Category: music

Steve Hackett – Beyond the Shrouded Horizon

Surprisingly gorgeous, atmospheric rock album

Beyond the Shrouded Horizon was released in 2011 on Inside Out music. It’s Steve Hackett’s twenty-first album.

I love all of the ways this record is its own thing, and yet harkens back to Hackett’s history. It’s very “boomer,” sometimes astoundingly old-fashioned but somehow beautiful even in its most cornball moments.

“Waking to Life” has a harmonic minor motif that’s very nice. I love that he has Eastern European connections in this music.

There are other essays into varied musical styles – The bluesy rock of Prairie Angel and Catwalk, the dense harmonies of Looking for Fantasy – but the central feeling here is mystical, in the same way that blue-hour motif reflected in both the title and the cover photo is.

insert from my copy

One reason this CD appeals is that Karen, my wife, also likes it. She asks me what I’m playing when I put it on, which she doesn’t do for a lot of the music I’m listening to these days. I think she would like Renaissance, which I’m about to start a deep dive into, although she’s aware of Annie Haslam. I think Annie is folk-adjacent enough to appear on her radar.

I love folk too, but I have really felt pulled towards prog and high-energy rock music for the last little while. I think that may have to do with the state of the world. I think i’m hungry for warrior energy, and metal and prog seem to have that energy more than most music.

I do understand “warrrior” energy as “boy music” which I resist on a personal level. I wrestle with that idea a bit, since I prefer to signify on the female side generally, but I feel like this is a time when fighting is the most necessary thing for a world citizen to be ready for.

But a warrior has to be fighting for something, and beauty seems like one of the best things one can fight for. Beyond the shrouded horizon, there may be more beauty to come. I hope there is. But we have to get there.

In the meantime, find beauty where you can.

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Genesis – Trespass

1970: the year Genesis figured out who they were, and then were forced to evolve again.

The lineup for this album is Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Anthony Phillips, and John Mayhew. This is Mayhew’s only album with the band, and Anthony Phillips’ last. It’s the band’s second. I have to say, it casts a spell.

My reissue copy of the gatefold sleeve. The cover’s janky but the vinyl is unblemished.

Trespass is the album that would establish Genesis as one of the world’s very best prog bands — it’s the template for much that came later. By the same token, it follows the template set by In The Court of the Crimson King, Time and a Word, and The Least We Can Do is Wave to Each Other while remaining distinctly a Genisis album.

Anthony Phillips is a more Steve Howe-like guitarist that Steve Hackett is. He’s a classical guitarist, which, granted, Hackett also is, on occasion, but of the two, I think Phillips has a slightly more delicate touch. I admire Phillips’s early solo work very much. this album is packed with some very out-front melodic ideas from Phillips, and Tony Banks has a lighter touch. The general aspect of the band is spritelier.

Peter Gabriel is front and center, as stong and evocative a singer and master of ceremonies as anyone could ask for, a great rock performance centerpiece fully realized, with that trademark sweet, honey-and-cigarettes baritone and finely tuned theatrical sense… And he was so young! He was quite fey on those early records, was he not?

The band also feels more balanced than it did later. At least it’s a *different* balance. Later albums would shift the sonics of the band more towards Banks being dominant, and new guitarist Steve Hackett was often treated like a “junior” member of the band. I wonder what a second or a third album by this lineup would have sounded like if Phillips hadn’t become ill and if Mayhew had found his way into the social circle of the band?

I own this one on CD and vinyl. I seem to be moving towards owning multiple copies of certain records. I also seem to be lacking storage space. I will need to address this issue at some near-future point. Something’s gonna have to give.

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Neon Heat Disease is my jam

What would an all-yankee King Crimson sound like, you ask? Here’s the answer.

Belew/Levin/Vai/Carey

Not to limit myself to a single answer to this question, but Beat is my favorite currently-active band. I hope (they’ve hinted) that they’re working on an album of original music. The primary work here, covering the music of King Crimson’s 80s ouvre, lends itself to a lot of things that I resonate with in terms of a creative approach to rock music.

They have the deepest pocket of any rock band I can think of, and I love their mathy-ness. They’re algo-rhythmic®! I hear the Beatles in this music. King Crimson’s next phase would be more overt about the connection, but the basic sonics of this band harken back in the melodicism, the collaborative writing process between Fripp and Belew, and the exacting approach to arrangements.

On the other hand, I can note the similarity of “Neon Heat Disease” to “Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish” by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band off of Trout Mask Replica. So.. is 80s Crimson a perfect amalgam of Revolver and Trout Mask with a forward-looking technical bent? I think the case could be made by plunking the needle down on this album.

Tony Levin is the second vocalist on this, and he’s also taken over keyboards from Fripp. He also provided many of the photographs of the band that grace the inside of this triple gatefold and booklet. His presence in this re-imagining of the original music is vital to its success.

Steve Vai’s replacement of Fripp works because there’s a line he treads between copying and originating. He has to honor that huge presence that would otherwise be missing without disappearing as a separate entity. One early indication of how he approached this is his solo in Heartbeat. It sounds like electric erhu. That’s a really cool way to interpret Fripp’s playing and take it somewhere else entirely at the same time, by adding an unexpected third element. There’s nascent world-music ambitions in the 80s Crimson music sourced here, and adding sonics that suggest new contexts is absolutely in keeping.

What Danny Carey adds most significantly here is that he plays all of these songs on a set of acoustic drums. I think the music from the later source albums is greatly improved by this one change. I don’t recall seeing any electronic drums in Carey’s setup from the show (you can correct me if you know different) and the essential liveness of the sounds he provides raises all of the music from the second and third albums up to the sonic level of the first album. I get that Bruford wanted to push the envelope on the sound palate he was using, but this live recording makes an excellent case for the irreplaceability of percussion sounds coming from skin and bone, not curated electrons.

This is one of my most important objects from my move back to analog music. I love vinyl in all its machine-age glory. Carey’s drumming here is evidence for my case. Music must be made by flesh and bone and all of the worldly materials. I fully believe that, and here’s some strong evidence.

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The Texts of Yesterday

A show-and-tell by Diane Griffin

Mick Farren published a dystopian science fiction novel called The Texts of Festival back in 1973. From that vantage, he saw a doomed, far-future world where people worshipped Gods with names like Dhillon, Djeggar, and Morrizen the Lizard King.

When I was a kid back in Yuma, Arizona, there were some of my brother’s friends who had both a cover band and a Kiss tribute band called “Kiss Theatre.” The cover band was the thing they cared about, but on occasion, for parties, they would wear all black and put on Kiss makeup and play a set of Kiss’s songs. When they did that show for the first time, people talked about it for weeks afterwards. The Yuma Daily Sun wrote about them.

 It seemed to me that these guys in Kiss Theatre considered it a schtick. It was too unserious for a band with larger ambitions. Even playing a set of hits-of-the-day was more dignified and relevant than pretending to be a famous band and doing a knock-off of their whole concept, regardless of the extra attention it garnered them.

I agree with them. If I were to start a band now, I think I would want to do mostly or even all cover songs, but I would not want to pretend to be someone else. I understand that people want familiarity, but I think – maybe I only hope – that they also want authenticity, some kind of connection to the artist they’re in the room with.

I’m not a purist about this, however.

Standing just on this side of the line is the band Beat, which is half members of the 80s version of King Crimson, half the two highest-level “ringers” there could possibly be. I saw Beat last year and found the show transcendent. They don’t call themselves King Crimson, as lead guitarist and founder Robert Fripp is not involved.

They ‘re often called a “tribute band” in the press, even with the involvement of two original members. Guitarist Steve Vai – one of the ringers — has taken great pains to learn Fripp’s original parts but adds as much of his own style as he can without breaking the vibe. Is this a tribute to or a continuation of King Crimson? I’m hoping for a CD of new original music, which would tip the scales away from “tribute band.”

Let’s move a little closer to that line between “tribute” and “continuation.” You may have heard, in a previous rant of mine, that the current touring and recording version of Yes has no original members. Another whole band playing this music exists. Jon Anderson, founding member of Yes, has done a couple of tours, a live album, and an album of original music in the 70s Yes style with a youtuber band called The Band Geeks. I think Jon and the Band Geeks are much truer to the spirit of Yes than Steve Howe’s band. So which is the tribute, really?

There are ways to put a twist into the notion of a “tribute band” without crossing the line. For example there’s Lez Zeppelin, the all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band, who play faithful renditions of the Zeppelin catalogue, without switching the gender of the original lyrics or toning down the cock-rock attitude.

I have friends who do a B-52’s tribute under the name Bikini Whale. They’re a straight-up note-for-note copy of the original, entirely competent and, to be fair, as high energy as the records. I roll my eyes at them, though. I’ve also talked to guitarist Kevin Coombs about some of the more technical aspects of what he does, and it’s clear he’s done quite a bit of research into the peculiar alternate tunings and gear the original guitarists – Ricky and then Keith – used to get the distinctive, and not-as-simple-as-you-might-think sound of the B-52’s. I admire the effort involved, but it makes me wish they would devote that energy to putting something new into the world.

Surprisingly, there are still a lot of rock music fans. However, what used to thrive on adventure and innovation seems to be made for comfort or identity confirmation now. The biggest touring bands have been around for forty, fifty, or sixty years. The guitars still scream, the singers still smile or snarl, with dentures to fill in for all the missing teeth.

Soon, there won’t even be that. All that will be left is the texts, the worshippers, and the tribute bands.

I Went to RPM Fest For a Day and Survived

By Diane Griffin

Music festivals – all sorts of festivals, really – are tiny, temporary utopias. One of the reasons I love them is the feeling that the rest of the world has faded into insignificance, and that the enclave you’re in can feel like the whole world. Food and camping and junk for sale in the vendors’ tents and artist’s booths and whatever else turns up make it seem like everything you need is right there.

We could talk about port-a-potties, which I think are the biggest drawback to the experience, and there! they have been mentioned, and we can move on quickly now, as one does when port-a-potties are involved.

If anyone were to notice this old trans lady at all at this event, my hope is that they saw me smiling, dancing, or walking back and forth between the two stages at opposite ends of the Miller’s Falls Rod and Gun Club. This isolated clearing in the woods is, in my opinion, put to its best use on Labor Day weekend. For that brief window in time, it’s filled with people of multiple generations and genders in black t-shirts with various outré images and bits of text printed on them, under multifarious unnatural hair colorations at a variety of uncivil lengths. The sweet smell of zaza wafts through the air everywhere.

It is a metal fest, after all.

This is the second year that I’ve attended RPM Fest Heavy Music Campout in Montague for as much of Saturday (the longest day of the festival) as I can endure. I love the atmosphere, generally love the music (not every band is to my taste, of course) and I feel a twinge of gratification for the fact that I’ve gone and done the thing.

Both years I’ve gone, I’ve skipped out before the headliner because I never want to contend with a crowd all trying to exit after that last act, and because these old ears and legs can only take so much. This year I missed Ghoul and last year I missed Prong. I feel some smidgeon of regret for missing the headliners, but it’s negligible pain compared to how my knees feel by 9 PM, after a long day spent mostly on my feet.

So what about the music? I think a festival is always going to be a mixed bag. I saw bits and pieces of sets from 12 different bands while I was there, and nothing offended me, but there was a stretch in the middle of the day when I found most of the music rather unmemorable.

There was this band Goblet that was doing the “Wacky Party band” thing. The bass player was wearing a shaggy hat with giant Viking horns, there was a cobbled-together sculpture of a pot pipe at the side of the stage made out of PVC tubing and an aluminum funnel, lit and smoking through the whole set. What I found most memorable about them (and this is emblematic of the spirit of the festival) was when the singer had two roadies bring out a big ice chest. While he was singing, all death growls and indecipherable lyrics over blasting chugga chugga guitars, he made a bologna sandwich, which he put on a plate and handed to an audience member. That was the finale of their set.

Death growls and niceness.

Among my favorite bands were Concrete Ties, a local hardcore punk band with a powerhouse female singer named Leyla Eileen, who was completely riveting onstage. I could not take my eyes off her as she prowled around, growling and exhorting the audience to rock.

I thought Mean Mistreater were great, high-powered 80s style metal with another fierce woman vocalist with clear and powerful tones, and a talented lead guitarist. A little research after the fact suggests that their name may have come from a Grand Funk Railroad song, and the strains of classic hard rock also flowed from The Atomic Bitchwax, a band that sounds like they’ve studied hard over every one of Grand Funk’s records.

The other two bands I enjoyed most are Coma Hole and Heavy Temple. Coma Hole is a two-member band: a fine drummer and a bass player who has an extraordinary setup. She plays a stereo bass and sends the two channels through different amp setups, one for the low tones and a separate channel which, on the other side of an octave pedal, goes through a massive guitar amp. All her gear is vintage and sounds amazing. Their music is psychedelic stoner rock with a deep vein of Nirvanna-esque grunge rock running through it.

Heavy Temple is a three piece stoner band who sound like they stepped out of a time machine from 1969. Their guitarist, Lord Paisley, is Hendrix-inspired, uses a fair amount of wah wah pedal and super-sludgy distortion. Their singer/bassist is High Priestess Nighthawk and she is another commanding presence. Drummer’s name is Baron Lycan. I know this because I happily purchased both of their albums and have referred to the liner notes as I’ve spun them.

I love the thread of fantasy that runs through so much of metal music. Of course it calls to me, as a writer of fantasy. It gives an air of freeness and imaginations allowed to run wild.

It’s not lost on me that almost all of the bands I liked best have women singers. There are many reasons for this, but I think I’ll list one here: I think the women are more likely to sing “clean” as they say, though there are certainly plenty who use death growls. I’m not opposed to death growls per sé, though I’m not as enamored of them as most of the younger metal fans are. I have learned how to produce that sound myself.

I did notice that every male singer I saw that day used death growls, with the exception of the two guys in The Atomic Bitchwax. Special mention here for the band Necropanther, who had two growly singers, one who pitched a little higher and one who pitched low. Death growl harmonies, anyone? I know where you can get some of that!

I spent a day in a far-away magical bubble world, and it was fine. It made me forget that there are people in the southern distance who are toiling to take this all away from us. I saw other people my age at the festival. I saw other trans folk there. Both sets of examples helped me feel like I was a welcome part of this ephemeral, idealized landscape.

I’ll go next year, too.