Tag: entertainment

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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Controversial Beliefs

  • Evidently, the most controversial belief I hold is that I am a woman. This one may get me killed at some point, or cause me to move to Europe. And then get me killed.
  • I think I would like to live in a small one-bedroom apartment in Bergen, Norway with Karen.
  • I think Yes’s Fly From Here – Return Trip may be one of the band’s best albums. We’ll talk more about this one at some future point.
  • I think when Donald Trump is dead and gone, all of this crap about him is going to come out and I think the world at large will be collectively mind-blown by the depravity the man has inhabited his whole life.

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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.

Barrett by Syd Barrett

A reminder of what might have been

Syd Barrett was the original leading light of Pink Floyd, but succumbed to debilitating psychological issues that began around the time of the release of the band’s first album. He left the band under a cloud after a short struggle to continue contributing, and after two erratic solo albums, left the music business entirely. Barrett, his second solo album, was the end of the road for Syd as a recording artist.

It’s sssssooooo wwwwweeeeiiiirrrrrddddddddd, but it’s also surprisingly good considering the problems involved in making it, and different from anything else you might care to name in rock music.

The first thing I think of with Syd’s solo stuff is wild tempo shifts and a casual attitude towards pitch, but there’s less out-of-control-ness than you might think on Barrett. I mean, it’s loose, at times almost chaotic, but I think Syd was a lot more on top of things for this record than his rep might suggest.

“Gigolo Aunt,” for instance is prime late-sixties pop rock, as is “Baby Lemonade.” The shuffling beats, the psychedelic brightness, the unique phrasing and viewpoint — all are trademark, and testament to Barrett’s distinctive creativity.

The band is Syd on vocals and guitar, Richard Wright on keys, Jeff Shirley from Humble Pie on drums, and David Gilmour on bass and backing vocals. Gilmour and Wright are the producers. At Gilmour’s insistance, Syd plays all the guitars.

Ultimately, it’s both its own thing – loose and immediate, quirky and streamlined – and a reminder of what might have been.

10/28/24

I’m listening to Hand. Cannot. Erase. by Steven Wilson and it’s a remarkable experience.

My copy of Hand. Cannot. Erase. by Steven Wilson

It came out in 2015. Wikipedia tells me it’s his fourth solo album, since deactivating Porcupine Tree after the less-than-successful The Incident (an album I liked, though they’ve made better.)

This album is proggy af. Synths, time signature shenanigans, lots of notes, two 10+ minutes-long tracks… and yet it feels contemporary. If Classic Rock™ were still a thing as of 10 years ago, this album would definitely qualify. I hear the influences, and the originality. This is a Contender, an album that should be in the pantheon.

I’m listening now and it soothes me. The election THE GODDAMN ELECTION is 8 days away and I have little hope that things are going to be OK. There is a charismatic cult leader openly running for president, describing the fascist policies he intends to implement publicly, and the supposed “normie” (but also authoritarian and a genocide) alternative is barely hanging on to a lead in the current polling. The only person in the race whom I think might have a chance of setting this country on the right path has absolutely no chance of winning. It’s a scary time.

But this album is good, thoughtful, and human. The playing here reminds me that there is virtue in people, and that that virtue… great musicianship, great music production, a clear eye expressed in the lyrics of these songs, originality… can still happen.

Steven Wilson gives me hope.