Project/Object @ B.B. King

The first thing I should say, as a disclaimer, is that we should all be happy that the music of Frank Zappa is still being played today. In a world where a lot of young music fans are starting to compare the Jonas Brothers to the Beatles, presenting his music to new audiences is vitally important.

Until a few years ago, I have to (shamefully) confess that I was only a casual Frank Zappa fan. I owned Hot Rats, a greatest hits collection or two, and some random tracks via the internet, but that was the extent of my Zappa experience.

I was still in this frame of mind a year after college when I convinced some friends to make the 18 hour drive to Manchester, TN to experience the Bonnaroo music festival. There were a ton of bands I wanted to see (as there are every year), and one that caught my attention specifically was Zappa Plays Zappa, a Zappa cover band fronted by Frank’s son Dweezil.

And so it happened that one afternoon that weekend while my friends went to see BB King play what I was told was an amazing set on the main stage, I chose to visit one of the secondary stages for ZPZ’s set. It was during that hour and fifteen minutes that my true Zappa-fandom was born. I was exposed to Zappa’s music in a whole new way, and the fact that I was surrounded by fellow Zappa-worshipers all singing their hearts out made the experience both surreal and heavenly.

Since then I’ve become a complete Zappa-phile. My knowledge, ownership, and enjoyment of his catalog has grown exponentially, and it pains me more than any other deceased musician that I never got to see him perform live. Thankfully Zappa Plays Zappa does a fabulous job of presenting Frank’s music to new audiences. However, they aren’t the only prominent Frank Zappa cover band around today (hooray, he’s actually getting to the point of the article!).

Project/Object first started touring in 1998 and are basically considered to be the ‘other’ Zappa cover band, despite of the fact that they’ve been around longer than ZPZ, and, maybe more importantly, have a former member of Frank’s line-up consistently performing with them. Both P/O and ZPZ have been blessed by the presence of various Zappa alumni during their numerous tours such as Terry Bozzio, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Ray White, and dozens of others, but P/O has had the advantage of having Ike Willis, the vocalist for a number of Zappa albums including the iconic Joe’s Garage, performing with them on every tour. I’d wanted to check out this Zappa troupe out for awhile now, but it was only this past week that I was finally able to catch one of their shows. Thus last Thursday I made the 5 block stroll (I love living in Manhattan) down to BB King Blues Club and Grill, something I found ironic considering the circumstances of my Bonnaroo Zappa baptism, to finally check P/O out.

Kind of angry I apparently missed Spock's Beard...

In all honesty the most I knew about BB King (the venue!) before the show was that they have a Beatles Brunch on Saturday afternoons with a looking-a-like band and a gospel brunch on Sundays. Other than that it was simply a venue I walked past whenever I go to the movies. I anticipated that it was going to be a classier place than a lot of other venues in NYC and probably a little more expensive given the area it’s located in (right outside of Times Square on West 42nd Street), so I tried to brace my wallet for the hit. Upon arriving and purchasing my ticket I moved into the main room, and I was asked if I want to be seated. I usually hate sitting for shows as moving around and physically rocking out is a big part of any concert for me, but I saw that sitting would put me drastically closer to the stage compared to standing at the bar, so I accepted the invitation and was escorted to a seat.

The club sits guests together as they come in, so I ended up at a table with two older gentlemen, two young men my own age, and a foreign couple (note: I found it pretty funny how many guys had dragged their hesitant girlfriends to the show. This was not a generational thing either, there were couples in their 20’s and couples in their 50’s who were having the same conversation about loving/reluctantly being there at every table). The seating was a little cramped and the forced proximity to others could have made things slightly awkward if I and my new friends weren’t social butterflies, but everyone was paying attention to the band anyway so it’s wasn’t all that terrible a situation to be in. Seated guests were also required to spend at least $10 per person on food and/or drink, but seeing as beers were $7 dollars each this was hardly an obstacle. The staff was quick and professional, but they were constantly trying to get everyone to spend more money on drinks during the performance, which became pretty aggravating by the end of the show. Still, if one’s not careful he or she can easily end up spending a shit ton of money on $7-10 dollar drinks and entrees that start at $15 dollars and max out at over $50 (note: a steak at BB King will cost you more than a steak at Ruth’s Chris).

But oh yeah, there was music too! The opener was a bluegrass band that one of the P/O members plays with while not Zappa-ing called Astrograss. Their set was entirely Zappa covers, which I have to salute the band for for being absurdly creative. The highlights of the entire night may have been the bluegrass covers of “Stick It Out“, a filthy song about having sex with robots, and “He’s So Gay“, which is pretty easy to figure out the concept of. Not only were the songs hilarious in both concept and execution, but you could tell some of the other members of the band could barely believe what they were playing. Astrograss isn’t the most talented bluegrass band I’ve ever seen but I have to give them an A+ for being ridiculous, ambitious, and having most of the audience on the floor laughing during their entire set.

After Astrograss, Project/Object made their way on stage. The non-Zappa-alumni came on stage first to very little fanfare, followed by Ike Willis to massive applause. I had seen recent pictures of Ike before the show, and it’s good that I had because otherwise I’d have probably mistaken him for the homeless guy outside my apartment. As a young douche bag I know I can’t really judge people on how well they age, but it’s really like seeing two different people compared to what he looked like back in the late 70’s/early 80’s (I couldn’t find a good picture of him back then, but check this out and then compare it to now). Also joining P/O on this tour is Ray White, who has aged equally well, to the point where he looks EXACTLY like John Witherspoon.

Left to Right: Ray White, Eric Svalgard, Ike Willis, and Jim Ruffi

I have to admit that my expectations had been set pretty high by Zappa Plays Zappa. ZPZ features phenomenal musicians who pull off flawless covers of Zappa’s music, and the band includes saxes and an auxiliary percussionist who add another layer of authenticity to each performance. I quickly became aware that P/O was going to be a different type of Zappa cover band experience. They’re a smaller group than ZPZ, featuring no horns or percussion outside of drums (at least currently, the composition of both groups changes semi-frequently, and sax was included on some songs in the second set), and to be perfectly frank their performances aren’t as clean as ZPZ’s. Part of this falls on the shoulders of Willis and White, who really aren’t the performers they used to be. In their prime they were both amazing vocalists offering stark contrast to Zappa’s emotionless, almost monotone spoken lyrics. On this night neither of them even tried to challenge their vocal ranges after the third song. Ray White in particular disappointed me with what seemed like a total lack of effort, which was especially surprising considering I had also seen him play with ZPZ at Bonnaroo back during the performance mentioned at the beginning of this review and his performance then, outdoors in the summer heat, was infinitely more impressive. The non-Zappa alumni of P/O are all fine musicians, with their current drummer Jim Ruffi standing out especially. However none of them with the exception of Ruffi would have made it in Zappa’s band, and frankly their overall sound just shrinks in comparison to that found in ZPZ.

All of those criticisms aside, I still found many things to enjoy in their performance. The band played two sets of a solid length, and their set list choices were spectacular. “Big Swifty,” “Little House I Used to Live In,” “RDNZL,” and “City of Tiny Lights” (one of my top 3 Zappa songs of all time) were choices I did not see coming and was thrilled to hear. The band is also very relaxed on stage, and captures the casual atmosphere of what I’ve learned Zappa’s original shows were like much better than ZPZ, who barely ever converse with each other or the crowd outside of Dwzeeil’s semi-awkward banter. Lyrics to favorite Zappa standards were constantly being changed for comedic effect (i.e. Tiger Woods jokes), and the band seemed like they were genuinely enjoying performing the music of one of their idols/friends, for fans who knew and appreciated Zappa for years. There was no encore but given the length of each set I wasn’t crushed. Also, the violin player they featured on some songs is really, really hot, so bonus points there. The audio for both the opener and P/O sounded just fine through out the show, although the bass solo in “Apostrophe” was totally undecipherable, partially due to the player and partially due to the mix.

Left to Right: Eric Svalgard, Ray White, Jim Ruffi, Ike Willis, Andre’ Cholmondeley. There's a bass player and another keyboardist hiding somewhere...

I came away from the show happy that I went, and that’s really all I can ask for from any performance by any band. I do understand why people view P/O to be the ’secondary’ Zappa cover band, but I would not let this keep you from seeing them perform if you have the chance.  I think P/O is a band for long time Zappa fans, while ZPZ works well for both the hardcore fan and the neophyte. I definitely would prefer to see them in a different venue, as I think BB King kept the crowd reserved and polite, which is just foolish behavior for a concert featuring Zappa’s music. Next time I want to be back in a crowd of people cheering, bouncing, and singing along with the music, otherwise it’s just not Zappa.

Set 1

A Pound For A Brown (On The Bus)
More Trouble Every Day
City Of Tiny Lites
Society Pages>
I’m A Beautiful Guy>
Beauty Knows No Pain>
Charlie’s Enormous Mouth>
Any Downers?
#Zomby Woof
#I’m The Slime (w/ Dumb All Over, Let Me Ride by Dr. Dre)
Tinseltown Rebellion
Big Swifty (w/ Stratus by Billy Cobham, Come Sail Away by Styx, Killer Queen by Queen)
Bamboozled By Love
#Peaches En Regalia
Pick Me, I’m Clean

Set 2

*Montana
*Magic Fingers
*Little House I Used To Live In
*Apostrophe
*#Cosmik Debris
*RDNZL
*Crew Slut
Outside Now
*Florentine Pogen
*Blessed Relief
Evelyn, A Modified Dog>
*San Ber’dino

#Katie Jacoby on violin
*Ed Palermo on sax

RIP Dr. Zoltan Øbelisk, He Was the Only One Who Truly Knew Me (with a slight tangent on progressive rock in general)

I take a pretty sarcastic tone when discussing progressive rock, but I don’t want that to confuse anyone from that fact that I love the genre more than any other style of music available to my ears. My outlook comes from the fact that I’ve been surrounded for many years by people who consider my musical tastes a source of great comedy. They let me know this any time I bring progressive rock up in conversation, and while this never keeps me from enjoying my music, it has allowed me to keep a fairly healthy perspective on the genre. For instance, writing a song in 5/4 creates a different sense of feel and flow that catches the listeners ear and really makes them listen to what is going on in a phrase. Writing a song in 17/8 is basically a way for you to wave your giant progressive dick in the air and tell the audience ‘look how fucking skilled I am, suck it peasants!’ Of course I still enjoy the song in 17/8,  but I’m fully aware of the artist’s intentions when he/she writes the song. No one’s brain is so mutated that they feel like they can best express themselves using phrases 17 beats long.

Not only does it keep the sweat out of his eyes, but DAMN it's sexy

To wave my own giant progressive dick in the air, I have to say I feel pretty unique in this outlook. Progressive rock nerds don’t take it too kindly when you try to poke fun at their music, most likely because they’ve been poked fun at for their entire lives for various non-musical reasons. So while metal fans can thoroughly enjoy shows like Metalocalypse that thrust every single metal stereotype in their face and show them how stupid being a metal fan can be, even suggesting to a progressive rock fan that Neal Peart’s hat is kind of funny looking will result in massive nerd-rage.

As it turns out, I’m not as unique in my love/hate relationship with progressive rock as I thought. At least, I think I’m not. It’s kind of hard to tell. To be perfectly honest, it’s nearly impossible to wrap my head around the music and personas of one Dr. Zoltan Øbelisk/Sir Millard Mulch/Carl King (no, I don’t know why he needs two fake names to release music under, maybe there was a buy-one-get-one-free sale). Regardless, I think I may get what he and his music are all about. Or maybe I’m so far off that he’ll track me down and kill me for spreading lies about him and his music. Whatever, here’s what I do I know for certain:

The good doctor

-I can barely handle his music, and that’s part of the reason I love it. Melodies and phrases fly by so quickly that it’s worthless for your brain to try to grab a hold of anything and interpret what it just heard because it’s under a constant bombardment. You just have to experience what you heard and move on, otherwise you’re going to be buried under and avalanche of x-tuplets. To be stupidly pretentious (and I want to stress the ’stupid’ part of this), there’s something very Zen about the whole experience of listening to his music and being totally unable to become attached to what is passing through your ears, to only be able to listen and have that one immediate reaction.

-He’s absolutely amazing at programming his music. Yes, he programs a very significant portion of his music, and considering the deep attachment most progressive rock fans and artists have to authenticity, I’m kind of surprised by total acceptance of this practice. To be perfectly honest it bothered me for all of 10 seconds for the sole reason that he is talented at what he does. Regardless, the music is complex to the point where it almost HAS to be programmed, because having people play his stuff live would probably cause the Higgs Boson to appear (look it up).

-All of his music free. All of it. You just sign up for his mailing list you can download everything. I don’t know, maybe he robs banks (it’s not like his music career has made him universally recognizable and thus unable to hide in public), or maybe he has some sweet black mail gig going.

So all of that being said, what does his music sound like and why do I feel like I have another sarcastic kindred spirit in prog appreciation? Well to answer the first question, think of him as a cross between Frank Zappa and Weird Al Yanchovic, only with less polka. There’s a huge throbbing vein of comedy in his music, and it’s always popping up in different ways. Maybe he’s lamenting the common criticisms toward the music industry as it exists today, with its lack of artist talent or originality, but suddenly you’ll be thrust into an incomprehensible instrumental track that changes meter totally illogically. Then before you know it you’re back listening to something with verses and a chorus again, lamenting the good Doctor’s experience working as a sales rep. The humor in his music is obvious at some points and at other times you find yourself wondering “Ok…that passage was ridiculous…it wasn’t even the slightest bit musical…and I loved it…did he just play a joke on me for liking that kind of shit or is he just as fucked up as I am?” But then before you can even think about answering the question you just asked yourself, you’re smashed in the face with something new.

The music is also extremely drum heavy, to the point where Keith Moon would probably tell Øbelisk to chill out a little bit. Another reason I have this music crush is that when he’s not programming drums, Øbelisk recruits the most beastly drummers available for his albums. It honestly seems like he opened up an issue of Modern Drummer and just started circling names, telling himself “Ok, I want him and him and him and him and him.” And yet at the same time I get the impression it’s almost another joke, being able to say that you had Virgil Donati, Nick D’Virgilio, Marco Minnemann, and Morgen Argen, amongst other prog heavyweights like Devin Townsend, all perform on your albums. It’s kind of like rounding up Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Brian Wilson, and Freddy Mercury and having them sing the most bad ass version of  “Good Vibrations” ever recorded, but then having them sing “Happy Birthday” during the harmonica solo, because why the fuck not.

All of this results in a final that product that is clearly progressive rock, but what is even more clear is the love/hate relationship Dr. Zoltan has with the genre. He knows his music sounds complex for the sake of being complex, and he lets you know that he knows that his music sounds that way, so in the end we all have a good laugh and then go back to enjoying a piece of music that changes key and time signature ever single measure. I personally think that’s a healthy way of looking at the genre, and it’s extremely rare that someone can look at their own music in such a way.

I titled this entree ‘RIP Dr. Zoltan….” not because the artist has passed away, but because his most recent album, “Why Am I So Wise? Why Am I So Clever? And Why Do I Write Such Good Songs?” may in fact be his last, according to his news letter anyway. I’m depressed that this may be his last amazing effort, but at the same time I think my brain is happy to throw in the towel, like a drug addict’s brain must enjoy the concept of never having to deal with another acid trip. So thank you, Dr. Zoltan Øbelisk/Sir Millard Mulch/whatever name you decide to assume next, for sharing a joke with me. I think.

RIP Sir Doctor

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 26^th 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 2^nd 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