Wow, what a day. Coralspin, The Fierce and the Dead, and now. . . everyone’s favorite Swedish band, The Flower Kings. Nice sound snippet uploaded to the web. Sounds gorgeous.
My only worry is the Nixon voice at the beginning. Scarier than anything that will happen on October 31! If you can get past it, well, bless you. And, it’s worth it.
The music sounds in continuity with Retropolis–undeniably fresh and meaningful. Thank you, Roine. For everything.
There’s nothing quite like waking up to a Tuesday morning, getting the kids (and self) ready for school, and discovering that there now exists a new Fierce and the Dead song in the world!
And, yet, it’s true. And, it’s a pure delight. Prog, prog, prog, and a bit of The Smiths. Thank you, Matt and Kev and the rest of the band. Thank you, Bad Elephant Music (David and James). A joy.
As Coralspin prepares the followup to their excellent first release, Honey and Lava, the band’s mastermind, Blake McQueen, shares the new visuals. Quite fetching.
It wasn’t easy deciding who to go with as there are a lot of great graphic designers out there with impressive artwork, but Sam’s work just had something about it that seemed right for us. Even though he mostly does artwork for angry and gloomy bands I thought he would have a good feel for something that was a bit more classic rock, and thankfully I was right. It gets the balance between old and modern right, it doesn’t look dated now and it won’t look dated in 10 years (I think — and please forgive me for gushing about our own logo, but it is a great experience to work with a talented collaborator who produces the right stuff for you — and I think Sam will eventually be recognized as one of the great rock graphic designers).–Blake McQueen
A month ago, I traveled out to Montana and Wyoming for the college. While there, I found my rental car stereo tuned to a 24-hour Pearl Jam XM station. I had no idea such a thing even existed. I played around with some of the other music settings. Nothing grabbed me, especially since the 1980s station seemed to mean really nothing but John Cougar Mellencamp. Not my 1980s, to be sure.
I’ve never been a huge Pearl Jam fan, but I’ve owned a few of their albums, and I’ve listened to them from time to time. I do remember, well, seeing Pearl Jam playing live on Saturday Night Live, being rather taken with the intensity of their performance of “Not for You.” I have also always held a fondness for their 1993 song, “Rearviewmirror,” a heartfelt reaction to the horrors of child abuse.
As I turned the station back to the all-Pearl Jam channel, I realized that 1993 was 20 years ago. Yes, the obvious. But, still. . .there’s being aware, and then there’s being aware. I felt the latter.
What floods back over me, as I think back to 1993, is what a wonderful year for music it was. I’m, of course, a prog guy, and prog was rather scarce in 1993. But, there was some excellent music, nonetheless.
In many ways, 1993 represented the best of the “alternative” scene. Maybe we can consider it the end of the classic college rock/alternative scene, awaiting the rebirth of prog with Marillion’s Brave, Spock’s Beard’s The Light, and Roine Stolt’s The Flower King a year later.
McCormick’s first album, With the Coming of Evening (1993)
One important exception to the non-prog of 1993 rule is Kevin McCormick’s brilliant first album, With the Coming of Evening. Sadly, this album never received the recognition it so clearly (at least to those of us who know McCormick’s music) deserved. Following what Mark Hollis began with The Colour of Spring, McCormick anticipated much of what would appear in the rebirth of prog over the next two decades. His album is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Whatever we want to label them, a number of excellent albums came out that year. Here’s a list of several.
Leo Koperdraat of Holland posted this on Big Big Train’s Facebook page tonight. Nice. And, very exciting. The drummer is even our own progarchist, Frank Urbaniak, and the artist is our own progarchist, Brian Watson. A progarchical band! Ok, I really can’t claim them–but I am rather happy to be associated with them–Brad (ed.)
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Dear BBT friends,
Just a year ago I had build up enough courage to post a song me and a friend had made. We have been making music for ourselves for about 20 years but this group made me feel confident enough to post one of these songs. With all the talk that happens here I would not expect you to remember it.
However we got a lot of positive remarks and the best thing that happened was that one of the members of this group was so positive about our music that he volunteered to become our drummer.
And now one year later we are called Fractal Mirror, the ten songs that we hope will be on our first album have been mixed and mastered by the excellent Rhys Marsh from Rhys Marsh and the Autumn Ghost and finally one of our tracks will be featured on the New Species Vol X cd that will be part of the next issue of Classic Rock Society Magazine. Without this fabulous group of BBT fans none of this would have happened and on behalf of Fractal Mirror I would just like to say:
THANK YOU! BBT fans and Greg, Andy, David, Nick, Danny andDave for creating this wonderful platform called Big Big Train group!!
We will now be looking for a deal with a record company that is willing to release our first album, Strange Attractors.
Fractal Mirror are:
Ed Van Haagen: Bass, Keyboards and Programming Leo Koperdraat: Voice, Guitars, Keyboards and Lyrics Frank L. Urbaniak: Drums, Percussion and Lyrics
With:
Brian Watson: All Artwork (Brian has been responsible for a lot of the booklet art that was part of The Tangent’s Le Sacre du Travail)
Andre de Boer: Video Art.
Many people still remember the meeting, but I’m not sure they really remember it well. They remember it as a meeting between two strangers, one of them a guitar-toting flower child, a “singer-songwriter,” and the other a hunched, bearded figure with dark glasses, deftly tapping a jazz beat on a crash cymbal. If you remember it that way, I’d like to jostle your memory a bit.
There are two ways in which the standard “folksinger turns to jazz” blurb seriously fails to capture what we can still hear when we listen to Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark. One failure is in counting strangers, for there were certainly more than two. The other failure is that classification of Mitchell with a putative pantheon of “folksingers” or “singer-songwriters” of the late sixties and early seventies, many of whom were her friends and some of whom were her lovers. It’s a failure if you leave it at that, anyway, if you take it to be all that’s required for the label on the file folder. Joni Mitchell herself is a meeting of a fair number of strangers, and it will help us to see how this is so if we see how uncanny is the party at which these strangers met the year of Court and Spark‘s release.
On earlier efforts, Mitchell had indeed established herself as a “folksinger,” in a sense roughly equivalent to that in which Todd Rundgren had established himself during the same period as a “pop singer.” Those who really knew, knew that she was already in danger of bursting with creativity with very limited patience for the boundaries on stylistic maps of the time. She stretched hard against the walls of the “folk” bin, in much the same way as her fellow Canadian, Bruce Cockburn. She also shares with the latter (and in fact, probably outdoes him in this) an urgent impulse to exploration and experimentation at the lyrical as well as the instrumental level. It is possible to hear Mitchell’s lyrics superficially, and nod knowingly at the relational roulette and sexual Sturm und Drang, as if it’s all just the standard post-Woodstock angst, with one foot in the summer of love and the other having at least a toe in the bloody theater of Southeast Asia.
But listen again to this amazing album, which became Mitchell’s most commercially successful despite its refusal of a narrow category. Listen to it as a party at which a number of strangers have met, doing what people do when they go to people’s parties. Some hang back shyly and watch while others dance wildly wearing lampshade crowns, or collapse in tears into the laps of new “friends” whom they hardly know at all. German philosopher-sociologist Georg Simmel wrote of how people must be “sociable” at parties, meaning that they must walk a sort of tightrope between taking both self and other either too seriously or not seriously enough. The people at this party, they stagger across a zone of overlap between the two, never really walking the line. This is what makes the entire album, with its sometimes unbearable lightness, a particularly serious musical work.
Listen. The strangers here are hardly limited to two (and some of them may have more than one head). Listen precisely as if it were “prog” in that deep sense that shakes the souls of many of us who hang out here. The very fact that “jazz” is supposedly a large element is enough to guarantee that the lines between several more “popular” and more “serious” musical genres have always already grown faint and almost disappeared. Sure, we can identify elements that are “jazz,” “folk,” “classical,” “torch,” and even a hint of “country.” But when I listened again to this album this morning, from beginning to end, what I heard was a wondrous party at which the number of guests is really beyond counting. Even the unifying effect of Mitchell’s mesmerizing voice is not exactly “unifying.” It is its own creature, not reducible to styles or genres by which it has supposedly been formed. It is willing to use words, phrasings, and sounds not according to a style, but according to the music.
Kerry Chicoine is no stranger to any lover of prog. Formerly of Mars Hollow, Chicoine has co-founded a new band, Heliopolis. Progarchy is very proud to be associated–in any way, shape, or form–with Heliopolis. Kerry sent this today:
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Put former members of acclaimed progressive rock bands Gabble Ratchet, Mars Hollow and Ten Jinn in a room together and what do you get?
Heliopolis (“City of the Sun” in Greek), a most appropriate moniker for a band based out of the sunny climes of Los Angeles.
The band was formed by Jerry Beller (drums) and Kerry Chicoine (bass) in September 2012 after the dissolution of their former band, Mars Hollow; the quintet is rounded out by virtuoso keyboardist Matt Brown, guitarist Michael Matier, and vocalist Scott Jones.
Heliopolis have played a string of acclaimed gigs on the West Coast ranging from Berkeley, CA (with MoeTar) to Mexicali Prog (with Italy’s Il Castle di Atlante), as well as shows in Santa Monica and Los Angeles; Heliopolis are slated to appear this fall at the second annual Nor Cal Prog Festival (featuring Moraine, Erik Norlander and Inner Ear Brigade).
The debut album “City of the Sun” is produced by David Morse (Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Van Halen), and engineered by John Prpich (Juice Newton, Led Zepagain); the album is scheduled for release in early 2014 on an as yet to be determined record label.
Chicoine states, “The Heliopolis mission is to build upon the foundations established by our previous musical experiences in an attempt to take the music into uncharted sonic waters with an emphasis on melody, composition and improvisation, and to bring the music alive onstage with energy and passion.”
Feel free to contact Heliopolis for more information (link below); we welcome you on our journey to the City of the Sun…
And, just to whet your appetite, 4 minutes and two seconds of Heliopolis–a preview (link above) of the forthcoming album. Music courtesy of Kerry C. and “New Frontier.”
Blodwyn Pig Compilation Of Rare Unreleased Recordings ‘Pigthology’ Now Available!
London, UK – British blues-rock legends Blodwyn Pig, featuring original Jethro Tull guitarist Mick Abrahams, have released a new compilation of rare unreleased recordings titled ‘Pigthology’ on Gonzo MultiMedia UK. Along with Abrahams (vocals, guitars), the band featured Jack Lancaster (saxes, flutes, violin, keys and wind controllers), Andy Pyle (bass), and Ron Berg (drums) and was later joined by Jethro Tull’s Clive Bunker on drums. Produced by Mick Abrahams and Jack Lancaster, ‘Pigthology’ features re-mastered recordings of Blodwyn Pig’s most beloved and successful songs “Dear Jill”, “See My Way” and “Drive Me”, along with unreleased live and studio material.
Blodwyn Pig in its first form was a legend in rock history hitting the top of the LP charts in Britain and elsewhere around the world. The band received new recognition and inspiration when the track “Dear Jill” was used in Cameron Crow’s movie ‘Almost Famous’. Many bands credit Blodwyn Pig with being a huge influence at the start of their careers, including rock legends Aerosmith. There are several fan sites across the internet which still attest to the group’s popularity. Through the years several bands have recorded covers of Blodwyn tunes, the most noted being Joey Ramone’s version of “See My Way”.
Blodwyn Pig played alongside Led Zeppelin, The Who, Procul Harem, BB King, Miles Davis, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd and Joe Cocker at the Isle Of Wight rock festivals, and the Reading rock festival. The “Pig” completed two successful American tours, playing venues like the Filmores, numerous universities and the LA Forum. Most of the recordings on ‘Pigthology’ are from this period.
A few notes from Jack Lancaster: “On ‘Baby Girl’ Mick played piano as an overdub, otherwise the track was played live in the studio. ‘Cosmogrification’, this was a reformed Blodwyn with Clive Bunker on drums. We only did a short tour. Clive joined because of Rin Berg’s illness. I play piano on ‘Monkinit’ – I mention this because normally we never used keyboard on tracks.”
Tracks include:
See My Way – recorded at Mick Abrahams studio (date unknown)
Baby Girl – recorded at BBC Maida Vale studios, John Peel show (1970)
Dear Jill – recorded at Mick Abrahams studio (date unknown)
Monkinit (A tribute to Thelonious Monk) – recorded at Verdant studios Hollywood, CA (date unknown)
Drive Me – recording location unknown (1970)
The Change Song – live at the Marquee Club Soho (1969)
Cosmogrification – live at Luton Town Hall (1973)
Same Old Story – recorded at BBC Maida Vale studios, John Peel show (1970)
Hound Dog – recorded at Mick Abrahams studio (date unknown)
Sly Bones – recorded at Mick Abrahams studio, Verdant studios Hollywood, CA (date unknown)
It’s Only Love – outtake, Morgan studios (1969)
Stormy Monday – Mick Abrahams studio (date unknown)
This is an anthology of the greatest moments of the original band’s career. Every track is a gem, and I cannot recommend it highly enough! – Jonathan Downes, The Gonzo Daily
An exclusive interview with Greg Spawton of Big Big Train. Interview by progarchy editor, Brad Birzer. [N.B. I was going to write a longish introduction, but I’ll do that with the review of EEFP I’ll have up in the next day or two.]
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Progarchy: Hello, again, Greg. I’m so glad you continue to be so generous with your time, and I’m deeply honored to have you do yet another interview with me. The order of the songs, BBT EE+4, is now set. In stone! How did you arrive at this ordering? I would guess you agonized over this, individually and as a group?
Greg Spawton: Thanks, Brad. We had four new tracks to accommodate and a listening experience as a long double album (as opposed to two single albums) to create and so there was a lot of discussion and consideration of various options. I wanted to create mini-suites out of some of the tracks with linked themes and that helped a bit as it drew some of the songs together. So, we had the Edgelands sequence of Seen Better Days / Edgelands / Summoned By Bells and the love-songs sequence with Winchester From St Giles’ Hill / The Lovers / Leopards and Keeper of Abbeys. Once those two sets of songs were in place it became easier to work the other tracks around them.
Progarchy: Do you see EEFP as a fundamentally different release from EE1 or EE2, or is it a fulfillment of the first two releases? A sort of baptism or sanctification?
Spawton: It’s a bit of both. Completists are likely to buy EEFLP even if they already own EE1 and EE2 and so we felt an obligation to create something new and different rather than just stick four new tracks on the end. But it also seems to have drawn all the threads together and, for us, it’s the ultimate expression of our work in this period of the band.
Progarchy: A followup, considering track order. You start with the very 1950s and 1960s rockabilly-ish “Make Some Noise,” but you end the entire collection with the–as I interpret the lyrics–suicide of the curator. Is this intentional?
Spawton: We knew those two songs had to be the bookends. Curator of Butterflies is not a song about suicide, although I can see why many people interpret it that way. It’s actually about life from the perspective of growing older. Now I’ve reached middle-age, I have a much greater awareness of how fragile life is. With my family and my good friends I find that awareness very burdensome. At home, I’m surrounded by teenagers and their take on life is entirely different. It’s fearless, they feel indestructible, they feel they have all the time in the world, whereas I sit back and wonder: ‘where did all the time go’? In Make Some Noise David captures the feelings of being young and full of hope and of dreams so we felt that had to be the opening statement. And as we had song from the perspective of an older person in Curator of Butterflies, it seemed right to put that one at the other end of the album.
Big Big Train’s justly-deserved award, “Breakthrough Artist of 2013,” by Jerry Ewing and the readers of PROG.
Progarchy: Is the whole album, EEFP, still an album dealing with the dignity of labor, in all of its various forms?
Spawton: In old money, EEFLP is a triple album so there is room on there to explore a lot of different themes. One of the main themes of the album is about the dignity of labour. There have been major social changes in parts of Britain in the last 50 years and some communities in areas that used to rely almost solely on employment from the mines or docks or from heavy industry have lost their way because that employment has gone. I am not being nostalgic about this; I am well aware that those industries were very tough places to work. I spent a few minutes down a Victorian drift-mine recently and I cannot imagine what it would have been like to work a shift down there. However, what these industries did bring was a sense of pride in working hard and of the potential of communal endeavour. The loss of these things has been catastrophic for some communities.
A page from the new 96-page booklet accompanying EEFP. Used by courtesy of the band and the artist.
Progarchy: Now that you’re done with EE–really three releases overall–how do you see your work with EE? That is, where does it fit in the history of BBT (besides, being the most recent thing)? How do you see it in the history of prog?
Spawton: If the band carries on in its current trajectory, we’re likely to end up selling about 30,000 copies of all of the EE albums. In the context of the huge 70’s progressive bands that is a tiny amount and we are only too aware that it can never have the sort of impact that Selling England by the Pound or Close to the Edge had. Having said that, it’s been a sequence of releases which has, I think, shown us at our best and has helped us to reach a wider audience and to get played on national radio in the UK. We’ve also grown as a band during the making of the albums. We are closer together as a unit and know what we can achieve. Danny has come onboard as keyboard player and has added a considerable amount to our sound. We’ve been able to work with a string quartet as well as the brass band and have been able to collaborate with some fabulous musicians and arrangers. And we are very pleased that we have been able to put together a release of 19 songs without any of them being there just to fill some space. Some songs are better than others, inevitably, but all have something to say and will, we hope, offer something to listeners.
BBT even has its own beer. Really, now? Great writing, serious beer, depthless prog. Does it get better than this?
Progarchy: A number of the new tracks reflect some really interesting influences, at least as I hear them. “Make Some Noise” seems very innocent and joyful, perhaps a pre-Byrds type of rock, the rock my mother danced to in college. “Seen Better Days” seems very Mark Hollis/Talk Talkish and then very jazzy. “Edgelands” again has a Talk Talkish feel. But, so very jazzy–an impressionistic jazz of the second half of the 1950s. “The Lovers” is proggy in a Canterbury, dramatic kind of way. Am I reaching, or were these influences intentional?
Spawton: I wouldn’t argue with any of those. We’re all fans of Talk Talk and the Canterbury scene. Influences are not something we think about during the creative process, though. I’d be a bit resistant to the idea of deliberately writing a song in the style of another band. For us, it’s an organic process of writing, arranging and performing. Influences often operate in a subliminal way and the writer may be unaware of how the listener will experience the songs.
Progarchy: The blending of songs into one another harkens back to The Difference Machine, and you’ve mentioned in a recent interview that your next studio album will be a concept album. Are you and BBT making a statement about where prog should be going with any of these decisions, or are you just taking your art as you feel so moved at the moment of creation?
Spawton: Honestly? We just write. Sometimes that is with something in mind (for example, where we need a song with a particular sound to help make a balanced album) but often it’s just what comes into our heads and falls under our fingers.
Progarchy: You’ve put so much into the booklet that accompanies EEFP. How much of the total art do you see in the packaging, the graphics, the photography. That is, how important is it to peruse the booklet rather than simply download the four new songs? We all lament the loss of the album sleeve, but you seem to have found away to recapture that glory. Again, was the booklet a group project, or did you work on this individually?
Spawton: Andy and Matt Sefton must take most of the credit for the overall design. Once we’d found Matt’s remarkable photos and he’d agreed to work with us, Andy was able to develop the overall shape of things using Matt’s images as the basis. The design of the packaging which carries our music is very important to us. Music is, of course, our primary concern and I have no problem with downloads. However, many people still prefer to experience music by purchasing physical releases and we put a huge amount of thought into making those items things of beauty and interest. Luckily, we found, in Chris Topham, a chap with a similar attention to detail for our vinyl releases and so we have worked with Chris and Plane Groovy to try to recapture the glory of the gatefold album cover.
Progarchy: A followup to the above question: you spend a significant part of the book honoring those that/who came before. As a historian, I love this. Again, how did you decide to do this? From my perspective, you’re tying in your work (adding all of those who contribute to BBT directly) with a whole lineage of English history and art. Any thoughts on the necessity and importance of this?
Spawton: I have been fascinated by history since I was a young child. In the 70’s, we had these beautifully-produced children’s books called Ladybird books in Britain and they were a big part of my early childhood. Looking back, they had a particular view of the world which wasn’t very nuanced (for example, the Roundheads were the goodies and the Cavaliers were the baddies) but they were spellbinding books with lovely artwork and they seemed to be able to transport me into those historic periods. As the band was developing I started to experiment with telling historical stories in the songs. Really, I think I’m just a frustrated historian without the outlet to write books so I used the ‘voice’ that I did have. I also began to become more aware of folk-music and that stories can be smaller and close to home and be just as interesting for people. And it’s the fact that the listeners are interested in these stories that has spurred me on. We get suggestions of stories sent to us now and there are so many interesting tales.
A guest appearance on EEFP from Lord Cornelius Plum.
Progarchy: Again, somewhat related, it’s a stroke of genius to tie this release into the work–sadly, often forgotten or poorly remembered–of The Dukes of Stratosphear. Just how did you come to work with one of its members?
Spawton: When I got to know Dave Gregory I realised that he knew just about everybody in the music business. When we were working on The Lovers, David and Dave wanted the fusion section to be quite spacey and psychedelic and so we ended up asking Dave if he would mind giving Lord Cornelius Plum a call. Lord Plum hasn’t really been involved in music since The Dukes split up and we were delighted that he wanted to play a solo for us, albeit he insisted on playing the guitar backwards. I have to say, he’s still got the chops. He plays backwards guitar a lot better than I can play in the forward direction.
Progarchy: As you know, your fan base (getting larger, deservedly, by the moment!) craves knowledge about the future of BBT. Can you talk about how you plan to perform live? Where? With whom? When? What setlist (not exact, of course–no spoilers!)? Will Rob travel with you?
Spawton: Our live sound will be done by Rob, no question about that. We’re slowly gearing up for some live shows but we know that it requires careful planning. One of the things we are adamant about is that a live show will be an attempt to convey the whole BBT sound with brass and string sections. That is a complicated set-up and requires a fair bit of rehearsal. We’ve chosen Real World as a large studio environment which can accommodate us all and we are going to spend a week there next year working songs through and ironing out any live issues. The setlist will mainly feature songs from The Underfall Yard and English Electric, although we may also do some earlier songs. We’re going to film the rehearsals as that is a good way of recording a live set without the controlled chaos of being on stage. After Real World we’ll be looking to play a small number of shows and I think that we will then aim to play a handful of gigs every year. Just occasionally, progressive bands manage to crossover into a much broader audience (Steve Wilson being the best example) and, of course, if that happens then perhaps we can aim to tour more extensively. I think that is unlikely though and the main thing for us is not to try to put anything on that ends up losing a lot of money which could put the band’s finances out of kilter.
Another page from the booklet. Courtesy of the band and the artist, Matt Sefton.
Progarchy: A followup. What about your future albums? Station Masters is coming in 2014. What about the next studio album? Can you tell us anything about it?
Spawton: Most of the next studio album is written and recording is under way. Nick is in England in late September so we’ll get another couple of days of drum recording done then. We may also do some recording at Real World. As you mentioned, it is a concept album with a story which David has been developing. It is not English Electric Part Three and it will be a little different but we are very excited about it. In the meantime, Station Masters is slowly moving forward and we aim for that to be a beautiful release.
Progarchy: What are the members of BBT listening to right now? If you could praise some current music, what would you praise? Or, any recent discoveries of older music? What about books? Anything that’s really grabbed your attention recently?
Spawton: There is so much great progressive music about at the moment and we have heard a number of excellent new releases so far this year. The nice thing is that we don’t feel in competition with anybody. There is a good feeling in progressive rock of us all being in it together, the bands and the listeners. Recently, I’ve had some fun working my way back though some of the classic 70’s albums and in the last few weeks I’ve been listening to a lot of Van Der Graaf Generator and PFM. I am looking forward to new music from Mew, Elbow and I have just bought the new Sigur Ros album. As for books, at the moment, I’m reading The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris and Britain Begins by Barry Cunliffe. And I’ve been reading a very interesting biography of Pink Floyd by Mark Blake. The book that has made the most impact on me in the last year was Working Lives by David Hall.
Progarchy: Again, Greg, thank you so much for your time. It’s always a pleasure.
Spawton: Thank you, Brad.
Nick, Andy, Dave, David, Danny, Greg, and huge red warning sign. Photo by Dutch Master, Willem Klopper.
Progarchy 