Van der Graaf Generator / Peter Hammill S& D, C or D?

I'm having trouble with this right now. I want to love this song so much. Want to proclaim it the greatest forgotten/failed/alternate uni pop great. Anyone else know it? Anyone have the first VDGG?

P.S: Another non-comformist opinion: they only really
got good starting with _Godbluff_. Better drumming,
better songs.

harsh dawns to come

'sleepwalkers' is too pompous (yet somehow that suits the ceremonial bullshit of 'gentlemen's' warfare, 'arrow' so catchy that i've maybe made myself sick of it, 'undercover man' intiguing and leaving me wanting more, 'scorched earth' an absolute gem, with its two harmonic threads merging very sneakily leaving me going "how did that happen ? will have to listen to part of it again" -- my favourite VdGG song

this was their 'comeback' album -- why was this not embraced as the smarter improved side one of led zep iv ? -- more intelligently heavy than the truly pretentious competitors 'the who' -- more coherent lyrically than bowie

i suppose the misanthropic snarl of hammill simply put people off, no matter what the lyrics were about or what the band did -- i have to agree with rock-sci that they _are_ heavily flawed -- what a pity -- a rock band with saxaphones and organ and lyrics (and songs, not 'prog' jams) was just what popular music needed, not more guitars

Now, have to give Skin and X My Heart a play...

Van Der Graaf Generator: An Introduction
1. Darkness (11/11)
2. Refugees
3. Killer
4. Theme 1
5. Man-Erg
6. Sleepwalkers
7. Still Life
8. When She Comes
9. Sphinx In The Face

I picked up the 1st set of 3 reissues "the least we can do is wave to each other", "H to he who am the only one" & "pawn hearts". Great mastering job, nice packaging/notes. One of the bonus tracks (on "h to he..." is this thing called "squid1/squid2/octopus" good grief it's mighty. deranged mix of fucked up free jazz & demented doomy church organ, heavy and as gothic as fuck!! it's 15m long too...

As far as solo, I have Hammill's Nadir's Big Chance and Over. I could get The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, and The Future Now for $8 each at alldirect.com, but since those versions came out in 1990, I'm afraid remasters will pop up soon. Anyone got info on that?

As far as solo, I have Hammill's Nadir's Big Chance and Over. I could get The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, and The Future Now for $8 each at alldirect.com, but since those versions came out in 1990, I'm afraid remasters will pop up soon. Anyone got info on that?

I'm sure others will get the re-issue treatment in due course - to be hoped for, anyway.

Inside Van Der Graaf Generator (2005)
Progressive rock pioneers Van Der Graaf Generator opened doors for groups including Genesis and Pink Floyd and remains one of the most influential yet unappreciated bands of the genre. This inside look features rare archival performance footage, plus critical reviews and in-depth analysis of the band by former Van der Graaf members Judge Smith, Nic Potter and David Jackson, as well as a team of prominent music critics and rock journalists.

Van Der Graaf Generator: Godbluff Live (2004)
Recorded on September 27th, 1975, prog rock legends Van Der Graaf Generator take to the stage to deliver some astounding rock sounds. Recorded on a tour of France, the show concentrates on the "Godbluff" album.

And on a side note, I have a VHS of a VDGG tribute band called Van Der Graf Jr. that was shot at Barnsdall Park's auditorium, where today's Arthurfest is occuring.

No Americanization just a sweeter bulk import deal, according to Artist-shop. I'll be sitting next to Phil in the waiting room.

I remember being really disappointed with VDGG after reading a rave about Pawn Hearts, the music just sounded ridiculously bombastic and too 'prog' for my ears at the time, then I suddenly had some kind of epiphany and love the whole thing - I don't think there's a bad moment on the album. My second fave is The Least We Can Do Is Talk to Each Other - those last doom-as-fuck organ chords in the coda to White Hammer!!!

Start with "Least We Can Do...", then buy "H To He", then you get "Pawn Hearts" (all re-mastered editions)...then "Silent Corner & The Empty Stage", "In Camera", "Nadir's", "Over", "The Future Now", "ph7" (all not-yet re-mastered).

Thank you.

do you mean K-Group? honestly never realised that existed beyond a PH backing band

and without going into all the contradictions that i might argue later, i figure Peter's failingest failing is he doesn't care very much about how his music *sounds*, or idk i'm not saying that right but he feels like a "message over context" guy more than any other

yeah big problem for him from like the mid-80s throughout most of the 90's, I think his albums from like 1998 on sound a bit punchier and more interesting but even still a lot of them feel like the last 40 years of Todd Rundgren, where they sound more like demos than a finished product

the VdGG remasters he did in 2005 were pretty awful too, totally brickwalled and blown out. I've heard the recent remasters were a lot better but for some reason the vinyl reissues don't use them. I got a copy of The Least We Can Do... and it sounds horrible, just like every other edition of it I've heard.

currently listening to the other album with Isildur's Bane, called In Disequilibrium. not sure where the actual 'songs' are but still it's pretty interesting, moreso than the reformed VdGG albums I guess. Hammill sounds good on it too, even though this was recorded only a few years ago.

"Every Bloody Emperor" is arguably the best thing they ever wrote which just makes me sad about all the other reunion stuff

and without going into all the contradictions that i might argue later, i figure Peter's failingest failing is he doesn't care very much about how his music *sounds*

Seems to be an issue with a few prog musicians, I had a solo album by the guy from Univers Zero that sounded like it was being played on a cheap Korg factory strings preset. Totally unlistenable.

I've noticed that with some full bands as well, specifically in the neo-prog stuff that isn't IQ or Marillion, or some of the various imitators from the 90s like Glass Hammer or Citizen Cain. the musicians sound like they're up to the task but there's no power in the music - ugly guitar sounds, cheap keyboards, drums that sound so thin it's hard to believe they're actually real. I agree, it's basically unlistenable, even if the music itself is good

Halfway there pretty much has it right with regard to Jackson’s dismissal from the group in 2006. Hammill hasn't gone into the gory details but he hasn't exactly made a secret of the reasons either, he addressed the issue with some frankness in a 2007 newsletter.

I like the reunion albums. They don’t all feel indispensable but there are great things on each.

Peter's failingest failing is he doesn't care very much about how his music *sounds*, or idk i'm not saying that right but he feels like a "message over context" guy more than any other

...

I've noticed that with some full bands as well, specifically in the neo-prog stuff that isn't IQ or Marillion, or some of the various imitators from the 90s like Glass Hammer or Citizen Cain. the musicians sound like they're up to the task but there's no power in the music - ugly guitar sounds, cheap keyboards, drums that sound so thin it's hard to believe they're actually real. I agree, it's basically unlistenable, even if the music itself is good

I reviewed their 2016 album and yeah, that was exactly the problem.

I've noticed that with some full bands as well, specifically in the neo-prog stuff that isn't IQ or Marillion, or some of the various imitators from the 90s like Glass Hammer or Citizen Cain. the musicians sound like they're up to the task but there's no power in the music - ugly guitar sounds, cheap keyboards, drums that sound so thin it's hard to believe they're actually real. I agree, it's basically unlistenable, even if the music itself is good

― frogbs

it can cut both ways. i mean, the lowrey is just about the cheapest, shittiest, most obnoxious organ i can think of. i swear to god i sometimes think a stylophone has a more mellifluous tone. doesn't keep soft machine from being all-time.

you're right, though, that a lot of prog focuses on CONTENT to the exclusion of form. '80s frank zappa might be the apotheosis of this. i know this is a man who valorizes ugliness, but there are far better ways to be ugly than the way those fucking '80s albums sound. zappa isn't abrasive, he's just demonstrating a more advanced version of the profound timbral bad taste exhibited by emerson, lake, and palmer.

in general, though, i think prog's often-questionable aesthetic decisions* constitute a great deal of its appeal. so much of gentle giant's music is completely antithetical to...

i don't know _how_ to describe gentle giant, other than to say "WHY THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE HETEROSEXUAL?!?!?!?!?". gentle giant's music would be _so_ much better if it was _queer_. prog rock got put down all the time for being fey and mincing like those were bad things. there's so much queerness in prog rock. keith emerson in his leather-boy getup thrusting his knife into his keyboard repeatedly. everything ever produced by genesis between 1971 and 1974. kevin ayers' eyeliner. peter hammill's over-the-top theatricality. _synthesizers_, oh my god, combine synthesizers, kink, and communism and you have transfem culture. even when jethro tull lucked into having a trans woman in their band, there was nothing remotely trans about them _musically_, despite their being fronted by a panto flautist in an oversized codpiece. prog bands kept putting artwork of wonderfully callipygean men on their album covers and have consistently been trying to "no homo" those creative decisions ever since. This shit ought to be the APEX of queer culture, but damn near everybody involved in this shit was disgustingly heterosexual. (shout-outs to bob drake, though. thank christ for bob drake.)

* (i'm listening to _facelift_ now and woo boy it is a BONANZA on that front... someone once postulated that the master tapes were soaked in bongwater for six weeks before being pressed to vinyl, and honestly, i find this theory plausible)

ELP are incredibly hetero, have you not seen the cover of Love Beach?

I believe Robert John Godfrey is gay and when I saw The Enid in 2013 I guessed their singer might be too based on the way they were joking around.

From 1968 to 1971 Godfrey became resident musical director with Barclay James Harvest,[2] making musical contributions to early recordings which established their full, orchestral style of rock music. The relationship fell apart and accounts differ as to why.[3][4] Godfrey is gay, and claimed this was one reason he was fired from BJH. "It was the band’s girlfriends who forced the issue," he told Classic Rock magazine. "They were from the Lancashire/Yorkshire area and couldn’t handle the idea of a gay man like me with a plummy accent."[5]

Still have never fully engaged with The Enid, I think they have the same disregard for sonics I moaned about up there, but Godfrey being gay a) doesn't surprise me and b) makes me want to have yet another try at digging their scene which has always felt removed from the boring normativity of a lot of the Prog boys

I love their first two albums but haven't kept up, some of their more recent bigger orchestral music sounded incredible.

I've got a feeling Carmen weren't all straight. All I can say for sure is that David Clark Allen is a sexual anthropologist and well known fetish photographer/author.

In many cases I guess prog musicians really genuinely like "ugly" sounds and I think it's part of what makes the genre interesting, even rewarding and it's hard to say if it's a disregard for sonics. Kind of reminds me of seeing Garth Hudson in Last Waltz, loving all these ugly keyboard sounds he's making.
However, prog and metal definitely has a problem with overpolishing and there has to be some kind of aesthetic deafness involved in that. And yeah sometimes the keyboards and guitars sound just too ugly.

The word "message" suggests lyrics to me and I don't think prog has ever prioritized lyrics to the extent of diminishing the music.

Trying to think of the best examples of awesomely ugly vs ugly-ugly.

I definitely don't want to delimit "good" sounds from bad, it's definitely not that simple, I guess I'm thinking about ugliness in the service of interesting versus ugliness as inattention to what music can be

RJG is a sociopath and his account of quitting BJH is bullshit, as is everything else he's ever said about anything. But yes The Enid are about the one overtly gay prog band, shame it has to be that guy really.

I know Godfrey tried unsuccessfully to sue Barclay James Harvest not too many years ago; I also remember him making the quizzical statement that the Enid were loved at punk clubs because they were so "un-punk" that they were actually perceived as punk, or words to that effect.

I tried getting into them because Voivod spoks so reverentially about them but it was hard since they were so damn prolific.

I still have a couple things on the shelves.

I like plenty of Voivod and that shout totally makes sense but aren't we talking about another band too interesting to get appropriate respect from their genre peers?

Yeah and I guess Voivod is somewhat prolific too but the difference is I was along the whole time for Voivod and came in late to Van der Graaf Generator.

I know Godfrey tried unsuccessfully to sue Barclay James Harvest not too many years ago; I also remember him making the quizzical statement that the Enid were loved at punk clubs because they were so "un-punk" that they were actually perceived as punk, or words to that effect.

― Halfway there but for you

yeah greg lake made the same claim about ELP. see: rick wakeman's "i'm so straight i'm a weirdo". which is _almost_ right. the truth is that being straight is just fucking weird. i mean fundamentally ok a lot of the time, don't get me wrong, but _weird_.

ELP are incredibly hetero, have you not seen the cover of Love Beach?

― frogbs

just don't ask d3n1s3 sh4rp3 about carl palmer

i definitely need to check out carmen, a lot of this stuff is like... niche symphonic and symphonic has never really been my jam. also definitely interested in david clark allen's fetish art lol.

but yes The Enid are about the one overtly gay prog band, shame it has to be that guy really.

― where did the times go (Matt #2)

i mean that's kind of queer shit in general, though... being queer means you go through a lot of shit that cishets don't and that fucks a person up, queer pioneers tend to be kinda fucked up people. if you look at a lot of the people trans people like me try to reclaim as trans, they're kinda awful. elagabalus? terrible, fucked-up person. ed wood? incredibly bad filmmaker and racist drunk. doesn't excuse it, but there's this desire for queer pioneers to be like tom hanks in _philadelphia_, which to me, from what i've seen of that movie and its legitimacy narrative, it kinda distorts a lot of what makes queer people _queer_.

i guess that's the other thing, just being queer doesn't make a person's work queer. i heard dee palmer's solo album just because i wanted to hear what kind of music she would make. i don't hear anything queer at all in it. it's just kind of an ordinary prog record. which is good! i defend that strongly. trans people don't have to make "trans music", like, our entire lives aren't about being trans.

anyway i'm gonna have to listen to their stuff but given that one of their best-known records is "aerie faerie nonsense", yeahhhh that sounds pretty queer. didn't stand out because faeries are _standard in prog_ except it's usually invoked by cishets for some reason? just... to me they're missing out on the best shit about this stuff.

I get what you're saying but I think you have to separate queerness from sexuality somehow, because prog music is pretty nonsexual as a whole to me. and when it does get horny it always comes off very weird. imo "Ladies of the Road" is worse than just a filler track, it almost ruins the band's entire image (though tbf Crimson was kind of falling apart there anyway). its not just a sex thing either, when prog bands sing about any sort of normal thing (see Triumvirat's concept album about getting laid off at the factory) it just comes off strange to me

there is a modern prog band called The Tangent that sorta pulls it off though, mainly because you just know the dude is an IT worker doing this in his spare time

"when prog bands sing about any sort of normal thing (see Triumvirat's concept album about getting laid off at the factory) it just comes off strange to me"

surely that's good?

I think Fandangos In Space by Carmen is an essential prog album, just amazing. On David Clark Allen's blog he writes about new flamenco bands.

I always thought the faeries and other fantasy cliches weren't that prevalent in prog but just appear more than in most rock genres. Same with power metal, I expected epic fantasy full time but a lot of the songs are about the things anyone sings about.

That Gentle Giant album "Three Friends" sounds like a pretty normal mundane story.

it is about a gay ogre orgy

Troll Throuple

I get what you're saying but I think you have to separate queerness from sexuality somehow, because prog music is pretty nonsexual as a whole to me. and when it does get horny it always comes off very weird. imo "Ladies of the Road" is worse than just a filler track, it almost ruins the band's entire image (though tbf Crimson was kind of falling apart there anyway). its not just a sex thing either, when prog bands sing about any sort of normal thing (see Triumvirat's concept album about getting laid off at the factory) it just comes off strange to me

there is a modern prog band called The Tangent that sorta pulls it off though, mainly because you just know the dude is an IT worker doing this in his spare time

― frogbs

King Crimson's image is really interesting to me! I think they're a very... like not musically complex, but _personally_ complex band. The image of King Crimson often doesn't accord with the reality. That's what I found so fascinating about the recent King Crimson documentary. It really delves into that.

This idea of King Crimson as this non-sexual, intellectual, cerebral band is, as far as I can tell, completely divorced from the reality. The impression I get from Fripp's statements about this period is that he was pretty much a huge slut. "Ladies of the Road" isn't even their first paean to groupies - "Cadence and Cascade" is also on that theme. In the "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" period there were a fair few references to analingus, as well.

I definitely do... I mean I don't differentiate queerness from sexuality in an _absolute_ sense. My gender identity isn't the same thing as my sexual identity. (My sexual identity is one that I've seen described as "WTFSexual", as in "What even is sex?" I'm not asking that ironically. I genuinely do not know what "sex" is supposed to be.)

I guess when I talk about queerness and the lack thereof I look at it kind of along the same lines as Natalie Reed's "Null HypotheCis". The default reading for me of prog isn't asexual or non-gendered. It's cisgender, heterosexual music, whether it's _explicitly_ sexual or not. There are a lot of implicit assumptions in there, things that aren't even noticeable to cishets but just don't track with my own experience and understanding. I mean, look, I don't want to get too sociologist here, but the music of, say, Magma, which is propulsive, repetitive music that drives towards an explosive finale... I'll just say that it _parallels_ normative cis male sexuality. I understand the appeal of that kind of sex. It's not the way I do things. That's not to say that Magma's music is explicitly sexual music or that music is all about sex or whatever whatever. There's just a level of resonance with cis male sexuality that's just _there_, it's congruent in a way where the presence or absence of congruence isn't even a question. And to me, I feel that incongruence pretty strongly.

A lot of what I like about prog rock is what I've seen referred to as "padding", as being "aimless". King Crimson talks of their name being evocative of a "man with an aim". I'm a woman and to the extent that I have an aim, it's mostly to live in and embody the moment. (Which, actually, is King Crimson's aim too... we get along a lot better than the name might suggest!)

Prog rock songs can be very long and while they do tend to eventually get where they're going, it's a long, often scenic trip. They don't get in and out within two minutes. Which, again, I'm not condemning. I think that's pretty cool, having that quick hardcore blast of energy. When I think about myself, how I express myself, that's not how I do things. If I arrive at a conclusion at all, it's almost by accident. That's the feeling I get from my favorite prog - oh, that actually makes sense? I didn't expect that to make sense, I thought we were just wandering around aimlessly. When I do stuff that's... _maybe_ sex? Anyway, that's kind of how I go about things. I'm very fond of the "fuck around and find out" approach.

And there's a sort of tension between that sort of structural _queerness_ I find in prog with the way so much of it is cishet coded. That's kind of what I mean when I talk about music not being queer, I don't necessarily mean explicitly, I mean sometimes people's queerness informs their work, the way cishet people's cishet-ness informs their work. Honestly maybe that's why Palmer's album disappointed me... it's missing any kind of implicit sense of gender or sexual identity whatsoever. It's just kind of _there_.

That Gentle Giant album "Three Friends" sounds like a pretty normal mundane story.

― Bulky Pee Pants (Tom D.), Sunday, January 14, 2024 8:59 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is about a gay ogre orgy

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm)

six of one, half a dozen of the other