A “gateway drug” is what I’m tempted to call this album.  It was that in my experience, anyway.  I bought it when it was released, during the period when my musical tastes, rooted in 70’s prog, began really to open out.  Here was my first encounter with a solo album from John McLaughlin, who had amazed me via televised appearances of the Mahavishnu Orchestra (was it on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert?  The Midnight Special?  Both?), and the appropriately legendary Birds of Fire (1973).  That limited exposure set my expectations, and pushed me to buy the album “blind,” as we used to say.

I listened.  So much for my expectations.  As I look back now at the remarkable list of musicians playing with McLaughlin on this album (you can see that list here on Wikipedia), it stands out as a landmark in my gradual awakening to the wonders of artists who refused to be confined by a genre.  Sure, the jazz elements are often prominent, but always — in every song — in the service of a work of art, and never simply subservient to defined protocols that I was associating with jazz at the time.  I did not really come to understand the term “fusion” until later; Coryell, for example, was for me a taste more slowly acquired.  Appreciation for the importance of Miles Davis in this historical trajectory also came later.

Such appreciation did indeed come, but it was in no small measure through a McLaughlin threshold.  His skills and stylistic range are breathtaking in general, and if you’ve not partaken deeply before, Electric Guitarist is a mighty fine place to begin.  The music curves in an irresistible arc, beginning with the amazing “New York On My Mind,” and culminating in an extraordinarily subtle and moving rendition of “My Foolish Heart.”  If you remember it, go listen again; if you haven’t heard it, I would urge you to add it to your queue.

My earliest recollection of being ‘into’ music was as a young teenager and listening to the Beach Boys. I loved their stuff when everyone else was into T-Rex, Roy Wood, Wizard the Slade and all those other 70’s icons. 

As much as liked the happy surf vibe I remember being drawn to the sadder and minor-chord tinged tracks such as ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ and ‘In My Room’ – a particular favourite to this day. Even back then I would delve into an artists catalogue, God knows how back then, but I did.  I recall searching in record shops for albums that were less popular and seeing the cover for ‘Surfs Up’ – a haunting figure of a wilted man on a tired horse in sepia-blue tints.

This was a major discovery.

Dark and dense, involving and difficult, the music was stunning and the definite weirdness of the title track, ‘Feel Flows’ and ‘A Day in the Life of a Tree’ would define my musical journey in the coming years. Odd time signatures, raw emotion, depth of feeling and musicality would all surface on most of my discoveries.

The re-emergence of Brian Wilson in the past few years has been a welcome sight and it is good too see his genius recognised whilst at the same time another genius of the same surname is making his mark in the modern prog world. 

I remember the day I was listening to a stunning track (‘Leaving This Town’) on the Beach Boys’ less well-known album , Holland, when my older brother popped his head round the door and said “Hey, titch, listen to this..” 

The next few moments were to define the rest of my teenage years and were probably responsible for me making a complete mess of my Grammar school education !

‘Dark Side of the Moon’ was playing, can’t remember which track, but I remember standing there thinking how stunning yet strangely familiar this music was.  Needless to say the whole Floyd thing was huge – they are still one of my favourites and recently seeing Brit Floyd live (and doing more than justice to the original band) just reminds you how strong and involving this music is 30 years later.

‘Animals’ stood out for me as it was released at the height of punk in the UK and created a huge stir, even to the extent of NME (New Musical Express) eulogising about it at a time when the Floyd, Genesis etc were seen as dinasours.

Perhaps the next milestone was the Rush era.

As ever, I seemed to be into something only a few other ‘chosen’ people understood but the chancing upon ‘2112’ was as strong a feeling as the Pink Floyd moment. I’ve mentioned this on tweet before, but we even queued outside Manchester Apollo overnight, on the pavement, in sleeping bags to get tickets for their ‘Farewell to Kings’ tour. We had races across the road to keep ourselves entertained, hopping like idiots in our sleeping bags.

We got tickets for the front row for the first three nights and also tickets for the front row of the circle for the last two nights so we could watch the lightshow !!  Five nights in a row – and I remember being amazed by ‘Xanadu’ each time.

Brilliant times and again,  glad to see them doing so well now even if my enjoyment of them now is not quite the same.

The dead years intervened when kids, career and growing up got in the way of music but not without regular forays into post-rock (Godspeed You Black Emporer, Mono, Explosions in the Sky et al) and more avant-garde stuff like Sigur Ros in their earlier days (Aegetis Byrun and ()  ).  Even trips down alt-Americana way proved fruitful with magnificent artists like The Willard Grant Conspiracy, The Walkabouts and others showing you don’t need to stick rigidly to one genre.

And so to the present, and what a bloody fantastic present time it is with an overflowing and wonderfully euphoric progressive rock scene.

A chance reading of a Sunday Times article which mentioned someone called Steven Wilson led to the Pandora’s Box of Porcupine Tree which is about as good a back-catalogue as you will find. A massively deep collection of stunning tracks with wide-ranging influences that just get better with each listen.  A whole scene has been re-discovered and a scene that is lively, modern, relevant yet harks back to the days when music was made for music’s sake and not just to fill stadiums and top the charts.

I recently saw The Pineapple Thief live in Manchester, standing on the front row, about two feet away from them, and was stunned by how skilful, committed and talented the people in this scene are.

And finally, in this brief whirlwind tale of JD’s musical journey, we come to what is quite simply the best music I have ever heard – Big Big Train.

Those who may know me from Twitter will probably know that I run, bike and hike on the hills in my area and I have never known music that connects so sublimely to what I do and what I like.  ‘The Underfall Yard’ has a collection of tales that paint a gloriously evocative picture of the engineers that built England. Heroic characters propping up cathedrals and teams of men digging tunnels through the landscape, set to the most note-perfect and emotion-wrenching music you can imagine. 

Their recent masterpiece ‘English Electric Pt 1‘ has been detailed enough in these pages (and by a certain Bradley J. Birzer) that I cannot improve on the reviews or details provided by better people than me !

So there you go, a snapshot of 35 years or so condensed into a few words.

Thanks for listening !  There will be more to come ….. J

I remember still being an atheist when I procured my first copy of ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery when it came out in 1974.  I had spent my middle school years saying that I was an atheist, for reasons not completely clear to me in retrospect.  It was probably partly because I had read Erich von Däniken, and was very taken with what would eventually become known as “ancient astronaut theory.”  It was probably also partly because I was just rebelling against my perceptions of the small-town midwestern Methodism in which I was raised.

But whatever else it might have been, I’m quite sure that it was partly from listening to Greg Lake sing “The Only Way” (on Tarkus).  In other words, it seemed cool to be an atheist.  My mother (who was certainly no atheist, but was quite open-minded), instead of trying to convince me to abandon my supposed conviction, warned me that I would need to be aware that openly discussing this could lead to VERY negative reactions from others.  Fairly wise advice, given that I was just coming out of junior high school, and was already frequently persecuted for being a “queer” (i.e., I read a lot, was overweight and bespectacled, was not at all athletic, and had only recently put together the broad outlines of the whole “birds and bees” thing).

It was into the midst of that ostensibly “cool” youthful atheism that ELP’s recording of “Jerusalem” was dropped like a dirty bomb.  It remains THE single ELP track that can almost immediately liquefy my spine and reduce me to a puddle of awe.  Here was Greg Lake, singing about Jesus (albeit in England).  I was not previously familiar with the poem or its hymn setting.  Since becoming familiar with the hymn, my sense of the near-perfection of arrangement and of sonic texture has only been confirmed.

The reverberations of “Jerusalem” followed me through high school, which is to say that they followed me from my “cool” atheism of early adolescence to the Bible-thumping obnoxiousness of my later adolescence.  What were some of those reverberations?

One was that savory but unsettling phrasing, “dark satanic mills.”  Even after I dove head-first into fundamentalism, the sense for the importance of darkness haunted me.  It was only much later that I actually found believers in God who seemed willing to approach it.  Most notably, Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn would later grab at the same region of my heart, singing about how we’ve “got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.”

Another reverberation was the triumphalist feel of the song, which was delivered with such arresting aesthetic sincerity, while also being…  I don’t think that the word ‘ironic’ quite covers it; that’s the word that comes to mind right now.  The building of a New Jerusalem has seemed so central to Christianity, both as I have at times rejected it and at other times embraced it. The sort of Christianity that I drifted into over time (Anabaptist/Mennonite) questions the triumphalist, empire-building feel of some major streams within Christianity more broadly.  Thus, I still listen to “Jerusalem” and hear this resonance as a friendly one.

A third, and (for purposes of this post) final resonance is that the darkness of these mills (I didn’t know at first what “mills” were being referenced; I still can’t hear the song with the emphasis on that word) desperately call for something that is not darkness.  This is now how I understand the “religious” feel of “The Only Way” as well as of “Jerusalem.”  Perhaps this is part of what made Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready”–released earlier, but not on my radar until a bit later–another revelatory listen.

No, I’m not going to present some kind of argument that this music should push you in a certain direction religiously (or spiritually, if you prefer).  I share this vignette from my path, hoping that you might nod with understanding, remembering and treasuring the resonances that such rich music and poetry have had along your path as well.

A huge thanks to the ever-creative and witty Progarchist, Mark Widhalm, for designing this. Hoping to make t-shirts soon.