[atlantaprog] Punks & prog...

OK. Something is going on here.

As most of you know, I'm doing sound from time to time at Eyedrum. A few weeks ago, there was this band called The Marsh... a three piece with a (real) Hammond B3, bassist, and drummer. Their tunes were sort psychedelic & a proggy. They reminded me of Barret-era Floyd or "Man Who Sold the World" era Bowie. Their singer (the B3 player) sounded like he could have been a young Pete Hammill (don't get started, all you Hammill haters out there!). Very interesting stuff. I actually invited them to play at Roguefest, but they'll be out of town that weekend. Check 'em out if you get the chance. They've been playing a LOT lately. Now here's the kicker - these guys were all quite young. The oldest couldn't have been more than 21 or 22. I was talking with them a bit (they didn't know I was a prog fan) and they kept telling me how much they were influenced by old Genesis and Yes - they were even arguing amongst themselves about which albums were better, Trespass or Nursery Crime, the Yes Album or Fragile, etc. They could have been a bunch of 40-something prog geeks (like a lot of us here) to hear them talk.

I could have written that off as a freak experience, until last night. There was this art-school punk trio called Raven from Savannah. Fuzzed-out bass, thrash drums (he was actually trying to find a cinder-block to put in front of his kick drum to keep it from scooting across the stage as he pounded the hell out of it!), and an old analog synth - no guitar. The bassist and synth guy were also the singers and they told me that they thrashed around so much that they didn't want to bother with mic stands. They took out a roll of duct tape and TAPED THE MICS TO THEIR FOREHEADS! The business-end of the mics were alongside their noses pointing down. They weren't kidding. Mic stands would have been totally superfluous once they started thrashing around. They want to get Madonna-style headset mics, but on their college kid budgets, it not something they can afford right now. I told them they should fashion some sort of Bob Dylan style harmonica holder for the mics, but they preferred the duct tape approach!

So how does this relate to prog? Well, one of their songs was a two minute workout called "Wake Me Up Wakeman" or something like that, and one of them kept trying to get the others to play an unidentified Crimson song that they had been rehearsing. I talked with them a bit after sound check. The synth guy couldn't say enough about how much he dug Wakeman (and indeed, even in the thrash punk context, some of his synth lines were remarkably Wakeman-esque). I asked about the Crimson tunes and they said there's no way they could play it live. Turns out these guys were prog freaks too. They marked the dates for Roguefest on their calendars!

These are the only people from various musical disciplines I've encountered lately who dig prog. Heck, look at the success of bands like The Mars Volta in underground circles, and even Green Day's latest album is a ROCK OPERA! And even here in Atlanta, the most watched band on the local scene are all under 18 (Unbounded Sky). It's kind of like the way people from my generation (40-somethings) would assimilate another era's music into our own styles (jazz, classical), today's young people are listening to what the prog pioneers did with a fresh set of ears and finding validity in the genre. This can only be a good thing!

Speaking of Eyedrum - it's looks like the experiences I'm having there will provide many amusing anecdotes in the coming months!


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