Rick Wakeman: The Six Wives of Henry VIII Blu-ray Review: While they mock Wakeman's penchant for cape wearing, (not to mention the mandatory laugh at the King Arthur on ice tour) Bluray.com gives a mostly positive review for the new Rick Wakeman BluRay disc. They don't seem to understand the music (who expects them to?), but they say that fans of Wakeman and Prog Rock (hey, that's us!) will enjoy the excellent audio and video quality. And the old man, despite no longer touring with Yes, can still fly up and down the keyboard with the best of them.
Pink Floyd takes EMI to court: One of the bigger news stories of the last few days has to be Pink Floyd suing their record label EMI. Apparently the argument is over selling individual tracks online. Apparently the Floyd don't believe their contract allows for this and are taking EMI to court to solve this issue. I'm going to make a nice little snobby Prog-fan remark: anyone who wants to listen to Pink Floyd tracks outside of the context of the full albums probably aren't real fans anyway. I mean, Floyd put so much work into structuring the all of their albums, (specifically post Dark Side of the Moon) that listening to individual tracks almost defeats the purpose of listening to Floyd in the first place. Although I do know some very not-Prog minded people who could listen to Have A Cigar over and over again on repeat without ever hearing anything else. So what do I know?
Permanent Waves: Making the case for RUSH: There seems to bit of Rush love as of late floating around the interwebs. It warms my little Canuck heart to see my fellow country-dwellers finally start to be considered as socially acceptable again after a few decades of hate directed at their more ambitious albums of the late 70s-early 80s. This time, it's a blog post coming from the (I presume) hipper than hip Chicago blog site Chicago Now. My favorite quote? Has to be: "I'm unapologetically a Rush fan. I've got their library "on shuffle" as I'm typing this (currently playing the bombastic "Cygnus X-1 Book II" from "Hemispheres"). Magnificent. If liking Rush isn't cool, well...I'm happy to be lame."
Wednesday March 10th 2010:
Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Eclipses Concept Album Classics: Happy 37th Anniversary to Dark Side of the Moon! It was on Wednesday 37 years ago that the Floyd turned from relatively successful Art-Rock band to mega-superstars. The all too legendary Prog Rock masterpiece is certainly beginning to show some signs of wrinkles and grey hairs, but apparently its appeal has yet to fade. While the band fights with EMI to make sure that tracks are kept together and not sold out-of-context, Wired Magazine provides us with a brief overview of their favorite concept albums including Prog favorites from Frank Zappa and The Moody Blues. I just get a little tickle whenever a mainstream publication mentions Progressive Rock at all. Rare sight indeed.
Don Preston and Bunk Gardner to tour US east coast: Original members of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, Don and Bunk are going to be flying up and down the east coast of the United States this summer. They'll be playing all the classics from the 1960s. Should be a great chance to hear those tunes played by the same people who helped Zappa create them. More information available on their Myspace page.
Phil Collins' Motown Cover Album due out in September: File this under "oh boy". I was almost hoping it was a joke, but Phil Colins is going full steam ahead on his Motown song cover album. The link goes to a forum post with pictures of the recording session. I know, Peter Gabriel is also working on a cover album. I highly doubt that any critic is going to hail Phil's as being innovative and revolutionary like Pete's has been.
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