Be sure to listen to 2112 at 21:12 on 21/12…
…and you can also read a free Rush comic book here.
Category: Progarchy
Merry Christmas from LEAH
An amazing “Merry Christmas” gift has appeared just this evening!
Leah writes on her Facebook page:
Here is my gift to all you beautiful people!
A symphonic metal Christmas EP from me to you!
Best of all…. it’s FREE!!!
Share away!!!
The EP contains studio versions of the three Christmas tracks that Leah played live on 12-12-12.
Download the EP for free, enjoy this excellent music, and please share the Christmas spirit.
Rush 2112: Hold the red star proudly high in hand?
Who is organizing the marketing of this new version of Rush’s 2112? The Priests of the Temples of Syrinx?!?
Here are a few reasons why you definitely won’t be able to hold the red star proudly high in hand for this release:
1. If you want just the 40-page comic book version of 2112, you can’t buy it separately.
2. OK, you can buy it separately, but only as an iBook; but then, you first need to buy an iPad to read it. (Thanks, Priests; obviously you want your great computers to fill our hallowed halls as well.)
3. The hard copy version of the comic book is only available if you buy the CD in combination with the Blu-Ray. Only that counts as “Super Deluxe.” So, if you want to buy a DVD with the 5.1 mix for your DVD player, you won’t get the comic book along with it; i.e., the only way to get the print version of the comic book is to add the purchase of the “Super Deluxe” CD + Blu-Ray combo to your purchase of the “Deluxe” version.
Note that the electronic version of the comic book has more features than the printed version. In other words, I guess in order to be counted as a Rush fan worth being taken into consideration, you are required to own both an iPad and a Blu-Ray player. (Thanks, Priests.)
By the way, I don’t think I can get too excited about the 3 unreleased bonus live tracks added to the digitally remastered 2112 CD:
– Overture (Northland Coliseum, Edmonton, AB – June 25, 1981)
– The Temples of Syrinx (Northland Coliseum, Edmonton, AB – June 25, 1981)
– A Passage To Bangkok (Manchester Apollo, Manchester, England – June 17, 1980)
What?!? Is the rest of the June 25, 1981 live version of “2112” so bad that it couldn’t be included in its entirety? Who wants to listen to just part of the complete epic?!?
This is such crappy marketing, indifferent to consumer wishes, that I am happy to refuse to submit to the tyranny.
A final note: The new album cover by Hugh Syme is a hideous piece of font-driven garbage. Does it look any cooler than the original cover? No way. Not at all. You could find fan-created art that looks infinitely better! This new cover is so lazy and unimaginative, it is insulting to fans who have held the red star logo in such high esteem for so long. Why on earth would you remove the red star from the cover?!? They should have used the classic iconic logo on the new release, I say; perhaps that alone could be considered an improvement on the original cover.
Attention, Rush: Last year’s three “Sectors” box sets were bad enough. But thanks to your submission to the cold-hearted, corporate merchandising machine—because you have allowed it to assume control—you are now officially out-of-touch.
Will we remember induction into the Hall of Fame as the epochal marker of this change?
Then again, maybe I’m out of touch… because I’d rather have an acoustic guitar than a Blu-Ray or an iPad.
A Different Kind of Truth (Best of 2012 — Part 6)
Mike Portnoy, in an interview with iDrum magazine, made an interesting remark about all the guys in the supergroup Flying Colors; namely, their running joke during the writing process:
We almost felt like the Village People! I’m the metal guy, Neil Morse the prog guy, Casey McPherson the pop guy, [Steve] Morse the country guy and Dave LaRue the funky guy!
I feel the same way about the supergroup team here at Progarchy. In addition to our shared loves, we also have our distinctive tastes. Me, I’m the metal guy; Brad Birzer is the prog guy; Carl Olson is the jazz guy; Kevin McCormick is the classical guy…
Continue reading “A Different Kind of Truth (Best of 2012 — Part 6)”
Watch out for Adriana Tegova in 2013
Adriana Tegova has tweeted a link to a great new song. I can’t wait to hear her debut album next year.
Listen online to the new track in its entirety while you can. Download it now, because it’s brilliant.
I first heard her as lead vocalist for All Eyes on Saturn, a fabulous Australian band that released a magnificent but hard-to-find EP with five amazing tracks.
Thanks in no small part to Adriana’s distinctive singing, the EP is a favorite of mine. Watch out for her in 2013.
You can also hear online (but not download) the lovely track, “Hiding“.
And here’s a video preview of another song, “Heaven“:
Leah: Live at The Columbia 12-12-12
Leah’s 2012 Symphonic Metal Debut: Of Earth & Angels
Leah released her first full-length album in 2012, Of Earth & Angels, and I first learned of its existence when Leah’s song “Ex Cathedra” (featuring suitably epic Latin lyrics) found its way into my Facebook feed, thanks to a student who had taken a number of my Latin classes over the years. After a quick sample of the album’s songs online, I knew I had to download the whole thing.
That was back in September. This month, as I was assembling my Top Ten of 2012 for the Progarchy archives, I realized that Leah was in my upper echelon, because, months later, I had not moved on from her album; if anything, I was enjoying it more and more, which is a sure sign that an album is a rare and special find, especially with a new artist. I love this time of year, when I look back and survey the wreckage and the survivors: the many albums that I had such high hopes for (but then turned out to be sad disappointments); the few surprises that came out of nowhere (to become treasured discoveries). Leah’s music has surprised me, and it stormed its way into my Best of 2012.
Yet Another Best of 2012
10. Flying Colors – At first I thought this was more “pop” than “prog”, but I kept coming back to it throughout the year. It’s prog, and it’s very good!
9. Neal Morse – Momentum. Neal stays true to his beliefs, while delivering the best album of his solo career. Full of energy and great melodies, he, Randy George, and Mike Portnoy create a masterpiece with this one.
8. Jeff Johnson & Phil Keaggy – WaterSky. A beautiful set of ambient pieces that were recorded while on retreat at a lodge in rural Texas. The sympathetic interplay between Johnson’s keyboards and Keaggy’s guitar is simply wonderful. My students request this music while working on math problems! Continue reading “Yet Another Best of 2012”
The Greatest Christmas Rock Song
Dan Flynn makes a very strong case that the greatest Christmas rock song is The Kinks’ “Father Christmas“:
The number that most embodies the spirit of the season depicts a violent robbery of Santa Claus. Thirty-five Christmases ago, The Kinks released “Father Christmas,” a gritty tale about a department-store Santa getting rolled by a gang of teenagers. “Father Christmas, give us some money/We got no time for your silly toys/We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it over/Give all the toys to the little rich boys.”
It’s a 45 with a sense of humor. It also has a sense of the Beatitudes.
If upon first listen “Father Christmas” rings as cynicism inverting the spirit of giving into one of taking, subsequent spins reveal a track telling us to give thanks for our good fortune rather than the small fortune under the tree. A hoodlum instructs St. Nick to hold off on the Bionic Man costume for his brother and the cuddly doll for his sister. “But give my daddy a job cause he needs one/He’s got lots of mouths to feed.”
“Father Christmas” invites us to be more Christ like. An ode superficially about the ultimate expression of materialism (theft) becomes a spiritual admonition to remember the least among us.
And, as Dan points out, the ultimate coda to the song is how Ray Davies actually got shot in New Orleans when he chased two muggers!
By the way, Dan says the best Christmas songs “can be counted on an eight-beaded abacus” and lists “Silent Night” as one of the eight best.
I have to say that the only version of “Silent Night” that I can wholeheartedly endorse is Leah’s version. And I wish Dan could have seen her amazing show last night, because she did epic metal versions of “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”, “The Holly and the Ivy”, and “God Rest Ye Merry”, which Dan will have to make room for on his abacus! But more about Leah’s incredible concert later on, as Progarchy shall post a full review…
An Epic Night of Symphonic Metal
I had the privilege of seeing an epic evening of symphonic metal tonight, as Leah rocked New Westminster with an orchestra of superb musicians. My full review will be posted tomorrow, but those who want a sneak peek at the set list can search Twitter for #Leah121212 because I tweeted the whole concert live. It was an amazing show, and I promise to share the details with you soon.
A Favorite Discovery of 2012: Yppah
Besides Big Big Train, one of my favorite discoveries of the past year has been Joe Corrales Jr.’s project, Yppah. Their latest album is Eighty One, released on the Ninja Tune label.
Corrales is similar to Matt Stevens (another Progarchy favorite) in that he likes to lay down a bed of rhythm using delays and samples while playing beautiful guitar filigrees on top of it. His style is much simpler than Stevens’, however, as he stresses the groove above all else. The bottom line for me is that his music makes me feel happy when I listen to it. (Which makes sense if you read the band’s name backwards!) Snatches of wordless chants swim in and out of the mix, Anomie Belle adds her siren vocals to several of the songs, Eno-esque audio effects burble along, and the percussion percolates with a world music feel. All of this creates an overall atmosphere of relaxed bliss. This is music for a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Yppah’s bandcamp site states,
Drawing on a cultural heritage that took in My Bloody Valentine alongside hip hop and heavily influenced by various forms of electronic music, psychedelic soul and rock, his music often mixes guitars shoved through massive reverbs/delays, keyboards/synthesizers, live drums, and other techniques.
Can hip-hop influenced music find a place in the prog music universe? Listen to “Happy To See You” below and decide for yourself. Beginning with a nice little guitar riff, the swelling synth background soon takes over and we are soaring through the clouds pictured on the album cover. There’s a brief detour to listen to a children’s chorus sweetly chanting us along our journey before the guitar comes back, turbocharged this time, to shoot us into the stratosphere.
If you’re interested in more, watch the in-studio performance below. A word of warning: Anomie Belle does some rapping in the second song, “Film Burn”, but it’s quickly followed by some beautiful violin work (she’s a classically trained violinist). And hey, if Rush can rap in “Roll The Bones”, then I guess it’s OK, right?
Progarchy 