The 5th Season - a diary, Day 2

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.

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When bands are loosing it

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.

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Music Without Borders - Interview: Farzad Golpayegani

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.

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New Blog Layout

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?

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

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

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....?

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Identity Crisis

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

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?