Author Archives: Tim Hall

These, from the Metal Storm forum, seem rather more true than some prog-metal fans are prepared to admit. Some examples:

6. When showcasing a new prog metal band to a non-musician friend, put on the most technically difficult song, and skip directly to the solo part.
7. If your friend says that it is cool, tell him that he has grasped the grandeur of prog and shown that his intelligence is superior to that of the mainstream sheep.
8. If he doesn´t, accuse him of lacking musical intelligence and not being a true prog fan.

And then…

34. Make sure your bandname is either a
a) Oxymoron
-Silent Noise
-Tender Harshness
-Healing Gun
Some geeky sounding name ripped from some obscure book.
-Deitronus
-Tarakoch
-Fentaran
or
c) Random combination of at least 2 three-syllable words.
-Eternal Twilight Tranquility (Can’t get much progger than that)
-Redolent Arithmetic
-Evolution of Vernacular Domesticated
35. Don’t worry about if your band name makes any sense or not. Since 90% of your fanbase is from Brazil and Japan, you can safely ignore conventional English grammar and instead focus on what´s really important:

NRT would probably approve of rule 90

90. No, Marillion is not prog. I kindly refer you to rule 20.

Link from DavidT (or possibly DavidT’s cardboard cutout) on the Unofficial MA forum

Update: 101 Rules of Power Metal from the same site is even funnier:

71. Whenever you short of ideas, pick up your Dungeons and Dragons books. You might as well be the first band to sing about owlbears.

Owlbears? I’m waiting for someone to start singing about Gelatinous Cubes…

The Ministry of Information has posted good reviews of both Porcupine Tree’s “Fear of a Blank Planet” and their gig at Preston.

But there are a couple of thowaway lines I rather take exception to. This one…

Queuing outside the venue, the audience seemed older and more predominantly male than usual, wearing a disconcerting number of retro ‘prog’ T-shirts.

And then this…

The album features guest appearences from Alex Lifeson and Robert Fripp from Rush and King Crimson respectively, if not respectfully – I’m not an admirer, and including what music critics and potential album purchasers could regard as ‘prog dinosaurs’ was needlessly dangerous. I didn’t exactly welcome the announcement that they’d be participating.

Even knowing which guitar solo was provided by Lifeson, I didn’t regard it as noteworthy; SW could easily have composed something himself and denied lazy journalists the opportunity to dismissively liken Porcupine Tree to retro ‘prog’… stuff. Fripp’s contribution, a layered guitar interlude between 4:11 and 4:48 on ‘Way Out of Here’, reprised towards the end of the song, was pleasant enough but again, not distinctive, and nothing SW couldn’t have generated himself.

So why have guest appearences by ‘name’ musicians only of interest to old-time ‘prog’ fans, which have the very real potential to alienate more mainstream listeners and critics? It’s a bad idea in terms of mass-market credibility, which succeeded musically only because the guests’ contributions were unobtrusive to the point of being anonymous. I’d call that a pointless gimmick.

I was probably one of those older males wearing a retro-prog T shirt, which I’d purchased at The Reasoning the night before.

I’m really annoyed by the whole “we’re not prog” attitude of some people; Porcupine Tree’s Steve Wilson and Marillion’s Steve Hogarth, I’m looking at you. I’m thinking of SW’s ridiculous spat with Roine Stolt 18 months ago.

I don’t believe there’s anything to be gained in attempting to appease NME-school music critics. They’re never going to like a band like Porcupine Tree. PT are all about musical content, rather than image or attitude. Their lengthy songs, instrumental virtuosity, complex musical structures and lyrics that aren’t about fights outside chip shops in Leeds are the antithesis of everything the NME school stand for.

Which is why pandering to them is akin to battered wife syndrome. “If only they didn’t invite certain unfashionable musicians these nasty critics wouldn’t be so mean” is a bad, bad strategy. Better to challenge the stupid revisionist ‘post punk orthodoxy’, and get the world to recognise that a clique of critics that seem to think Mark E Smith is a greater genius than Roger Waters aren’t really worth listening to any more.

A while since I’ve done one of these.

This time, rather than select random songs from the last N CDs I’ve played, the list is taken from the 11 gigs I’ve been to so far in 2007. Just to make things interesting, all of these were performances by a different band from the original recording. Some are covers, others were performed by the original songwriter, but with a different band. One band appears both as the coverer and coveree!

1. Birds flying high you know how I feel
2. Comin out of nowhere, Drivin like rain
3. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. “I am the Walrus”, guessed by Rob. But who performed it?
4. I remember who you are
6. I’ve exposed your lies, baby
7. Lend me your ear while I call you a fool. “Witches Promise” by Jethro Tull, performed by Odin Dragonfly, identified by Hippydave
8. Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na
9. Put your hands upon me, feel the light inside. “Talk to Me”, by Karnataka, performed by The Reasoning. Identified by Hippydave
10. Your love is like a tidal wave, spinning over my head

Yes, #5 is an instrumental. But it shouldn’t be impossible to identify if you’re been reading this blog and know what bands I’ve seen.

As before, put your guesses in the comments, not just the songs themselves, but the band that played them. Yes I know one of two are by little-known local bands, but they’re all listed in the blog archives. Think of this as a test to see if you’ve been paying attention.

I haven’t posted reviews yet of Marillion’s Somewhere Else and Porcupine Tree’s Fear of a Blank Planet, perhaps because there’s not much I can add to what others have already said. Electric Nose clearly loves both albums. NRT, of The Ministry of Information loves FoaBP, but is decidedly lukewarm on SWE.

For me, the Porcupine Tree’s opus clicked almost immediately, although hearing the whole album live certainly didn’t hurt. “Somewhere Else”, on the other hand, still isn’t working for me. A couple of songs, most notably ‘The Wound‘ are starting to stand out, but too much of the album still reminds me of Radiation and Marillion.com, two of my least favourite albums in Marillion’s back catalogue.

Perhaps it will all start making sense in June, when I get to see them live.