FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Genesis: The legendary Shepperton Studios concert in HD
03.20.2014
09:42 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
The restoration of the film of Genesis performing at Shepperton Studios in 1973 is perhaps the single most heroic episode in the history of fanatical fandom.

I might not have all the details exactly correct, but the gist of it is that about ten years ago a guy who goes by the online handle of “King Lerch” became aware of a 16mm film of of a live Genesis concert from 1973 that was being auctioned off as part of an estate sale in New York. He then noticed that a small group of Genesis fans were planning to pool their resources, rather than bid against each other and joined forces with them. No one had any idea what exactly was on the film or even what condition it was in, so by banding together, their risk was spread out, and minimized.

Like most reels of Kodak film from 1973, the film had gone a bit red and required significant clean-up in that department. The audio was kind of iffy, too, coming as it would from the magnetic track on the celluloid print. Apparently a few hundred man hours were devoted to the project and it became widely known when it was released—for free—to grateful Genesis fans on the Internet.

The version that was done ten years ago amazed and delighted fans of the group, but a couple of years ago, good King Lerch and his merry men opted to make yet another better version, taking advantage of updated audio/visual technology, and the fact that many people now have Blu-ray burners, to offer an HD version—it’s free for download at the Genesis Museum—of the Shepperton concert. That’s… really generous

Old Michael went past the pet shop, which was never open, into the park, which was never closed, and the park was full of a very smooth, clean, green grass. So Henry took off all his clothes and began rubbing his flesh into the wet, clean, green grass. He accompanied himself with a little tune - it went like this….

Set list:
“Watcher Of The Skies”
“Dancing With The Moonlit Knight”
“I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)”
“The Musical Box”
“Supper’s Ready”

This is perhaps the single best representation of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis on film. Sadly there is next to nothing that exists of live footage of them playing their enigmatic, inscrutable masterpiece, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, but if I had to pick a second choice, it would be seeing them do their seven-movement progressive rock sonata, Foxtrot‘s epic “Supper’s Ready.”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.20.2014
09:42 pm
|
King Crimson: Incredibly heavy, yet somehow still gravity-defying live set from 1974
03.10.2014
05:11 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
As there is precious little live footage of the pre-80s incarnations of King Crimson—Beat Club, the poor quality fragment from Hyde Park in 1969 and the Central Park 1974 clip, not much—this extended 29-minute set from France’s Melody television show is a treasure (even with all of those goofy video effects, in fact, I think they enhance it nicely).

The line-up is Bill Bruford, John Wetton, David Cross and Robert Fripp.

1 - Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part II
2 - The Night Watch
3 - Lament
4 - Starless

Larks’ Tongues here is frighteningly good.

The quality is great, but it’s even better on the deluxe 40th Anniversary Series edition of Red that came out in 2009. That release, with Steve Wilson’s insane 5.1 surround mix of the album (done with Robert Fripp’s participation), sounds like a jet plane lifting off inside your living room skull. Red happens to be one of the heaviest rock albums of all time. Crank it up loud enough and the sonic power of that album can blow you away like a feather in the wind. Most King Crimson albums I find to be a bit spotty (some of them are really spotty, in fact) but when they lock into a serious groove, like on Red’s unfuckingbelievable title cut, well it’s awe-inspiring.

If you haven’t heard the Steve Wilson 5.1 surround treatment of the classic King Crimson albums and you’ve got a 5.1 set up for TV and gaming, they are simply superb. I recommend starting with the first King Crimson album, In the Court of the Crimson King, because it’s a great—indeed the perfect—place to start anyway, plus Wilson did such a crazy good job with it. Ditto with Lizard. Hell, I never even liked that album, but in Wilson’s mix the “rock band as symphony” aspect of the work is teased out nicely and envelops you like you’re standing inside of a large (and especially complex) audio equivalent of an Alexander Calder mobile.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.10.2014
05:11 pm
|
Emerson Lake & Palmer: Do they suck?
01.14.2014
03:34 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Over the weekend and for half the day yesterday, I tried—TRIED—to figure out if there was anything worthwhile in the Emerson Lake & Palmer catalog.

The answer is yes, but not that much! For the most part, they’re bloody horrible, exhibiting the very worst muso excesses of any of the progrock bands. Musical hubris on a very grand scale, pop pomposity writ large. Genesis seem humble compared to these guys. Even Yes never got even close to the edge of what ELP were all about. One album after another struck me as tedious, boring and just “virtuoso” shite, but there was occasionally a number—or a snatch of something, a moment in one of their longer pieces—that was not just good, but excellent. Those highlights were, quite honestly, to my ears, few and far between.

At their best, ELP could be sublime. No really. Carl Palmer is a truly great drummer. Keith Emerson is a keyboard god. Greg Lake, that man could sing! At their worst, they sound like three goofballs whose best idea was to rip off B. Bumble & The Stinger’s “Nut Rocker”, play it on the Moog and add an orchestra! Their problem isn’t their musicianship, it’s the fact that they have terrible, terrible tacky taste.

My wife politely inquired at one point “What the fuck is this shit?” When I told her, she rolled her eyes, shook her head and walked away from me, disappointed.
 

 
This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to figure out if there is anything decent in ELP’s recorded output. A double A-side of “Lucky Man” and the even better “From the Beginning” was one of the very first 45s I ever bought and I had most of their albums, purchased at a garage sale for 25 cents each. For a nine-year-old kid, the die-cut, fold-out H.R. Giger cover of Brain Salad Surgery seemed extra mysterious and cool, but the music left me totally cold. It’s not like I didn’t try to listen to it. A) I only had so many records at that age and B) because they were such a monster group, I wondered if maybe it was something that I wasn’t getting. (I listened to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music around that same time, over and over again on headphones, because it irked me that I didn’t quite understand it.)

By the time Never Mind the Bollocks was in my hot little hands, I never gave Emerson Lake and Palmer another thought. Probably like the vast majority of you reading this, I would imagine.

Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to name a band so more or less forgotten, but who were once so MASSIVELY POPULAR. During their heyday, ELP sold over 25 million albums. There were basically tied with Led Zeppelin for the top-grossing touring act of 1974 and they co-headlined (with Deep Purple) the massive “California Jam” concert that year, a gig that drew over 250,000 people.
 

Awards? We got ‘em!

The next time I was reminded of them, they were hawking their box set on Live with Regis and Kathy Lee in the early 90s looking rather well-fed.

This is not a troll post, I promise. Maybe I’m the one still missing something… I’m happy to listen to anything by ELP that anyone cares to post in the comments. Here’s the best of what I found, my (admittedly short) list of Emerson, Lake and Palmer favorites.
 

“From the Beginning”—this song, a typical acoustic “Greg Lake number”—is killer. I’d rate this song a perfect 10/10. It’s awesome. Check out that fantastic Moog work from Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer’s delicate percussion. Why couldn’t they always be this restrained?
 

“Lucky Man”—another “Greg Lake number” (and written when he was just twelve years old!). This one’s a stone classic, nothing controversial in that statement, right? A great pop song. One for the ages.
 

Here you can see Emerson Lake & Palmer play Mussorgsky’s 1874 piece, “Pictures at an Exhibition” at London’s Lyceum Theater in 1970. Because this composition is often used to demonstrate “prowess” by concert pianists, I’m including this out of respect for Keith Emerson’s prodigious talents, but… yeah. This is all kinds of Spinal Tap…
 
More ELP after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
01.14.2014
03:34 pm
|
Demons of the Night Gather: Black Widow, amazing, obscure early 70s ‘Satanic’ prog rock group
07.24.2013
03:49 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Black Widow were an early 70s British progrock group known primarily for their use of occult and often outright Satanic imagery in their act. They “consulted” with “King of the Witches,” Alex Sanders about the rituals they performed onstage, and he is said to have advised them that they were in danger of evoking a “she devil.” (That’s a buck-naked Maxine Sanders seen on one of their picture sleeves).

Their best known song, not really a hit, but it’s excellent just the same, was “Come To The Sabbat.” With its persistent sonorous chant of “Come, come, come to the Sabbat, come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there” and that flute, Black Widow really didn’t sound like anybody else (maybe a more evil-sounding Uriah Heep?). Too bad that they disbanded after three albums and not much interest, because Black Widow could rock.

Black Widow actually recorded one album before they split that was never released, but it did eventually come out in 1999 on Mystic Records. Black Widow reformed in 2011 and put out new music. There’s even been a Black Widow tribute album made by various doom metal bands.

Thankfully, for such an obscure group, there was a pretty decent documentation of Black Widow’s stage act left behind due to a 1970 Beat Club appearance. In it, they perform the entirety of their Sacrifice album. It was released on by Mystic Records in 2007 as Demons of the Night Gather to See Black Widow.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
07.24.2013
03:49 pm
|
Mother Superior jumped the gun: Unknown all female prog rock group from the 1970s
07.17.2013
03:31 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
One of the first all-girl rock groups—and they were “prog rockers” at that—the UK-based Mother Superior recorded just one album in 1975 before going their separate ways. Apparently it was only released in Sweden.

From Prog Archives:

UK band MOTHER SUPERIOR was formed in the summer of 1974, when bassist Jackie Badger turns up for an audition to join UK band Cosmetix and finds the main members of that band in an almighty row that ends their history there and then. She opts to hook up Jackie Crew and Audrey Swinburne now formerly of Cosmetix, and through and ad in Melody Maker New Zealand musician Lesley Sly becomes the final member of the new band, and following a long session involving substantial amounts of alcohol they come up with the band name Mother Superior.

The band is actively gigging whenever and wherever they can, performing in pubs, at air-force bases and later on a number of gigs in Central Europe follows. While they do build up a regular fanbase, the UK record labels aren’t overly keen on signing this all girl band. As bassist Jackie Brewster revealed in her blog: “One night at the Golden Lion, the place is rammed with an audience of men and women, Sony have sent an A and R man down who says to us after two encores, that he can’t see who our market is, women would be jealous of us and men wouldn’t buy our records because their girlfriends wouldn’t like it. “

At that point in time this isn’t a great concern for the band. They have recorded their debut album in the usual manner of a new band their label doesn’t really think too much of - late night sessions handled by inexperienced studio techs promising that “it will be all right in the mix”. The album is subsequently released on a small Swedish label attached to their own label Polydor, which does give the band a good reason to tour Scandinavia the following year. That their label chose to call the album “Lady Madonna” just one more decision made that wasn’t approved by the band members.

Following extensive gigging, a label not really believing in the band, the usual on the road hassles and management problems, line-up alterations and day to day problems became the order of the day for Mother Superior. They decided to call it quits in 1977, their final gig performed on December 9th.

Seen here on an unknown TV show, the band does an original, almost Yes-like take on the Stephen Stills classic, “Love the One You’re With.” (Here’s a link to their interesting cover of the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna.”)
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
07.17.2013
03:31 pm
|
MAGMA’s cheerfully insane brand of sci-fi avant garde make them progrock’s weirdest outliers
07.01.2013
04:31 pm
Topics:
Tags:


H.R. Giger’s cover for 1978’s Attahk album

French progrockers MAGMA sing their lyrics in “Kobaïan,” a made-up phonetic language based on German and Slavic languages constructed by the group’s founder, Christian Vander, after he had a “vision of humanity’s spiritual and ecological future.”

MAGMA’s albums tell the multi-part sci-fi saga of humans who have been forced to leave a dying Earth behind and settle on the planet Kobaïa. MAGMA’s unusual sound is described as “zeuhl” in Kobaïan, which means “heavenly” and Vander claims his biggest musical influence is John Coltrane at his most celestial. One can also detect some Zappa, Stravinsky and “Carmina Burana.”

The mysterious MAGMA are considered somewhat tangential members of the progressive subgenre (“avant garde” might be a bit more accurate) and have little in common with the likes of Yes, Genesis or King Crimson. Certainly it can said that they hoe their own row! Often they sound like an extremely dark heavy metal band. You can’t really compare MAGMA to anyone else, they’re just that weird. Give me MAGMA over Emerson, Lake & Palmer any day!

As on YouTuber quipped:

If anything could be more twisted and insane than Magma, it’s early Magma.

They’re even weirder than Gong and that ain’t easy!
 

 
More MAGMA after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
07.01.2013
04:31 pm
|
Prog perfection: Van der Graaf Generator’s ONLY live performance of ‘A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers’
04.23.2013
03:54 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Although history will recall the Van der Graaf Generator as being a “progressive rock” group, in many respects, this assessment has more to do with timing than the actual music this far ahead-of-their-time band actually made. Imagine if Pawn Hearts, their masterpiece, was released in 1981 instead of 1971, if you take my point.

It wasn’t for nuthin’ that the likes of John Lydon, Julian Cope and Marc Almond were such massive fans of the group. David Bowie, it is alleged, once refereed to himself the “poor man’s Peter Hammill”!

And speaking of Pawn Hearts, this is an album I’ve loved for decades, and yet I remained blissfully unaware of the existence of this single, solitary live filmed performance of “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers,” the sprawling, 23-minute-long epic suite consisting of ten separate movements that takes up the entirety of that album’s side two. I found this by accident yesterday, looking for something else. My jaw dropped as I watched it.

This 1972 performance from Belgium television—which is nothing short of astonishing and quite intensely intense—was shot piecemeal and edited together because it was impossible to play the song all in one go. Apparently, this is the only time “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” was ever performed live like this by the original classic line-up of Hugh Banton, Guy Evans, Peter Hammill and David Jackson.

Peter Hammill told this to the Sounds music paper about the theme of the enigmatic suite:

“It’s just the story of the lighthouse keeper, that’s it on its basic level. And there’s the narrative about his guilt and his complexes about seeing people die and letting people die, and not being able to help. In the end - well, it doesn’t really have an end, it’s really up to you to decide. He either kills himself, or he rationalises it all and can live in peace… Then on the psychic/religious level it’s about him coming to terms with himself, and at the end there is either him losing it all completely to insanity, or transcendence; it’s either way at the end… And then it’s also about the individual coming to terms with society - that’s the third level…”

According to Peter Hammill, writing on his website just a few days ago, Van der Graaf Generator will be performing “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” each night of their upcoming 2013 summer tour dates.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
04.23.2013
03:54 pm
|
Rock snob alert: Dig the Soviet bloc psychedelia of Hungary’s Omega
03.27.2013
01:26 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
One of the most influential bands ever to come out of the Eastern Bloc, Hungary’s legendary Omega have been at it since 1962, the same year the Rolling Stones first got together. Give or take a couple of early members departing and a period of inactivity during 1987-1994, they are one of the longest-running acts in rock history and with one of the most stable line-ups.

Omega’s sound has obviously changed over their five decades, travelling light years from their early Beatles-influenced pop songs towards something kinda like early Status Quo fuzz box guitar meets the Moody Blues classical rock (or sometimes like a Slavic version of schlager), then a prog rock sound in the 70s that gave way to harder rocking wail (and even disco) by later in that decade. The 1980s saw them develop a spacerock thing that continues to be their signature sound.

Since Omega recorded songs in both magyar and in English, and regularly toured in England and Germany (The Scorpions are known to be big fans) they are one of the most popular groups to originate from the Communist bloc.
 
image
 
In any case, it’s more Omega’s early material that I like the best, so that’s what I’m going to post here. I hadn’t thought about this band in years until one of our readers, Kjirsten Winters, reminded me of them. I was shocked by how many amazing vintage clips of this band exist. Feast your eyes and ears on Omega…

Start with the mind-bending “Tékozló fiúk” (“Prodigal Sons”) from 1969. Play it LOUD!
 

 
More Omega after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.27.2013
01:26 pm
|
Progrock’s greatest uneasy lovesong: Kevin Ayers’ ‘The Lady Rachel’ live in 1975
03.26.2013
06:16 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 

Now she’s safe from the darkness
She’s safe from its clutch
Now nothing can harm her
At least not very much

When the great Kevin Ayers died on February 18th, I checked YouTube to see if there was a vintage live clip of him performing my favorite song of his, “The Lady Rachel” from 1969’s progrock milestone Joy of a Toy. There wasn’t, but a few weeks later, a kind soul posted this humdinger of a performance from Belgium in 1975.

Ayers, with a band including Zoot Money and Ollie Hassell, does an astonishing twelve-minute long “Lady Rachel” here. If you’re a Kevin Ayers fan, you’ll plotz. The quality is great, too.

The thing that I wondered about is the audience murmuring among themselves at the song’s start. Who the hell would have talked during Kevin Ayers in his prime? Idiots!

When Joy of a Toy was remastered with extra tracks in 2003, it included an outtake from the sessions titled “Religious Experience” [take 9] (aka “Singing a Song in the Morning”) with Syd Barrett on guitar.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.26.2013
06:16 pm
|
Weezy, get me some LSD: ‘George Jefferson’ is a big prog rock fan
01.06.2012
03:06 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Sherman Hemsley, the actor who played “George Jefferson” on the The Jeffersons and All in the Family is known to be a huge fan of prog rock, especially Gentle Giant, Nektar and Gong.

Hemsley collaborated with Yes’s Jon Anderson on a funk-rock opera about the “spiritual qualities of the number 7” (never produced). Hemsley also did an interpretive dance to the Gentle Giant song “Proclamation” on Dinah Shore’s 70s talkshow, that was apparently somewhat confusing for her.

But the best story, I mean the best story of all time, is the one told by Gong’s Daevid Allen about his encounter with the beloved 70’s sitcom star. Here is Allen’s verbatim tale as related to Mitch Myers (and originally published in Magnet magazine):

“It was 1978 or 1979, and Sherman Hemsley kept ringing me up. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap because we didn’t have television in Spain (where I was living). He called me from Hollywood saying, ‘I’m one of your biggest fans and I’m going to fly you here and put flying teapots all up and down the Sunset Strip.’ I thought,  ‘This guy is a lunatic.’ He kept it up so I said, ‘Listen, can you get us tickets to L.A. via Jamaica? I want to go there to make a reggae track and have a honeymoon with my new girlfriend.’ He said, ‘Sure! I’ll get you two tickets.’

I thought, ‘Well, even if he’s a nut case at least he’s coming up with the goodies.’ The tickets arrived and we had this great honeymoon in Jamaica. Then we caught the plane across to L.A. We had heard Sherman was a big star, but we didn’t know the details. Coming down the corridor from the plane, I see this black guy with a whole bunch of people running after him trying to get autographs. Anyway, we get into this stretch limousine with Sherman and immediately there’s a big joint being passed around. I say, ‘Sorry man, I don’t smoke.’ Sherman says, ‘You don’t smoke and you’re from Gong?’

Inside the front door of Sherman’s house was a sign saying, ‘Don’t answer the door because it might be the man.’ There were two Puerto Ricans that had a LSD laboratory in his basement, so they were really paranoid. They also had little crack/freebase depots on every floor. Then Sherman says, ‘Come on upstairs and I’ll show you the Flying Teapot room.’ Sherman was very sweet but was surrounded by these really crazy people.

We went up to the top floor and there was this big room with darkened windows and “Flying Teapot” is playing on a tape loop over and over again. There were also three really dumb-looking, very voluptuous Southern gals stoned and wobbling around naked. They were obviously there for the guys to play around with.

[My girlfriend] Maggie and I were really tired and went to our room to go to bed. The room had one mattress with an electric blanket and that was it. No bed covering, no pillow, nothing. The next day we came down and Sherman showed us a couple of [The Jeffersons] episodes.

One of our fans came and rescued us, but not before Sherman took us to see these Hollywood PR people. They said, ‘Well, Mr. Hemsley wants us to get the information we need in order to do these Flying Teapot billboards on Sunset Strip.’ I looked at them and thought they were the cheesiest, most nasty people that I had ever seen in my life and I gave them the runaround. I just wanted out of there. I liked Sherman a lot. He was a very personable, charming guy. I just had a lot of trouble with the people around him.”

Oi, if Daevid Allen thinks you’re weird, you must be a stone freak! (Like our pal, opera singer/actor Jesse Merlin. He met Daevid Allen in San Francisco and Allen said “Just look at him. He’s a perfect example of himself!” Coming from Daevid Allen, that’s the best compliment in the history of the world, isn’t it?)

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Floating Anarchy: Gong, live on French TV, 1973

Below, “George Jefferson” dancing up a storm to Nektar’s “Show Me the Way”!
 

 
After the jump, a video for Gong’s “How to Stay Alive” with animations of Daevid Allen’s drawings.

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
01.06.2012
03:06 pm
|
Mind-blowing early Soft Machine footage, 1968
09.06.2011
07:05 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
The amount of high quality video footage of the Soft Machine unearthed in recent years has been truly impressive and a godsend to fans of the ever-changing line-ups of the Canterbury prog-rock greats. For me, the earlier the better, so this 1968 performance of the group on French TV is some of the best footage of the Softs, I’ve seen, period.

Showcasing the improvisational brilliance of the classic Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge line-up in a way that their first album did not, this 24-minute long set is a barnstormer throughout, ending on an extended, energetic romp all over their classic,“Hope for Happiness.”

If you’re a Soft Machine fan, this will absolutely blow you away.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
09.06.2011
07:05 pm
|
The women’s bathroom at last night’s Rush concert
06.29.2011
06:21 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
The lads vs. the ladies. Pics taken 30 seconds apart.

Visit SF Gate for the whole story

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
06.29.2011
06:21 pm
|
Page 2 of 2  < 1 2