The Music Man
What I have been listening to recently.
Jam Bands
First of all I periodically go through a rediscovery of the Grateful Dead. I know that sounds almost like an oxymoron... periodic rediscoveries of the same band... but I get to the point where I will listen to too much GD and need a break. Anyway the most recent cycle started today by me replacing my copy of Without a Net. What great enjoyment I still get from songs like Cassidy, ChinaCat Sunflower (I named my last cat after that song), Eyes of the World and Franklin's tower. As you can imagine there have been quite a few bands that cut their teeth on the Dead in some form or another and have gone on to success in their own right. I would say the band with the most owed to the Dead, though not in a musical sense per se but in the sense of bring different types of music together to make something unique is String Cheese Incident . Like the Dead they are very taper friendly and I have quite a few of their live shows. Another band that is quite exciting now a days is the Trey Anastasio band. He is from Phish and again he bring a ton of disparate musical talents to the table. Plus I love his voice! LOL
Prog Bands
You know in a way I am still reeling from NEARfest 2002! The thrust of my musical adventures in Progressive this past few weeks has been either to explore bands that were there last year (or previous years that I didn't attend) or that will be there next year. There are four bands now scheduled for NF2K3 as we call it. Magma - an avant-guard band from France.. that has to be heard to be believed. Christian Vander is the leader and the best descriptions that I have heard are 1) "if Coltraine had done Rock Opera" and 2) Klingon Opera. Now that second description is only because Vander has actually created his own language called Kobian for all the lyrics to his music.
A small and fairly new band from Germany will also be there called High Wheel. They are more of the tight progressive fusion genre with excellent lyrics. Their two most recent CD's clock in at over 70 min each and seem to be theme albums.
Also there is a band opening on Sunday Am called - get this - Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum. They are in the RIO category (Rock in opposition) and apparently have a very interesting stage show. RIO is "A form of music coined by ex-Henry Cow drummer Chris Cutler. This type of music consistently defies categorization (except for "RIO") and is extremely challenging and often hard to listen to. Only for the very explorative".
Just announced are the Flower Kings - a symphonic band from Sweden. This is also an exciting proposition because in many art rock circles this band is one of the biggest symphonic rock bands out there.
So follow some of the links and check out the web sites for these bands.
Fare thee well now
May your life precede by it's own design
Nothing to tell now
Let your words be yours
I am done with mine.
What I have been listening to recently.
Jam Bands
First of all I periodically go through a rediscovery of the Grateful Dead. I know that sounds almost like an oxymoron... periodic rediscoveries of the same band... but I get to the point where I will listen to too much GD and need a break. Anyway the most recent cycle started today by me replacing my copy of Without a Net. What great enjoyment I still get from songs like Cassidy, ChinaCat Sunflower (I named my last cat after that song), Eyes of the World and Franklin's tower. As you can imagine there have been quite a few bands that cut their teeth on the Dead in some form or another and have gone on to success in their own right. I would say the band with the most owed to the Dead, though not in a musical sense per se but in the sense of bring different types of music together to make something unique is String Cheese Incident . Like the Dead they are very taper friendly and I have quite a few of their live shows. Another band that is quite exciting now a days is the Trey Anastasio band. He is from Phish and again he bring a ton of disparate musical talents to the table. Plus I love his voice! LOL
Prog Bands
You know in a way I am still reeling from NEARfest 2002! The thrust of my musical adventures in Progressive this past few weeks has been either to explore bands that were there last year (or previous years that I didn't attend) or that will be there next year. There are four bands now scheduled for NF2K3 as we call it. Magma - an avant-guard band from France.. that has to be heard to be believed. Christian Vander is the leader and the best descriptions that I have heard are 1) "if Coltraine had done Rock Opera" and 2) Klingon Opera. Now that second description is only because Vander has actually created his own language called Kobian for all the lyrics to his music.
A small and fairly new band from Germany will also be there called High Wheel. They are more of the tight progressive fusion genre with excellent lyrics. Their two most recent CD's clock in at over 70 min each and seem to be theme albums.
Also there is a band opening on Sunday Am called - get this - Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum. They are in the RIO category (Rock in opposition) and apparently have a very interesting stage show. RIO is "A form of music coined by ex-Henry Cow drummer Chris Cutler. This type of music consistently defies categorization (except for "RIO") and is extremely challenging and often hard to listen to. Only for the very explorative".
Just announced are the Flower Kings - a symphonic band from Sweden. This is also an exciting proposition because in many art rock circles this band is one of the biggest symphonic rock bands out there.
So follow some of the links and check out the web sites for these bands.
Fare thee well now
May your life precede by it's own design
Nothing to tell now
Let your words be yours
I am done with mine.
Comments