Daily Prog Rock Update

White Knight

Spectral Warrior con passion
This morning I sampled via u tube: Camel-- "Air Born" and "Lunar Sea"; Gentle Giant--"Black Cat", "Why Not", "The Power and The Glory" and "Aspirations".
 

Nima

New member
This morning I sampled via u tube: Camel-- "Air Born" and "Lunar Sea"; Gentle Giant--"Black Cat", "Why Not", "The Power and The Glory" and "Aspirations".

What a bunch of great songs, the last prog album I listened to was Camel - Moonmadness.
 

White Knight

Spectral Warrior con passion
Hi, Nima and thanx for your input. Never having listened to either group before, I must say it was a good experience. On balance, I prefer Camel to Gentle Giant. What about you?
 

White Knight

Spectral Warrior con passion
Today I listened to Brain Salad Surgery from ELP and Performance [movie soundtrack] from Ry Cooder and Mick Jagger, amongst others.
 

Nima

New member
Hi, Nima and thanx for your input. Never having listened to either group before, I must say it was a good experience. On balance, I prefer Camel to Gentle Giant. What about you?

I've been listening to Camel for the past seven, eight years, and I too prefer Camel over Gentle Giant. Camel has an over all melancholic feel to it which I really like.
 

Art Rock

Sr. Regulator
Staff member
Sr. Regulator
Camel is such an underestimated prog band. Moonmadness and Mirage are absolutely brilliant and would certainly make my pop/rock album top100 regardless of sub-genre.
 

Nima

New member
Camel is such an underestimated prog band. Moonmadness and Mirage are absolutely brilliant and would certainly make my pop/rock album top100 regardless of sub-genre.

Agreed, Camel has become a cult band because of its unpopularity. It is quite a shame, though. However, I prefer such bands to remain underground; for brilliant music sometimes remains not understood or never known. I am surprised how their 80's and beyond never got the recognition it deserved. I can understand how the 70's stuff (the first four albums) not being understood by many and remaining underground but after that they had a certain pop edge to them that I never became a fan of. There were certain songs after that I appreciated like Stationary traveller.
 

White Knight

Spectral Warrior con passion
"Performance" {movie soundtrack}--Mick Jagger, Ry Cooder etc., etc. "Tarkus, "Brain Salad Surgery"--ELP.
 

John Watt

Member
Gentle Giant? "We. Can. Change. The. World."
At least modern computer font lets me type that out the way they sang it.

I walked downtown today, a calm and sunny day, with lots of leftover snow and ice.
When I was walking beside the side of this huge Catholic church, I started singing.
The echo was nice, and I was catching it from houses across the street.
I was singing the "Soon... oh soon, the light, ours forever, ours the right, the son shall guide us, a reason to be here".
That led into singing out my own words to another song in the same key,
feeling all expansive about humanity and what looks like the beginning of the fall of the American empire.
"We've got to get together sooner or later, because the revolution's here". Yeah!
Amun! May All Peace Be Upon You.

So far, that's my progressive rock update.
 

White Knight

Spectral Warrior con passion
Gentle Giant? "We. Can. Change. The. World."
At least modern computer font lets me type that out the way they sang it.

I walked downtown today, a calm and sunny day, with lots of leftover snow and ice.
When I was walking beside the side of this huge Catholic church, I started singing.
The echo was nice, and I was catching it from houses across the street.
I was singing the "Soon... oh soon, the light, ours forever, ours the right, the son shall guide us, a reason to be here".
That led into singing out my own words to another song in the same key,
feeling all expansive about humanity and what looks like the beginning of the fall of the American empire.
"We've got to get together sooner or later, because the revolution's here". Yeah!
Amun! May All Peace Be Upon You.

So far, that's my progressive rock update.
John, do you remember CSNY singing those lines in their song "Chicago" about the 1968 Democratic National Convention confrontations/riots between the police and demonstrators?
Myself, I liked the way CSNY did those lyrics as well.
 

John Watt

Member
I hear you white knight. Some things never change. They have to fail.

I'm surprised at Camel getting so much attention, never being big around here.
When you say Gentle Giant to me, I think of Saga, a local band with timing issues.

But when it comes to musicianship,
one of the online videos that turns me on for the energetic playing,
and that's funky hard rock, it's Ian Drury and the Blockheads,
their one live video of "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll".

I watched that bassist, thinking the average road band was sounding like that in the seventies and eighties,
before that whole scene got swamped by personal high tech.
I haven't seen an Alembic bass onstage since then.
 

John Watt

Member
I came up with my own progressive rock this morning.
It's not very often I wake up in a musical mood,
but I started playing guitar and singing and came out with this line.

"No, I never got caught up before, in someone elses' nasty divorce".

Now this progressive chord progression has some meaning.
 

John Watt

Member
white knight! Your daily progressive rock update has me coming back, and I'm not disappointed.

I caught an email from Wolfgang's Vault, supposedly the largest collection of free online music,
with attendant sales, in the world. So I clicked and their feature was Journey.
They said this new recording was presumed lost, and features the band in a studio with other L.A. players,
Tower of Power horns, and other musicians. This was after Steve Perry joined the band, and the album hadn't hit yet.

I like Neil Schon's guitar playing. When he was with Santana, their appearance at Woodstock is still one of my favorites.
And when he started Journey, it was rock fusion, better than progressive rock.
I can't blame him for carrying that level of musicianship into a vocal realm, getting Steve Perry and his songs.

So I never heard any progressive rock, or any music so far today, but I was singing "Who's Crying Now" on my way to this borrowed office.
That might be the last song I learned the lead solo note for note for, so I could riff off that to my best benefit.
Big intervals, C up to G, Bb up to F....

Yeah! I am having a semi-progressive, jazz-rock-fusion morning! Thanks!
 

John Watt

Member
No, I wasn't at Woodstock. I heard about it happening in high school.
It set a bad precedent in America, music promoters learning that
you could stuff a field full of people for acid-rock music.
Don't forget, by the third event people were dying and getting raped in the mosh pit.
Not my scene.

I did have a progressive rock moment this morning.
Walking downtown, a young guy was getting out of a COGECO van, an online provider, so I said hi.
The head of COGECO has told me to phone him the next time I'm out in public... uh... doing something,
and they'd cover me. So we got into that and his radio was playing some old rock.
Yeah, I guess old progressive isn't progressive any more.

I've got to stop doing my Neil Young imitation. Even though he's almost local,
his first Grammy and recent releases have a lot of people talking about him.
I'll sing a song off "After The Goldrush", a late sixties album before "Harvest" and "The Needle and the Damage Done".
People don't realize how slow and weak his vocals were back then,
and I start getting looks like what's wrong with me.

"Have you heard about the knights in armour coming,
from the yellow phase of the sun?
There were archers shooting, and soldiers rushing, all around the chosen one.
All in a dream all in a dream, the loading had begun.
Flying mother natures' silver seed, to a new home, in the sun.
Flying mother natures' silver seed, to a new home, in the sun."

Ahhh! The good old L.A. days, when aliens were coming to take us away.

Typing here online, I'm thinking they got me already.

It might be time to get out my parents' old Frank Chacksfield album,
and listen to "Victory at Sea", a favorite since I could hear.
That's one musical thing that's still progressive in my life, my listening abilities.
 
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