Prog Rock

to every nation its popol vuh

That's the one, I couldn't find it

Geir's favourite band called Popol Vuh. Seriously.

I love Popol Vuh but sadly every time it's brought up it just makes me think of "Popozao" by Kevin Federline

wait that's not sad. actually that rules

By the way the jester is Jahn Teigen of Eurovision nul points fame.

I'm not fucking surprised on the evidence of that

Anyone been watching Andy Edwards videos? I think he's interviewed Cardiacs and Uriah Heep members. He was a founding member of Frost and played in IQ and Robert Plant's band for a while.

Most interesting thing was him explaining that it's usually labels that impose that overly polished and edited sound on metal and prog records, I never knew this but it makes sense because InsideOut records often sound like that. He said he had it promised by the label that his drumming performance on the second album would not be screwed around with. So I guess I should send angry emails to the labels for polishing their bands to death? (He did also blame the insecurity of musicians)

I have not but I've seen them pop up a bunch and they look interesting. I really like Frost - but they're a good example of that unnaturally polished sound

He's only in the first two albums and I think that polish is part of the reason he left (not certain about this), but he has kept hammering the point that too much polish/editing is the biggest problem with the genre (metal is probably worse for this)

He occasionally has clickbaity titles/preview images that suggest an old stick in the mud, but he's actually very open minded

I believe this video has most of his arguments about polishing/editing but it's a subject he could talk all day about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAdGg16OzH0

For all the complaints I could make about indie rock in retrospect, I do appreciate that it hardly ever sounded too polished to my ears.

I have now been bullied to work my way FORWARDS to Hold Your Fire. So far this is very 80s Yes, in a good way

The Patto album?

Funny reference to them here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cv44gQ4NdB7/

Rush in fullest 80s plumage!

If they have an entry on progarchives.com then they're a prog band in my opinion

...except this leads to absurdities like Kind of Blue as one of the top 100 prog rock albums on their chart.

problem less the category than the ranking there lol

Was in Fopp today and seen 20 Flower Kings albums and so many bands I've never heard of using Roger Dean pastiche cover art.

New Banco and PFM albums but none of the old ones. Amazed at some of the stuff stocked these days.

Didn't know the original Banco frontman was in a few Fellini films, I'll have to keep an eye out next time. He had a great look, his beard used to be inane. Need to get bloody Darwin too.

Helpful for me, I only have one of them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN8H7ck_mJ4

There's only really a dash of rock (never mind prog) in Escalator Over the Hill, but it's highly worth hearing. I haven't heard the Corea/Lenny White/RTF records he mentions, but the others I've heard are pretty frustrating: bombastic when they try to be intense and cutesy when they try to be lyrical.

Prog fans claim everything is prog.

Definitely happens but I like hearing about albums like this in other genres and jazz fusion has a lot of potential crossover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siTjgLEec2w

I don't recall ever seeing a full-time French horn player in a band before (though he seems to pick up a fluegelhorn towards the end), it must be even more uncommon than having an oboist.

I've posted about this in the Yes thread but there's a bar here that does a "prog night" every month. basically a DJ brings in a turntable, a computer, and a video projector, and just plays prog rock for 3-4 hours (the joke always is, "what's that, like 9 songs?"). I always have a blast if for no reason other than how surreal it is to be at a bar that's playing my kind of music. like how many bars in the country are playing stuff like Gong and Soft Machine at that sort of volume? plus it does draw a good crowd I think.

anyway the dude who does it has to have surgery, but he still wants it to happen next month, so he asked some of the regulars if anyone wanted to take over. I immediately said "I'll do it!", half joking, but he was just like well alright then, let me show you the mixing board. he went through everything, I understood maybe a third of it, but regardless he told me "alright, you're up, let's see what you got, mix something into this record". what was playing was "Thela Hun Ginjeet" and I'm thinking okay this isn't fair, I know it's Crimson but its not really prog, and obviously I gotta play something prog. and I'm panicking because I can't think of anything, plus I'm not really confident I know how to use the board (I'd never touched one before this), also you know it's prog night obviously we were all smoking in the back so I was also high as hell. also I'm not really sure where in the song we are, like how many spoken word sections are there in this song? two? three? can't let it go to "Sheltering Sky", people are grooving back there and to tell the truth I'm super nervous. because I really do want to do this!! I have always wanted to DJ, but always thought my tastes were too esoteric and strange, so no one would really like it.

but I do figure something out! "Day and Age" by Frost, it's not quite as funky but it is fast and it rules very much. turns out to go down pretty well, and the dude just leaves me back there. so I'm playing all sorts of shit - "Communion with the Sun" by Utopia, the second half of "Emperor and His War Room", "Watcher of the Skies" of course (I had to, dude plays it every night), the funky bit of "Mister Class and Quality", "Going for the One", and the battle section of "Gates of Delirium", which fucking rips at this volume. plus a number of requests. mostly just excerpts, the good 4 minutes of this and that, but I did play one track in full, "Ship of Fools" by Motorpsycho which actually brought people out on the dance floor. totally surreal experience where I'm telling myself "is this really happening??" . I think I was there for like an hour and a half. apparently the guy thought I did a good job because he told me I should take all the equipment, bring a bunch of records, and do it next month. so uh...yeah. I gotta figure out how to hook all this shit up!!

That's so cool frobs! Good luck and definitely post what you end up playing next month.

What fun!

A Star Is Born.

That's awesome.

Jealous, frogs. I would love to dj a prog night.

welp I found my opening track

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

nice choice!

Make sure you play "5% for Nothing" as an interlude between every other selection.

hah! guess I might as well test my skills to see how quickly I can change out a record. who knows this may be the only chance I ever get to DJ so I want to do something crazy or stupid. like I'm definitely playing Limelight by Rush, I'm not big into Rush but that is the name of the bar and it's never been played at prog night so I feel I have to...but the second or third time that cool guitar riff comes in I'm gonna segue it right into Love Beach by ELP

consider this me being there and drunkenly shouting a request for NOLAN POTTER

frogbs out there living my dream! Specifically, I dream of DJing a Prog Nite and dropping the "Diana" section of Mike Oldfield's "Incantations Pt. 1" (at 8:56 below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15a4xFuYbqw

No joke, this world would be greatly enhanced by more Prog Nite DJs

trying to figure out what goes with what and all the cool segues you can do is pretty fun. you can't really beat match since tempos are all over the place and generally not in 4/4, but you can try to match together the ambient between-section bits a lot of these bands did. and similar riffs and what not. a lot of things mix well with Jon Anderson's "Moon Ra" which is definitely goin in

somewhere close to the peak, where you might think of playing "yours is no disgrace", a zag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwRDVqJ6RLY

just found out this is a PAID gig too, now I'm actually a bit nervous!

this rules, i'm excited for you and wish i could be there, sounds like a great time.

also you are def going to be very good at it.

ILX aint gonna be the only one getting all yessed out tomorrow night

alrighty, that was really fun. I decided to make it hard on myself and use two turntables, plus my phone for requests or things I wanted to play that I didn't have on vinyl. it was more work than I thought! I didn't realize how little you wind up paying attention to your own set because there's so much to do. in theory this should not be true in a genre known for 20 minute songs but I kept bouncing between snippets of this and that.

but I think people dug it, a lot of stuff got a good reaction, can post a setlist if you want HOWEVER I actually don't really remember it all! I stuck to the 'plan' for about an hour and a half and then just bounced all over the place

imo the best part was that I was running projections off a Chromebook my son primarily uses - I made a video playlist and projected it onto a giant screen, but the autoplay has a mind of it's own sometimes, and it wound up playing Peppa Pig for a while, apparently the whole bar was wondering how long before I noticed (it was about 15 minutes lmao)

nice! glad it went well. def post whatever you remember of the setlist

I mean, with the right song Peppa Pig visuals might not be that far off lol

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3775107497_10.jpg

okay, it was something like this

Walter Wegmuller - Der Narr
Wobbler - This Past Presence
Yes - The Remembering - I cut the mellotron bit from Wobbler into that "relayer" part, so it was only like 3-4 minutes of the side
The Nice - Brandenburger
Camel - La Princesse Perdue
Triumvirat - The History of the Mystery Part One - started halfway through this, when it starts sounding like a gameshow theme
Van der Graaf Generator - Theme One
Todd Rundgren - first four tracks from A Wizard a True Star, I cut the last note of "You Need Your Head" into "The Ikon" by Utopia, and then once that hit a big note cut it back into the "International Feel" reprise at the end of Side 1
Robert Wyatt - Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road
Animal Collective - What Would I Want? Sky
Utopia Strong - Konta Chorus
Jon Anderson - Moon Ra
Susumu Hirasawa - Nice Nice Very Nice
Pink Floyd - One of These Days
Walter Wegmuller - Der Wagen
Hawkwind - Are You Losing Your Mind? - beforehand someone said "You gotta play some Hawkwind" - I asked what he wanted to hear and he pointed me to this album called Alien4 from 1996??
Midday Veil - Babel - people were starting to dance (!!) so I had to put on something like this
Ruins - Progressive Rock Medley
IQ - Awake and Nervous
Neil Cicierega - Fredhammer - getting a little goofy at this point...I was like "ok folks let's play a guessing game, here is a mashup between two musicians, you have to guess which one has an extensive background in progressive rock". This is a mashup between "Sledgehammer" and "Nookie" - obviously everyone knows it's Peter Gabriel, I thought it would be funny if the second one was Fred Durst
Rush - Limelight
Kansas - Journey from Mariabronn (this was a request)
Yes - The Gates of Delirium - played nearly the whole thing which was nice because I kinda needed to get a drink and the bar was crowded :)
Ween - Among His Tribe (this took the place of "Soon Oh Soon" from Gates)
Motorpsycho - Mona Lisa/Azrael
Knifeworld - High/Aflame
Gong - Flying Teapot
Midday Veil - Empire Is No More
King Crimson - Sleepless
Marillion - first two from Clutching at Straws - someone actually brought the LP in and asked that I play it, which I thought was rad as hell
Motorpsycho - Mutiny!
Cardiacs - The Everso Closely Guarded Line

hmmm...what else...I am pretty sure I played "One More Night" by Can at one point...probably a few other tracks I forgot...also I threw on "Shimendoka" by Haruomi Hosono right at the end

A++++++++++++++ set list \m/

one question -- were IQ's vocals ever a barrier to entry? i've liked a lot of what i've heard by them, but the singing has put me off so far