Tag: prog rock

I Missed Them Completely

I’ve been a Prog Rock fan since I first discovered Rush in 1981. I was 10 years old and most of what Prog bands did went way over my head, but there was something about Rush that clicked with me. Not long after it was Yes. Then Pink Floyd. Then Genesis. Then King Crimson. And so on and so on.

The 1980’s though, were a pretty dark time for Prog. First we had Asia, which included members of Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson Lake and Palmer, releasing their very commercial, radio friendly, MTV orientated first record which blew away the album and singles charts in 1982. Then a year later we had Yes releasing 90125 in similar financially friendly fashion. Genesis had descended into a hellish pop music abyss by then as well (though there was still good in them if you were able to look past the chart topping crap), and while it would take a few years for them to catch up, even Pink Floyd released a pretty radio friendly record. Rush and King Crimson both morphed into an 80’s sound without really caving into the pop music world, at least not to my ears. I get the impression that Robert Fripp was trying to bend pop music to his own personal will (if anyone could have done it, it was him) while Rush just kept making Rush sounding records that happened to embrace 80’s technology (arguably to their detriment, but also maybe arguably to their benefit).

In other words, prog rock in the 70’s was awesome. Prog rock in the 80’s was… less awesome (though still better than almost anything else… except for some specific Genesis songs [looking at you, Illegal Alien and Invisible Touch]).

But there was one question that I never asked myself, or anyone else for that matter… did I miss anyone? Were there any other bands that I should have been listening to that I wasn’t?

Apparently the answer is yes, yes there was.

Marillion.

Well, there were probably 20-30 bands that I should have listened to but never did (Gentle Giant and Camel come to mind, but not Jethro Tull. Fuck Jethro Tull. I can’t stand that friggin’ band), but I don’t know why Marillion never came up. I think it might be as simple as they were not very big in the United States. They apparently were huge in the UK for a little while at least, and I was actually paying attention to the industry as a whole at that time (their biggest record came out in 1985, the same year as Power Windows by Rush, which I bought the minute it hit the record store shelves). Was that the only reason I never listened to them?

I have been aware of them for ages, of course. Was I aware of them before the internet? If it really was a regional (US vs UK) thing that kept me from them, then the internet would have been what put them on my radar. Recently they have been showing up in a bunch of places online where I happened to have been looking. A few months ago I made a note to check them out on a streaming service somewhere. I don’t recall what made me want to do that, but it was something. I didn’t do it until this past weekend though. Their guitar player was a guest on That Pedal Show and I figured I should at least listen to their biggest record, Misplaced Childhood, before I watched it. I did. I liked it. I thought the record had a sort of 70’s Genesis vibe to it. It was very 80’s, but not in a bad way (and me calling something “very 80’s” is usually meant as a negative).

I thought they dated back to the early 70’s like all of the more important prog bands but no, their first album was in 1982 or 83 (according to the two minutes I spent digging around wikipedia). I think if I had known about them at that time I probably would have gone completely off the deep end for them. They would have been a legit prog band that wasn’t devolving into a commercial/pop shadow of their former selves the way most of the prog acts from the 70s did. I knew they had two singers and that the changing of singers sort of mark different eras of the band, but I didn’t realize the first singer left as quickly as he did (after the forth album).

Yesterday I googled “list of best albums by Marillion” and found one random site that ranked them from worst to best. I listened to the 4-5 “best” albums on the list during the work day and liked most of what I heard, though I have to admit I wasn’t listening all that closely because, ya know, work.

I guess the point of this post is to get myself to accept that while I am a total prog rock snob, there are still a lot of things I don’t know about. Maybe it’s time to start taking advantage of streaming music services (ick) and start digging into the catalogs of some of those bands. Just not Jethro Tull or Dream Theater. I fucking hate both of those bands.

I Don’t Know… I Don’t Want It

Beat…

Adrian Belew and Tony Levin were in King Crimson (the first time) from 1981 through 1984. The two of them have recruited two world class musicians to play the music from that time period once again. On drums they have Danny Carey from Tool. I am not terribly well versed in Tool’s catalog, but what I do know is good and he seems like a good choice to cover for the legendary Bill Bruford. The other new guy… I don’t know.

I should be absolutely stoked for this new band. Adrian Belew is a fantastic guitar player. He’s one of the most innovative, original musicians ever. He’s a giant. Tony Levin is literally as good as a human being can get. Whether it’s on the bass guitar or the Chapman Stick, or any other chunk of wood with strings on it, he’s as good as it gets. He’s one of, possibly THE, most talented musicians on the planet Earth at this time. I’ve seen him live twice, once just before the pandemic hit when he was playing in the last version of King Crimson, and once back in 1988 (or was it 1989?) with Yes spinoff Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe. I really wanted to see him with Peter Gabriel back in September but we went to Disney World and caught Covid-19 instead.

Belew, Levin, Carey… all people I should be salivating over the chance of seeing them live on stage together. It’s that fourth guy though…

Is Steve Vai one of the most talented guitarists in the history of wood and strings? Yes, that’s a fair statement. Is Steve Vai a musical genius? Yeah, probably. I just… I just don’t really care for his music, that’s all. To me, he’s sort of in the same boat as Joe Satriani. I heard once that he actually took lessons from Joe Satriani at one point. I saw Satriani live once. He opened for Deep Purple. There was no denying his talent. No denying he is an astonishing guitar player. Having said that though, two songs into his set I was completely bored. Enormous talent. Staggering technique. But no actual interesting music. None.

Vai played with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake back in the 80’s. His ability was jaw dropping. His actual music? I’m sorry but it was just boring. It was style over substance in the worst way. That 1981-84 period of King Crimson is very important to me. I am positive that Steve Vai is going to do amazing things with it. I am also sure that I will be bored to tears by all of it.

I honestly feel terrible that I feel this way. I should be giddy with glee over this new band. I’m not. I just can’t. It makes me sad, it really does. My sincere apologies to Misters Belew, Levin, and Carey. And to Mister Vai too. I just can’t get over my preconceptions. I am really sorry.

Random Lunchtime Stuff

Some random thoughts as my lunch break winds down…

I read a great article from Guitar World yesterday called 20 Ways to Improve Your Les Paul. The need to have my 1978 Les Paul Custom repaired/upgraded is never very far from my mind, but I don’t have the money to spend on it and I am nervous about trying to sell another guitar to pay for it because what if I am overwhelmed with sellers remorse? Worse, what if I sell it for a lot of money and then find out I didn’t sell it for nearly enough. Oh, the stress! Anyway, the article made me want to get on with it, even though most of the things it suggests are things I wouldn’t do. Fifties wiring and PAF clones are about all I have in mind. That and frets… yikes!

Speaking of Les Pauls, I haven’t played my new Les Paul, or any guitar for that matter, in weeks. I am starting to go through withdrawals again, and I have zero calluses left on my left hand. I am soft and smooth and in for a lot of pain and unpleasantness when I do start playing again. Crap.

Speaking of Les Pauls again, I just finished listening to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in its entirety in one sitting for the second time in a week. I don’t know for sure that Steve Hackett played all of his leads on a Les Paul, but it seems that way. There’s clearly a Stratocaster on the next Genesis album, but The Lamb and the three records he played on prior to that all sound like Les Pauls to me. I think he played through Hiwatt amps back then, but I don’t know that for sure. When I saw him in 2019 he was standing in front of a Marshall and a single 4×12 cabinet (he was also not playing a Gibson Les Paul at that show, but a Fernandez Les Paul copy. I think it’s the same (or similar) model I saw Robert Fripp play that same month). I wonder if it was a real Plexi, or even cooler, and old JTM45. Oh, to go back in time with a pile of cash.

I need to go grocery shopping tonight, and I want to get an oil change for the Mazda, which is about to be Bellana’s Mazda. I want the car to be all up to date with everything when we “sell” it to her. I also want to go back to the store that sold me the jacket yesterday and get them to take off the damn security tag. I am pretty ticked off about that. I hope to see my parents this weekend if possible, but it really doesn’t seem like I am going to have the time. There are too many things going on right now, only some of which are related to the imminent xmas. I am hoping I can throw the wife and step kids into the car at some point over the weekend so we can all go out and look at xmas lights. I want that to include a visit to Boston too, but I know it won’t. I wonder if New Years Eve in the city is a possibility? The last time we did that it was followed a couple of months later by a global pandemic, so maybe it’s bad luck? Who knows.

Okay, lunch is over. Time to go be productive for a couple of hours before calling it a work week. HoHoHo, Merry weekend.

Cleaning Day

My scrambled eggs seriously angered my stomach this morning. It’s been an hour and I still feel far from right.

I’m trying to clean the kitchen right now while also trying to ignore the stomach anger. Why won’t the chrome on the stove stop streaking? WTF?

I’ve been listening to metric tonnes of Genesis lately and I just decided that I will listen to The Lamb all the way through while cleaning. The whole double LP in one sitting. Think I can pull it off?

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.