By day, I'm a father of seven and husband of one. By night, I'm an author, a biographer, and a prog rocker. Interests: Rush, progressive rock, cultural criticisms, the Rocky Mountains, individual liberty, history, hiking, and science fiction.
I have no idea what to call this type of music. That is, how to label it or place it in a genre. It’s pop, to be certain. Very clever pop. I suppose there’s some Talking Heads influence in here, but I don’t know either band well enough to say for certain. Regardless, I love it. I don’t pull it out of the CD rack as often as, say, CLOSE TO THE EDGE. But, every once in a while, a cold, grey morning calls for the wonderfully cynical and yet simultaneously innocent sounds of Blancmange. Utterly clever.
2017 is shaping up to be a very exciting year… three sold out live Ayreon Universe shows and of course a brand new Ayreon album!
It is almost Christmas, and we just wrapped up the Guess The Artist games for the new album. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Thanks so much for your amazing participation and support, I was looking forward to reading your inspiring comments every time.
I have to say I’ve a very good feeling about this album myself, everything is somehow falling into place. Please stay tuned, we’ll have more news for you in January!
Warm Christmas wishes to you all from Lori, Hoshi and me at the Electric Castle!
One of our beloved friends and progarchists, Russell Clarke, posted this as a comment, but it deserves to be its own post, separate but equal! Nothing RC writes is unimportant.–ed.
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From our friends at PROG
The funding campaign has now passed the UKP60,000 mark. The community is pulling together for something that they believe in.
In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, and that may have been the wake-up call for a lot of people (myself included.) There are others that have been long-time supporters and subscribers. I haven’t been so I fall into the former camp, but I am still happy to donate to the people who put in the hard yards to make this a vibrant community. Regardless of the reasons it’s still great to see people rallying around those who put themselves out there to create such an amazing bunch of people.
Having said that, there’s currently plenty of “How dare you donate to this cause when my pet cause is more important?” on display.
Also, there’s the even more ridiculous “How dare you donate to this cause when I need the money more?”
In response to both, I have two words, neither of which are printable here.
Nobody tells me what causes I must support. The moment they do, it’s called a tax, and I pay enough of that already.
And I’m pretty sure the prog scene wouldn’t be what it is without the contribution of people like Jerry Ewing. Kudos to you mate!
We need to rock on, make our own mark, and ensure that us, as Progarchists and readers thereof, are constantly spreading the word about our amazing genre. If Prog Mag is to be absent I will redouble my albeit paltry efforts to publicise our muse.
A huge, ginormous progarchy congratulations to YES for *finally* making into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!!!
Over our five years of existence, we’ve been huge YES fans. Here are just a few selections of the many thousands of words we’ve written on YES over nearly half a decade.
One of the only (well, probably the ONLY!) good things about PROG being shut down is seeing the amount of support being shown for our beloved friends. On Facebook, everyone from Greg Spawton to Matt Cohen to Mike Portnoy and beyond has offered great words for Jerry and everyone at Prog.
Mike Morton of The Gift has taken this to the next level. He’s set up a link to help donate to all of those who just lost their jobs. Remember, they had no idea this was coming at work. Not only were they let go this afternoon, they were denied pay for the previous three weeks as well.
This just appeared on Jerry’s wall at FB (late afternoon, December 19, 2016). I post it not for reasons of gossip, but simply as news and information.
Of course, I’m totally on Jerry’s side. . . . Sounds like Dickensian nightmare.
Well you’ve heard the rumours. You’ve read the news. It would be remiss of me too say much on a public forum, but they walked in, told us TeamRock had gone into liquidation, no one was getting paid in December, and to vacate the premises there and then. I could rage now about some people, but that will come later. For now, almost 100 good people exit into the cold December night, unaware of whether they can afford a Christmas dinner, or a roof over their head in January. Good people who have slaved over great magazines for great musical causes for many years. Brilliantly talented people: [removed names Jerry lists]. The best of the best. We’ll be back folks. Watch this space…
Only moments ago, I learned that Teamrock (parent company of PROG and CLASSIC ROCK magazines) has gone under. Lots of really talented folks are out of work as of today. For what it’s worth, I am so terribly sorry to know this. Jerry has been a solid and kind friend to us, and he and his team have brought me (and I’m sorry all of us) hours and hours of entertainment and news. I was always struck by how professional the layout, the writing, and the art at PROG was. Perfectionists, all. They deserve better than this.
For better or worse, I never followed Big Country closely after the band’s first three albums. Overall, I liked STEELTOWN (1984) better than I liked THE CROSSING (1983), but I definitely liked both.
By the time THE SEER (1986) came out, I felt as though the band was repeating itself. And, yet, the title track of the album is as good as anything else the band did. Outstanding, really. Though, I’m sure that Kate Bush’s vocals didn’t hurt my view of the song!
This is the special pre-preordering page for the as yet unfinished album “The Slow Rust Of Forgotten Machinery” – the Ninth studio album by The Tangent. All composed and demoed – ready to record
Before we start – please let us make this very clear.. This album will be on sale at a perfectly normal and reasonable price in 2017 and we will have “normal” pre-ordering for the album nearer the time at those prices.
Progarchy 