Category: Uncategorized

10-minute James Marsh Video Tribute to Talk Talk

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized5 Comments

If you have 10 extra minutes today or tomorrow or any day from here until the end of times, make sure you check out this stunning video tribute to the music of Talk Talk.  James Marsh, master artist of all things Talk Talk, made the video.  I’m finding the entire thing quite inspiring.

Here’s the link (sorry, I still don’t know how to embed videos):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kSwgHxMLX_c#!

Art by James Marsh.
Art by James Marsh.

The information below the video at Youtube reads:

Published on 19 Jan 2013

Animation promo for the album ‘Spirit of Talk Talk’, available from Fierce panda Records.
All net profits going to the ‘Rare Bird Club’ of ‘BirdLife International’ for Conservation, UK Reg. Charity.
Sample tracks include music by – Nils Frahm, Jack Northover, Zero 7, Sean Carey, Lone Wolf, King Creosote, The Lovetones, Turin Brakes and more…

As some readers of Progarchy might know, I consider Talk Talk one of the greatest musical acts of all time with The Spirit of Eden ranking as one of the best–if not THE best–post-classical albums of all time.

The Cautionary Barrett

On By chuckhicksIn progressive rock music, Uncategorized3 Comments

This is an important month for admirers of the late Syd Barrett.  The artist’s birthday falls on January 6, and his first solo album The Madcap Laughs was released January 3, 1970.  These anniversaries occasion an opportunity to ponder what Barrett left in the cautionaryvery short slice of time that shattered musical conventions.

What Barrett accomplished on guitar is legendary in itself, taking the lowly Danelectro 59-DC and, with a Zippo lighter or a ball bearing for a slide, creating entirely surreal soundscapes scarcely resembling anything on the blues records he enjoyed as a youth.   But it was Barrett’s lyrics that gave substance to his melodic adventures.  As we might expect from a native Cantabrigian, Barrett’s verse was informed by sundry literary figures.  One Russian fan site conjectures  influences ranging from C.S. Lewis (“Flaming” and “Scarecrow”) to Tolkien (“The Gnome” and “Dark Globe”).  Known references include James Joyce’s verse for “Golden Hair” and Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children on “Matilda Mother.”  I would like to expand upon the latter, as Syd Barrett’s oeuvre seems to be one large cautionary tale, reflected both in his artistry and later, after his crack-up and expulsion from the Pink Floyd, in his personal life.

Cautionary tales are written or recited for young audiences.  Syd Barrett’s music clearly displays infectiously playful, childlike elements.   The Piper At the Gates of Dawn has been characterized as consisting of two main features: extended pieces that included free-from passages (“Interstellar Overdrive”) and shorter, whimsical pop songs.

Of the latter it has been suggested that these include certain dark elements.  A good example is “Flaming.”  The melody and the vocals pack the giddy spontaneity of adolescence — a sense of being swept up in infatuation for the first time.  Listening to this song is to be transported back to age 13 or 14.  The subject to whom the song is directed can neither see nor hear Barrett, but he can see and hear her.  Using buttercups and dandelions to heighten a sense of euphoria, Barrett sings

Too much? I won’t touch you — but then I might.

Later we discover this conversation involves “travelling by telephone” — the preferred medium of exchange for adolescents for the past 60 years (the only difference today being wireless texting).  But the notion of Barrett inserting himself as the agent of sensory overload, of shattering the playful possibilities with a very direct and perhaps unwelcome advance — this is the tension that drives “Flaming.” Continue reading “The Cautionary Barrett” →

The Myth of Jennyanykind

On By Craig BreadenIn Uncategorized7 Comments

Rapture.  Mythic is playing through the headphones on full blast.  Mythic, from 1995.  Arrived today in the mail, $4 off Amazon Marketplace.  It’s been out of print for years, naturally, and my copy was lost long ago. [Note: Mythic was re-released on the band’s BandCamp page one day after this article was originally published.  See link below. — CB]

Living in NYC in 1995, I was visiting North Carolina (a former and future home) when I found Mythic.  I really liked their first record, “Etc.,” a minor local mind blower, but Mythic was all the best part of “Etc.” amped and twisted and cranked.  It dropped into a Chapel Hill scene that was undergoing some serious transformation as Jimbo Mathus’s Squirrel Nut Zippers, which arose out of the ashes of Metal Flake Mother, were getting national attention, and weird rock purveyors Zen Frisbee soldiered on, having been solidly ignored for their brilliant album, I’m as Mad as Faust. Continue reading “The Myth of Jennyanykind” →

Interview with Greg Spawton of Big Big Train (June 2012)

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized1 Comment
Nick, Andy, Dave, David, Danny, Greg. Photo by Willem Klopper.
Nick, Andy, Dave, David, Danny, Greg. Photo by Willem Klopper.

[This interview appeared at TIC, June 27, 2012.  A gracious thanks to Winston Elliott, editor of TIC.  I’m reposting it here because 1) it might find a new audience; and 2) Big Big Train just today began pre-sales for English Electric Volume 2–out March 4, 2013]

An Interview with Greg Spawton 
by Brad Birzer

We’re in the middle of perhaps the largest revival of progressive rock—that form of rock music which pursues the artistic and the mythic—since the genre became somewhat suspect as overblown and over-the-top in the second half of the 1970s with the rise of punk. Almost any American over the age of forty can remember the time when long songs such as Yes’s “Roundabout,” Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung,” Kansas’s “Song for America,” and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s “Karn Evil 9” dominated FM radio.

The music of these groups, unlike much rock produced in America, originates not as much from jazz and blues as it does from European forms of classical, symphonic, and operatic music.

In this way, the genre of progressive rock has sought to preserve and extend the best of the western tradition while also being willing to incorporate non-western instruments and rhythms.

Those days of FM dominance are long gone, but the emergence of internet sales and music downloading has allowed accessibility to a number of excellent bands and artists that would have been bypassed by corporate labels over the past three decades as not marketable enough for the immediate fashions of the moment.

Numerous forums exist online for the discussion of progressive rock in all of its nuances, complexities, and manifestations. On Twitter, one can turn to @progrocktweets, @alisonscolumn, @mattstevensloop, @thesidsmith, and the accounts of any number of musicians and bands.

On the web itself, sites such as www.2112.net/powerwindows, dprp.net, rushisaband.com, progarchives.com, and deliciousagony.com offer all kinds of progressive rock news.

Continue reading “Interview with Greg Spawton of Big Big Train (June 2012)” →

An Ember Still Burns to This Day

On By Pete BlumIn Uncategorized3 Comments

The large lighted sign sports the huge initials, “S. B.”  I think it stands for “Standard British” or some such thing, but what I know is that my tank is low, so I pull into the station and stop near the pumps.  Once I stop, it’s suddenly the late 1960’s, my driver’s license is still new, and I’m in an Impala, of all things.

The guy who rushes out to the pumps from the office is clean and official-looking, but has a beer gut.  He also has a beard.  “Yessir!  Fillerup?”

Still getting my bearings from the crossover, I just shut off the car and nod.

Spocksbeard-octane-200
Spock’s Beard – Octane (2005)

“Regular or high octane?”

“Octane.”  He nods again as if my reply were not strange in the least.

He takes off my gas cap, sticks the nozzle of the old-looking (even allowing for the time-shift) gas pump in, and begins pumping.

Pumping.

And it’s like another crossover, but this time its all coming from an unbelievable sound system.  I look at the dashboard and see an AM radio, pushbuttons and all.  I try the volume control, and sure enough, that’s where it’s coming from.  Except that it’s not, really.  It’s not coming from a speaker in the dash, or any speakers in the car that I can see.  It pervades both the car and my body.

“Check the oil, sir?”  In a normal tone of voice, though I can hear him well enough above the music.  I don’t think that he hears it.

“Nah, it’s OK.”

He nods and begins spritzing and wiping the windshield.

The music is what is filling the tank.  The tank?  It’s filling me, isn’t it?

A flash before my eyes…  The town I’m in is that town where I lived during my childhood and adolescence.

Yeah, it’s music.  I’m listening to music.  Wasn’t I just listening to music?  Wasn’t I just walking with my ear buds in, when suddenly I was jerked sideways into this “review”?

Review!  I forgot that’s what it was supposed to be.  It seems so much like a gas station.  I don’t think it will succeed at being a review, but I’ll at least give it a little effort.

Continue reading “An Ember Still Burns to This Day” →

Big Big Train’s English Electric (Part Two) is now available for pre-order

On By russellclarkenzIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Big Big Train’s follow-up to last year’s highly-acclaimed English Electric (Part One), will be released on the 4th of March 2013.

The aptly-titled English Electric (Part Two) is now available for pre-order. Here’s the link! http://bigbigtrain.com/main/shop/ee2

Big Big Train continues its journey across the English landscape with an album of seven new songs which tell further tales of the men and women who work on and under the land. Along the way, stories are told of the shipbuilders in Neptune’s Yard, of a machine that burned its legend across the pages of the history books, of a keeper of abbeys and a curator of butterflies, and of a second chance at love.

Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on this release!

Cosmograf Lyric Sheet Up

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

tmlis lyric sheet sampletmlis lyric sheet sampleVery excited about the release of the new Cosmograf CD.  Robin Armstrong–aka Mr. Cosmograf, Master and Lord of Time and Chronometers–has just updated his blog.  To view it, click here.

Pre-orders begin tomorrow.

Ayreon: A Dutch Progger in King Arthur’s Court

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

ayreonthefinalexperimencr9I often joke with my students that I can still remember the days when listening to progressive rock and watching Dr. Who could get a kid beaten up.  Yes, 1981.  I remember it well.  Seventh grade at Liberty Junior High in Hutchinson, Kansas.  Yet, it’s now 2013, and I’m still listening to Rush and watching Dr. Who.  Obviously, I survived the bullies

But, I can get even nerdier.  Much nerdier.  I was also a huge Dungeons and Dragons guy.  Yes, 1981.  I remember it well.  Yet, it’s now 2013, and I’m still playing DnD.  Now, with my kids.

My love of all things progressive (music; not politics!), science fiction, and fantasy have come together quite nicely in a number of direct ways: Rush, Roswell Six, Rush again, Ayreon, more Rush, Cosmograf, Glass Hammer, The Tangent, Rush, Kansas, Star One, Spock’s Beard, and even more Rush.

Surprisingly, though, only a few rock bands have really explored the Arthurian legends.  Those artists that have–such as Rick Wakeman and Gary Hughes–have gone all out, making nothing less than elaborate rock operas.  While Wakeman’s Arthur seems rather French, Hughes’s remains very Celtic.

The French legends, generally centering on the love affair of Lancelot and Gwenivere, usually reflect the medieval notions of courtship as inherited from the Moors.  The Celtic legends are almost always more mystical, suggesting strong relations between the Celtic gods (a twilight) and the Christian God.  Famously, one Celtic god, Bran the Blessed, even went so far as to sacrifice himself so that the Christian God could reign supreme.  How often does this happen in pagan myth?

Continue reading “Ayreon: A Dutch Progger in King Arthur’s Court” →

East Coast Racer

On By Dr NickIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Mallard steam train

In the run-up to the March release of Big Big Train’s hotly-anticipated English Electric Pt 2, Greg Spawton is delighting us once more with insights into the origins of each track on the album.

Check out the BBT blog for more on opening track East Coast Racer – the story of Mallard, legendary holder of the world speed record for steam trains.