Mystery Train is not the most complex song made by the band, but it is a supreme display of greater musicianship compared to what "normal" people listen to these days.

To come back to the statement I made earlier about jazz and classical. It is actually a bit contradictory. I have found that prog can be the doorway leading to great discoveries in music. Before I got into prog I was completely anti jazz and classical (including opera), but now I'm open to both categories. Because there are no rules in prog, anything can be incorporated into it. Sometimes the result is bad, but a great many times the result is purely amazing. Just a side remark here: if you hate jazz and start liking The flower Kings...you are doomed to eternal schizophrenia.

Before I end this, it is time for the million dollar question...

What should I put on the MP3 player next?

A proggers 5th season - the fever's already begun

2009-08-25T12:54:00.001-07:00

It looks like so many people have their 5th season. The people in the Cologne area have their carnival. They stop working and just hang out drinking. Drinking a LOT! In Munich we have the Oktoberfest. Since travelling the world became so affordable, it's mostly tourists who drink. Drink a LOT! Well what would you do if you travelled half the globe for attending the worlds biggest 'drug' fest.

Fortunately I can escape the Oktoberfest for a weekend for the europroggers 5th season. Not to far away from Cologne, in the Netherlands there's the little town Baarlo, and they've established the best music festival in the world, progpower europe. 3 days, 15 bands, and what will we do? We will drink. Drink a LOT! But hey, how would a progger drink? Right, not without hearing 3.743.712,07 notes a day, played live.
But not just that, a proguli meeting par exellence it will be, meeting cyberfloat, Jimmyjoint, gdcantell, and of course PL already ordered tickets and I hope more will come.
The big deal of the festival is that most of the audience and bands will stay at the same accommodation and many bands just do the same like us folks, enjoy the festival and see the others play. It's like a big family. There is no "you audience - we band". It just happens that you're chatting with some dudes, go for another beer and you can't find them anymore; the reason for this is mostly that these guys just prepare for stage and gonna play in 20 minutes. That's how you spend the afternoon and half of the night. After the headliners have played the party starts at the bar in the basement. That's where you meet the Threshold drummer, guitarist Marcel Coenen, etc. Once you have enough beer and go your way to the venue, another crowd happens to hang out, someone brings some beer from somewhere and you talk to Zero Hour among others before falling into bed. In the morning you even don't notice the hangover, at breakfast, Pathosray on the left and Cynic on the right of you, you prepare for the next massive note attack.
But definately all people you meet there are great guys. If regulars or just some who only come once, all are nice, friendly and helpful. There even are no doors locked at the accomodation, and people share rooms who have never met before. They say that there never was anything missing in the end of the festival (except a beer or two...).
And they seem to come from all the world, no matter if Australia, Korea, Paraguay, etc, no place in the world seems to be too far away.
Bummer, still 6 weeks to go...

Last year I intended to post my very personal impressions of the festival, but ended up being too busy to do it. I Promise I'll post them this year.

A very deep thank you goes out to Rene Janssen and his team for organizing the festival for the 11th time now, and to the nice and kind citizens of Baarlo for bearing the invasion of the black t-shirts so patiently. Be prepared!

A personal note for Jana:

I promised to provide you with a ride from/to Munich, as the car is going that way anyway. Would be a shame if you'd jump over to Munich from Australia and not head to the festival.
I'm leaving a second trace here, if I intended to do you any harm, I'd be traceable not only via the progpower team, but also through the google server.

Edit: If there's some space left I'll bring some Oktoberfest-beer!!

That is why I do this

2009-08-24T20:08:00.001-07:00

Strange Land had a show last Friday at a place that shall remain nameless here. I am the diplomat of the band after all, not that you can't all go to the web and find out where it was. It was out first show at this venue and our first within about 70 miles of this place. I thought we made this clear to the venue. We're interested in expanding our territory and reaching new people. Details were sketchy about the show until a few days before. Then, it looked like we were on a bill with five other bands. The whole show started at 6, we were told to be there no later than 10. Ok... looks like we're last. No biggie, with 5 other bands there should be a decent number of people hanging around.

Ah, but it's never that easy. From 6-10 it was an all ages show. We were indeed last and the band that was supposed to be before us didn't show. I thought, fine, we'll go on around 10:30 then. Promptly at 10 all the under 21 people were booted out. The band on stage at the time finished their set with a pretty good crowd still there. But for some reason the venue made us wait until 11 to start. In that time almost everyone left while the cover band got started upstairs (don't even get me started on cover bands. I'll lose my diplomatic immunity). Since the band we we're booked with didn't show none of their people were there. So most of the night we had five people. We managed to snag a few others in passing from upstairs. Add to that, the sound guy was pulling double duty due to an emergency. He was running up and down the stairs doing sound on both stages. He loved us though. Sound guys seem to like us because we don't sound like every other band they have to sit through. At one point Brad's vocal mic behind the drum kit was feeding back and he just unplugged it. We didn't have Brad singing for most of the night. Such is the nature of live shows. Shit goes wrong and you either roll with it or you collapse.

All that said, this was one of the best shows we've had in a while. We played well. We had fun on stage. And the crowd that was there was engaged. I have so much fun when I can interact with people from the stage. We cracked jokes. I got everyone to introduce themselves. We laughed. I may take my music seriously, but I don't take myself seriously. It wasn't my show. It wasn't Strange Land's show. It was our show, band and audience together.

I've played a lot of shows for many different kinds of crowds. I'll take small and enthusiastic over large and indifferent any day. I'm they guy in the band who isn't gung ho to play out. I prefer writing and recording. But for shows like this I will always come out and I will enjoy playing on stage. All I need to do to be successful is reach one person. To make one person laugh. To know that one person understands what I'm trying to do. For one person to feel like I understand them because of a song we wrote. We got lucky, we reached more than one last week. And that is why I do this.

Special thanks to Progulites Iceman and Falcon for coming out. It's cool to meet hardcore prog fans and to put faces and real names to the chat board nicknames.

Music is Music

2009-07-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked me today why people thought it was weird that he listens to Iron Maiden, Eminem, and Ziggy Stardust all in a row. Apparently it's not acceptable to have wide-ranging tastes anymore, and people are supposed to be defined by their musical genres of choice. Metal, classical, jazz, prog - all of these carry stereotypes as being very elitist and condescending towards anything that's not part of that particular genre.

Now personally, I enjoy a huge variety of music myself, but I rarely find myself listening to something other than prog or metal - occasionally rock, pop, jazz, or classical, but rarely. Not that that's all I enjoy, that's just what I enjoy most. I mean, I guess it is considered strange that someone would listen to such a variety of music, but it shouldn't be. Because people like different types of music. Some people like Pantera. Some don't. Some people like Coldplay. Some people like Suffocation. Some people like Pink Floyd, some people like Koyaanisqatsy, some people like Consiorzoacquapotabile, some people like Metallica. Different people listen to different things for different reasons. As for me personally, I enjoy to various extents all of those bands. PF, Suffo, CAP, and Koyaa in particular more than the others - and this is just the rock/metal/prog end of the equation.

Although I really, seriously fucking hate it when people (especially girls) say that "they listen to everything". No they don't. The spectrum of music is NOT just the modern rock/hip-hop/pop from the second half of the twentieth century that you hear on the radio. I can honestly say that I like (or at least can appreciate) almost all types of metal (black metal's a bit tough), extremely different forms of prog, folk music, the blues, showtunes, avant-garde music, various types of jazz, "classic rock", modern hard rock to a limited degree, funk, hip-hop, bluegrass, soul, gospel, zydeco, polka, mariachi, a LOT of classical (which really composes about 99% of the music ever written), psychedelic rock, disco, post-rock, REAL pop (not bubblegum pop), and I'm even warming up to country a little bit. I don't make the claim that I actually listen to each genre on a regular basis, but I at least like them all. Music is music, and there's really no point in trying to find "the best and only the best", because it's all a matter of personal taste. I'm not really picky at all. I'm like that with hanging out, with video games, with deciding what clothes to wear, with music, with food, whatever. Whatever the choices are, I don't care - I'll find at least some enjoyment in each of them. That's not to say I don't have preferences, because I definitely do, and there are some bands/genres/foods I really don't like at all.

But if somebody says "I listen to everything", you best give me your favorite folk metal band, your favorite funk band (and which era too, most funk bands had a LOT of revolving members), your ideal jazz sextet, be able to distinguish between the genres of classical music, discuss your favorite instrumental timbre, which era of technical death metal you like better, define "post-rock" and "djent", your favorite minstrel singer, enjoy the accordion, and be able to have an opinion on whether serialism is really music or math.

^ THAT's listening to "all types" of music, not the fucking bullshit that people claim it is. Remember kids, not all music is on the radio, by a long, long shot. Granted, some music on the radio is good - some music on it is GREAT. I'm not at all ashamed to admit I'm a fan of Creed, Coldplay, Alter Bridge, Muse, T-Pain, and a number of others. But for some reason people are always afraid to try out new music if it doesn't fit in their preconceived notion of simple 3 minute pop songs. Or their preconceived notion of UBER BROOTUL HEVY METLZ, or of long, atonal, complex 20 minute epics.

People are just too unwilling to think outside the box just for one second and try to appreciate music for what it is, rather than trying to slam it for what it's not. I can't tell you how many times I've facepalmed reading reviews that say "I usually listen to really obscure death metal like Destroyer 666 and Lykathea Aflame, but this Sigur Ros album sucks, it's all 'pretty' and not heavy and it's not TEH BROOTULZ". And it's the same on the other side of the coin. "Death metal sucks blah blah, that's not even music just random shit and noise." Death metal is one of the most complex musics out there and to blatantly INSULT it like that is just fucking WRONG, as in both morally and factually incorrect. The same thing with ignorant prog nerds who think that everything popular is automatically shit and that songs have to be long with 6453524 million time signature changes to be good. No. That's not how it is. Hell, I'm sure most prog bands don't even think that way. I'm sure for the most part Dream Theater don't go into the studio thinking "this part has to be in 7/4, this part has to have a G#sus4add9 chord, the melody for this part is too catchy, let's change that..." No, I'm pretty sure they just head in the studio, jam out on some riffs and try to construct a song that sounds good - whether it's "truly progressive" or "breaking new ground" be damned. A good song is a good song.

But not everybody is open minded. People will have likes and dislikes. And personally, almost nothing gives me more enjoyment than recommending people music they haven't heard before and them enjoying it. But there's a responsibility that goes with it, you can't just introduce a casual listener to a band like Sigh, and you can't just introduce a death metal listener to polka music. Small steps, and that's what genres are for. But music is music. And even if you're a death metal listener, you can't expect growls and blastbeats in your polka album. Because there's a fucking huge variety of music out there, and to expect it all to fit within your little preconceived notions is stupid.

I'm not saying everybody should be super-open minded all the time, and I'm not saying that all music is automatically good, but there's a give and take with it that needs to be acknowledged far more often. If you enjoy Daft Punk, Eminem, Count Basie, Iron Maiden, Sigur Ros, Mr. Bungle, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Koyaanisqatsy, and Ziggy Stardust at the same time, awesome for you - you've got an appreciation for well-crafted, well-performed music, no matter the genre or what anyone expects of you. More people should listen to music the like that, and actually I think a lot would, they just haven't been exposed to things that would really challenge and intrigue their ears. Remember kids, music CAN be entertainment, and that's fine - but it can also be an experience, whether a song be 3 minutes long, 6 minutes, 12 minutes or 50 minutes. A lot of people forget that.

Update on the sabbatical coming soon guys. :] Rant over.

"There are only two types of music - good music, and bad music" - Frank Zappa

An elision of purpose

2009-07-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

So, the new Strange Land cd is out. Special deals are selling now, the general distro will start in a week or two. It's been a too long process to get this one out. The reasons are varied, from our own procrastination to major personal issues, to playing too much of the waiting game. Nonetheless we are pleased with the results and we thank everyone who has stuck with us. When we picked the title we didn't think we'd actually be having a cathartic experience making it.

So what happens next? Is this the end of a process, the beginning, something in the middle? It all depends on what kind of band you are and what you want out of your career. Some bands just love making new music, so the release of a cd is pretty much the end. You finish the album, get the word out that its available, and move on the the next one. The amount of promotion you do I guess depends on how much energy or money you have for it. Once you've told people it's available you get right back to making new music.

On the flip side the album release is just the beginning. You get it out there, push the promotion, set up a tour. You play as many shows as you can hoping to collect some new fans along the way. I suppose the bigger you get the more this second option is what you do. Bigger bands have the resources to mount full scale tours. For the most part bands in this mode don't even think about recording for a year or two.

I think we'll try to hit a mark somewhere in the middle. As part of growing as a band I think the balance shifts around. We can justify more advertising but not a full scale tour. Hopefully more shows but we won't be putting off writing and recording new music to make time for shows. I'm sure we'll find a balance. I know for a fact it won't take 5 years to release the next one.

Going and going, with fictional borders...

2009-05-03T00:09:00.000-07:00

The following is an essay I wrote for my English class. The assignment was to pretty much interpret and give meaning to any song (and I cut it down, originally I wanted to do a 25+ minute epic ;D). Enjoy!

-----

"My New World", by Alex Ricard

Most bands would consider a 16-minute long song exploring different musical territories and building up over a variety of themes a massive accomplishment, but this is just the order of the day for prog-rock super group Transatlantic. From their two albums, only three of their songs are under 15 minutes long (and simultaneously, they have three songs over 25 minutes long). “My New World” from their first album SMPTe is, comparatively, a concise and focused effort from the band that explores the limits of pop and rock music over its duration, lyrically telling the complex story of two unlikely lovers in the 1960s as a metaphor for the state of America during that time period. Overall, “My New World” uses this love story, combined with the musical flow and structure of the song and the positive energy from the music itself to create a rich, vastly layered atmosphere.

In alternate verses, the two main characters are introduced through the lyrics. “Days in the sun she's seen by the river/reading a book, feeding her dreams,” Roine Stolt sings, illustrating the female as a peaceful hippie type who “hiked up to Woodstock, she got high in Frisco …painting and poetry filled up her mind.” The male character is also introduced here, as “the boy, the pride of his mother” who “took pride in serving his country/went off to war, no more than a child.” The chorus is a thematic break from the story to feature a first-person perspective with “my new world was spinning me around,” alluding to rapid changes both in society and in a personal connection as the main focus of the lyrics. Throughout the song as the love story progresses, the differences between the two characters (representative of the diversity of the American people) are further explored: the line “now she’s a loner, now she’s a stoner, no one can touch her” is repeated throughout the song, while a verse dedicated to the boy states “disappointment struck him hard when he found out/there was no ‘lucky Stars and Stripes’/they set it all on fire, while Jim and Janis got us higher”, showing a shared experience in troubled times, such as in a relationship or a period of massive social change. By the end of the song, however, the differences are resolved with a final chorus stating “my new world is spinning me/and time is not my enemy/my new world is ahead of me today/and all things pass away,” underscoring the peace and contentment perfect for a happy ending. However, as implied in the chorus and title of the song, the “new world” is a complete change, due to the troubles and triumphs that occurred during the ‘60s.

The music itself begins with a slow, sweeping melody played on strings. Guitars then quickly come crashing in for a bombastic exaggeration of the same theme before the song settles down for a Beatles-esque piano shuffle in irregular 5/8 time for the introduction of the characters. The song slowly builds up to the chorus which features four-part harmonies with an uptempo beat, giving off a happy feel. “My New World”, over time, becomes very atmospheric and soft and then fluctuates between loud and soft sections, creating an episodic story. The overall structure of the song is very linear: throughout the work, many melodic themes are revisited, modified, layered, and constructed in a way similar to leitmotifs in classical music. This structure helps to further the storytelling nature of the work, while helping the emotions reach their full fruition because the song is not bound to a traditional verse/chorus structure.

“My New World” modulates through various major keys, which gives it a “happy” feel. The chord progressions and rhythms used give it a very Beatles-influenced sound, combined with the influence of bands such as early Yes and Genesis, who also had their start in the sixties. The fairly brisk style imbues the song with a slight sense of purpose - even the solo sections speak with unique voices. Rather than being an all-out rocker, “My New World” is casually restrained, remaining polite and pleasant, yet still with an attitude. The song carries with it the peaceful and idealistic attitudes of the ‘60s and contrasts it with the harsh realities of the violence of the period, functioning as both a timeless love story and a homage to the entire time period.

Bright Ambassadors Of Morning stole my trebles

2009-04-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

Pure Reason Revoluton, I like them mainly because of the clever vocal-arrangements.
When they cancelled their gig at Progpower Europe I was quite disappointed, but now I had the chance to see them at a local venue. Knowing not much more than their debut album, I didn't expect much, as the cd sounds rather plain and sort of easy listening, and I did not expect them to pull off the same vocal work as on disc.

The bigger surprise it became!
Starting the gig with some early to mid 80's sounding keybards and keyboard bass, the show seemed to be something like a positve and 'happy' version of Depeche Mode. Soon the guitar came to a more prominent place in the music, more agressive parts got played like Steve Wilson does in Porcupine Tree, the vocals raising to their full power, all the fine harmonies and canon style achived live, wow! 20 minutes after the show started I realized that I got tears in my eyes, couldn't stand still, had to groove all the way through. The show started quite solid and increased to full power in about 35 minutes to full fire works, volume at 10 (11 would be too much, I prefer to still hear the drums...), then they switched back one gear and played tunes with more complex sound structures. One should mention that the band is sort of a gathering of multi-instrumentalists, lead singer-keyboardist-guitarist, female vocalist-bassist-keyboardist, guitarist-vocalist and drummer.
In the meantime the guitarist plays his solos kneeing on the floor for adjusting the knobs of the many effect processors live. Again, like Steve Wilson did back in the days.
I'm not annoyed that, including encores, the gig was only 90 minutes long, knowing how young the band is, and the few people in the audience. however, I felt like a Shikansen hit me and took me to Berlin, sticking on its very front, in that time. All those landscapes flying by at lightspeed...

They truly have the potential to become big! A formula like: {positive depeche Mode x Porcupine Tree + self} comes to mind.

Back home I wanted to end the night with one more beer and a bit of the most recent PT recordings. I gave up. No trebles, it has been gone. I didn't notice what an earbleeder the gig was.... ok, one beer, no music anymore.

wishes for the band:

1. a second microphone for the lead vocalist. It simply is a time-waster to always adjust the tripod when switching from keys to guitar and back.

2. a better stage clothing for him. Complaining about that warm lamp while wearing the most tasteless leather jacket is stupid.

3. Bring that dynamics of your live sound to disc! Whenever somebody says it is too exhausting for the common listener, tell him you're not about to do easy listening.

Have a Cigar, dear boy, and listen to The Sound of Muzak.

2009-04-14T21:09:00.000-07:00

Back in 2007 Hanson (yes THAT Hanson) released a 12-part documentary filmed during the making of their album "Underneath" which saw them leave their major label Island/Def Jam due to frustrations with the label in the making of the album. In the end the band started their own indie label and have been releasing albums on it since then.

The documentary is a warts and all detailing of trying to make an album in the major label environment when the label wants to exert pressure on the band to make a "radio hit". It's VERY revealing and candid and even if you HATE Hanson (and fair play, I don't like them either) but if you ever wanted to see the ugly side of making a record for a major label and just the making of an album this is worth a look.

Part 1 of 12 is down below. I'm only a few "episodes" in, it's really great and quite revealing. I really hope nobody here (or anyone, really) never have to go through that....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arfx4i-050I

Also, for a class of mine I had to create a "protest poster" (see above) about any particular issue. I chose the music industry. The documentary I linked above is a great example of all of the shit and horrible things that happen in the industry. Personally, I'm of the belief that the major labels need to fall and hard. Call it karmic justice, but their insistence on sticking with outdated business models and their tendency to rip the artist off for 80, 90 percent of the profits is just flat-out wrong. It really disheartens me to see these pigs in control of the music industry. Pink Floyd said it best 30 years ago - it's a machine, and always has been. Now, I am not at all advocating downloading music illegally. Supporting artists, especially small and independent ones is the right thing to do, without question. But when buying CDs and going to shows is only supporting the middle man, how can we support bands? With the current recession, the boom of downloading, the "loudness war" and the mp3 trend, increasingly manufactured pop music with Auto-Tune all over the place, it's no wonder how the industry got to where it is today. It needs to fall so it can be rebuilt from the ground up. Maybe in 50 years we'll see the same cycle, but for right now we cannot allow this to continue. They said home taping was killing music, and that downloading was killing music, but it's not killing the music, it's killing the industry. And the industry is killing music.

We do abuse music

2009-04-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

I decided to post this as a new article though it is a direct reaction on Sean's because this is to strong in my mind for just doing a comment:

Do you remember those news printed on paper everyone used way back? I still use them because you can read them wherever you are, without the need of a monitor or display and internet connection.

One or two months back I read in a small article in one of those that the company Muzak went bankrupt. That company's product has the same name; aka elevator music or warehouse music.

It is said that music makes people friendly, peaceful, yet happy, so playing music in a warehouse lightens up the customers mood and they'd purchase even more - was their claim.

This is a tragical simplification in my opinion, because nobody ever had the idea that one's mood might turn bad if he doesn't like the music he hears.

Back in the 80ies, when I once purchased some car spare parts and queued up at the cash point I realized at a certain moment that my spirit was slowly changing into bad mood. I realized that I wasn't the only one whose mood was darkening, a couple of other people were doing the same thing. I was a strange effect to me and I was wondering about that for about 5 Minutes. Then I noticed that a speaker was dabbling out the most crappy Bavarian folk music at an almost inaudible loudness. I said to another - in the meantime quite angry - dude: "Hey I think it's that almost imperceptible music torture that makes me so angry. It took a bit to find that out." That guy stared at me, froze for a moment or two and smiled at me when saying that "this really is the worst music I ever had to bear!" Luckily the emotion in our part of the queue was back to positive, now that we had found out the evil that happened to us.

Back a few years from now, the warehouse music wasn't a single event anymore but a pestilence, we went for some speaker cables to an electronic shop. Still being in a rather good mood - emotionally dumb for sonic pollution - my friend said to the salesman: "That indeed is some nice crappy music you guys have playing there." The salesman switched from good manners to aggression instantly. "Yes and it is in here ALL FUCKING DAY LONG!!!" we were trying to be nice guys but man, that went wrong....

So much for the general music-does-people-good idea.

Well so, folks, look around, errr... listen around! Music is everywhere. Everywhere!

I mean, when I was a teenager it was so unimaginably cool to have that walkman playing music while cycling through the city! But that was long ago.

Today wherever you go there's muzak. If McDonald's, Burger King, SFCC, any store, SUBWAY STATIONS!!! TV jingles, sweepers, shows, serials, documentaries, - even news! movie, games, yet websites.

Really, what would a website of a warehouse chain be without muzak!! http://www.hertie.de

Where else... wait loops, cell phones, ipods, car radio, car docking station, wifi, itunes, the list seems endless.

I fear opening a can of beans, muzak could be inside!

Do I need a psychiatrist?

Isn't it any wonder that one blunts about music? It is a sonic pollution, yet violation today how music is abused and sprayed at us. How can something so omnipresent be of worth for the common man? Even gold would be nothing of worth if it were available everywhere endlessly.

I'm no more one of those people carrying an ipod everywhere, ripping cds to itunes and using the computer for listening to music.

I want my gems stored in shelves (that's what they are for - the shelves of course...), grab the jewel case, open, insert, play, sofa, listen, read/watch booklet (damn is this font supposed to be read? What's the song title???), be happy!

I tune in to progulus when I actually want to listen to random prog goodness.

I refuse to have music playing right now because yesterday we've been at a great Asia gig ( where 150 - 200 progulus flyers went away, not one ending up on the floor!), and a little session afterwards - because silence is golden.

Sean, the Cartasis demo is great! Hope to hold the cd in my hands soon!

How do you use music?

2009-03-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

It's always the lament of the independent prog musician that you can't get people to pay attention long enough to even like or dislike your music. Prog, like jazz and classical, takes more than superficial attention to appreciate. We often blame the industry for aiming for the lowest common denominator. We blame the fans for not making any effort to find new music. We blame the bands that make the music we find superficial. I'm sure we can blame ourselves for something too. But maybe it's more than that, more than finding someone specific to point a finger at. We proggers make music that is a little more 'adult' or mature in nature. We're aiming for audiences tied up in bills, kids and jobs. Even the teenagers we might find an audience in are swamped with both day to day activities and by entertainment choices. I don't have the time I used to to throw on a disc and my headphones and just lay on the floor and absorb new music. I used to do that and pour over the liner notes. There are many older albums that I know all the song titles to. Now most of my listening is in the car, at work, or while I'm out walking. There are cds I've had for 3 years that I can't name a track on.

Is music becoming something that doesn't stand on it's own? Is music now something found in movies, in tv shows, in video games, in your ring tones? Is music something that has been so omnipresent in the background of electronic entertainment that we're numb to it? Prog has nearly always been a niche. Is all of music become a niche in the vast swamp of everything that we have at out fingertips for consumption? I heard an NPR story the other day about tv shows finding an audience. About 10 years ago a hit show had 20 million viewers weekly. Now a hit has under 10 million. Has the overall world of entertainment become to fractured and diversified that we only have niches? And now, since it's so easy to make your own music or movies or art, every niche is getting very crowded. If everyone is making their own music, who's listening to mine?

Maybe it's just the nature of change. Maybe we are at a point in human history where the very nature of music consumption is changing. Once upon a time music was about the only form of entertainment available. I'm under no illusion that we can or even want to go back to the days of Bach's church employment and rich royal patrons. I have long been aware that there are a lot more choices out there for entertainment. There are more ways that ever for everyone to create their own entertainment. But lately I've been thinking lately it may be more of a cultural change. We now consume music like potato chips. It's always there, there's always more, and there are almost too many flavors to choose from. Inundated with so many choices we find a handful we know we like and never deviate from those choices. There is limitless music available. We can buy it and keep it forever. We don't need to go see it or buy sheet music and play it ourselves. We don't even have to go through the hassle of putting needle to vinyl anymore. For those of us who do want a lot of variety it's hard to keep up. I have been putting all of my cds into my iTunes library. As of today I have 830 albums in my itunes. I have nearly 30 DAYS of continuous music. I'd be willing to bet that I spin less than half of those more than once a year, and I still have about 100 cds to go.

It is an interesting time to make music in. Like the tv industry has seen and the music industry is struggling with, I think the superstar is on the decline. You'll see less and less new bands achieve the status and longevity of bands like Rush or the Beatles or Madonna. I feel like I'm right at the start of finding a new way. A way to keep making the music I need to make, for myself, and finding new ways to share with people. Hey, I do have some ego. I wouldn't put out the effort I do if I didn't want other people to like my music. I can say I make the music just for me, but I'd be lying if I said that was enough. So, if you're bored and looking for something a little new and a little different come visit my niche of a niche of a niche.

A Death Metal Sabbatical

2009-03-29T02:44:00.000-07:00

I will soon temporarily leave the world of Prog in the very capable hands of my colleagues here at Progulus and Progrockin'. Over the course of my musical exploits in the past few months (years, even), I've grown tremendously as a musician, even just as a guitarist. My rhythm technique and soloing have especially improved, and my improvisation continues to impress even myself in say, an acoustic folk-blues setting, or melodic vocal harmonies. But in the past few weeks, I've gotten back into metal in a big way. If anybody reading this has a Facebook, they can find me as a fairly prominent member of the groups "Lifer: A Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Forum", "Metal Heads", and "DO NOT USE THE HORNS UNLESS YOU ARE METAL". Really thrusting myself back into the internet metal community has sort of given me a new perspective on prog, and it's weird to listen to bands without keyboards again, haha.

I've come to realize that my musical ability to write metal has grossly stagnated. I really don't know how to write a good riff anymore, and this saddens me deeply. I was given a stong dosage of death metal, tech-death, black metal, and a little folk, old and new: Atheist, Death, Lykathaea Aflame, Agalloch, Gorguts, Desultory, Incantation, Immolation, Immortal, and many more. I've put them all in a massive playlist on shuffle, and so far have gotten way back in the swings. Tonight I am enjoying my last night of prog with some Kaipa before I enter a "death metal sabbatical". I will listen and enjoy death metal again for the first time in years. I love what I've heard so far, and really, it's not as bonecrushingly brutal as I remember. I get the same feeling from something like the extremes of jazz-fusion as I do this. It's actually kind of a nice, comforting feeling, simple and agressive and straightforward in its aggression. I love it.

To kick off the festivites, I spun Atheist's "Unquestionable Presence" today and wondered why I ever left metal. Don't worry guys, I am a progger first and foremost, and will always be. But sometimes, it's just nice to go home.

The Road to Life and Progressive Rock Part V

2009-03-07T21:12:00.000-08:00

Phase 6

Graduate through a new "door".

"Computerized clinic, For superior cynics, Who dance to a synthetic band,
In their own image, Their world is fashioned, No wonder they don't understand!"
-Natural Science/Rush

A "Late" Graduation and the beginning of a Love Affair.
The Senior year would add something to the radio waves . . .
"The Spirit of Radio" by a band called Rush. Another band I couldn't take in yet,
I didn't know what to make of it. It had such weird time changes that the only
thing I could compare it to was my creative "whistling and humming" in the
shower! I'd make up weird melodies, odd time changes with beats (sort of "Beat-
Box" like sounds waaay before the Rap community would find its use, we're talking
70's thru the 80's here!)- So I was emulating Drums and Guitar SFX- like I said, I
was weird, I used to imitate instruments, celebrities, cartoon characters, sound
effects, etc..
So Rush was a mystery to me, and Geddy's voice was REALLY different, I didn't
know what to make of them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juv5Ifs2fFY

As I mentioned before, In my last years of high school would see the days of
New Wave, for the most part I wasn't interested, with few exceptions (see
previous story). But many of these bands would be another link.
Bands like these would influence Prog to come (its my contention that if their
were no Flock of Seagulls, U2 and Ultravox, there would be no "Grace Under
Pressure" by Rush in 1984, in sound, that is) and was just another re-birth for
the genre. But for the most part, I heard less musicianship and more "push a
button and it plays a melody", programmed, tweaked sequencers making music.

"All this machinery making modern music, can still be open hearted
Not so coldly charted, It's really just a question of your honesty, yeah, your honesty
One likes to believe in the freedom of music, but glittering prizes and endless
compromises, shatter the illusion of integrity"
-The Spirit of Radio/Rush

Yet again how prophetic those words would be.

Punk was also transforming the American bands. With the likes of the
Dickies; Stiff Little Fingers; Black Flag; X; The Dead Kennedy's; Social
Distortion; Patty Smith; The Angry Samoans; The Ramones, The Butthole
Surfers, and The Meat Puppets etc. (Acknowledgement to "Iggy Pop" and
"The Stooges" for doing it in the late 60's early 70's).
Like the Harder Rock bands of the late 70's rebelling against Disco, these
"Punkers" would musically "Flip-off" some of the sappier New wave and Top
40 rubbish, this new music seemed to want-to yell at the establishment, and
make things "ugly", this would be the root of Thrash from the "Crossover"
bands like:
DRI; Excel; Waysted Youth; Corrosion of Conformity; S.O.D.; Misfits and
more would in-turn influence Heavy Metal into "Speed Metal" and beyond.
This would come much later of course, but again, I'd hear these bands and
heard the influences seeping through each other. And would add their angry
tones of the coming "New Wave of British Heavy Metal".
But at the same time the Punk movement was litterally spitting at the Brit
"Dinosaurs" and their Progressive Rock full of pomp and circumstance, and
only the strong would survive. And I wanted more.

ELP, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, the Bands that put England on the map again
were now labled "Out of touch" with the World, "over the top" and Labels,
Record Exects (many abandoning the bands they supported) and Radio
listeners wanted "simpler" and "straight forward" musics . . .
I was not one of those people.
But Jon Anderson (Vocalist for Yes) would say decades later:
"We were Punks, we were doing what was not popular, The Who were punk
kids, James Cagney was a Punk, these guys making Punk music would
eventually become more popular, then they would buy better equipment and
so on..."

"All the same we take our chances, laughed at by time, tricked by circumstances
Plus ça change, plus ç'est la meme chose
The more that things change, the more they stay the same"
-Circumstances/Rush

Again, the Pop music (Top 40) was starting to wane from me as FM Radio
had what I was looking for, especially in the late hours, when D.j.'s got a bit
more adventurous with the turntable. Pop songs ran out of "musicianship".
But popular music is just that. And it held no form of creativity for me to sit
through it, I respected music too much to just "tune it out". The music I liked
held me in its trance, I couldn't just "wash the dishes" to it.
This would be the way to this day . . . its not, just music to me, its something
a creative person "crafted" and played with the highest denominator.
Eventually, Hit Singles would't mean anything to me anymore, "Albums" were
more important than a single track that was "made" to have more creativity
than the whole. But good music is good music, no matter how simple, some
music just didn't sit well with me.
But time and time again, with almost every job and friends that would be made
in the coming years, I had to "tolerate" musical tastes.

1981:
I was doing terribly in school, but drawing constantly and because of these
2 things, my parents, especially my Dad, we started to be at odds with each
other . . . I HATED school, my attention span was nil, but I wasn't a bad kid,
on the contrary, Smoking didn't make sense to me, just the the smell of Pot
gave me a headache, drinking made people annoying and stupid, Beer tasted
like piss and I didn't hang with the "wrong" crowd (maybe bad choices in what
a "friend" was, but...), I was a good kid with my head in the clouds.
I couldn't WAIT for school to be over! So my wish came true, and with not
able to grasp Math and failing "P.E." (Physical Education) as it was my last
class of the day, and I couldn't stand the competitive attitudes of the other kids
and the Coaches (except for 2), were right out of the movie "Dazed and
Confused".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_eTV4lRJYU&feature=related
I'd hang with a friend named Robert Flock (Who had a punk/new wave friend
that introduced us named Eric, who always made fun of me in a condescending
way) we would sneak off to the Stadium, talk skateboarding, music and girls,
stupid jokes and laughing our heads off, then jump the fence and head over to
a Doughnut shop with our saved lunch money (The food at school was really
bad, one of many reasons we called the School "the Chino Work Farm").

. . . I wasn't going to graduate with the rest of the class, which (I) was the shame
of my parents. This would be the 1st real nail to start distancing me and my folks.
How I'm still ALIVE from that news is a miracle . . .
But I was going to get my Nogales High School Diploma if I went right away to
a Continuation School for the summer!
To my amazement it was swift and easy and I got to talking to another kid, he
was this big guy with semi-long hair, but he seemed more mature than the other
kids. We would talk about music and he told me he was going to see Rush on the
"Moving Pictures" Tour. I just started to hear the new songs, and he talked about
Neil Peart and what an awesome Drummer he was.

After we "Graduated" and went our separate ways, Rush stuck in my head,
and I started paying attention to the songs and the musicianship . . . this was
the same band I saw on that turnstyle in the Record Shop!? How could I be
soo stupid!!!? (If I heard Cygnus X-1 Book II/Hemispheres back then, God
knows who I'd be now!) Next to Kansas, this Canadian trio would engulf my
world . . .

Phase 7
New influences, new awareness.

"Passing time will reach as nature relays to set the scene, New encounters
spark a true fruition, Guiding lines we touch them, our bodies balance out the
waves, As we accelerate our days to the look in your eyes."
-Sound Chaser/Yes

So after the insanity of High School, went into a stint at community college
(Mount San Antonio, Walnut Ca.) in a crappy Drawing class (I learned more in
High School, though "now", they have an excellent curriculum for Art and
Digital/CG Graphics).
But because of joining up, I was to receive my own stereo to enjoy my new
collection of music. I had my ideas of what I wanted, I was building up on
pamphlets of equipment. Pioneer was looking really good and that years series
of stuff was really cool in design and I was asking for a deck type set up of an
Amp/Receiver; Cassette deck; Turntable and Speakers.
Not the whole top of the line "Rack", but enough to have oomph!
http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo48/jgmacv/levisdeer176.jpg

. . . And what I got was a Soundesign all in 1 component model that had a built
in Cassette and 8-Track player (its 1982 not 62!) and a separate Turn-table
that sounded like a Bus idling. . . I was disappointed to say the least.
But "I" was a disappointment! So I kept my mouth shut and made due.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3114/3197033479_9fb4676c2f.jpg
(My God! that's the Stereo I had! Yikes!)

1st Job:
My 1st goal was to get a nice Turn-table and I was eying a cool Pioneer direct-
drive. http://www.vinylengine.com/library/pioneer/pl-4.shtml
But to obtain it I had to get a job and My Parents were shuving me to get one!
At this time, my best friend Glen had a neighbor named Alex Zandor, He would be
a new music friend who was becoming a Hard Rock/Heavy Metal fan. He would get
me a job at a plant that made "Cables for Nuclear Power Plants" (and in a scary low
tech way of lacquering them, as cable being fed through holes, drilled through empty
large plastic paint buckets with sponges and lacquer!), And the supervisor was this
butch looking red haired woman(?) with facial hair and her husband, this pencil
neck/eraserhead with a twitch and stuttered as he would talk of "simple things".
All this on the graveyard shift . . . but it was money for Art books, sacred Vinyl and
that sweet Turntable.

New Musics (81-82):
This is probably the time that Southern Rock was hitting its peak and my faves
would be Molly Hatchet (that had a bit of Metal in them); Point Blank; Allman
Brothers; 38.Special; The Outlaws; Blackfoot; Atlanta Rhythm Section and of course
ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd (Who even to this day, I own NOT 1 record).
The amazing guitar solos were the main event to these guitar driven Southerners,
and some even had "3" guitarists!
Molly Hatchet doing Allman Bros.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B53j-lKZdhE
Outlaws, the "Epic":
Part1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqJ_V7ay3E8&feature=related
Part2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3JAglkUrms&feature=related

Blackfoot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrtApoX959c
Pointblank:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rawGDqTxe4

Also, I was discovering:
Pat Travers; Gary Moore (his Metal years); Survivor; Gamma (Ronnie Montrose's
band); Pat Benatar; The Cars; Sammy Hagar; Judas Priest and Blue Oyster Cult,
and re-discovering Robin Trower.
Survivor (When they were a great Hard Rock Band):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al4mk_gVarM

Glen Mayfield would hang out with me and Alex and we talked about seeing
Kansas (for some reason Alex didn't go) . . .
At this time sadly, Steve Walsh (the original Vocalist) had left, but was
replaced by the excellent John Elefante . . . It would be my FIRST concert,
and it delivered!
A funny note:
Seems the floors were "slippery" at the Universal Amphitheater, with the 1st
song "Paradox", John would play his key parts up on a riser, then run to the
front of the stage to sing, when his key part was coming, he'd run . . .
and then he slipped, sled and fell on his butt! But got up, RAN to the riser
where his keyboard waited and made it in just in time for his part!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCzVd_BrL9s
Robby Steinhardt was playing his Violin for "Mysteries and Mayhem", then
started walking the stage . . . and fell right on his butt, his part came up, and
he just sat on the ground and played it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqhDa4pPzIg

"Windows" . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55sSc95T_nk&feature=related
I remember being very nervous, with pot heads and beer drinkers making
trouble and the "unknown" plaguing my mind, but also the excitement!
Still one of my fave shows to this day, my teens were filled with their music
and here I am witnessing these awesome musicians playing their catalogue
along with the "Vinyl Confessions" material, though I missed the great Walsh,
John's vocals just soared and with much gusto, passion and POWER!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNODeiYl-gs

Another Clip from Vinyl Confessions Tour in Omaha:
"Play the Game Tonight"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymn_zMIBKzA

"And when the curtains open, to the roaring of the crowd, you will feel it all around you
Then it finally happens, and it's all come true for you
And the songs are playing over and over, till you do it all over again!"
-Play the Game Tonight/Kansas

2nd would be another fave show with Zebra! This too was an energetic show
and they were even better live, filled with such power and sound from this
power trio, I was truly impressed. Singer/Guitarist Randy Jackson's Double
Neck "B.C. Rich Bitch" sounded HUGE, chorus ladened and echo . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3yPXOtIjdM&feature=related
Doing Take your fingers from my hair and the " B,C, Rich Double Neck":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiT4HAW-PRY&feature=related

3rd would be Heart on the "Passion Works" tour, and again . . . awesome.
Nancy Wilson looking gorgeous as ever and her voice ripping the ceiling
open!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pSMOusgPHg&feature=related

Going to concerts would bring a new understanding what it took to get it
off the ground, as well as being able to perform or enhance the music from
the studio to stage.
Perceptions of this growing within me with each band and passing years.

"Those who wish to be, must put aside the alienation, get on with the facination,
the real relation, the underlying theme..."
-Limelight/Rush

Phase 8
"Expanding Realms" circa 1981-84

"In a similar way, At the end of today, I could feel the sound of writing on
the wall, It cries for you, It's the least that you can do, Like a spiral on the
wind, I can hear it screamin' in my mind, Long live Rock and Roll! . . ."
-Long Live Rock n' Roll/Rainbow

So during the time, with new friend Alex would be filled with hanging out
at his Grandmothers, who was VERY Hungarian (she was always saying
"Eat EAT!!!" but she cussed like a sailor) and had a Stockpile of Sodas, and
high-end junkfood like bags of Milanos! It was a wonder Alex was tall and
skinny. You would open any drawer in her immaculate house, and there
would be candy bars, Hostess confections and Pop Tarts!
So it was listening to music, watching movies, talking music, Sci-fi, playing
guitars, drinking and eating. . . hanging out. I was 19.
Never did too much heavy conversation though, I was missing that with
Glen Mayfield, heck . . . with a girl would be a change, but that would
come briefly when I was 21, too sad to talk about here and would involve
too many verses of songs. For another entry in my Book perhaps. It was
brief, sad and both in desperation to feel needed (for acceptance, sex, love
and just needing to feel sympathetic). A short-term relationship that would
be a premonition for the future.

Metal finds a Hero:
Ozzy Osborne would release to the world Randy Rhodes and the New Wave
of British Heavy Metal would hit our shores.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqwsOcKK3ic
. . . but the ONLY one that I would hear from it, was the great debut from
Def Leppard "On Through the Night", that I played religiously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwE2IRd5bBc
Randy took what Eddie Van Halen unleashed on the World, but Randy had the
"Darkside" of its sound, with many Classical flurries/undertones that made it
really different, and lots of Power Chords, so it grabbed many an Influence
from the past but took Metal into the future.
"The Blizzard of Oz" album would be played over and over. There was also a
faster tempo than most Hard Rock/Heavy Metal at the time (other than Priest),
and it is something that appealed to me. I also noticed that Ozzy aquired
Drummer Tommy Aldridge from the Pat Travers Band, so I was already a fan
of his style.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6JA6X25g9M

Some great Guitar duels between Pat and Pat Thrall.

Also, me and Alex went back through the history of Black Sabbath, we
started listening quite alot to the Debut Sabbath album, dark and scary!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akt3awj_Ah8
And "the Wizard" had a great Harmonica by Ozzy himself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCjspyo-_aI

Another album I enjoyed . . . and was surprised by the topics,
"Master of Reality" and the Pro-Christian themes it had, very
Church of England, but songs like "Into the Void" stood out:
(Tony Iommi Interview and Music)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epDSucMvP70&feature=related
Then of course . . . the fave for all the Pot-heads:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXs9-XEiDoY

So Black Sabbath; Ozzy; Kansas; Yes; Styx; Pat Travers; Leppard and Van
Halen would be the diet of the day. And new discoveries of Gary Moore; April
Wine; Robin Trower; Billy Squire; Quarterflash, The Cars and Neil Young.
As well as re-discovering Led Zeppelin by purchasing and listening to Alex's
Cassettes. Favorites would be in "Houses of the Holy"; "Physical Graffiti" and
"Presence".
Kashmire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGB18OI-Q50
Achilles Last Stand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWOuzYvksRw

April Wine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BbbFFEeumA
(Love the Guitar Harmonies and the "3 Guitar solo/swaps")
Gary Moore:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGWdkqDH0XY
and the great Intro to "End of the World":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40OR-JtfP_Y&feature=related

(Other than Gary Moore) the radio was often playing many tracks from these
albums and soon, the release of Van Halen's new album,"Fair Warning", me
and Alex worshiped this album and played it daily.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2R2KXNQR1M

Another fave from the same:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2Qatc4K85A&feature=related

Comprehension of the music filtering through my ears would grow into more
adventurous musics.
I remember asking my friend Alex as we were driving from work, "Have you
heard about this band Iron Maiden?" and he'd say he heard something about
them. But we never pursued it, not even searching for them at record stores.

After a visit from Alex's brother Bob, he played for me the Soundtrack for the
movie "Brainstorm" by James Horner. Funny how I 1st heard it at a Electronic
Store called "The Federated Group". Bob had it on Cassette and we listened
to a few tracks on an early Aiwa Portable, but it sounded really good, and we
cranked it! An employee came around and asked, "What is this? This is really
cool!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV-bs5aEMRk
I had yet to see the movie (Brainstorm) but the music made quite an impact on
me . . . it was powerful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqzf465drjc&feature=related
When I got my own copy on vinyl, and before I slept, I listened to it on
headphones . . . and track 2, "Lillian's heart attack" scared the PANTS off me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7HSkbLezYs
It would take awhile to get used to it.

This album along with the Star Wars soundtracks, would inspire me to get into
this genre.

When I visited Alex's family in the suburbs of Las Vegas, we went to a Record
store around the "Strip" and it would be the 1st place to buy Focus albums.
Eventually buying a few more, and Focus "3" would be a fave because of a few
songs having "medieval qualities" about them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEZdXfcOdLY&feature=related
(later discovering the Strawbs and "Folk Prog" or the Canterbury Sound) and
also purchasing Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9A60e16SvM
Strawbs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuuCHawtzZc&feature=PlayList&p=
1F6224FAD8756F1F&index=59

And speaking of the Canterbury Sound, because of my love of medieval
history, I would buy almost any Rock album with a medieval theme (like Rick
Wakemans "Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table") from my childhood love of Knights and its history. I came across an
album with a "Knightly" cover, the song titles were interesting, so I bought it
and took it home. As the 1st track came on, the music was in-different key
(or so I thought) of the vocals, and the more it went on, the more dissonant it
became, but it did have a melodic quality, but . . . I must have had the face of
dog when it hears a strange noise.
As the album went on, that sound was getting weirder, I didn't know what to
make of it. The musicianship was strong, and the vocal layering/harmonies
were really beautiful, but this was NOT what I thought it would be.
This was Gentle Giant and the album "The Power and the Glory". The song
"Cogs and Cogs" with its beautiful intertwining vocal layering would be a fave,
but this album would have to grow on me for the next 20 years when I could
understand it. I had a lot to learn (I think this album was a big influence on the
Kansas "Point of Know Return" album, especially songs "The Spider" and
"Paradox", as well as the obvious for Spocks Beard; Echolyn; Advent; Eye
Strings and the like which would be discovered in a whole other lifetime).
Other albums would be purchased in more recent years and i'd hear what I'd
been missing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2c4k_dHA2Q

The Moody Blues would be another purchase and I loved the poetry within
the moody tunes. Their debut "Days of Future Past" and "On the Threshold of
a Dream" would be new (old) faves. And I'd buy other albums in years to
come. But I loved the prose and poetic dialogue intros!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lazdg-eqmQ
Soon they would return with their new album "The Long Distance Voyager"
in 1984.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv8oKH0_lac&feature=related

This was also a time I tried to learn how to play Guitar from a neighborhood
music store and a former guitarist of "The Ink Spots(later years)", which I
appreciated and was happy to learn the basics . . . it was just that I could not
remember the lessons, like school, I was not able to comprehend what was
being taught, I couldn't grasp it, a wall that plagues me to this day.
But from the same unit that used to be the store that held that album with the
"Nude man" on the cover, I got my own Guitar, again a "half-ass purchase" of
a cheap Memphis brand (plywood) for $150.
A Black Stratocaster, why? One name . . .
Ritchie Blackmore.

1. The Rainbow induction

"You don't know what's happening, you want to go home
but there's nowhere to hide
you walk out on stage, your first time alone
the crowd's going wild
and you feel so alive
you could stand up and take this all night
they love you but you're in love with the spotlight
you're the spotlight kid"
- The Spotlight Kid/Rainbow

On latenites I would stay up watching the new "Video" shows sprouting up.
This particular one was called Rock World and this episode featured "Rainbow"
at the 1st "Monsters of Rock at Castle Donnington Speedway" in England.
This was a leg for the Down to Earth tour (apparently "monsters" was started
up by Rainbow's Promoter).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsters_of_Rock
The sounds coming from all the musicians, the stage presence and Blackmore
just SHREDDING his White Strat with sounds that made my jaw drop! His "lip
singing" the notes and at moments in a trance as if he was far away in this
guitar dream world, as he let notes fly off and hover into the air with thousands
of fans in COMPLETE silence!
Blackmore and his Strat in a Guitar FX extravaganza of feedback, tremolo,
string bending-sounding like a wolf howling and entwined with haunting notes
enhanced by his Taurus Pedals adding Major/Minor notes and nuances.
. . . As a note faded into the night sky, it segued into Graham Bonnets rendition
of The Shirelles "Will you still love me tomorrow" . . . INCREDIBLE!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So9f5ZEFDQc
with "Eyes of the World" intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlYkSYwDzfU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTxJJaqPdbU
"Difficult to Cure" with new singer Joe Lynn Turner would soon come.
"Spotlight Kid" was a Radio Single and I loved the main Riff and the "sound"
Don Airey chose for the Keyboard Solo! From there I bought every album
from their history and would also discover another name of their past
. . . Dio.
I worshiped Blackmore and Rodney James Dio, and then the airwaves would
introduce Dio with Black Sabbath and more albums to my growing collection
(and even an album of his Blues/Rock debut band "Elf". Had to have MORE
Dio!). Going back into their past catalogue, I religiously listened to "Rising";
"On-Stage" and "Long Live Rock N' Roll".
I also became a LP collector and of ANY EP-single I could find from
Rainbow, as I still do to this day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-aHeoLuMDY
(1977 w/Ronnie James Dio)
Dio with Sabbath:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frtJQFe9apw&feature=related
The album "Heaven and Hell" would be a staple on my Turntable.

Rainbow's "Tarot Woman" from Rising:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkanocYiQ1Q

From there, I'd go back further to Deep Purple and re-discover a band that
influenced a genre and a generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkg0xJj2A4w
Ritchie Blackmore became my Guitar Hero. Showmanship with "chops",
he rose from a Bluesman, Rock, Even a little "Funk", one of the Founders
of Heavy Metal and Post-Progressive Rock to Neo-Classical and beyond.
He had all I wanted and more!
"Lazy":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6x8GGXrCFQ&playnext_from=PL&feature=
PlayList&p=4FDB56BECB104AFF&playnext=1&index=18
Later years after Ian Gillian (vocal extrordinaire) . . .
"You Fool No-one":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5CoGJevTuo
(With David Coverdale on Vocals, later to form the Rythem & Blues/Hard
Rock band "Whitesnake")

Rainbow Bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_(band)
Deep Purple and the "Family Tree":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Purple

2. The Education of Rush: 1981
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrejJHPnVfk&feature=related

"All the world's indeed a stage, and we are merely players, performers and portrayers
Each another's audience, outside the gilded cage"
-Limelight/Rush

But on FM radio, I would hear more from Moving Pictures and it was time
to make a purchase. After I got fired from the assembly job and one of my
strange fates with friends that would just "fade away", Alex and I went our
separate paths and I found a job at a Printer, loading up paper and cutting
them. Across the street there was, the now long gone, Zody's Department
store. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq0C3OUaTow
They had this LP clearance sale and ALL the Rush albums up to Moving
Pictures for $2.99 . . . I bought them all and began my odyssey.
(The Tour album, "Exit...Stage Left" would soon follow. It would be the 1st
time to hear them live, Somehow I missed Rush when they were on Don
Kirchner's Rock Concert, same for Kansas).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lpVjXwAfm0&feature=related

It would be profound, each album had its own world of musicianship and
ideas that would baffle, amaze and inspire me and would be my soundtrack
for my drawing sessions. . . . These guys were GIANTS!
"2112" was a Sci-fi kids dream, the music was cinematic with a Hard Rock/
Prog soundtrack! but every song was soo beautiful, from its 2112 side A
to side B and the individual songs, and the haunting mellotron laden "Tears".
The cinematic would continue with "Farewell to Kings" and the same feelings
I would have with Yes's "Close to the Edge" were found in Rush's "Xanadu".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NP-ZlztziM
But the last track "Cygnus X-1", a voyage that was, much like Bowman's
perilous hyperspace flight in 2001: A Space Odyssey, another cinematic
journey through sound, I can't imagine a fans anticipation for the next album
when the last words on Cygnus lyric sheet says, "to be continued", and here
I am breaking time and space . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeQLVxBczBY

I then held in my hand the album I called "Gay" so many years ago . . .
As that $45 needle from that Pioneer Turntable I saved up for, hit the groove
of side 1, my life would change like seeing that Star Destroyer flying over my
head in that Cinema in 77. I couldn't believe that 3 guys could produce such
sounds, colours, and scenes. I held this album in my hand when it came out
and I "didn't buy it!!?" NUTS!!! Who knows what I'd become if I heard
"Hemispheres" back then! The same, or a musician, a drug addict?
All I knew was, this was the most brilliant piece of music I had EVER heard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAZXGjoQTzw

A Rush Fanatic I became.

Neil Pearts words, let alone his amazing abilities on his ever growing Kits,
would transport me to wondrous worlds and everyday thought, in profound
lyrics that resonate in me, and sometimes find there way into my vocabulary
to this day.
But it is because of The "Professor", I would become a Drum fan and hear the
difference between a player and a Drummer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9qJLt1dofE
Alex Lifeson. . . his "sound" so synonymous to Rush and what they are. One
of the most underrated Guitarists there is! From the technical, to the moody,
the atmospheric and sublime. It would be his sound (as well as his mates) in
those crazy time signatures, but also his Guitar tone and style in which he
played, filling the role of a second guitarist, that would be unique to my growing
ears and a prolific understanding of what music could be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78D00dYOBrM

Geddy Lee has the most distinguishable voice in Rock . . . but then the Bass.
I'm not sure if anybody truly appreciates what the man DOES on that 4 string
Bass, listen to the older pieces (as now), he does NOT just add a "beat" or
rhythm, the man plays it like a 6 string Guitar! And the tone was his signiture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUNxqE_3N0c
And STILL to this day, they sound like "musicians", not old fogies trying to
live on there past. They create MUSIC.
For now on, they would set the standard and ALL would follow.
To this day, I am still on the look out for any LP's, Promo Discs (CD and LP),
EP's and Tour Programmes that I can get my hands on.
Bands have done Tributes and interpitations of their music, but none can
emulate their knowledge of recording, playing style or sound, that makes
them squeeze out soo much music, from a "Trio" that plays more like a 6
piece band. This IS the definition of a Power Trio.
Kansas and Rush would be at a tug of war for my favorite bands of all time.

But with the older albums, I would re-discover the "Permenant Waves" album,
it was still fresh and new. Hearing "The Spirit of Radio" properly on a good
Turntable made it more dynamic and the time changes were soo damn unique
at that time. "Freewill" was another unique piece that it could be a hit, yet be
un-radio like, Alex's Guitar Solo was more akin to a Jazz piece, take away the
Drums and Bass and its a Fusion masterpiece! It almost has no Rock
elements in it, almost freeform, but you bring in the Bass and Drums and it
follows the lines, but still it comes from another World, it has to be one of my
favorite all time Solos!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDqDlRf8wxs&feature=related
. . . not only that, but the prolific words and clever phrasings that fit the music
so well! Words that would grow in meaning as I got older, at first I thought it
was "Anti-Deity", but we all have a Freewill, and my guide does not want
"Jesus Robots", but a human being of freewill and a conscience.
We all have a choice, and this song was a reminder that our own choices, if
we believe it is right without malicious intent, its the right one (or a "kindness
that can kill", we choose our path what ever it may be).
It didn't stop there, 2 "Ballads" that only Rush could make unique, "Alone
and yet together like 2 passing Ships":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AatUO5n7QE8

"Entre Nous" showed that prog Bands could write well thought out "Love Songs"
that was not only from the heart, but with some intelligents.
"Jacobs Ladder" was Cinematic, A "Film" of Clouds would grow in my head as
"Thunder Heads are rumbling through our distant overture", it was the anatomy
of a sky battle of Storm Clouds represented in music!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnkwhHOjv-4&feature=related
But the big Final was to be a favorite, Epic and prolific, from our "beginnings" of
life to possibly "losing our way", science and nature colliding, yet we have that
will to create something unique and go beyond what is "instinct".
"Natural Science":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7W0Nm8iHwk

. . . To say I was overwhelmed by their catalogue is an understatement.

Rush Bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Rush

Finally purchasing an Emerson Lake & Palmer album!!!
I'd end up finding ELP's "Pictures at an Exhibition" and would listen to it
quite alot, and STILL did not own "Brain Salad Surgery".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpEoF5nYE5w

"Talk, talk, it's only talk, debates, discussions, these are words with a D this time,
Dialogue, dualogue, diatribe, dissention, declamation, double talk, double talk"
-Elephant Talk/King Crimson

Another introduction to something that should've made me run out and get
EVERY album. A show that tried to ride the Saturday Night Live band wagon
in 1981. A comedy show called "Fridays"(on ABC) and this band comes on
that I had heard of a long time ago, these guys were soo incredible I didn't
know what to think of them, they were sort of New Wavish, but . . .
progressive.
The SOUNDS coming out of this smiling mans Guitar was NUTS! and is that
Bill Bruford on Drums!? It was King Crimson promoting the "Discipline" album
and it was . . . insane (until YOUtube, I thought I'd NEVER see this again).
Adrian Belew left an impression on me with his "Dialogue" vocals, his happy
dimeanor and crazy playing style, as well as Tony Levin on Bass, and it just
might be the 1st for me to notice bass playing of that calibur since Geddy Lee.
And seeing Robert Fripp "sitting" as all these busy notes came flying out of his
fingers (it was before or after this I read about Bill Brufords history in a
magazine called "Musician" and he also talked about his "Mutant" kit that is in
the vid, notice the Simmons Electronic Drums, he was 1 of the first to use
them).
I went out and got the album probably a few months later and became one of
my all time favorites. As I collected more albums in the years to come, I would
discover that the 3 "Primary colour albums" (Discipline, Beat and Three of a
Perfect Pair) were a different line-up and sound, of their previous history.
These 3 would be my faves (as well as the albums to come after), but would
slowly re-discover a band with a rich influencial history.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zl_Ryg5Ks4

(Note: seems ABC/YOUtube keeps deleating it for copyright bullshit, hopefully it
is still up by the time you click on link).
I've never seen Guitarist/Founder (on Chair) Robert Fripp THIS happy (hehe).

It was there I would discover another "U.K." based band. . . . and a few others.

Phase 9
. . . Heavy Metal, Heavier times.

"For the windows of the world, are never open all the way, and the voices of the past
are not forgotten
Till you leave it all behind you, you will never see the day, 'cause your life is on the line"
-Windows/Kansas

To be Continued . . .

Opus Insert
("The Pied Piper, The Anatomy of a Whistle or How to annoy as many people as
possible").

Or how about, "You're not paid to be a Canary!", what the hell am I talking
about you may ask. Well my Father was a damn good whistler. In fact, he was
always in the same key of the musics he whistled along with.
In-turn, I was to imitate my Dad-imitate the music I loved. I have always been
an imitator of sounds, birds, animals, musical instruments, celebs, cartoons,
sound FX, since I was a little kid.
But I vaguely remember a Hit song that had whistling in it back in the 60's.
My Dad would imitate it to a T, and I started doing it, though it wasn't the "O"
shaped mouth-blowing air out, was more the "sides of the mouth open with
the tongue tip touching the pallet behind the teeth, like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbQh8mTLUU0&feature=related
I started "singing" melodies by whistling, much like Guitarists playing the
vocal parts of songs (as I do :P), and that includes any inflection in the
voice, any subtlety. Then I started doing this with the melodies of music of
the instrument, mainly Guitars and keyboards-from there I was imitating them,
(and Drums, again, like a "Beat-Box"), but I was doing this since the late 60's.
Bass was a controled "farting" sound (Ha!), but I'd add a "voice" to it, so it
became 2 sounds at the same time, even the "Fretless" sound. Same for
Drums, a popping sound as well as tongue on pallet, mouth opens quickly,
teeth clenshed and air through the teeth-Snare and High Hat and other
Cymbals, it went onto emulating China Crashes, Double Bass Toms (Kick
Drums), Electronic Pads, Wind Instruments . . . call me "Bobby McFerrin",
before . . . Bobby McFerrin (why didn't someone tell me I could make money
with this, instead I'm bragging to Prog Heads that don't have any money! :P).
One thing I still catch myself doing is, when I imitate a Guitar sound, I "whistle"
the "Harmonics", I just can't help myself. When I hear Eric Johnson's "Bristol
Shore", its either a high E or a harmonic towards the end of the song, I plant
that tougue up to the pallet by the teeth and blow "(schh)TTEEEEEEE!!!!"
. . . I'm a freak.
Then Geof Tate comes along and for 3 albums has his trademark whistles,
the best comes from "I will remember" from Rage for Order (Queensryche):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCxxK0SZuEE
Everytime I see the "Unplugged" version of it, where Tate "doesn't" whistle
any of the parts, I whistle the parts :P When I'm in a large Parking Garage,
I get the urge to whistle it . . . and damn it, when I'm goofy enough to do it,
Blow man blow!
. . . I'm such a weirdo! what is wrong with me?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83bmsluWHZc&feature=related
"Be HAPPY at your work!"

A Prog Musician's Pledge

2009-02-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

1. I will keep my chops and my mind sharp, as a tool needs to always be ready to work.

2. I will be humble about my chops and my mind, but I will never be afraid to use them.

3. I will keep my mind open to influences and I will continue to learn and absorb so my songs may reflect the world as it is, was, and could be.

4. I will never write vapid, hollow songs unless I am writing a concept album that has vapid, hollow characters.

5. I will veil any love songs, if written at all, in metaphor like "You spread your gossamer wings above the breaking dawn." The phrases ooh baby baby, yeah baby baby, and hey baby baby are verboten (see #4 for exceptions).

6. I will not write songs about how much I rock, how much you rock, how much Rock rocks, how much I want to rock you, or how you rock me baby baby (See also #4).

7. I will always be in it for the love and joy of music, never for the money.

8. I will fear no meter or rhythm no matter how "non-danceable" someone else thinks it is.

9. I will fear no harmony no matter how dissonant it is.

10. I will fear no melody no matter how oblique it is.

11. I will moderate the use and be wary of the overuse of 4/4, 3/4, 6/8 and of I-IV-V, I-vi-ii-V, and VI-VII-i.

12. I will remember the past of prog and look forward to the future of prog.

13. I will take my music seriously but not myself.

This is the first draft of this list. Although I like having 13 items I'm open to additions. Any thoughts?

The Great Debate

2009-01-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

Is Falling Into Infinity an album so evil? Is it not?

The record company forced the band to write a more song based album, less progressive, for spreading the masses. Evil evil capitalism, really.

To draw my "lines in the sand", let me start at the beginning.

It was in 1990, prog seemed dead to me for many years, I was into metal, King's X was the high end of greatly crafted music, metal itself was beyond the edge of a mass product, my musical self was dumb, my interest almost dead.

When I listened to a friend's copy of "When Dream And Day Unite" I was very much impressed that someone does make this great music again and I instantly got me a copy myself. It took many listens over some months to explore and understand the full divineness of this recording. A good, good sign.

"Image And Words" was so different, it was almost shocking, but still, another divine album. Their first gig in my area, supported by Fates Warning. Awake came out, another album, again heading another direction. The fusion elements Sherinian introduced to the band combined with a new move of progmetal. Another gig, where they played "The Great Medley", a pre-release tour. Awesome, awesome! I already was a big fan of them. "A Change Of Seasons" again took me months to really understand everything they did put in there, as every album before.

It went on and on, every new album showed some new directions and skills of those guys, it was unbelievable.

"Falling Into Infinity" simply showed that they have those fine skills in writing "normal" songs too. Nothing bad for me, and I loved those songs and still do. As for gaining fans, it may have helped, but wasn't necessary anyway. The band Dreamtheater got mentioned in every corner of the global metal scene, like wildfire.

Gods. Creators of the universe.

Then came "6 Degrees Of Inner Turbulence". Looking back in 2009 now, I think this album introduced the turning point. It sounded to me as if they lost some love, some enthusiasm.Still the fine writing of those gods, but it didn't touch me emotionally. I never warmed up on it and never will.

"Train Of Thought" hit me better, it was a bit like back to "Awake". But less innovative, harder, faster, but almost without all those fine ideas in writing that made them being the gods of DT. "Octavarium" got even worse. 7 normal-length tunes that plainly pump out guitar - aggression without saying anything or leaving any kind of impression or emotion. The prog epic Octavarium sounds like an interwaved collection of prog clones; you simply never hear a DT-identity in any of its notes. The band regresses tragically.

They move to Roadrunner Records. Light at the end of the tunnel?

"Systematic Chaos" - oh no, the regressing line continued linearly. As BG said so perfectly: They are nothing more than a proggier, better Metallica. I didn't purchase this album.

What will the next album be like? A prog - Motörhead with LaBrie - vox. I better do not imagine that....

I don't think so, rather than that I bet they will not change any further and keep up doing the same and the same, stating that this is the DT sound. Their place in the market.

Twisting this article by 6 degrees, I go back to "Falling Into Infinity", the fan collecting album Atlantic insisted on.

The album is good, it ever was, it just showed another aspect of those geniusses.

I have no idea for what reason they changed label. Not knowing anything is good in that case, gives me a chance to speculate:

Atlantic saw where they are heading to and tried to bring them back on the track of being innovative and spectacular. DT didn't want to, they intend to reinforce their place in the market as the DT sound. A tross on a money collecting quest.

Now would that be better than the intention of releasing "FII"?

If they wanna get me back in the boat, they better concentrate on new musical adventures, bring in a couple of different styles and genres, show their incredible skills, set up more new, higher levels in prog metal, give me a reason for studying an new album for several months.

What we got for the last few albums was a bunch of so extremely high skilled geniusses hanging in the couch of a progmetal-Bonjovi. Please guys, stop that tragedy!!!!!