It is Brads Birthday today. Many Happy returns from across the pond.
Jack White on “Entitlement” at Château de Fontainebleau
“Stop what you’re doing” …
… and watch Jack White performing “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known” and “Entitlement” at Château de Fontainebleau!
Or are you “sick of being told what to do”?
Hmmm, well, “Entitlement” beings at 4:33 …
Congratulations to Seven Impale
Seven Impale release their new album, City of the Sun, today. Progarchy reviewed the album here: https://progarchy.com/2014/08/21/seven-impale-basking-in-the-city-of-the-sun/ , but continues to be so dazzled that in honor of the occasion thought we’d post a live performance of Extraction, which blazes with energy. City of the Sun, indeed.
Amazon’s got the MP3 album for a very reasonable price ($4.95 at this writing). You could do worse than head on over and get a copy: http://www.amazon.com/City-Sun-Seven-Impale/dp/B00N2GS44S/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1409922998&sr=8-3&keywords=seven+impale
Happy Birthday Alex
Officer of the Order of Canada. Guitarist. Trailer Park Boys kidnap victim. It’s the great Alex Lifeson’s birthday today, so here are nine Lifeson lessons whipped from the pages of Classic Rock.
“I make them up every night… it’s terrifying!” – Lifeson on his live monologues, Classic Rock issue 61
“It’s the most popular song in Mexico…ever!” – Lifeson on Closer To The Heart, Classic Rock issue 61
“Much as I like what we do in Rush, on my solo album I wanted guitar…and then some more guitar!” – Classic Rock issue 71
“We had access to two studios, and nothing else to do at night.” – Lifeson on why the Snakes & Arrows album was recorded so quickly, Classic Rock issue 107
“We’ve had some difficult times with producers. Mainly because they didn’t happen to be a producer.” – Classic Rock issue 113
“We know how boring and ordinary we are.” – Classic Rock issue 148
“It’s kind of a success story. Kids from the suburbs have a dream, and they live their dream. Everybody can relate to that.” – Classic Rock issue 148
“Our whole relationship’s based on humour – laughing and goofing around, being idiots.” – Lifeson on Rush, Classic Rock issue 148
“I definitely hear a lot of Rush in a lot of bands coming through right now.” – Classic Rock issue 179
Mighty News: Arjen Lucassen’s New Project
Yesterday, our favorite Dutch rocker and master of sci-fi prog, Arjen Lucassen, announced the name of his new project: Gentle Storm. I have no doubt it will be incredible. I’m sure–genetically!–Lucassen is constitutionally incapable of anything less than perfection. Equally exciting, Gentle Storm will be performing live.
Here’s hoping they come to Red Rocks!
We are excited to announce that Arjen’s collaboration with Anneke van Giersbergen will be called The Gentle Storm. The album is planned for release in early 2015.
Arjen likes to say that his touring days are over, but he’s helped Anneke form a stellar band for live dates in support of the album. You can find out more at your favorite social media pitstop:
www.facebook.com/TheGentleStorm
www.twitter.com/gentlestormband
www.instagram.com/gentlestormband
https://www.facebook.com/annekevangiersbergenofficial
https://www.facebook.com/arjen.a.lucassenMore details to follow!
RochaNews: Pineapple Thief Free Download of New Track
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The Triumph of Kate Bush
Tracey Thorn recounts her experience of the amazing Kate Bush concert in the pages of the New Statesman, namely, the experience of “the ecstatic triumph of a life’s work”:
Six straight songs and then, just as we are relaxing, the stage transforms, and the drama begins: a multi-sensory performance of “The Ninth Wave”, the suite of songs that forms side two of The Hounds of Love (1985). There’s Kate on screen in a life jacket, apparently slipping away from us, singing “And Dream of Sheep”, one of her most beautiful songs.
I should probably write this somewhere more formal – my will, perhaps – but in case I forget, let me say here that I would be happy for you to play this song at my funeral. I weep as she sings it, partly because I’m imagining my own funeral, but also because we are witnessing a struggle between life and death, where a drowning woman yearns to be saved, to return to her beloved family. “Let me live!” she cries a few songs later. Overwhelming and exhilarating as they are, all the special effects – Kate in a tank, a helicopter search beam strafing the audience – are in the service of the songs and the story.
Why is it so moving? Well, because when finally she is brought back it is not just the fictional heroine, but Kate herself who has survived the years, and those cold seas, and returned to us. The two strands, family love and audience love, intertwine as she shows us how both mean so much to her. “D’you know what?/I love you better now,” she sings, as the first half ends and we wipe our tears.
Part two is calmer, more reflective, consisting of one side of the recent album Aerial (2005). Reprieved from death, she now revels in the simple, sensuous pleasures of life. Birdsong on a summer afternoon. The setting of the sun and the rising of the moon. In more conventional hands this could be merely decorous and pastoral, even a little twee, but somehow she has found a way to transform contentment into euphoria. The mood is hypnotic, rhythmic and trancey, and the stage dazzles with images of light and flight; less genteel garden party, more full-on midsummer rave, it could be the ultimate blissed-out headliner of a blistering, sunny Glastonbury.
And her singing voice, which I so worried about? It is a thing of wonder, any youthful shrillness replaced by a richer, occasionally gravelly tone, and with a full-throated power unbelievable in someone who has so rarely sung live. All I can think is that she must have been practising, on her own in a barn somewhere, for the past 35 years. Practising, planning, waiting for all the stars to align – her own desire, the cast of collaborators, the right time and place – in order for this to happen. And it is an ecstatic triumph, a truly extraordinary achievement.
Zee Baig is an American: Long Live, Fire Garden!
I just found out that Chicago’s master of all things Prog, Zee Baig, became an American citizen today. Getting to know Zee–even if only virtually–over the last year has been one of the great joys of editing progarchy.
His success today is the kind of thing that makes me say: good for Zee and incredibly good for America!
So, let me be blunt–let’s please help Zee celebrate by supporting his excellent band, FIRE GARDEN.
Goodbye Thomas, Hello Billy: Behind the Scenes Drama with Yes
Steve Howe has revealed in a radio interview that Yes wasn’t getting what it needed from Roy Thomas Baker on the production of Heaven and Earth, so they had to turn to Billy Sherwood, who left his stamp especially on the vocal mix:
“We got into it, and it was OK,” Howe tells WMGK‘s Ray Koob. “You know, every producer’s got a certain style. Roy’s method was pretty much about the sound. It wasn’t so much about the construction of the songs, like Trevor [Horn, producer of 2011’s Fly From Here], who worked very hard on that. So, Roy kind of let us do most of the music, and twiddled with a lot of knobs. But, I tell you, in the end we really did have to bring it back to Yes Central — because, in a way, I don’t think he was as familiar with our mixing style as say Billy Sherwood, who ended up doing that for us. Well, we did it with him; it was a collaboration. So, we had to kind of pull it back to Yes Central. It was all fair in love and war.”
When I saw Steve after the show in Vancouver, he remarked about his good memories of Vancouver because that was where The Ladder was recorded. Steve is really happy with the sound of The Ladder because of its unique “flavor.”
I think Jon Davison is fantastic and I have come to like Heaven and Earth very much, despite what initially struck me as weird about it — namely, the production! — and this news makes me wonder what the album could have been if Sherwood and not Baker had been involved for the entire process.
I hope they do another album with Davison soon, and with the right producer this time.
