Great news today from Burning Shed. The forthcoming album from Gazpacho: SOYUZ is now available for pre-order.
I didn’t realize this would be coming so soon. I’m in the middle of a retrospective of all of Gazpacho’s albums. This, of course, will be coming to a progarchy website near you.
For now, though, pre-order SOYUZ.
And, now, to wait patiently. . . .
Marillion at 20 Monroe Live, Grand Rapids, Michigan, February 18, 2018.
Waiting for Marillion to take the stage, my thoughts drifted to the rest of those gathering in this well-appointed concert club. Why were they here?
Doubtless, there were locals who, when they heard Marillion was returning to Grand Rapids after 20+ years, anticipated pure nostalgia — “Kayleigh,” “Incommunicado,” “Hooks In You,” “No One Can,” fixtures of local rock radio in the early 1990s. After all, why else would a band with no more than a cult following tour the States, if not to play the hits?
Then there were the hardcore fans, the ones I’d hung with in Facebook groups for a couple of years now. People from GR, Kalamazoo, and Detroit who’ve traveled nationally and internationally to see the band since their last Michigan stops — some 30, 40 or more times. The folks who converged on this mid-size Midwestern city from (for example): Bangor, Maine; Hillsboro, Oregon; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Baja, Mexico; and Stoke-on-Trent, England, telling stories of their first Marillion experiences, sometimes stretching back more than four decades. Not to mention “The Nine,” as they named themselves, who’ve seen every show on the current US tour. They all have their favorite songs — but they knew that much more was coming than a rote run-through of career high points.
And then there was me — a Marillion fan since Seasons End, but only on my fourth show (still way behind King Crimson and Rush), bringing my wife and two friends for their first experience of the band, ten minutes away from my house. I couldn’t help but wonder: what connects us? Why this band? What’s at the heart of this experience?
Today, much to my surprise, a nice package arrived from Sweden. And, to make it even better, inside, I found not just a beautiful new cd, but also a three-page handwritten note.
Now, that’s excellence!
Thank you, Mattias Olsson. I’ve not listened to a single note yet, and I’m already your fan!
Did Beethoven steal tunes from his older contemporary for the “Eroica” Symphony, the Ninth Symphony, and for his most popular and beautiful song?… It is one of the most popular tunes in all of classical music, nay, in all of music, period. 1,085 more words
via Copying Mozart: Did Beethoven Steal Melodies for His Own Music? — The Imaginative Conservative
With their USA tour winding down, Marillion have announced street dates for the rest of their 2018 limited edition live reissues through earMusic, listed below with original years of release:
Merch copies of the “Limited USA Tour Edition” of FEAR (which includes a sampler of the live reissues) sold out at Marillion’s recent Grand Rapids show, but it’s still available from Amazon at this writing.
Other confirmed upcoming releases include:
Finally, watch this space for a review of that Grand Rapids show, coming soon!
— Rick Krueger
For the first time in 32 years, performer/producer Todd Rundgren is reuniting his band Utopia for an extended tour of the United States.
Founded as a progressive septet specializing in synthesizer-heavy, instrumentally-oriented wigouts, Utopia served as both Rundgren’s dedicated live band and an outlet for his more experimental music. However, as Rundgren’s solo albums kept getting wilder, Utopia went a different way, shedding two of three keyboard players, picking up Kasim Sulton as bassist and co-vocalist, and morphing from the proggy hard rock of Ra (including the tongue-in-cheek epic “Singring and the Glass Guitar — An Electrified Fairy Tale”) to sleek power pop with cooperative songwriting, tight harmonies and a high-tech sheen.
With Roger Powell on keyboards and Willie Wilcox on drums, Utopia hit a commercial peak on the albums Oops! Wrong Planet (including “Love Is the Answer,” later a pop hit for England Dan & John Ford Coley) and Adventures In Utopia (intended as the soundtrack for a Monkees-like TV series that never happened). The band’s highest visibility may have been as the backing group for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell album, which Rundgren produced.
True to Rundgren’s restless musical tastes, Utopia then veered off into the commercial dead ends of Deface the Music (an album of Beatles pastiches) and Swing to the Right (a concept record slamming early Reaganism). Rundgren’s pioneering video work for the band gained extensive play on the fledging MTV, but the quartet petered out in 1985, only reuniting for a 1992 tour of Japan.
Purely by chance (if such a thing as chance exists), Fidelia played Traffic’s “Dream Gerrard” from WHEN THE EAGLE FLIES, then Gazpacho’s “Vera” from LONDON.
From such “chances” emerge the stuff of dreams.
What hit me hard–in fact, for the first time–is how similar the style of the two bands is.
Separated by decades as well as countries of origin, Traffic’s epic “Dream Gerrard” blended stunningly into Gazpacho’s “Vera.” Same style of bass, keyboard swells, and atmospherics.
Cool.
Haters are always gonna hate: case in point, Fergie’s unexpected rendition of the U.S. national anthem last night.
It was widely ridiculed as the “worst rendition ever,” but its jazzy take is arguably quite fitting.
Does it not bring on some old school cool to the proceedings?
Hey, I like prog, so my distinctively refined tastes diverge quite definitely from those of the masses…
Iceland has been very active when it comes to the Progressive Rock genre in the recent years. It could be said that Ring of Gyges is one of the bands that represent this wave of the Icelandic Prog very well. Formed in 2013, the quintet released an EP titled “Ramblings of Madmen” in 2015 and a single “Witchcraft” in 2016, before launching their debut full-length release “Beyond the Night Sky” in November last year.
Vocalist and guitarist Helgi Jónsson told us about the band’s beginnings, new album, the Icelandic Prog scene, and more.
Let’s start from your early music beginnings. How did your musical career begin? When did you start playing? Which groups have been your favorites as a young man? Please tell us something more about your early life.
I come from a musical family, my dad plays bass and my parents raised me with their old vinyl records; Queen, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, that kind of stuff. I started learning classical guitar when I was a kid, probably around 9 or 10 years old, though I wasn’t really interested in that kind of music. I grew up in the countryside and the music school I went to wasn’t very good so the only proper tutoring I was getting at the time was from my dad, who taught me my first chords on the guitar (the power chords were particularly interesting to me!). When I was 13 I scraped together some money out of birthday cards and bought my very first electric guitar and amplifier, both shitty no-name brands, but I was ecstatic. I quickly formed a band with two of my schoolmates. We were mostly playing covers but I wrote one original song as well. Later on, my parents gave me an American Fender Stratocaster as a confirmation present, which remains to this day my favorite guitar and a good portion of our album was recorded with it. In high school I started to really get into prog, Rush, Dream Theater and Focus were some early favorites, but Blackwater Park by Opeth is probably the album that really sealed the deal for me on this whole prog metal thing.
“Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.” JAMES COOK
d him, and to that mind, both Frederick McKinnon and Tim Hunter have created and produced a three volume recording around a play they’ve written on this amazing explorer titled: “JOURNEYS: CAPTAIN JAMES COOK.” 2018 is an auspicious time to release these as they mark the 250th year of Cook setting out to the Pacific realms and of course the 239th anniversary of his fatal demise in Hawaii, 14th February, 1779 over a stolen cutter.
and dialogue penned by New York playwright Frederick McKinnon. At the time of writing Tim reported, “I’ve been interested for a while of working on a musical project about James Cook, I was particularly fascinated in Cook’s connections with East London, where I lived for a while.” He went on to add, “I joined forces with Fred, who was a fellow Cook enthusiast, and we’ve been working on the project for about a year now.”
Prog artist and fan, Tim not only plays the part of Captain James Cook he also provides guitar and keyboards throughout. Cook is a subject dear to his heart. “We’re very proud, in North Yorkshire, of James Cook, who spent the early years of his life here. Cook rose from humble origins to become one of the world’s greatest explorers. On his three great Pacific voyages, he re-drew the map of the world and paved the way for the peoples of Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, French Polynesia and British Columbia to no longer live in global isolation.” The albums were released under his label Northern Soundscapes. Tim is also a member of Anglo-French group, ‘Silver Hunter’ who play Marillion-style Prog. He also aired the popular ‘ProgYes’ Radio show on Phoenix FM for two and a half years.London-based actress and singer, Sarah Lipman was cast as Elizabeth Cook and provides 
through her vocals a pivotal insight into her relationship with James. Two of the tracks from the first album focus on her coping without her husband and raising their family.
“So Long Gone“: While James Cook is still away at sea, Elizabeth returns home after burying their baby daughter and reveals her emotions concerning her husband, who has been gone for two years and eight months.
“I Am the Man I Have to Be“: Despite Elizabeth’s misgivings, James is about to leave on what would be his last great adventure. He and his wife sing a duet sharing their intimate, but sometime conflicting, feelings.
Progarchy 