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Aggie87

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I really hope they put out a live cd from this tour, would love to hear this incarnation play! Of course a studio release would be perfectly fine as well!

You're too easy to please, Erik!!

I think we'll get both. I know there's studio recordings in the can.

I was at the Friday night NYC show. I got a surprise call the day before the show offering me a ticked & a VIP pass! An exciting evening that certainly cheered me up. :)

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I really hope they put out a live cd from this tour, would love to hear this incarnation play! Of course a studio release would be perfectly fine as well!

You're too easy to please, Erik!!

I think we'll get both. I know there's studio recordings in the can.

I was at the Friday night NYC show. I got a surprise call the day before the show offering me a ticked & a VIP pass! An exciting evening that certainly cheered me up. :)

I was at the Saturday NYC show, and they were on fire! They played with great emotion AND precision, pretty hard to do. The three drummers thing was a blast.

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Wish they'd play over here again - good, lord, Fripp lives here. I can never work out if it's the economics or the fact that Fripp can't be doing with the oh-so-hip English rock journalists.

Someone on the Hoffman board claimed to have inside information that some dates in Europe were going to happen next year. Personally, I wish they'd have had at least one date in Texas on the current tour.

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Wish they'd play over here again - good, lord, Fripp lives here. I can never work out if it's the economics or the fact that Fripp can't be doing with the oh-so-hip English rock journalists.

Someone on the Hoffman board claimed to have inside information that some dates in Europe were going to happen next year. Personally, I wish they'd have had at least one date in Texas on the current tour.

Sheffield City Hall, perhaps!!!!! They must have done that on their way up.

***************

Finally capitulated to the Opeth enthusiasm and dl 'Pale Communion'. I tried them once before with the RAH album but have yet to get beyond disc 1 - the growling stopped me in my tracks. Shawn assured me that later albums lose this. Thankfully, none here.

Enjoyed the record...with reservations. It really was a nice retro-fest - if there are synths in there they are well hidden. The dominant keyboard sounds are mellotronic and organ-led...just like the good old days. Some very fine guitar - in places reminded me of Wishbone Ash (who were never really a 'progressive' band, more blues based). Nice textures including some quaint medievalisms.

Reservations:

a) Something that disturbed me with too many bands of this ilk from the 70s - a tendency to play a theme for a couple of bars, then play it again, and again unaltered (this happens on many of the tracks). Maybe it's 40 years of jazz listening (or the impact of Debussy and Delius) but I always feel once you've put a phrase out there you need to alter it next time round (unless you are doing minimalism!).

b) Structures are somewhat episodic - a few minutes in one section, then a change of gear, then something else. But no clear sense of evolution from a to b to c. Now that might be a first listen impression - with repeat listenings I might pick up on linking threads.

c) Lyrics seem to be standard Prog-cod. They should have done the vocals in Swedish. Mystery level increased tenfold. [i appreciate that worldwide sales would correspondingly drop significantly].

Please don't take this as anything more than a personal reaction (I hate those diktat from Olympus posts that are so often used to dismiss music enjoyed by others). These chaps are very brave to be performing music in a syntax that is completely out of fashion. I have a feeling that on repeat listenings this will grow on me. In which case I'll explore further.

Nice to see Dave Stewart still getting work.

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I would recommend listening to both Damnation and Heritage, both feature all clean vocals. They should be available on the UK version of Spotify. Each record has a very distinct personality, taken in tandem with Pale Communion it's quite the trio.

Opeth is a "grower" band, it takes a little while to absorb their records, but I find that makes them even more rewarding once they sink in.

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On a different tack (though prompted by noticing Dave Stewart's appearance on the Opeth), anyone else keen on this:

61D2X82byfL.jpg

Dave Stewart Barbara Gaskin - The Big Idea

Stewart was one of those musicians left beached by the punk revolution in Britain in the late 70s. Kept going with National Health for a while but then seemed to turn to writing for a keyboard magazine.

During the 80s/90s along with his partner Barbara Gaskin (a Northette on the Hatfield albums) he put out a string of singles (often covers...one got to No. 1 in the UK charts during the New Romantic era!) and several albums. Although he'd switched from his trademark organ/piano/electric piano to synths, the records were superbly arranged, again having that deft ability to use key changes to colour the music; and Barbara's multi-tracked vocals gave a lovely choral feel to the music.

Anyway, this one came out around 1991 - I played it endlessly at that time as I was packing from my last flat and moving to my new house. To my mind, stands head and shoulders above their other LPs. Great songwriting, superb instrumental passages. And a strange disquiet and dissatisfaction about Britain - these were the days after over a decade of Thatcher, following the late 80s crash, before the Blair boom.

Highly recommended to Porcupine Tree/XTC fans.

[Read the review here - I am not alone: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Idea-Dave-Stewart-Barbara-Gaskin/dp/B000026YMB/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1413223417&sr=1-5&keywords=dave+stewart+and+barbara+gaskin]

Edit: Just noticed he's been doing a fair bit of arranging for PT and like bands

Edited by A Lark Ascending
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  • 2 months later...

Footage just showed up yesterday on youtube of King Crimson's "Cat Food", from the BBC Top of the Pops. It was apparently re-broadcast on a german show, which is where this is sourced. Never saw this before, but it's cool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8t4lYNjS0Y

Edited by Aggie87
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There's some more about the clip here:

http://www.dgmlive.com/news.htm?entry=262

Ignore the first post which is a spoof from 2006. The 2015 comment is below it.

I'd always wondered when this was broadcast - March 1970. I didn't even have a record player but it still left an impression (didn't have a KC record until the following spring).

I assume the bassist is Gordon Haskell?

[Favourite bit of miming on ToTP - Fairport Convention doing an instrumental medley. One tune had a mandolin part so Dave Swarbrick mimed with his fiddle; when the tune swapped to a fiddle lead he exchanged it for a mandolin. This was during a brief few weeks in 1971 when ToTP had an album spot where a 'head' band played three tracks from an album. The runes were saying the future lay in LPs - they were back to singles very quickly.]

Edited by A Lark Ascending
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I've put together yet another Generation Prog Festival and I'd say we've reached a new level this time around - just check out the line-up:

- The Aristocrats (USA/UK)
- Leprous (NOR)
- Panzerballett (GER/AT)
- Subsignal (GER)
- Circle of Illusion (AT)
- Alessandro Bertoni Keystone Quartet (USA/UK/NL/GER)
- Disperse (PL)
- Counter-World Experience (GER)

The festival will take place at Luise - The Cultfactory in Nürnberg, Germany, on November 20+21.

Lots of special things about this - it'll probably be an album release gig for both Panzerballett and Counter-World Experience, it's the first time Circle of Illusion will play live outside of Austria (they'll be performing their entire epic concept album Jeremias) and obviously there's that very special Alessandro Bertoni Keystone Quartet, which features the Relocator rhythm section (Frank Tinge on drums and yours truly on bass) and the fantastic Tom MacLean (To-Mera, ex-Haken) on guitar! smile.png

Are we going to see any of you guys at the show? smile.png


More information here:
www.generation-prog.com

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