Prog Gift Ideas
(Note to my family: This is not a gift list for me. You should have gotten your 2009 Gift List on December 26th of last year, please refer to that and ask me for a new copy if you some how lost or original).
It’s that time of year again, where we all force ourselves to cheer up and see the brighter side of life, and part of that brighter side is giving gifts to all of our coworkers, neighbors, bar tenders, and if we’re feeling super generous, friends and family.
Now chances are that if you know a fan of progressive rock, it’s been a huge pain in the ass to find them an appropriate gift. They already own all the music they want, since they never wait more than 4 hours until after a record is released to get their hands on the limited collector’s vinyl edition with 300 page color art book and band commentary DVD. On the other end, the only things they don’t have that they want cost tens of thousands of dollars (see: Neil Peart’s drum kit from the Test For Echo tour, Robert Fripp’s stage stool, the 2nd neck on Chris Squire’s 3-neck bass, etc). So you usually just end up buying them something from the Apple store and move on.
BUT NOT THIS YEAR! This year you have the Prog Blog’s guide to holiday shopping for the common prog fan. While things like a gym membership, soap, or clothes that they weren’t wearing back in high school may provide more immediate and obvious benefits, I’m here to help you find the gifts that your prog fan boy or girl (ok, lets be honest, boy) truly desire:
Applications for our iPhone that lets us make music as if we were a 3-year old:
This is why all iPhone drum apps fail
Prog fans, like all dirty hippie creative types, love Apple products and probably had an iPhone before Steve Jobs had one. You can tap into this irrational love for a nominal product by getting them one of the many iPhone apps that let regular douche bags sound like cutting edge musicians.
Bebot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpgxd8bljtg) is one app that lets you create all sorts of noise just by touching and dragging your fingers across the phone’s screen. You can also add tons of effects to make it sound like you’re doing something much more complicated than randomly pointing at the screen. I will commend the creators of the application here because I think they’ve created something that, by default, allows the user to sound at least as skilled as Sigur Ros.
If this is too ‘artifical’ for someone trying to use their iPhone as an instrument, you can get them Pocket Guitar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51cWRrZdkwk&feature=related) which will let them remember why they hated their first guitar teacher AND make them sound like a crappy midi file. Or, if they’re a wind player, you can get them the Ocarina app (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdQvSWXaODs&feature=related) which has already been used to play every single song from Zelda about 8 billion times on youtube, shockingly.
Invent a new audio format
'Rubber Ducky' never sounded so good!
Prog is all about one-upmanship. So you can play the guitar AND bass part to “La Villa Strangiato” at the same time AND do it at twice the tempo Rush played it at? So what, I can do that AND play drums!
One thing prog fans love to one-up each other on is the audio format of their music collection. From vinyl to eight track to cassette tape to compact disc to WAV to MP3 to DVD-A to FLAC to OGG back to vinyl again for some stupid reason, we always want to tell other people how ‘pure’ sounding the music we listen to is. No one ever really wins this battle, but we still all scramble to convert our archives any time a new format appears claiming to be the only true way to listen to an artist’s music. Thus, if you want to give your prog fan a special gift, invent an audio format that no one else has. Then present it to them and tell that that NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD HAS THAT FORMAT. He or she will probably leave immediately to update their collection, half joyful that they will be ahead of the curve and half shameful that they didn’t have format before you invented it.
If you need help with an idea for what format you want to use, here are a few free ones I promise don’t exist yet:
-Honeycombs full of bees
-Wood
-ACTUAL solid gold and platinum records
-Human flesh (depending on the body part, they may REALLY enjoy this one)
-Waffles
See, it’s easy. And no, don’t worry, they won’t question whether or not the bees moving and stinging the listener is a disadvantage. They should have done a better job preserving the media!
The album cover from In the Court of the Crimson King on anything
The Mona Lisa. If she liked prog.
We love this album cover. We don’t care that it freaks other people out. It’s basically our mascot. We’d paint it on our houses and cars if it didn’t kill the resale value. Honestly, if we woke up one morning and found it had been tattooed across our back, we’d love it. Just go over to cafepress.com and stick it on a shirt or a mug or a bumper sticker or baby or whatever and give it to us. We won’t care that we’re breaking numerous laws by owning an illegal piece of merchandise, and neither should you.
Stuff for an instrument we don’t actually play
How did you know I wanted to start playing Normaphone? You're so thoughtful!
The first thing prog fans love feeling is superior, but the second thing we love feeling is eclectic. Chances are we already own everything we can possibly want or afford for our main instrument (because we all play at least one instrument, DUH), but you can encourage that we waste time on a new instrument by buying us something for an instrument we barely play, or even better, don’t even play at all.
For instance I am a drummer, but I own a guitar that I can’t play for shit. It hangs on my wall and laughs at me whenever I try to pick it up. What I SHOULD do is put it in its case and find someone who wants a great Babicz Tribeca acoustic guitar (mmm blatant shilling for Babicz guitars goes here) so that my roommate doesn’t have to suffer needlessly through my ‘practicing’. However when my sister gave me a Rock Band (mmm blatant shilling for Rock Band goes here) song book for said guitar for one of the various winter holidays my family celebrates, I loved it.
You can do the same for your prog fan. If they have a drum kit sitting in their basement that was left their by the drummer in their last band, buy them some drum sticks (and yourself some ear plugs). If their grandmother left them a keyboard in her will, get them a sustain pedal! If you want to be really creative, get them something for an instrument they don’t even play, like slide lubricant for a trombone or bow rosin for a cello. They’ll get the hint, trust me!
Hopefully now your head is full of great gift ideas for the prog fans in your life. Go forth with new confidence that for the first time since they became a fan of the best music in the world, you’ll have found a gift that truly fits their totally awesome life style. It might kind of be like giving a crack addict a pipe for the holidays, but don’t worry, at least one person always loves an enabler!
Will It Prog? Nov 19
The progressive rock community is a bit like a cult. We’re always looking for new members to indoctrinate with our absurd rules and customs, but we’re also totally cool with simply calling you a heretic and setting you on fire if you don’t want to drink the kool aid. Thus every new band that introduces itself to the public is subjected to this trial by prog, and depending on their music, image, and various intangibles that no one really discusses but we all innately agree upon some how, the band is either forcibly branded with the prog label like cattle or they’re condemned as a source of musical decay, an inferior strand of musical DNA in the progressive master race.
To be fair, progressive rock is not unique in this process. Most niche music genres have their own methods for including or excluding new artists. I do feel though that prog community is exceptional in the sheer scope of artists it’s willing to try to associate the prog tag with. Hip hop, blue grass, jazz, metal, techno, trance, industrial, R&B, basically any genre with the work ‘rock’ in it, classical, hardcore, emo, punk, alternative, I honestly can’t think of a genre that doesn’t have at least one band in it that at some point didn’t also get slapped with a ‘progressive rock’ tag. We’re like the super spoiled kids no one likes in elementary school who invite the entire grade to their birthday party. We don’t actually have many friends ourselves, so we force as many people to be involved with us as possible to make it look like we’re popular. (and HOLY SHIT if you brought a gift we don’t like, you can kiss your turn on that kick-ass moon bounce goodbye).
So today I’m going to look at some of the bands making an impact in popular music and I’ll be asking the all important question, “will it prog?” Is this a band that music nerds are going to claim as their own, a savior of ‘real’ music for the masses, or shun as yet another cancer slowly crushing the vital organs of popular music? (note: according to progressive rock fans, popular music has had terminal cancer for about 40 years now).
Them Crooked Vultures: Super groups almost automatically always get recruited by the prog army. By nature, super groups are pretentious (Hey, I’m an awesome musician, screw my band, I only want to work with other awesome musicians) so the ground is fertile for a pompous progressive rock view point. Also, the odds prog infestation increase exponentially for every member of a classic rock group involved in the project(in this case, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin).
Result: IT WILL PROG. It will prog hard. I will say that, to me, the music I’ve heard from this band sounds like a more straight forward Queens of the Stone Age than anything actually stereotypically progressive rock. How the music actually sounds doesn’t matter though, they’ll be assimilated by the end of the year, unless they sign some kind of exclusive deal with Target, in which case a hit will be put out for Dave Grohl.
Phoenix: A band growing in popularity with hipsters and people who want to be hipsters. You’ve probably heard a song of there’s in a commercial without realizing it, so your opinion of the 2010 Cadillac RX is no doubt linked directly to that of the band. They’re French, and France is basically the lamest country in Europe when it comes to Progressive rock for some reason. Lamer than Sweeden. Seriously.
Result: IT WILL NOT PROG. No question here. It’s not the immediate corporate shilling (For instance Porcupine Tree has been played on MTV multiple times) or even the hipster association (see: The Decemberists). What it comes down to is that France is the only place in the world that can out-pretentious progressive rock fans. At least that’s one battle they can claim they’ve won.
Cage the Elephant: Cage the Elephant reminds me of Sublime, replacing the southern California influences and replacing them with Kentucky drawl. Their popularity has been steadily growing since they played some big festivals (Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo), tv spots (Letterman), stuck their big single up for free on iTunes, and lent it as an opening theme for a videogame. They also look like they haven’t come out of their parent’s garage in 10 years, making them ripe for the prog-ing.
Result: IT WILL NOT PROG. The music is just too generic to catch the attention of the public, and I keep finding reports of emotionless, sloppy live shows, something prog fans will NOT tolerate. They ARE being tolerated by the jam band and festival scene apparently, so the hippies can have them!
Passion Pit: Another hipster band, using heavy doses of electronics and synths to cover up the actual guitar/bass/drums being used on stage (simple formula: acoustic guitar and sounds controlled with a keyboard or iPhone=hipster. Drums and bass that aren’t produced by a computer=not hipster). Those traditional instruments are actually there though, I swear. Also, I get the feeling that I’m listening to rejected and remixed Sesame Street tunes listening to their material. This is not a criticism.
Result: IT WILL PROG. Their vocalist sings like his balls got ripped off. Automatically this lands them in progressive rock territory. Also, with lyrics like ‘Rapunzel Rapunzel let down your hair’ I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been stealing their lyrics from the same book of stories and rhymes that most early 70’s progressive rock groups were using.
Hopefully you learned something by looking into this crystal ball. Progressive rock has the ability to sneak up and steal your favorite bands when you aren’t looking, so be on your guard, lest you wake up and find that all of your music has been progged during the night.
Album Review: Between the Buried and Me – The Great Misdirect
Between the Buried and Me are a relatively new band on the prog scene, having seen a huge spike in their prog-popularity after they appeared on the 2008 Progressive Nation tour. Of course with a name like ‘Between the Buried and Me’ you’d expect some kind of teenage hardcore or scremo group. It was this prejudice that actually kept me from giving the band a chance for their first few albums. It’s hard enough being a prog fan when you have to deal with band names like “The Flower Kings” (note: I love The Flower Kings), so I didn’t want to add to my portfolio of bands with names that would get my ass laughed at. Yet eventually the buzz around BTBAM became too great for me to resist, and I gave their most recent album at the time, Colors, a honest listen.
While some of my fears were confirmed with Colors, I found myself understanding quite clearly why BTBAM was generating so much prog-hype. The vocals were just as I feared, cookie monster growling along with some clean vocals from someone who sounded like they were 16. The song writing was also a little disjointed, which is more of a critique I have towards various metal genres in general and isn’t specific to BTBAM. However the musicianship was stellar, and when the band hadn’t randomly generating their phrasing the tracks they created were amazing and easily some of the best new prog in the second half of the decade. It was almost like two different bands, a horrible stereotypical teenage death metal band whenever someone was singing, and then an amazing prog metal band whenever vocals weren’t needed. In the end I decided I liked the overall product and would at least continue listening to their stuff whenever they provided new material.
So here I am now listening to their latest offering, The Great Misdirect. I think this album represents a huge step forward for the band and an significant progression (ha!) in their sound. The excellent prog-metal band seems to have taken the reigns on this album, as the song writing has become much more fluid and phrases are much more distinct. Instead of just random thrashing and crazy finger-twisting guitar dueling we actually have passages that stick in your memory and contribute to the feel of each track. On Colors I felt only the ending track, “White Walls“, had any kind of real identity that kept it distinguishable from the other tracks on the album. With The Great Misdirect I find myself identifying passages and songs much more easily. Even the clean vocal sections seem to have evolved beyond what they were on Colors. They still sound like the vocalist needs to finish puberty at times, but at least the music supporting said vocals has improved.
Once again the musicianship is top notch. It’s not the kind of stereotypical prog musicianship where you find your jaw on the floor after a particularly technical section, but it’s still present enough to be appreciated. The intro to “Swim to the Moon” is about as face-melting as the guitar parts get (if you don’t understand the concept of face-melting, look it up). One compliment I can pay the album as a whole is that, especially for a band that is still so young, they understand how to balance all of the instruments during the song writing process and create layers of sound instead of just writing multiple solos and telling the engineer to “Pro Tools the bitch”. Also, if I could give an award to a band for having a keyboard player while still maintaining an extremely brutal metal texture to their songs, BTBAM would win it every year. That goes for their albums before The Great Misdirect as well, in fact I was very surprised when I watched a clip of these guys on youtube and saw a keyboard player on stage.
The crappy death metal band hasn’t been kicked out of the studio completely, and whenever the growling vocals kick in the melodies once again become completely interchangeable with each other. However that’s part of the band’s sound and I can accept that for what it is. In fact I’m absolutely sure this is part of the reason that the band has become so popular, especially with younger prog fans. Whether I like it or not this aspect of their music is something that speaks to people outside of the progressive genre, and because of that I foresee BTBAM continuing to grow and exist as a band fans of metal and prog can connect to each other over.
Hopefully BTBAM can continue to build and progress (ha again!) their sound in this direction. Other reviews of the album I’ve read have been disappointed because it’s not as straightforward and metal as their previous efforts, but I personally view this as a good thing for the development of the band. This is a great album to listen to if you’re just getting into the band for the first time, and I wish I had it available to me before I listened to their older stuff. As with most death-prog-metal (yeah, that’s some over genre classifying there, deal with it), if you can handle the vocals then you’ll enjoy what is on the whole a really sick album.
Grade: B+
Prog Happenings – November 4th
Prog Happenings will be a semi-regular summary of the various events that have punctuated the prog landscape recently, as well as some of my thoughts on each. Basically they’re the events that don’t justify an entire post, but are still worth talking about. So without further stalling:
Dream Theater Wins ‘Spirit of Prog’ Award at Classic Rock Awards (http://bit.ly/23iZRW)
This past Monday Classic Rock, a UK hard rock magazine, had their yearly Roll of Honor awards, and Dream Theater was presented with the ‘Spirit of Prog’ award. Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman presented the award to band leader and drummer Mike Portnoy and had some very high praise of the group during the presentation.
For all the crap I dish out on Mike Portnoy and Dream Theater on this blog, I’m glad they got this award. Without them prog would probably be a dead genre, and Portnoy in particular has done a lot to promote progressive music in the main stream. I personally wouldn’t have ever become enamored with the genre if it wasn’t for Dream Theater, so I think this award is absolutely deserved by the band. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop ripping them though.
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer Reform for Performance at High Voltage Festival in the UK(http://bit.ly/4hZq83)
ELP, one of the classic prog rock groups that your average music fan might at least recognize the name of if they were alive during the 70’s, will be reforming for one performance at the new High Voltage Festival being held next July in the UK.
Older prog fans are giddy with excitement over this. Personally I’m going to be interested in seeing how the band has aged. While they didn’t stop making music on their own, the group last performed together in the 1990s. I’m predicting that they won’t be lighting any more cannons on stage, MAYBE one if they’re feeling spry. Seriously, Greg Lake is one of my personal prog bass heroes, so I’m praying there will be a recording of this at some point.
Mars Volta Fire Drummer Thomas Pridgen. Maybe. Kind of. Anyone know if this actually happened?
Rumors are flying all over the web right now about the current status of the Mars Volta and their drummer Thomas Pridgen. A recent show was canceled with fans at the venue being told by security that the band had fired their drummer during sound check. The band and Prigden have been totally silent about the rumors thus far, which only adds to the speculation. Fans are fairly split right now on 1) whether or not this is true, 2) whether or not losing Pridgen would be a good or bad thing, and 3) who should take his place (Zach Hill and former drummer Jon Theodore seem to be the most popular choices).
I personally love Pridgen, so I hope these rumors are just that, rumors. That being said, the Mars Volta’s line-up has always been growing and shrinking on the whims of Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, so I’m preparing myself mentally for this rumor to be true. I’d love to see Theodore back with the group, as he’s a drummer with great energy, great chops, and a unique style behind the kit. However I’m guessing the door between Theodore and the band has been nailed, screwed, and welded shut, so I don’t expect that reunion to happen any time soon. Keeping my eye on this one…
Between the Buried and Me/Cynic/The Devin Townsend Project/Scale the Summit Announce US Tour (http://bit.ly/8IDu0)
Almost as if to prove that progressive rock is starting to flourish in the US again, fans will be able to feast on this prog smorgasbord starting in January of 2010. BTBAM have seen an absolutely huge growth in their popularity since appearing as a supporting act on last year’s Progressive Nation tour, large enough that they are headlining this tour that contains two other prog heavyweights, Cynic and Devin Townsend.
Cynic is a band no one in the world knows outside of prog historians, as they recorded one integral album in the history of prog before disbanding. Their reunion was something prog fans have been asking for for over a decade, so the fact that they’re serving as a supporting act here is kind of surprising. Devin Townsend is one of progressive rock’s mad scientists (in fact, I think we ONLY have mad scientists). Some consider him to be a more metal, more more balding, more Canadian Frank Zappa. He’s one of the darlings of the prog online community, and living proof of how the internet has impacted the genre. Scale the Summit is another beneficiary of the Progressive Nation tour, having been the opening act on this past year’s US leg. They’re very young but many people see this as being a good thing, and predict many quality albums in their future as the band continues to mature.
A comical, probably unintentional coincidence on this tour is that it features bands with growling vocals (BTBAM), computerized vocals (Cynic), weird-ass vocals (Devin Townsend), and no vocals (Scale the Summit). If you’re the kind of person who’s bothered when the douche bag next to you at a concert is singing louder than the band, you won’t have any problems on this tour.
Umphrey’s Mcgee S2 Shows Walk The Line Between Progressive and Hippie Bullshit (http://bit.ly/2zNYtv)
Progressive jam band Umphrey’s Mcgee has come up with a very…creative concept for some of their shows. Their “Stew Art Series” lets fans suggest themes that the band then uses as inspiration for a totally improvised concert. Fans can use cue cards, text messaging, and other media to suggest themes before and even during the show, and it’s up to the band to them turn these concepts into music.
While I think this is certainly a ‘progressive’ effort, I’m unsure of whether or not this will actually translate into quality music. UM is absolutely the band to undertake this effort, as I think they’re among the best improv jamers on the planet, but this just seems like an exercise in hippie silliness to me. To be fair I’ve only heard the samples from the first show that the band has provided on their blog, so I don’t know what the overall product has sounded like so far. The list of themes I’ve seen fans come up with have also been fairly entertaining, like ‘mudslide on mars’ and ‘Chaka Khan at an Iron Maiden show’.
Cracked Tells You How to Be a Prog Rocker (http://bit.ly/2FYtec)
While I wanted to cover most of this in the second half of my post on Stereotypes in Prog rock, cracked.com has done a great job in poking fun at the genre I love. Check it out if you want a good laugh. Now I just need to figure out how I can write the second half of that post without looking like I blatantly plagiarized from this…
Thank you!
A ton of people have started reading this blog in the past few days, so I just wanted to say thank you to anyone who stops by. Hopefully you like what you see and will keep coming back to read my bullshit.
[adultswim] loves progressive rock
Ok, so that’s probably not totally accurate, but last night on The Venture Brothers (possibly the only [adultswim] show with a plot) a lot of fans got their first taste of progressive rock. Considering that this is one of my favorite shows on tv, I can’t describe how happy this segment made me. The prog-gy goodness actually continued later in the show, but here’s a quick video clip of the awesomeness.
Album Review: Transatlantic – The Whirlwind
I was pleasantly shocked when I first heard rumors that Transatlantic had reformed to record a third album. Their first two albums, SMPT:e and Bridge Across Forever were not only amazing pieces of work, but they introduced a lot of the newer prog fans to an style of progressive rock that hadn’t been recorded or appreciated in decades, melodic 70’s prog. Of course all of that came crashing down when Neal Morse, one of the two primary members of the super-group, left the progressive music scene to focus on faith-based music, effectively killing both Transatlantic as well as his main project, Spock’s Beard (note: Spock’s is still around, but the music isn’t nearly as creative. Neal, if you’re reading this, you broke my heart.) So when I started hearing rumors that the band had gotten back together to record another record, I thought it was just the wishful thinking of a obsessed fan base (and trust me, they’re obsessed. A lot of prog fans would have rather had a Transatlantic reunion than lose their virginity, and the band had only been gone seven years). Yet here I am, with a brand new Transatlantic album streaming through my headphones.
And this IS a Transatlantic album. First of all, the first disc is one solitary 77 minute piece. Transatlantic always prided itself on writing the most epic of epic epics, and they certainly accomplished that here in terms of shear volume of material. The second disc is more original material as well as some covers, which is something fans should be used to from their first two albums as well as their live shows, which always featured the integration of classic prog covers from artists like the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, and Genesis. The covers on this album are fairly solid, with “Return of the Giant Hogweed” being pretty fucking stupendous. “Soul Sacrifice” is also decent, but I can’t help but feel like it was put on the album as an excuse for Mike Portnoy to record a drum solo.
The 77 minute title track is quite the beast. I’ll commend the band here for creating something so large that still manages to sound like one cohesive piece. I was afraid when I learned that they were only giving themselves four weeks to write and record the entire album that the result would be a rushed, choppy, and unimaginative product, but this certainly isn’t the case. At the same time, there’s a ton of very diverse music to wrap one’s head around, and I’d be very impressed if they try to perform it live (which of course they will, because they’re a ridiculous prog band). I LOVE the fact that the first voice we here is Roine Stolt’s instead of Neal’s, because, while I think Neal may be the superior vocalist technically, I find Roine’s voice to be infinitely more unique and entertaining to listen to. There isn’t as much vocal interplay between the member of the group as there has been in the past, but we still get a healthy cross section of the different vocal textures that make up the band. The song writing is kept fairly simple through out and the only member who seems determined to show off his chops is Portnoy, which is normal for the style of the band. That isn’t to say the record doesn’t reek of prog, it’s just a style of prog that doesn’t focus on technical proficiency. The high-energy sections are thoroughly invigorating without being overly complex or blazing fast, something that has become a crutch for less creative prog bands. This is precisely the classic 70’s-style prog fans of Transatlantic love the band for.
Left to Right: Pete Trewavas (Marillion, Bass/Vocals), Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater, Drums/Vocals), Neal Morse (former Spock's Beard, Keyboards/Guitars/Lead Vocals), Roine Stolt (The Flower Kings, Guitars/Lead Vocals)
That being said, there are some things that keep The Whirlwind from being on the same level as the bands previous albums. There are a lot of high points where I find myself becoming really engaged in in the title track, but these sections are punctuated by stretches of material that don’t really add anything to the piece. If they had cut the piece down to something more reasonable (you know, like 45 minutes) the result could have been a truly great piece of music on par with their previous efforts. Instead we have something that has large stretches of brilliance accompanied by chunks of stagnation. I’m not saying it’s a bad piece of music, because it’s not, I just find myself skipping around a lot to find the awesome parts (which again, there are plenty of). One other thing that is a bit of a bummer is that it does sound like Neal was given the reigns on the lyrics for a lot of the piece (which may have been a condition for him agreeing to do the project in the first place), because many sections of the song are full of references to ‘eternal glory’ and ‘the giver of life’ and there being ‘a reason you’re here, it’s not by chance’. I understand that that kind of topic matter his focus now, which is fine for him, but it’s also why I don’t listen to his new music. Having these kinds of lyrics dominate the piece is kind of a let down, albeit one I expected.
The original material on the 2nd disk so far doesn’t strike me as the best work they’ve done. While the band has always been known for their epic, 15+ minute plus songs, their other albums have been rounded out by really strong supporting tracks like ‘We All Need Some Light‘, and so far I don’t hear anything nearly of that caliber on the second disk. ‘Spinning’ is probably the best track of the bunch of the new material on this second disk, but that’s mostly because the rest of the songs don’t do anything for me. To be fair the 2nd disk is a ‘bonus’ disk, so I guess it’s possible these tracks are supposed to be B-sides. The one totally redeeming aspect to these secondary tracks is that they give us the very first Pete Trewavas lead vocal song, ‘Lending a Hand’. It’s not even a great song, I just love hearing him try to sing the high notes that for some reason he feels the need to reach (though I guess it IS prog, where everyone feels the need to sing outside their range). In the end I’m glad I got the second disk because the covers are really fun to listen to, but the original material besides ‘Spinning’ could have bee left off and I would have been fine with it.
What I take away from this album is that it was a solid effort by some of the best musicians in progressive rock (or outside of progressive rock, as the case may be). I’m glad they got back together to give us this very enjoyable album and I’m excited about their announcement that they will be touring sometime in the future. However I’m not going to be starry eyed about The Whirlwind either and say that it’s just as good as their previous albums. I think they may have tried too hard this time to create an ‘epic’ album, the second disk’s original material probably could have been left on the cutting room floor, and Neal’s direction with a lot of the lyrics leaves me a little peeved. Still, the good outweighs the bad and I’ll be listening to this for quite awhile longer.
Grade: B
Invasion of the prog-lodytes: Examples of how progressive rock is sneaking into new genres of music
What years of listening to Rush records in your mother's basement can do to your complexion.
Prog has always claimed that it was ‘music for musicians’. It’s a pretty attractive label, and much better than the alternative ‘music for geeks who aren’t getting laid’. Regardless of the tag-line, the point is that even if you don’t actively listen to progressive rock, chances are that the bands you DO listen to count progressive rock artists among their influences. When young bands (that don’t suck) are talking to the press and the reporter asks them who their influences are, if they’re brave enough to mention people outside their own genre 90% of the time the drummer will include Neil Peart and/or Mike Portnoy, bass players will mention Geddy Lee, Tony Levin, and/or Chris Squire, and keyboard…well…ok, if they have a keyboard player, chances are he isn’t being given any face time unless he’s also the front man and super duper pretty (guitarists gets more genre dependent, but I see Steve Vai’s, David Gilmour’s, Frank Zappa’s, and Steve Howe’s names thrown out a lot).
So what happened to all these progressive-rock-influenced artists? How come none of them ended up making progressive rock? The answer is that you are simply being a naive fool. Progressive rock has worked long and hard to covertly work its way into more mainstream genres, and the fruits of decades of labor are now beginning to ripen. Below you will find examples of some genres where artists are now becoming popular who show significant signs that they’ve been infected with the prog.
METAL
What, no corpsepaint for the baby?
Metal was one of the earliest and easiest genres for prog to branch into. For one, a lot of metal musicians are extremely talented. I realize that, to people who aren’t fans of metal, a lot of the music just sounds like loud noise and unintelligible lyrics, but under the growling and the corpsepaint you’ll find some of the most technically skilled musicians around. Good metal guitarists can play diminished augmented pentatonic chords using alternate sweep picking just as fast as the proggy-ist prog douche bag guitar player, they just chose not to so because it’s not brutal enough (note: metal people judge all things on a scale of 1-brutal). Metal drummers and prog drummers are in an eternal pissing contest over who can play double bass faster, and just like how metal singers and prog singers are always trying to see how high they can sing without causing a sonic boom. Also, they put equal emphasis on physical activity and hygiene in their personal lives. So prog and metal have been pushing each other’s buttons for a very very long time, and the results have been enjoyable for both fan bases:
Examples of prog/metal marriages:
Dream Theater – Basically the flag bearer for progressive rock. Train of Thought is their most metal album, but every album has significant metal overtones through out. Scenes from a Memory is widely considered to be one of the best prog album of the 1990’s if not of all time. (Dream Theater Example – “Painc Attack”)
Opeth – If Dream Theater is a prog band with metal overtones, Opeth is a death metal band with prog overtones. The band drifts between melodic haunting passages and crushing metal destruction almost too freely. If you can’t handle cookie monster-style vocals you’d best start with Damnation which is their ‘mellow’ album, but then quickly get Deliverance and give that a spin as well. (Opeth Example – Death Whispered a Lulaby, and then The Drapery Falls)
Other prog/metal bands (and their albums that you should check out):
Symphony X - V (Example: “Inferno”)
Fates Warning – Inside Out (Example: “One“)
Queensryche - Operation: Mindcrime (Example: “Spreading the Disease”)
Tool – Lateralus (Example: “Sober”)
Between the Buried and Me - Colors (Example: “White Walls”)
Scale the Summit - Carving Desert Canyons (Example: “Dunes”)
Pain of Salvation - One Hour by the Concrete Lake (Example: Inside)
Coheed and Cambria (Example: “Welcome Home”)
Jazz
Above him, Led Zeppelin was stealing his music
The other genre that prog was able to easily seduce was jazz. Jazz has been the most popular kid in school basically forever. Everyone wants to claim that they’re influenced by jazz, or that they have jazz tendencies, or that they once slept with jazz at a party but jazz wouldn’t remember it because jazz was really drunk that night. No matter how much jazz wants to deny it, jazz and prog did in fact hook up a few times in the 60s and 70s, resulting in the genre fusion. If you know jazz, think of Kind of Blue. Fusion is the exact opposite of that. It’s fast, complicated, crazy shit that most of the time sounds like a bad jam session made up of really good musicians (note: I love fusion). If someone tried to dance to fusion they’d be mistaken for a seizure victim and taken to a hospital. The people who play fusion are of course ridiculously talented to the point where they could probably have a full conversation with each other using only their instruments. One problem fusion inherited from jazz is that any band that considers itself to have drawn from jazz and some other genre automatically considers itself to be ‘fusion’. What can I say, jazz was a whore:
Examples of prog/jazz marriages:
Mahavishnu Orchestra – If there was ever a band that sounded like an acid trip, I’d pick Mahavishnu Orchestra. Drawing from Indian, European, jazz, and classical music, as well as John McLaughlin’s own eccentricity, the music they produced was frantic, intensely complex, and mind blowing once you manage to wrap your brain around it. Birds of Fire and Apocalypse may be the best characterizations of the band’s sound, but if you don’t enjoy either album that’s fine, you’re probably still too sane. (Mahavishnu Orchestra Example: “Trilogy”)
Frank Zapppa – I’m not even going to try to explain Frank Zappa in three lines. I don’t even know if I can call the majority of what he did ‘fusion’ but he’s fucking important and he fits best here. Go listen to Hot Rats, Roxy and Elsewhere and Apostrophe, and if you don’t like those don’t worry about it, there’s about five billion other albums that sound totally different that you can get into. (Frank Zappa Example: “Waka/Jawaka”)
Other prog/jazz bands (and their albums that that you should check out):
The Mars Volta – Francis the Mute (Example: “Wax Simulacra”)
The Dixie Dregs – Night of the Living Dregs (Example: “Assembly Line”)
Liquid Tension Experiment - Liquid Tension Experiment 2 (Example: “Biaxadent“)
Jam Bands
There wasn't actually any mud. Hippies are just this dirty.
Unlike jazz and metal, prog hasn’t shared a lot of common ground with the jam scene. The Grateful Dead were thoroughly un-complicated and yet they became extremely popular by touring their asses off and playing a lot of simple country and blues covers in cool new ways (making them…….progressive? MY BRAIN CAN’T HANDLE THAT). For a long time hippies were content bopping along to country and blues music, and probably would have been fine like this forever, until Phish came along and expanded the genre by writing songs that made as little sense as possible. Moving from the relatively comfortable confines of country and blues to the total nonsense that Phish produced (note: I love Phish) blew hippie’s minds. So hippie musicians, being totally incapable of rejecting any art form, started incorporating every possible genre of music into the covers they played, into their huge and totally awesome music festivals, and eventually into their own music. Alternative and bluegrass were some of the first genres to gain popularity with hippies, then some electronica and punk weaved its way in, and now metal and prog are starting to poke their heads in as well:
Examples of prog/jam band marriages:
Umphrey’s Mcgee – UM is the cream of the crop as far as blending technical skill and musicality. It’s really an amazing balancing act that they pull off, and they do it flawlessly. I also find their live improv stuff to be far less meandering and self indulgent than a lot of other jam bands. Anchor Drops is the place you start for their studio efforts, but after that I suggest downloading their eight billion podcasts, as a lot of their best songs haven’t ever been recorded in the studio. Honestly I’m not even going to bother discussing other prog/jam band marriages in depth, Umphrey’s is really the top of the line and an experience like no other. (Umphreys Mcgee Example: “Bridgeless”)
Other prog/jam bands (and their albums that you should check out):
The Disco Biscuits - Uncivilized Area (Example – “I-man”)
Keller Williams - Laugh (Example – “Freeker by the Speeker“)
moe. – Wormwood (Example – “Crab Eyes”)
Oysterhead - The Grand Pecking Order (Example – “Mr. Oysterhead”)
Bluegrass
A tradional bluegrass band. Guitar, upright bass, banjo, mandolin, and no black people.
I’m going to be upfront about this. I hate country music more than any other genre of music on the planet. Most of the performers are talentless and I think the stereotypes it generates are more damaging to rednecks than gangster rap is to urban youth. That being said, I also think the slide guitar/dobro, mandolin, and banjo are some of the coolest instruments ever. So I compromise and enjoy bluegrass. Bluegrass to me, is what happened to all the talented southern musicians. They sing about all the same topics the crappy country artists do, but their songs are ten million times more interesting and their lyrics are ten million times more creative. To be honest I don’t know if bluegrass is actually even aware of progressive rock, but both genres are fast, technical, and full of energy, so if they haven’t met maybe I can help.
Examples of prog/bluegrass marriages:
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones – This band probably only gets lumped in with bluegrass because it features a banjo. It’s also probably one of the few, if not only bluegrass band to include sax and electronic drums (note: electronic drums that are actually awesome, unlike most electronic kits which sound horrible). All of that being said, Bela Fleck might be the most well known and universally respected banjo player ever (even more than Steve Martin!), and Victor Wooten is part of the pantheon of modern bass gods. Kind of bluegrass, kind of fusion, whatever, it’s extremely creative and fun to listen to. Little Worlds is a 3-disc set that’s probably less bluegrass-y than their past efforts, but it’s a great introduction to their sound. (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones Example: “Next”)
Yonder Mountain String Band – The shining symbol of ‘new grass‘, YMSB is talented and technically proficient and blah blah blah, but that’s probably the least attended to part of their music. What makes them such an incredible band is how they’ve taken bluegrass out of the realm of genres like polka (i.e. dance music that’s a joke to most people) and made it emotional and joyful. I’ve never seen so many universally happy people in my entire life as I’ve seen at YMSB shows. The crowd just emits rainbows and sunshine and good emotions. They make 80 year old men act like 10 year olds on their birthday, and the coolest hipster turns into a Appalachian mountain dweller before their onslaught of elation. Mountain Tracks: Volume 5 is a great selection of live tracks to check out, and their new album The Show is pretty solid. (Yonder Mountain String Band Example: Sideshow Blues)
Other prog/bluegrass bands (and their albums that you should check out)
Railroad Earth – Amen Corner (Example: “Seven Story Mountain”)
Hopefully this has given you a decent idea of how prog isn’t actually as alien a genre as one might think. There’s a lot of common ground between prog and genres that are far more popular, and there has been and will continue to be bleeding between groups as new bands find their own unique sounds.
P.S. – I do want to mention one band that I left out, that being Muse. Muse has a totally absurd amount of popularity for a band that prog fans consider to be ‘one of us’. It’s not super duper technical, but it at least creates the illusion of being super duper technical, and sometimes that’s good enough. It is high energy and features a guy who sings high enough to make the guy from The Darkness jealous so I guess the leap in prog-faith isn’t too absurd. I can’t really explain why the rest of the world loves them, not that I’m complaining either. So I guess if a band like Muse can be touring with U2 and performing on the VMAs then I can still hope that prog will take over all of music one day. A man can dream can’t he…a man can dream…
Mars Volta @ Roseland Ballroom
“Hey, who’s playing here tonight?”
“The Mars Volta.”
“Oh, what do they sound like? “
“Jazzy hardcore Latin prog-punk.”
“…..oh…..sounds cool…..I think….”
That’s part of the conversation I had with the guy guarding the cast entry door for Shrek the Musical, because the line to get into Roseland Ballroom was around the block. He came back later and told me that one of the female members of the cast was ‘totally super jealous’ that The Mars Volta was playing so close and she was stuck on stage that night. I found all of this funny, because this exchange was probably the perfect way to characterize The Mars Volta.
The Mars Volta is one of the more schizophrenic bands to carry the label of ‘prog rock’. Yet they also remain one of the most well known and popular bands in the genre, either despite or because of this characteristic. I discovered the band in my freshman year of college after the release of their first album, and when I mentioned them offhandedly to my roommate (a musician but not a fan of progressive rock), he already knew who they were. A progressive rock band that the world knew about before I did? How the hell did this happen?
The answer was that I had actually heard of them before I knew that I had heard of them. The two principle members of TMV are Cedric Bixler-Zavala (vocals and absurd names) and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (guitars and slightly less absurd names). The world first became aware of the pair in the band At the Drive In, which had a popular hit with “One Armed Scissor” in 2000. The group enjoyed a good amount of popularity until Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez left the band, citing creative differences and their quest to do as many drugs as possible at all times. At the Drive In fit rather squarely into the punk and hardcore genre, and Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez wanted to branch out more into the progressive genre. They added keyboards, bass, drums, and reformed as The Mars Volta, while the remaining members of At the Drive In reformed as the band Sparta, which went on to do many things better than TMV such as suck and die.
Since then TMV has produced a number of albums via a very fluid line-up. While Cedric and Omar consider themselves to be the ‘core’ of the band, ten other musicians have come and gone over the course of seven years and six albums. This is where TMV earns the schizophrenic label in my mind. While there are some recurring elements that help you remember that you’re still listening to The Mars Volta such as heavy latin influences, frantic disjointed guitar lines, manic drum patterns, and Cedric’s shrill voice, you’re still going to get a very different impression of the band depending on what album you listen to. Their first album, which was the result of their work with legendary producer Rick Rubin, was drastically different than the material they produced with At the Drive In, yet it maintained mass appeal through catchy melodies and relatively traditional song structure. Each album since then has been significantly different than the last, and while the impact of the constantly evolving line-up is evident with each new offering, one gets the impression that the band is deliberately trying to cause turn-over in their fan base by producing albums that sound nothing like the previous works. With some bands you can see a clear progression in sound from album to album, but with TMV the landscape changes less via gradual erosion and more often via violent earthquake.
I’d seen the band once before at Bonnaroo in 2005, and while I enjoyed their set there were a few things that bothered me about their performance. They came out late and ended early, cutting about an hour out of their advertised set. Also Cedric’s voice wasn’t exactly spot on, and a lot of the songs were slowed down from their album counterparts, both of which indicated to me that they can’t play their songs live. Still for the most part I enjoyed the set and came away excited that I had seen them.
That being said, I was interested but wary when I saw that the band was playing in NYC at the start of this month. I loved their newer material, the majority of their set was awesome when I saw them at Bonnaroo, and their new drummer, Thomas Pridgen, is an absolute beast. On the other hand I didn’t want that kind of let down again from the short set and the less than perfect performance of some of their songs. Still the tickets were cheap and I hadn’t seen a show at Rosenland Ballroom since I moved to the city, so I figured it would be a good way to spend a Thursday night.
So after being stuck outside of Shrek for about an hour trying to explain to the entire cast of the musical who was playing on the other side of the block every time a new person walked in (“The Moors what?”), the doors opened and the massive line funneled into Roseland. Roseland is a coverted ice rink, so it’s not a huge venue. They added a balcony if you don’t want to be down on the floor, but I chose to mingle with the masses for this this show. I somehow was able to get a spot 10ish rows back from the stage, which I felt was rather odd considering the size of the line in front of me when I got in. It was like 50% of the people in front of me had just disappeared (or more likely, went to the bar or bathroom before getting a spot on the floor). One of the first things I noticed was that the band had a very cool tapestry set up behind them, and it would get cooler as the night went on. The band’s album and stage art has always been based in surrealism, and this tapestry was no different, with lots of eyeballs and wings and other things messing with my perspective. So we’re waiting and waiting….and waiting and waiting….and waiting and waiting….and now the band is late, much like they were for Bonnaroo. Now I understand that no band ever comes out exactly on time, ever, for any reason, but once you hit half an hour you’re not being band-cool anymore, you’re just being douche bags. Strike 1.
So finally the band does come on stage, and they open with the first two tracks of their first album, which are some of my favorites. The crowd is in love immediately, so everyone is going crazy with a half-mosh-pit-type-deal breaking out, which is something the band usually hates. They mention that we should help out the security guards up front when we can but otherwise ignore the crowd activithy and continue blasting away. Cedric is extremely energetic on stage, and in between his cheesy dance moves and mule kicks he’s tossing his mic and mic stand around like he’s in The Mars Volta color guard or something. All of the other musicians are extremely emotional and physically expressive on stage, but the most interesting thing to watch may be the tapestry they have up behind them. As the show goes on, the different lights that hit the backdrop make different patterns appear and fade, so that depending on the light color the background behind them can totally change:
OBEY
I'm in there, somewhere, getting my knees broken.
As they transition between songs, they go into this ambient, quiet mode during which Cedric downs as much boiling hot tea as possible to keep his vocal chords from being torn to shreds. It’s interesting the first time, but they do this slow-down between EVERY SINGLE SONG. While part of me appreciates the break from the being kicked in the head by crowd surfers, by the 3rd or 4th time I’m just bored with it, and by the 7th or 8th time I’m wondering if they know how to transition between songs in any other way. I know they want to ‘jam’ more, but that would involve actually ‘jamming’. Strike 2.
As they make their way through their set the band is sounding very tight, and the mix job is actually really well done. The only thing I could have complained about was that the keyboards were too low in the mix, which is a shame because on a lot of their songs the keyboard line is really ear catching and adds a whole new layer to the piece. Beyond this one issue the entire sound product was stellar where I was standing, which was no where near the sound board. The performances of each song sounded solid, and they only slowed down one song noticeably. Cedric’s voice was much better than it was at Bonnaroo and he really belted out some of the highest notes. The set list itself (see below) wasn’t my favorite, and I would have really liked to hear more from their second album, which features a lot of longer, jazzier songs with full horn sections, but they chose to stick with mostly newer material. Of course they don’t even have the horn section anymore, so this was probably a foolish hope to begin with.
After about 90 minutes they had played a lot of newer material, so I was hoping they might play some older songs next, but instead they…just stopped. It felt totally random and forced, as if the fire marshal had told them they needed get off the stage or something. But no, that was the end of their set, 90 minutes, no encore, half an hour before they were advertised to end. A lot of people tried to cheer them back out, but as the lights came up and the crew started chucking set lists and picks and drum sticks into the crowd people quickly gave up and started filing out. So once again the band had come out late and ended early on me, which was exactly what I was afraid of when I bought the tickets. Huge Strike 3.
As I walked home my opinion of the show and the band became more sour with each step. While the show was probably better performed than the last time I heard them, they didn’t play a lot of the songs I wanted to hear, and, more importantly, they started late and ended early. At this point it would be really hard for me to justify seeing them again live. Maybe if they’re at a festival I’ll go check them out, but while they’re a good band, their live show just leaves me too pissed off to spend my money on seeing them anymore. Of course their albums are still amazing and I’ll still be picking those up whenever a new one comes out, and I’ll continue suggesting the band to anyone who’s a fan of one of the many genres they fall into. As a live band though, TMV have broken my heart twice now, and I can’t take that kind of emotional beating anymore.
Don't worry baby, The Mars Volta won't hurt us anymore!
Set List:
1. Son Et Lumiere
2. Intertiatic E.S.P
3. Goliath
4. Cotopaxi
5. Roulette Dares
6. Viscera Eyes
7. Halo Of Nembutals
8. Eunuch Provocateur
9. Ilyena
10. Teflon
11. Drunkship Of Lanterns
12. Luciforms
13. The Widow
14. Wax Simulacra
Progressive Rock Stereotypes Part 1: If you don’t learn anything about prog from this blog, and least you can learn what to hate
I was a psychology major in college, something that gets me laughed at by my friends almost as much as my musical tastes. While they were all off learning about thermodynamics or the economic principles behind the stock market or something else that would get them a salary twice as large as mine directly out of college, I was learning how to trick a monkey into thinking its mother was a robot.
Being a single robot monkey mother in today's world is tougher than ever
Amid all of the bullshit topics psychology includes, one of the ones that actually made sense was that of stereotyping. Of course today society tells us that stereotypes are inherently evil/tools of racists/the oppressor of the homosexuals/deadly carcinogens/etc. However, if you aren’t a stuck up and sensitive douche bag with skin the thickness of newspaper then you also realize that stereotypes can be 1) useful and 2) hilarious. Today I’d like to explore some progressive rock stereotypes, some of which are blatantly false, some of which are mostly true, and all of which are perfectly legit reasons to love or hate the genre.
Stereotype 1: Progressive rock is pretentious
"How dare I be so beautiful?"
Most musicians like to think, at least to themselves, that their music really means something. On the other hand, progressive rock musicians know that their music has some kind of deeper meaning, and by god if the rest of the world doesn’t understand what they mean by ‘Goodies for the table with a fable on the label/ Drowning in miracle sauce’ then that’s because they are lower life forms not deserving to witness the artist’s genius.
In response, progressive rock fans themselves have become even MORE pretentious than the artists. Reflexively they look down on every other band or genre that doesn’t fit prog stereotypes (see: the rest of this article) as well as anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that progressive rock is the greatest music made by the greatest musicians in the history of the universe, or any parallel universe. Speaking of parallel universes…
Stereotype 2: Progressive rock songs are about topics only nerds in their mother’s basement can relate to
Guys, guys, GUYS! HOLD ON! My mom's calling. MOM SHUT UP I'M PLAYING WITH MY FRIENDS!
One of the things that has kept prog from really ever gaining mainstream popularity is that it doesn’t appeal to the issues most people are dealing with in their lives. Teenagers don’t enjoy it because there’s never been a prog song about how the popular kids stole their girlfriend and how sad life is living in a rich suburb. College kids don’t like prog because you can’t dance to it (discussed later on in party II of this entry) and because no prog musician has ever written a song about dancing the night away in a small town bar, or how awesome it is to be seen at a club. No, the works of progressive rock lyricists instead tends to fall into one of three sub-categories:
-Things you need a 20-sided die to resolve: If it involves elves, dragons, outer space, orcs, goblins, vampires (but not this), whatever, it’s prog. Led Zeppelin started this trend, and once nerds realized they could get away with it, they too started writing stuff blatantly ripped off from Lord of The Rings.
-Great philosophical questions/debates about the nature of existence: Is man inherently evil? Are we alone in the universe? Will string theory unite all other theories of physics and take us into a golden era of science? Lets write a song about it, I bet we can figure out the answer if we put some formulas over these arpeggiated chords.
-Epic rock operas: If a prog lyricist’s genius can’t be contained in the brief 10 minutes that usually make up a single prog track, an epic rock opera is required. There’s usually something mystical or distopian or both about the setting and story of a rock opera, like you’re an assassin for the government, or computer-worshiping priests have taken over society, or the murdered spirit of one of your past lives has come back to haunt you, or whatever. What’s consistent is that every prog rock opera would make a horrible mini-series on USA Network.
I would be lying if I said that every prog song fit into one of these concepts. A lot of songs have no lyrics at all.
Stereotype 3: Prog is needlessly complicated for the sake of being complicated
This is the piece people needed to sight read to get into Frank Zappa's band
A lot of prog bands are totally ok with admitting to this one, and some even treat it like a contest. In a number of their songs Dream Theater does something they call ‘shrink and grow‘ phrasing, where they will repeat a phrase multiple times, subtracting a repetition every time until they get down to nothing, at which point they’ll start adding repetitions back until the whole group of phrases is ten years long again. Does this add musical value? No, it’s more of a subtle wink at the fans who actually care about this stuff. These are the kinds of fans who are impressed when an artist tells them a song is in 13/16, or that there’s a key change every measure. Deep down I’m probably one of these types of fans, but that’s because my internal clock has always been screwed up. Songs in 4/4 bore me, and I even find myself getting too comfortable with 5/4 and 7/4 at times. Yes, I realize this is pretentious of me. I don’t care. If I know where the next downbeat is going to be I get bored.
Stereotype 4: For prog musicians, gear=skill
He can actually play all 4 necks at the same time. You don't want to know what he uses to play the 4th guitar though...
Sometimes a prog artist can express his or herself using conventional instruments. Most of the time however the raw prog power that courses through their souls needs a more powerful conduit than the usual fodder one would find in Sam Ash. Luckily for prog musicians, being nerds they have easy access to engineers who can help them make their prog-tacular visions reality. Here are some totally typical, in no way hyperbolic examples of your average prog musician’s set up:
Who needs effect pedals when you can just have 5 seperate guitars!
Add another beater! Of course! Why didn't I think of that!
I couldn't decide which viewpoint of this drum set was most ludicrious. I hope this is sufficient.
They said you couldn't give a bass guitar steroids. They never saw an 11-string bass.
If you're going to play a keytar, at least make it look like something you can cut a man in half with
How do all of these totally awesome instruments actually sound? Who the hell cares! They’re totally awesome looking! Think of it this way: Britney Spears knows that no one is going to her shows because they want to hear her songs. They want to see the elaborate stage show, the dancing, and her god given talents (NSFW-ish, if you had any doubt). Instruments like the ones above are the prog equivalent of this concept. Except the drum set, which is totally valid and necessary.
Prog Stereotype 4: Prog songs are all 10 years long
I'm sorry, this picture is being used horribly out of context. This is actually from the largest group tanning booth in Japan.
I think the longest prog song I’ve ever heard, legitimately one track on an album, was 54 minutes. However, most prog artists aren’t this naive. They realize that unless their fans are either stoned or European, they won’t listen to any track longer than 30 minutes. One trick artists will use is that they’ll write something longer than War and Peace, and then split it up over various tracks/albums/decades. Suddenly a 2 hour masterpiece, once insurmountable for a listener, is now available in easily digested 10 minute chunks. The result of this practice is that some songs have comical titles like “Metropolis Part II: Scenes from a Memory: Act IX: The Dance of Eternity”.
Prog fans do need to shoulder some of the blame for this stereotype. If a song is less than 3 minutes long, we require an explanation, and if none is provided we come up with our own: The song blows. I’ve actually heard people say that they weren’t going to buy an album because there was no song on it longer than 4 minutes, making it thoroughly un-prog.
Keeping with this stereotype, part I of this entry ends here. Keep checking every few hours for part II, preferably using different IP addresses to boost my hit count.
Note: If you’re a prog fan, you might notice that I rip a lot on things Dream Theater has done in this entry. Since they do actually fit 75% of these stereotypes, and they’re the reason for the other 25%, I’m ok with this trend, so deal with it.
Porcupine Tree @ Terminal 5
People often ask me “Why is it called ‘progressive’ rock? What’s so ‘progressive’ about it? Shouldn’t it be called ’stupidly complicated self-important bullshit?’”(to which I usually say this) The truthful answer is that ‘progressive’ refers more to the genre back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and the name has simply stuck since then. That isn’t to say though that a lot of progressive rock bands haven’t had their sounds ‘progress’ over time. Porcupine Tree might be one of the best examples of this.
Over on the left, someone was stealing their car.
Porcupine Tree started out as just Steven Wilson, and the music he produced was very different from what you’ll find the band making today. Under the guise of Porcupine Tree, a name that actually started out as a joke between Wilson and a friend (what, you think anyone would actually have a good reason for naming their band Porcupine Tree? Prog isn’t THAT pretentious), Wilson started recording music that focused on soundscapes and was more akin to trance, psychedelic, and noise rock. The music evolved from there, and as the project grew in popularity Wilson was basically forced to include other musicians so that live performances could happen. With the addition of Richard Barbieri (ex-80s art rock band Japan) on keyboards, Colin Edwin on bass, and Chris Maitland on drums Porcupine Tree’s music started to change into something much more structured and easily accessible to the public ear. The band’s sound continued to change over time, with a major shift happening in 2001 when Maitland left the band and was replaced with Gavin Harrison, who is currently regarded as one of the most talented drummers in prog rock. The band’s sound over the last 5 years has gotten significantly heavier, most likely due to Wilson’s work with death metal band Opeth.
Porcupine Tree was probably the second modern progressive rock band that I discovered, and they’ve always been the prog band that I figured would eventually develop the biggest fan base. Not only is their music amazing, but their music doesn’t fall into a lot of the traps that usually kill a prog band’s momentum. Their songs aren’t about totally inaccessible concepts like the behavior of subatomic particles, the music isn’t so complicated that you need a masters in jazz performance to understand what’s going on, and the songs are short enough that you can actually squeeze them into a radio edit without totally destroying the product. They aren’t the biggest prog rock band in the world currently (Dream Theater currently holds that title, but their success is always associated with national tragedies for some reason, so I’m hoping they stop selling albums before we’re all killed), but their latest album The Incident debuted at #25 on Billboard’s top 200 and #7 on their Rock chart.
I’ve seen PT two times before this, and while I’ve been extremely happy to see the band grow, each time I’ve seen them it’s been in a progressively (ha!) larger venue and resulted in a less and less intimate experience with the band. Not that this is a bad thing in some ways, as both of my previous PT concerts have been slight adventures. The first time I saw them was in college with a friend who I had introduced to the band that year. For some reason I was able to convince him to drive 3 hours from Schenectady, New York, where we were going to school, to Syracuse, for a band he had just started listening to. The band was playing in a small bar that held about 200 people, which was cool because we ended up being only 10 feet away from Wilson. It was also next to a strip club, which sounds like a good thing, but in reality it just made the area around it sketchy and unsafe. Honestly I have no idea who booked them there or why, but I’m glad they did because it was a GREAT show and I can say I saw the band in a tiny little shit hole.
Club Tundra in Syracuse, NY. Biggest asset: Bar 50 feet away from the front of the stage.
The next time they came to the US (they’re British, did I not say that?) the same friend and I drove 3 hours in a totally different direction, this time to see them in Boston. This time we saw them in an actual theater and instead of getting 10 feet away from Wilson we were probably 3 million feet away. At least that’s what it felt like in comparison. Again it was a great show and totally worth it, but I did feel like I was in even more danger than I had been at the sketchy strip club bar. I made the mistake of wearing my fraternity letters, and as I have since learned, progressive rock fans are not generally members or fans of members of fraternities. Something about being socially isolated their entire lives. We made it out of Boston without incident, and the show was once again phenomenal. They previewed some of the (good) material that ended up on their next album, which was really cool to hear for the first time with hundreds of other fans.
So after missing them on their last tour for various reasons, I really wanted to be sure that I saw them on this one. Now living in Manhattan, I have the advantage of not having to drive 3 hours to concerts anymore (minus Summer festivals, and All Points West does NOT fucking count). Now I simply have to walk 3 blocks over to times square to the Nokia Theater, walk down 10ish blocks to MSG or the Hammerstein Ballroom, take the subway up to the Beacon Theater, or walk 10 blocks up to get to Terminal 5 (I kind of live in the best location ever in the history of Manhattan), where PT ended up playing in NYC this time around. The same friend and I thus made the epic trek up to Terminal 5 (not before stopping at The Pony Bar, delicious American craft beer goes extremely well with progressive rock) for our 3rd PT show.
For those who haven’t been to Terminal 5, you kind of have to know where it is (usually the entrance isn’t blocked by vans, I assume). It’s on a side street on the far west side of Manhattan, and there’s no giant TERMINAL 5 sign anywhere. It’s in the middle of about 8 billion car dealerships, so if your car gets stolen or you don’t feel like paying for parking, you can just buy a new car after the show. Once you get in it’s kind of like an M.C. Escher painting in that you’re confronted with lots of random staircases that take you up, down, around, and who knows where else. There’s an outdoor area with a bar and lots of couches covered in pigeon shit that they stick you in if you show up before the show. It would be a nice area to hang out in if it wasn’t so fucking grimy from being outside. The bar was also serving something that looked like fried hot pockets. Still undecided if this is a great or horrible concept.
So they eventually funnel you out of the pigeon shit lounge up and down more staircases and into the actual venue:
This is actually an optical illusion. If you're a normal drummer you see two or three drum sets, and if you're a prog drummer you see one.
As you can see, those on the bottom floor are packed in tightly enough that there are probably a few accidental pregnancies every show. Now usually I’m of the opinion that, if I’m seeing a show, I want to be as close as possible, otherwise why go see a show? Otherwise you might as well just put in a DVD and turn your stereo up enough to cause permanent structural damage to your living room and save the money on the concert ticket. However for this show I ended up on the 2nd floor on one of the railings. After the usual waiting and chatting with the other concert goers the opener appeared, King’s X.
Now one of the things I had always heard about Terminal 5 was that the sound was HORRIBLE there. However PT has always been known for making sure their concerts sound crystal clear, so I was going into this show with an open mind. That open mind was immediately filled to capacity by whoever was doing sound for Kings X. It was almost impossible to discern different bass notes, and the cymbals on the drummer’s kit might as well have been not miced, because you couldn’t hear them resonate at all. I was most pissed over the fact that Doug Pinnick’s amazing vocals were so far down in the mix. I enjoyed the show for what it was, but going into PT I was scared for what their set was going to sound like.
Luckily whatever issues were going on with King’s X were totally absent with PT. All of the instruments came through clearly and the band itself was extremely tight. They opened with the entire first disk of their new album and their performance totally redefined my opinion of said album, which to this point had been positive but not stellar. After this show the entire album has shot way up in my mind. The second set was all older tunes with the exception of one new song from the second disk of the new album. Again, spectacular. Absolutely crushing versions of some of their heaviest tunes as well as appearances by some of their less often heard songs. A full set list is at the bottom.
One thing I did have a problem with was the lighting they had. The light show was pretty mediocre, and I think Gavin Harrison was playing in complete darkness the entire time. I seriously could barely ever see him. I know Wilson also puts a lot of thought into the video package that plays with each song, but I honestly don’t think I looked at the screen behind the band more than twice. The action is on stage, let us see the fucking musicians!
All in all, a great concert experience. Terminal 5 isn’t anywhere near the top of my list for venues, but I won’t bitch about seeing a show there if the show itself is good. Next time I’m gonna try to get on the floor and see what the experience is like there, where hopefully my height advantage will give me a good view while keeping other people from seeing anything.
Setlist:
The Incident
-intermission-
Start of Something Beautiful
Russia on Ice/Anesthetize
Remember Me Lover
Strip the Soul/3
Mother and Child Divided
-encore-
Sound of Muzak
Trains
