[atlantaprog] Re: Punks & prog...

It's good to hear.  One of the funniest things I've seen was an interview in 
Revolver magazine with Wu-Tang Clan.  One of the guys had a Yes sweatshirt on 
and said "yeah, we love that awkward white-boy sh%$!"  ;-)  I've seen Shakira 
in a Yes shirt also-- looked pretty good on her for some reason.
 
And I never thought I'd say this, but that new GD album is pretty good.  Not as 
good as the Who, who they seem to be channeling, but good nevertheless.
 
Brian


Allen Welty-Green <agmedia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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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