Catharsis

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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.

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

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!