David Longdon

I am a total prog rock snob. Prog rock in general is a snobby kinda thing, but I am maximum snob. I don’t apologize for it. I don’t care if sharing my musical tastes make me sound like an asshole. I just don’t. I’m snobby about all music, but I am extra snobby about prog.

Prog started with In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson in 1969 and pretty much ended with the horrible Love Beach by Emerson Lake and Palmer. Everything that came after that is something else. Prog-ish. Prog-adjacent. Whatever. It became something else. I’ll still call it prog but I don’t know that I agree that it is. Asia was prog musicians, but is it prog? Hell no. Yes in the ’80s, same thing. Is it? Not really. A few moments here and there, but mostly no. Genesis in the 80s certainly wasn’t either, though they were sneaky and slipped some ideas in now and again. Rush… Rush, in my opinion, is the best thing that has ever happened in popular music, but was it really prog in the 80s? Prog-adjacent, yes, but authentic? I don’t know.

What about the bands that came after that? The next tier, so to speak. This is where my snobbery hits it’s heights and it’s all because of one band: Dream Theater. I had so many friends who saw Dream Theater as the second coming of Rush. The next best thing, so to speak. The bringers of a progressive rock meets metal movement that would usher in the future of prog blah blah blah. Music school friends. Rush fandom friends. So many people telling me how awesome Dream Theater was. Unfortunately, I fucking hated them. Loathed them. Listening to that band makes me feel physically ill, much like most country music makes me sick. I just cannot express in words how much I hate that band.

Clearly I was in the minority and that’s fine. I can respect the people involved for making music out of the mainstream and being successful at it. I very much admire them for that, but the music had such a negative effect on me that it made me avoid any band from the late 80s on that even gave a hint at progginess. No thanks. If this is what it’s come to then I don’t want anything to do with it.

As we got into the 2010s though, realizing that the actual authentic people who were involved in the 70s were starting to go away more and more often, I started wondering if I had missed anything worthwhile. I heard a Steven Wilson record a few years ago that I liked quite a lot. It wasn’t very prog, but it was in the ball park. I knew him as the guy who was remixing so many of the classic records. I dug a little deeper and his work got proggier and better and then I realized he was the guy from Porcupine Tree. That was one of those bands that I had purposely avoided. Should I bother? Yeah, let’s try it. I picked a record at random. It was really good. I picked another at random and it really wasn’t good. Okay. A little more digging and I find that they took a while to evolve, but once they got where they were going they were excellent. Their last 5-6 records are great.

Okay, so if that band is worth a listen then maybe what passes for progressive rock in the 21st century is worthy of more study. Who else should I listen to?

I’ve stumbled across a few good bands. One used to have a guitar player from the band XTC who, in my younger days, I liked sometimes. Not always. They were quirky and weird and those are plusses to me. The band was called Big Big Train. They had just released a record called World Tour. I took it for a spin. Good stuff. Great songs. Not even a hint of “heavy” but that’s okay. I really liked that album. Track two is called Alive and it is a spectacular song.

Apart from knowing one guy used to be in XTC, I didn’t know anything about them. Who are these folks? Who plays what? How many people played on the record? All good questions, but the biggest question that first listen prompted was WHO THE HELL IS THIS SINGER WHO SOUNDS MORE LIKE PETER GABRIEL THAN PETER GABRIEL??? The guy sounded great.

And finally, eight paragraphs later. We get to the point of the post, which realistically should only be about three sentences. That singer who sounded like a young Peter Gabriel on a really good day was named David Longdon and a few days ago, at the ripe young age of 56, he passed away. No details have been released outside of saying it was an accident. I suddenly wish I had started listening to him a decade or so sooner than I did. I missed out on a lot. They were going to tour the US in 2020 but Covid. I think they tried touring in 2021 too but Covid. That means a lot of people who are legitimate fans will never get to see him live. That’s really sad to me. I didn’t see him live because I am a prog snob, but people who are more open than I am will miss him too. Damn it. Rest in peace, sir. Everyone else, give one of his records a spin today. You’ll be very happy you did.

Do Something

It’s 9:30pm. I’m sitting at my desk on a Windows machine (why?) watching last Friday’s That Pedal Show (finally) and thinking that I should post something without having any clue what to post.

TV? I finished Foundation last night. Two thumbs up, says the guy who never read the Azimov books. I watched both Walking Dead spin offs today. World Beyond was good. Fear wasn’t. At least I don’t think it was. I have to fess up that it was so boring I was barely paying attention to any of it.

That Pedal Show has an old SR&D Rockman headphone amp on the board. I haven’t gotten far enough into the episode for them to use it, but it did send me on a hunt. I used to own a Rockman headphone amp. Which model was it? Ebay and Reverb searches make me think that it was a Soloist. The original Rockmans apparently had a little gain control on the back. Mine didn’t. I know it wasn’t an X100 because my memory seems to think that the X100 was the latest and greatest model when I bought mine and I didn’t want to pay the full price so I bought an older model used. I used to use it to record a direct line into Mike’s Fostex cassette 4-track recorder. Larry had a couple of the rack units. The Sustainer, the Stereo Chorus and the Delay… was it called the Stereo Delay? I can’t remember. I do know the Sustainer was awesome as a direct signal into the 4-track. I would think about buying a Soloist for the nostalgia value, but I don’t want to spend $100. I need them to be cheaper than that.

Okay. So I am going to get into bed and maybe watch a little more That Pedal Show, or maybe go look for a new TV show, or maybe just watch a random Futurama, or maybe just go to sleep. As mentioned in a previous post, I am so freakin’ tired.

Until next time, good night everyone.

Wah Pedals

I search for boutique wah pedals and get link after link telling me I have to get my hands on the wah pedal I dumped into my closet when that frat boy fucker in California went on his idiotic racist rant following the George Floyd protests and implied that people who put more value on a human being’s life than on their neighbor’s windows are both unworthy of his products and incapable of pissing while standing up. Fuck that guy. I’m never using his pedals again, I don’t care how amazing his fucking deluxe wah pedal is.

End rant.

So where do I go? There is Xotic and Jam Pedals. They are both supposed to have excellent wahs. One company that I know nothing about keeps popping up too. Real McCoy Custom, or RMC. they seem to have a ton of models, all with stellar reviews, but only a few are in production. Is that info correct? They are pretty expensive and there aren’t a whole lot of dealers (just one in Massachusetts).

I’m thinking when the time comes, this is probably where I want to go. The RMC10 reviews are all stellar, but I’m only seeing RMC11’s for sale around here.

One of these days.

Wasting Away

The last week or so… what a waste.

Have I given up on the November Music thing? A few days ago I would have said no, but over the last couple of days I have had a ton of time to work on things but instead I just sat on my ever expanding ass, eating junk food and watching TV (Foundation on Apple TV+). Literally the only thing I have accomplished this week is gaining weight. The last two nights I’ve gotten to bed time, right around now, and realized that I still have exercise to do to close my Activity rings. Instead of going to bed and getting a good night’s sleep I am about to march around trying to close the rings. About two minutes in my back is going to start screaming at me. I don’t know if I can keep it up with things hurting as much as they are. Failure, thy name is Robert. Crud.

How do I motivate myself again? I don’t know. Was I ever honestly motivated or was I just fooling myself somehow. I hate feeling like this!

On the upside, having never read Foundation I can say that I am enjoying the show. From what I’ve heard, the TV show has absolutely nothing to do with the book apart from a few character names. So I guess that’s a thing.

Ugh… what the hell is wrong with me?

New Song

National Solo Album Month needs to come up with a better name because I’m not writing that dumb acronym again. I’m just calling it November Music, m’kay? That works for me.

Three songs down. I don’t have a count in mind as a goal, I just want to hit the challenge mandated minimum of 29 minutes and however many seconds. Eight seconds? I don’t remember. Let’s round it up to 30 minutes. This puts me at 15 minutes, but one of the songs is disgustingly terrible so if I drop it I’m at 11 minutes. The songs tend to be running a little long this month so I am still in good shape.

I want to like this one. I am not sold yet, but I am hoping it turns out to be track one and kind of the signature song for the month… I just don’t know if I pulled it off.

I’ve been listening to a lot of prog lately… it shows.

Sunday Tunes

I worked on some November music today. I started a new song, which is just rhythm guitars and a drum loop so far, added rhythm guitar to one song and leads to two. There’s one semi-proggie song in the pipeline that I am hoping will come out okay when it’s done. Fingers crossed, right?

The Good and the Terrible

I mixed two songs tonight. I was only planning on doing one. I had a song from the November list that was ready to finish off so I was going to take care of it, upload it to alonetone, maybe add it to a post here, and then go to bed.

Unfortunately it is the worst dog shit of a song that has ever come out of my untalented brain. It just sucked so bad. What was I thinking? What is wrong with me?

So rather than go to bed with that awful taste in my ears, and also with that song at the top of my alonetone queue, I decided to finish off a song for the new round or re-recordings. The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project and all that.

I feel a smidge better about my place in the universe after working on this one. Consider my ears’ palette cleansed.

Bang your head, kids.

New Song for November

Yesterday I posted a new recording of a song from this past summer. Tonight I post a brand new song for the November National Solo Album Month project. Caution: This one has keyboards. I buried them in the mix to be safe though so I think we’re okay.

More Car Tunes

I spent about 45-50 minutes in the movie theater parking lot recording vocals for November tunes. I had four songs ready to do and I only got to two of them. That’s okay. There is still a lot of November left.

There were a lot of cars around and people out for walks (at least until it started raining). It wasn’t quite as private as I like and I was distracted. Oh well. Maybe more over the weekend.

Pics!