Favourite Van Der Graaf Generator Album?

This band is so good I kinda want to shout it. I think they might be my 2nd-favourite band of all time behind Cardiacs these days.

Favourite (song on the) Van Der Graaf Generator (debut) Album: "it's all a game". the nice jams with the doors and holy fuck let's tour the multiverse

\m/

I absolutely love "Aquarian"

'octopus' for me

exceeeept anyone who pretends it isn't 'afterwards' is fronting lol

Pawn Hearts

"necromancer". i love peter hammill's ridiculous white magick songs. i was just listening to a live version of "white hammer" from '72 and it fucking slayed. (they also did "aquarian" at that gig!)

does "giant squid" count? i love the squid 1/squid 2/octopus live medley from the rejected second lp of "pawn hearts".

i have been working my way through VDGG by picking up old vinyl copies when I see them - something nice about discovering a band through old LPs and I think VDGG works really well on records - started with H to He (which was actually probably a good place to start?) and have gone through most of the 60s/70s records i think

anyway i bought a VG- copy of Pawn Hearts on the weekend (tatty sleeve, plenty of pops and surface noise) and FUUUUUUUCK!!!!! A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers!!!! FUUUUCK!! like divinely great, a little glimpse of God through the storm clouds

i feel lucky that i left this one til late, as I feel a big part of enjoying this band is overcoming the barriers to enjoyment? like maybe that’s just prog but their sound (and Hamill’s voice) (and the songwriting) takes a fair amount of getting used to - but having gotten my flying miles, I was really well-placed to be reduced to absolute rubble by this

anyway this is one of the few places one could publicly admit to this experience so

welcome to the clan, you have accessed the deepest agonies. if you want a bonus level, head for the Hammill solo (but actually VDGG) The Silent Corner And The Empty Stage, trust me

all things are apart, amen

There's a good in studio live take on A Plague of Lighthousekeepers from around teh time of the lp. Haven't watched it in a long time but I think hamill is still having to read the lyrics off a sheet, possibly a copy of the inner from the lp.
I have it on a dvd which I think may have been replaced by a longer one. With a couple of earlier live tracks. I think what i have has a live Godbluff though.

Interesting to note how much influence there was from VDGG on the italian prog scene. I hear it a lot .

anyway i bought a VG- copy of Pawn Hearts on the weekend (tatty sleeve, plenty of pops and surface noise) and FUUUUUUUCK!!!!! A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers!!!! FUUUUCK!! like divinely great, a little glimpse of God through the storm clouds

I really love this, one of the very best pieces of its genre, maybe of any.

Interesting to note how much influence there was from VDGG on the italian prog scene. I hear it a lot

I think VDGG, Crimson and Genesis were the only prog bands who played Italy a lot in the 70s, hence their big influence on the RPI scene. Henry Cow too I guess but maybe they're not so easy to copy.

a while back I used to read all those WRC sites which were full of prog dorks who were really into KC and Yes. I remember them being none too kind with VdGG, saying their music was too dramatic, too thorny, and really suffered from a lack of guitar. so I got into them a little cautiously. One of the sites gave Pawn Hears a C- and when I got to Lighthouse Keepers I was stunned at how wrong they got it. I mean I'd always trusted them in the past. Anyway Godbluff & Still Life rule too, pretty much a perfect 4 record run (with a big gap between, too). I'm wondering how the vinyl remasters sound because my copies have been played to death.

remember them being none too kind with VdGG, saying their music was too dramatic, too thorny, and really suffered from a lack of guitar

I read "too thorny" as "too horny" and that fits too

I am revisiting my good old prog rock and today it's The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, which is practically a VDGG album and mentioned exactly and criminally once in this thread. Lots of Hammill raw acrobatics, a familiar visceral / meditative, peaceful / anxious sound, but songs are more varied and less of a piece. Modern is like an acoustic 21st Schizoid Man, Red Shift and the closer could be on Godbluff. The "ballads" are really successful too and help give the album a singer-songwriter vibe. An excellent addition to the VDGG catalogue. I remember also liking Chameleon and his divorce album Over.

Pawn Hearts was my favorite album in the world for a while. I've rarely used the "rewind" button so much in a given song than A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers, I think it was taking me 50 minutes to listen to it.

remember them being none too kind with VdGG, saying their music was too dramatic, too thorny, and really suffered from a lack of guitar

Also not good enough musicians... have they actually listened to Guy Evans?

I think Peter Hamill's said that VdGG was far more collaborative than his solo albums, and that's the essential difference even though it's the same musicians.

I listened to The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage yesterday after reading about it here, and it's pretty incredible. The only song I didn't like was "The Lie" — fuck off with all that moaning about the church, buddy, who do you think you are, Ian Anderson? But other than that it's really good; the best word I could use to describe it, and this goes for VDGG at their best, too, is "unsettling."

"The Lie" is great. Probably helps to be a lapsed Catholic though.

Hopefully not too much of a spoiler to observe that delaying the entry of drums until 3.5 tracks into your album is quite the flourish, especially the way they enter

now planning a cycle of prog releases where i delay the entry of drums until 3.5 albums into the dekalogy and garnering all the flourish-acclaim

like maybe that’s just prog but their sound (and Hamill’s voice) (and the songwriting) takes a fair amount of getting used to

I had a friend when I was 18 or 19 or so who loved Peter Hamill and VdGG. He lent me a solo PH album from the 80s, which I found totally off-putting in a visceral way. However, when he lent me Pawn Hearts, it clicked immediately. Hamill's voice suddenly sounded incredibly powerful and expressive.

first time I heard Hammill's voice was on Fripp's Exposure album and all I could think was "this guy can't be for real"

"The Lie" is great. Probably helps to be a lapsed Catholic though.

I'm very much that; haven't been inside a church since I was 18. But I'm not...conflicted about that, or nursing old wounds, or whatever. I knew it was all absurd before I ever took First Communion, and just did the whole thing to keep my mom happy.

I hadn't heard any VdGG/Hammill until very recently and I found his voice kind of the opposite of off-putting. Seemed very familiar and also very...non-prog. Like, I felt like people who aren't into other prog might be able to get into VdGG. The vocals kind of reminded me of Bowie, but even more they reminded me of Billy Mackenzie. Made me wonder if Mackenzie was a Hammill fan, and I did find one article claiming he was influenced by Hammill, but nothing concrete. Seems very possible though!

I don't know about VDGG but he definitely didn't like Genesis!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAqYmTH6REE

The singer he sounds the most like to me is halford

I don't think he exists in a different universe from Genesis-era Peter Gabriel fwiw. I don't know what it was about that later Hamill album tbh (not even sure which one it was).

Listening to "Pilgrims" now, I can't unhear Rob Halford, now that you said it.

I'm very much that; haven't been inside a church since I was 18. But I'm not...conflicted about that, or nursing old wounds, or whatever. I knew it was all absurd before I ever took First Communion, and just did the whole thing to keep my mom happy.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

i'm with tom d, "the lie" is fucking amazing. none of it took? none of the shame? every hard-on i ever had i hated. of course there were complicating factors but i'm still broken and traumatized in ways that a lot of my friends, none of whom are strangers to trauma, aren't.

The Silent Corner also has Randy motherfuckin California from Spirit on guitar!

none of it took? none of the shame? every hard-on i ever had i hated.

No; I never had any issues around sex, certainly not any God-related ones. My mom gave me a book called How Babies Are Made when I was pretty young, probably preschool. And I only went to Catholic school for two years in high school, by which time I was already pretty much who I was. I don't remember ever talking about sex with a priest. Shit, I was an altar boy, even served with one of the biggest names in Catholic scandal history (McCarrick) and came away unscathed. I've mentioned here before that a priest I knew (and liked) left the church and moved to Las Vegas, and one day a guy he'd molested years earlier showed up on his front doorstep and shot him, but nothing ever happened to me. I guess I wasn't that cute in my altar-boy days. Or maybe I was just bad at reading signals; that was certainly true when a few girls tried to approach me in college.

I don't think he exists in a different universe from Genesis-era Peter Gabriel fwiw

OK listening, they're not that similar, I guess just similarly dramatic and fond of dynamic contrasts; just seemed surprising to see Hamill's voice described as "non-prog". Idk who Billy Mackenzie is, though.

No; I never had any issues around sex, certainly not any God-related ones. My mom gave me a book called How Babies Are Made when I was pretty young, probably preschool. And I only went to Catholic school for two years in high school, by which time I was already pretty much who I was. I don't remember ever talking about sex with a priest. Shit, I was an altar boy, even served with one of the biggest names in Catholic scandal history (McCarrick) and came away unscathed. I've mentioned here before that a priest I knew (and liked) left the church and moved to Las Vegas, and one day a guy he'd molested years earlier showed up on his front doorstep and shot him, but nothing ever happened to me. I guess I wasn't that cute in my altar-boy days. Or maybe I was just bad at reading signals; that was certainly true when a few girls tried to approach me in college.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

and just being in that environment hasn't really left any marks? for me a lot of it was realizing that all of the stuff i had grown up thinking of as "normal" was just deeply fucked up and wrong. that's what "the lie" means to me, the unique sense of _moral inversion_ represented by patriarchal christianity.

I just foundmy copy of After The Flood the BBC sessions which I remember being quite good. Even starts with one session by the 68 band.

OK listening, they're not that similar, I guess just similarly dramatic and fond of dynamic contrasts; just seemed surprising to see Hamill's voice described as "non-prog". Idk who Billy Mackenzie is, though.

... Billy Mackenzie...

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

I'd heard of the Associates before but for some reason imagined they were jangly indie-pop. This is disappointing.

correct if by "disappointing" you mean better than genesis *and* van der graaf generator

here 4 this drama

and just being in that environment hasn't really left any marks?

I mean...it spurred me to read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and study Buddhism and Asatru, so...maybe, but all that boils down to is thinking "OK, that was a bunch of bullshit, but maybe there's something out there that's not" and eventually coming away from all those explorations disappointed, too.

Genesis = VdGG > going to Catholic school > whatever that Associates song was

(NB I have mostly pleasant memories of attending Catholic school for junior KG and summer school and teaching music lessons in Catholic schools; apologies if I minimized any actual trauma people suffered there)

So Still Life, eh? What an album.

“La Rossa” is almost too good to be true

I'm finding it very difficult to listen to anything but APOLK at the moment. Even other VDGG feels like thin gruel. I guess this will continue until I play it to death.

Have dabbled in solo Hammill, actually think Gog/Magog maybe one of my favourite PH/VDGG things - first time I heard that was a similar 'fuckin hell he really went for it!!' moment

(also - are any of the various Pawn Hearts remasters particularly worthwhile?)

I've heard the one in the recent CD boxset was good. dunno about the latest vinyl reissue but I would assume it used the same master. but I can't say because my copy sounds pretty good

in fact I think I'll go listen to it right now

I mean...it spurred me to read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and study Buddhism and Asatru, so...maybe, but all that boils down to is thinking "OK, that was a bunch of bullshit, but maybe there's something out there that's not" and eventually coming away from all those explorations disappointed, too.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

i mean bullshit in what terms? this is another part of the lie, "catholic" meaning literally "universal". no universal church, no universal brotherhood of man. it's just about finding something that works for _you_. for me, that was taking hormones, getting my dick cut off, and becoming a communist lesbian witch. (by the way i do want to give shout-outs to hammill for his embrace of witchcraft in early VDGG, stuff like "necromancer" and "white hammer"; kind of a shame he walked away from that path IMO but again, people gotta do what works for them). what worked for me is probably just not gonna be right for most people, but for everybody i do think there _is_ something that's right for them.