Prog and self loathing
There's nothing like prog rock. Punk was supposed to kill off three disc concept albums, seventeen hour guitar solos and drum solos so long that the rest of the band could not only get a blow-job during them but in fact get in the tour bus, go to another city, play a gig in that city and then come back to finish the set and STILL get an ovation. That's how good the music scene was back then. All of which leads me to mention that I have been to the library and have borrowed heavily of The Pink Floyd.
Oh my suffering Christ alive but they're good. Stick your three minute thrash effort right up your arse because this is how to write music - a twelve minute guitar intro - a verse of sub-teen angst poetry/lyric and then another few minutes of guitar. Oh yes.
The great thing is, of course, PF are still going, albiet in reduced circumstances having shed a members to, you know, acid and tiffs but having borrowed my nephew's Live 8 DVD of their set, I can confirm their set was AMAZING. Why do you have a load of 50something prog rockers closing the gig? For the simple reason that they are, as Big Bryan pointed out 'fucking great'. Also they can play a stadium but mostly because Waters and Gilmore together was like the Beatles reuniting, but without the necromancy.
So glutting on prog on the iPod is a tremendous feeling. In reality I'm on a train or walking through the station but between the headphone speakers I'm back in my room aged 17, listening to led Zep again and discovering for the first time that there is music like this out there.
But it's not all buying into the sort of bands that by now have about as much artisitic integrity as Nike (discuss) (but it's not the band's fault that the producers of Top Gear have the Best of Pink Floyd on their CD players and every time J Clarkson steps out from behind the bonnet of a penis extension and wanks on about 'this car isn't fast...it's very fast indeed' you get three chords from Floyd).
Music choice is currently also about instant market gullibility. The excellent closing ceremony of the Commonwealth games had some hillbilly Australian outfit plucking banjos and singing about boxing booths. Top. Ten minutes later, song downloaded. Half hour later, played about 6 times. It rocks. And twangs.
Oh, and the self loathing. trrying to beat level seventeen of Jedi Outcast. There's an afternoon I could have better spent writing a stained glass window, designing a symphony or painting a novel.
Oh my suffering Christ alive but they're good. Stick your three minute thrash effort right up your arse because this is how to write music - a twelve minute guitar intro - a verse of sub-teen angst poetry/lyric and then another few minutes of guitar. Oh yes.
The great thing is, of course, PF are still going, albiet in reduced circumstances having shed a members to, you know, acid and tiffs but having borrowed my nephew's Live 8 DVD of their set, I can confirm their set was AMAZING. Why do you have a load of 50something prog rockers closing the gig? For the simple reason that they are, as Big Bryan pointed out 'fucking great'. Also they can play a stadium but mostly because Waters and Gilmore together was like the Beatles reuniting, but without the necromancy.
So glutting on prog on the iPod is a tremendous feeling. In reality I'm on a train or walking through the station but between the headphone speakers I'm back in my room aged 17, listening to led Zep again and discovering for the first time that there is music like this out there.
But it's not all buying into the sort of bands that by now have about as much artisitic integrity as Nike (discuss) (but it's not the band's fault that the producers of Top Gear have the Best of Pink Floyd on their CD players and every time J Clarkson steps out from behind the bonnet of a penis extension and wanks on about 'this car isn't fast...it's very fast indeed' you get three chords from Floyd).
Music choice is currently also about instant market gullibility. The excellent closing ceremony of the Commonwealth games had some hillbilly Australian outfit plucking banjos and singing about boxing booths. Top. Ten minutes later, song downloaded. Half hour later, played about 6 times. It rocks. And twangs.
Oh, and the self loathing. trrying to beat level seventeen of Jedi Outcast. There's an afternoon I could have better spent writing a stained glass window, designing a symphony or painting a novel.
1 Comments:
In high school we once tried to watch the Wizard of Oz on mute while listening to Pink Floyd~ it's supposed to make sense in time with the movie. Unfortunately we were too virtuous at the time to consider smoking pot in order to make sense of it all...
Post a Comment
<< Home