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

if they pressed those on vinyl they'd make a killing - VdGG albums are pretty hard to come by

Yeah, vinyl reissues of those four are planned.

Listening to Still Life now, I'm taken aback by how good it is to hear Peter's voice again (it's been several years since my last Hammill) but getting the CDs out the packaging of the new reissues is a bitch, I ripped the cardboard by accident.

still life is the best one! that 20cd box set it up on streaming things!

"House With No Door" is so fantastic. Reminds me of his solo stuff quite a bit (which I tend to prefer).

Don't know anything about Isildurs Bane, 2 albums with them, didn't expect so many collaborations.

Regret not getting those remasters of The Future Now, pH7 and A Black Box when they were cheap. I still haven't registered at Discogs yet.

Streamed a bunch of the box over the wknd, new remasters def improvement over the last round which were basically unlistenable, am really tempted to buy the thing

still bothers me that the recent vinyl reissues don't use the new mix. I am pretty sure it's not the brickwalled 2005 mixes either. I've only got The Least We Can Do and I'm starting to think there just isn't a good sounding version of that album. I think it was just recorded lousy.

Isildur's Bane is one of those Swedish prog groups that's somehow been around for like 40 years. I've heard parts of the albums they did with Hammill and they are really chaotic in spots, kind of electronic and really dissonant sometimes. I need to listen to them again, they were really fun I thought. definitely not for everyone though.

Always impressed how they were able to reinvent themselves as a post-punk band for The Quiet Zone / The Pleasure Dome & Vital

Also I haven't listened to Present in a minute man I forgot how great this record is

Fuckin hell A Black Box is amaaaaazing isn't it

I'm listening to samples of his 2023 remake of his 1988 album In a Foreign Town, and I'm afraid his voice is in very rough shape. His tone, range, and pitch are all worse for wear; there were points when I could have mistaken him for modern-day Roger Waters. I believe he smoked for many years but quit a while ago.
I saw him a few times fifteen years ago and his voice had held up very well till then; obviously 60 is not 75, and he is still delivering the sense of the songs, but it's humbling to hear this (inevitable?) decay, highlighted on songs he first recorded 35 years ago.

I wouldn't say he's anywhere near as bad as Waters. I agree he's starting to sound his age a bit but his voice has still held up a lot better than some of his contemporaries. tbh I'm not sure why he decided to re-record these two. I guess they do sound less plastic but removing Jackson's sax parts is a bummer.

the whole relationship with Jaxon has been a mystery for forever

have to admit i've not been attentive to Peter's work for ages, i hope he's free to do whatever takes his fancy for as long as he's around, but i feel like ever since the heart attack whatever happens is just a bonus

yeah it's bizarre especially given the whole point of the reunion was the realization that they weren't gonna be around forever. I mean I respect them for not making it public like a lot of bands do but it feels like there's still a lot of bad blood there for whatever reason.

I haven't really kept up with him either, though I remember his mid-00's albums being pretty good. I liked the album he did with Isildur's Bane called "In Amazonia"...there's another one out there but I haven't heard it yet. as brilliant as Hammill is I never found him to be totally engaging as a solo artist. feel like he needs other musicians around him to truly bring out his best. hence why the mid-70s albums which featured the VdGG lineup were my favorite. as I suspect they are for most people. the K-group stuff is quite good too. but yea the albums where it's just him with a guitar and synthesizers....I mean yeah the dude writes great tunes, but his voice has such power, he needs more than that.

btw I am guessing probably none of you have heard of Isildur's Bane, but I will point out one of their early albums has a nude male ass on the cover, so their bona fides are legit

yeah maybe K-Group is as close as we get to Hammill outside of VDGG. it doesn't even matter to me, maybe it matters more to him. a lot of the public reasons for VDGG breaking up were purely practical/financial but you wonder if there's other things going on in private and that's ok, they can stay private, not my business

i have not heard Isildur's Bane frogbs but god loves a Tolk ref

wait is the nude male ass a "ring" reference 😮😔

yeah it's bizarre especially given the whole point of the reunion was the realization that they weren't gonna be around forever. I mean I respect them for not making it public like a lot of bands do but it feels like there's still a lot of bad blood there for whatever reason.

:woman_shrugging: i mean none of my fucking business. just because they worked together for a long time doesn't put personal details like that within my scope as a fan.

btw I am guessing probably none of you have heard of Isildur's Bane, but I will point out one of their early albums has a nude male ass on the cover, so their bona fides are legit

― frogbs, Friday, January 12, 2024 1:34 PM (twenty-five seconds ago)

_never heard of isildur's bane_? the third act on the bill on day one of NEARFest in 2002? you _wound_ me, friend. do you think i am wholly ignorant of scandinavian prog? i have heard every single artist named in the Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock, even that ones which do not actually exist. my friend, i am so enthusiastic about prog that i boof prog every single day. and here you suggest i do not know isildur's bane!

i admit that i've never actually _heard_ isildur's bane before, though. i'm listening to a compilation called "lost eggs", because the title is a heckin' mood. the first track is really bad. the seventh track is twenty seconds of synthesizer fart noises. tracks 3-6 are legit tho.

i'd also never seen the cover of "sea reflections" damn that is a fantastically terrible '80s private-press rock album cover. the artist, catharina rysten, has a swedish wikipedia page tho. so the naked guy is standing in water staring at a UFO which is beaming up a saxophone?

ass is probably not a "ring" reference although one of the tracks on the album is entitled "Bilbo"

i don't think you can truly love any of the VDGG people without having tolerance for very questionable aesthetic decisions and in that spirit i hope they all carry on for eternity

I had heard that Jackson was let go because he had signed off on, or otherwise participated in, some European VDGG concert or documentary DVD that the others didn't want officially validated; and/or that he was not making himself available for agreed-upon schedules around recording and touring.

Nothing salacious hidden in the paragraph above, just didn't want to accidentally make any revelations for those who don't want to know.

the fact that they were billed above Echolyn is a crime if you ask me! that 2002 lineup is pretty dire but the years after looked pretty good!!

I have heard some of their 80's records, they are hilariously bad, but also kinda fun. from what I've heard of their 90's stuff (the "Mind" records) they definitely got better but they're good in sort of in the way the Flower Kings are, they seem to love to pump out hour-plus CDs with like 10 minutes of good stuff on them

on the records they did with Hammill it sounds like they're trying to ape VdGG and IMO they do a pretty good job of it. no organ or sax but they get the doom riffing right!

fwiw I did hear some rumours about the situation with Jaxon, nothing controversial but more a question of commitment and creative ambitions.

xpost

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.