Favourite Van Der Graaf Generator Album?

Is it on again soon?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=prog

the prog at the bbc compilation of clips might be a bit more essential, the documentary ('prog rock britannia: an observation in three movements') falls back on received wisdom and just whoever-we-could-get interviewees, and makes other mistakes, too, like allowing ian anderson to speak

ahh right thanks. virginmedia has the iplayer on my tv so i'll catch up with it there.

I own and enjoy all of these (except for the very latest--haven't picked that up yet). I need to do some more listening to really choose a favorite though.

The first I ever got was Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other which always impressed me with the heavy doom ending of White Hammer and the tiny epigraph in the gatefold in which they thanks "Alice for the Doughnut".

Geir what is your fave?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbH_JYFr2Us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDmhP6YiN6s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzoaWrRYg98
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgPIHu10QxY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAkBhgQcE0M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1vWpctw4sE

all 4 parts ^

Geir what is your fave?

Waiting for LOLs as Geir says they are insufficiently melodic

Even Geir must love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVBP6VezTgs

Anyone who doesn't must be nuts.

And I'm glad this guy from the comments page isn't on ILX

WhatFuckingUsernameI (4 months ago) Show Hide
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I've been meaning to listen to this band for years and now that I have a chance thanks to You and the tube my first impression brings a question to mind. If anything was possible what if Nico (of Velvet Underground fame) were to sing the lead ? I mean no disrespect I just wonder what your thoughts on that would be.
manzanadecoco (1 month ago) Show Hide
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I am going to see the band, as opposed to Peter Hamill alone or with guests, tomorrow. For the first time ever. (Although Hammill did brush against my arm by accident circa 1982.) And your Nico idea is making me gag. It's such a weird culture clash. It's like saying, What if we got Donny Osmond to sing lead for the Dead Kennedys?
manzanadecoco (1 month ago) Show Hide
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A weird German chick who liked to hang out in the New York gay scene? How does that correlate with progressive at all? I've been trying to remember, and to the best of my knowledge, there is only 1 gay musician in the entire field of progressive rock. It's not a place Nico is going to feel right at home in.
manzanadecoco (1 month ago) Show Hide
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I saw John Cale solo live maybe 25 years ago. As far as I'm concerned, progressive fans and Velvets fans are two distinct camps with not a lot of overlap in personnel. One man's opinion.
manzanadecoco (1 month ago) Show Hide
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Velvets. Andy Warhol album cover! Who else has an Andy Warhol album cover. The Stones. Progressive fans detest the Stones. Progressives love the Beatles, and hate the Stones, Nico, Warhol, and cheap sleazy full-of-itself junk like that. Progressives like Tales from Topographic Oceans, something that's ambitious, personal and honest, not the cruddy bloody Rolling Stones strutting and posturing fakely like a bunch of proto-rap goofballs.
konstantinov (1 month ago) Show Hide
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Dude, you are a dirtbag piece of shit racist and you give ALL progressive music fans a bad name.

Whenever I made cdrs or tapes for people I always put Afterwards on them.

noodle vague are you all talked out on VDGG?

Who wrote "Afterwards"? It wasn't Hammill...

argh i cant find my cd to check the credits

It's a Hammill song. AMG seems to erroneously credit it to a guy called Peter Kirtley, who has an instrumental piece with the same title. But the AMG description of the VdGG song clearly ascribes it to Hammill, and the fact that he has the lyrics up on his Sofasound website clinches the deal for me.

"there is only 1 gay musician in the entire field of progressive rock"

- suggestions?

no idea

Thanks Noodle. It was AMG that threw me off.

As for gay prog, is that a stab at Rush?

I think at least one of the guys in IQ was gay and out but I don't suppose that's who the original douche was referring to on that comment box.

who was he referring to just out of curiosity ?

Not really a great one for knowing or caring about musician's private lives, and I can't think of any prog musicians off the top of my head who've made a big deal of their sexuality.

Prog musicians have sex?

i didn't mean anything derogatory by flagging it up, i just found it so wtf as a statement i spent several full seconds looking at it making the o_o face

the first GIS image result for 'gay prog rock musician' seems to be rick wakeman, but i couldn't believe that for a second, all his camping is way too unintentional

there's a prog board somewhere where they're discussing the issue and someone says lindsay cooper. not sure which lindsay cooper they meant. not really any of my business.

probably, however, the original poster meant freddie mercury :/

No I didn't think you were stirring it, agreed it was a wtf statement in the first place.

it was

I have that DVD with Plague of the Lighthouse Keepers on it (Godbluff Live DVD). Maybe I should have just got the youtubes instead :p

I'm not voting in this poll because I'm basically only familiar with Pawnhearts and Godbluff. But of those two Pawnhearts is better.

BTW, trying to find the pearls in Hammill's solo career requires too many albums and too much listening to mediocre stuff.

I disagree; nadir, black box, over, chameleon; all good albums from beginning to end. I can't say much about his stuff after taht though

"there is only 1 gay musician in the entire field of progressive rock"

That is weird, I can't actually think of any! Is prog rock the most hetero music genre?

either that or the so far in the closet its in narnia genre

worth running a hammill solo poll?

Not that this precludes Rick from being gay, but his son Oliver Wakeman is the current keyboardist for YES.

Is that true that prog is a very hetero genre? I mean prog-rock is basically a lot of flights of fan(ta)cy

"there is only 1 gay musician in the entire field of progressive rock" - oh I see that was quoted out of context. I though you were quoting an ILXor, not some scummy youtube commentor.

isn't prog rock just... asexual?

A lot of it, lyrically, is less invested in sex and desire than some genres of rock and pop but hey you could say the same about electro or black metal or a bunch of other things. I'm not digging at anybody on this thread because the original comment was so bizarre, but it was just some shite spouted by some twat on Youtube and as such doesn't merit thinking about with any seriousness at all.

Are we allowed to imagine a world in which all prog musicians are gay? What would that look like?

pretty much the same, but the embarassing album covers would have naked space dudes on them.

Like this?

http://www.connollyco.com/discography/rush/hemispheres_hi.jpg

that belongs on the naked prog thread

did lots of Rush fans wear that tshirt?

I bet KJB does.

He does indeed.

Thought you would.

IIRC the "gay" member of IQ was supposedly Tim Esau, the orig bass player, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually true. Not that it matters one iota.

If any of the 1st wavers were actually gay, I imagine they'd have kept their traps shut abt it, I mean it was the seventies, wasn't it.

The "asexual" thing is a total red herring, I know for a fact that members of King Crimson got mad action when they toured the st8s, if members of Pink Floyd, Yes etc didn't as well, well I mean really, come on, you know. That was one of the annoying things about that BBC doco, that they played up the asexual/dorky side of it, when a bunch of these guys, when they were young (esp Gabriel, Wakeman) were great-looking dudes.

Actually, on top of that, I remember seeing Hammill in Leeds in the late 80's, and there was a coteire of hippie girls in brightly-coloured home-knit jumpers, who were up at the front, doting over the guy, and that's when he was middle-aged!

Hammill's always been a v. good looking guy, true.

So that's who you modelled yourself on back in the 80s? ;)

The "asexual" thing is a total red herring, I know for a fact that members of King Crimson got mad action when they toured the st8s, if members of Pink Floyd, Yes etc didn't as well, well I mean really, come on, you know. That was one of the annoying things about that BBC doco, that they played up the asexual/dorky side of it, when a bunch of these guys, when they were young (esp Gabriel, Wakeman) were great-looking dudes.

i wasn't really referring to their action, more the vibe of the music. which is generally - GENERALLY - not about screwing. or dancing.

I checked discogs, the reviews are...not great. though I think that's more the pressing than the master. though I'm not sure if the 2022 vinyl reissues used the new masters at all. plus, it doesn't have "Theme One"!

anyway there's a quote I read on RYM (I think) which called this album the "final boss of prog rock". that definitely feels apt. and who else could pull this off but Peter Hammill?

ahh fuck I had to pause "Lighthouse Keepers" 2/3rds of the way through to watch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjrVg7eRHrc

no doubt this is the sort of thing that was going through Hammill's head all the time

i had to think about what i would call the final boss of prog-rock and i think it's probably the final version of dirk campbell's "zabaglione", performed only once in louviciennes on june 19, 1976, a performance so miserably demoralizing that campbell immediately quit the group, and rock music, forever in order to further explore occult theories regarding "early music"

seriously i would murder (a healthy salad) for a decent quality recording of it

angels arranged in triangles blowing across the ocean

other candidates include khan's "madman's rap" and the malgaard suite by comus

xxps ^ the cd remasters in the 'Charisma Years' box set are really great.

specifically I mean the new stereo mixes of H to He / PH / Godbluff / SL

Still Life is the album i listen to most.

I also first heard Hammill on Exposure, and later found Pawn Hearts on a trip to Ottawa. For a couple of years, I didn't explore any further because I felt "this is fine, but strange - how much more of this would I want"? It's at the extreme end of his oeuvre and sort of a strange place to start. Then I picked up H to He Who Am the Only One because the purple sleeve looked so appealing and that started the boulder rolling.

I hear Hammill in Halford; and when I heard The Number of the Beast, the songwriting gave me a strong feeling of "Hammill for Dummies" (sorry Maiden fans).

that's what "the lie" means to me, the unique sense of _moral inversion_ represented by patriarchal christianity.

I'm neither an expert in Catholicism nor baroque sculpture, but the piece that inspired the song, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini, has inspired interpretations that it is a representation of "the possibility of a female enjoyment that is infinite and unknowable, while masculine enjoyment is defined by finitude and failure": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_Saint_Teresa. Try looking at those photos while listening to the song.

well, i have read notes hammill made on the song saying that "the lie" didn't refer to the painting itself, but was inspired by the painting - and that's how i read it, as the patriarchal repression of female sexuality, its transmutation into suffering for the benefit of the patriarchy, for the benefit of the Male Gaze. _that_, to me, is The Lie.

i just bought a copy of the Pawn Hearts 2CD+DVD reissue from last year - haven't listened to all the bonus tracks, but fired up the Denon DVD-3910 to listen to the DVD-Audio disc with the "new stereo mix" - and I don't have Hoffman ears or purity of heart but it was pretty fkn awesome. totally revealing of extra details in the mix and honestly miles better than my grotty old LP.

just found a 2xLP copy of Vital - Live. pristine shape, too. I guess whoever bought it didn't like it much :)

I do find it amusing that VdGG were the last of the major prog acts to release a live album, and they did so in 1978, when the band and the genre itself were falling apart. not only that but it's a bootleg quality recording, with Jackson's sax infamously not even picked up on most tracks. in spite of all that it absolutely rules. it just tears up their whole back catalogue and the performances are reckless in a way you rarely see in prog. its also full of unreleased stuff which is pretty unusual for one of these live albums. in fact I can't think of another 70's live prog album with unreleased original material on it, let alone this much of it

There's "Conundrum" and "Quatrain" on Jethro Tull's Bursting Out, but I can't think of any others.

ahh well, that's one prog live album I haven't heard :)

Depending on whether you consider Santana prog (I do, especially in this era), there's a bunch of unreleased stuff on Lotus.

I do find it amusing that VdGG were the last of the major prog acts to release a live album, and they did so in 1978, when the band and the genre itself were falling apart. not only that but it's a bootleg quality recording, with Jackson's sax infamously not even picked up on most tracks. in spite of all that it absolutely rules. it just tears up their whole back catalogue and the performances are reckless in a way you rarely see in prog. its also full of unreleased stuff which is pretty unusual for one of these live albums. in fact I can't think of another 70's live prog album with unreleased original material on it, let alone this much of it

― frogbs

_another live_ by utopia

VITAL is so sick!!!! that bass tone!!!

I guess if you include prog bands that improvised from scratch onstage you'd have large pieces of Henry Cow's Concerts, some stuff from the Crimson live albums, and so on.
Tangerine Dream's Ricochet and Encore are almost entirely new/improvised music, but also questionably "live".

i highly rec the Maida Vale sessions too!!

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41lYm6lchFL._SY580_.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpolfQIPS84

even the recent Merlin Atmos live album is good

(plus it has VDGG handling some typically Hammill solo songs like Flight and Gog)

I do love them live around 75-78 cos they get really intense and have guitar and stuff.
Vital in the remastered form for the 2005 reissues is pretty good and I think has more David Jackson in as part of the remaster process I think. But there are a load of live sets around too. By the end they could rate as a pretty great dark post-punk band so hope there were a stack of people discovering them at the time. Like if John Lydon cited them do hope it lead to some people finding out how good they were and seeing them at this peak, one of several but others were years earlier too. Like not that they don't stand on their own feet since they did seem to be pretty marvelously maverick.

the maida vale sessions are fabulous, the version of "darkness" on there is wonderful. i don't think it's on the maida vale sessions proper, but the expanded version called "after the flood" has some wonderful material too - great version of "killer" and as i've already said, i'm really fond of "necromancer" - really fun '68 version here.

yeah think I mentioned turning up my copy of After The Flood a few days ago.