Speaker 1Hello and here we are again, myself Stephen Wilson and my colleague Tim Bowness here and this is the second part of our Album Years podcast discussing what is turning out to be an incredibly verdant year for important and significant album releases, 1977 and in the first episode Tim we talked about the sort of UK, US punk scene and how that also influenced or whether coincidentally or by design some of the other music that was coming out at the time, specifically how it had an impact on some more progressively orientated artists. People like Van de Graaff Generator, Hawkwind and Pink Floyd's album of the year Animals which was a very angry record. So now we're going to actually talk about progressive rock itself because there was a whole lot of other progressive rock that paid no lip service to what was going on in terms of punk music and disco music. So the more purist approach if you like to progressive rock or the kind of progressive albums that seemed oblivious. To the shift in the musical climate and there's quite a lot isn't there and some of these are good records right?
Speaker 2Yeah well I think as we said in the other show that this year it was a peak era for many genres, many types of bands that for whatever reason 76 seemed slightly sleepier, slightly tired and 77 isn't necessarily only good for what people see as the new music, the punk revolution. As we've said in some ways you know didn't produce that many great albums during this period but it seems to be good in reggae, it seems to be good in prog rock, it seems to be good in disco, it seems to be good in soft rock that there's a lot of artists really at the top of their game at the same time.
Speaker 1And also as we said that revolution was very much an underground, press-led revolution wasn't it? It certainly wasn't a commercial revolution was it? So the big records of the time were outside of that. So let's look at some of the, so one of the ones that you mentioned a few times in our previous episode was the Yes album from this year, Going for the One, which is mad isn't it? I mean it's as ambitious and unselfconsciously over the top and pretentious as anything that the band did and in a good way, all for the good really. I mean this to me has my favourite Yes epic on it, Awaken. Yeah. And obviously they have a lot of great records. They had a, they kind of scored a freak hit single off this record as well, didn't they?
Speaker 2Wondrous Stories. Yeah, which is how I discovered the band. I mean I think I heard, again, Wondrous Stories on top of the pops, absolutely loved it. And there was a TV advert at the time. One of the things that there used to be were TV adverts in Britain pushing albums and I remember two of the albums that were pushed massively. One was Yes, Going for the One and the other one was 10cc's Live and Let Live that were just on TV almost all the time in between the Avengers or whatever it was called. It was on all the new Avengers that would have been at that point and we're not obviously talking about Marvel new Avengers here, we're talking about the proper Avengers. Proper, proper Avengers. Proper, we're talking Patrick McNee.
Speaker 1And Diana Rigg.
Speaker 2We're talking Joanna Lumley. Joanna Lumley. Joanna Lumley and Diana Rigg, of course, proper Avengers and proper new Avengers.
Speaker 1What was the name of the actor that played Gambit or whatever his name was? Mike. We should know this.
Speaker 2We should know this. Anyway, let's carry on. Linda Thorson. I know Linda Thorson. No, who was the guy that played? The guy that played Gambit. Yeah, she was in the Avengers.
Speaker 1He was always flirting with Joanna Lumley. Was it Purdy? Purdy, yeah. He was always flirting with her.
Speaker 2What was his name? Well, what's interesting is if we're not talking about futuristic things in 1977, Purdy's haircut. Purdy's haircut at the time, absolutely alien. By 1980, 81, every girl in my school had the Purdy haircut.
Speaker 1There you go.
Speaker 2That was the future.
Speaker 1Well, we're digressing slightly here. We're talking about Purdy's haircut. Yeah? Yes. Getting back to yes. Going for the one. So. This is a mad, mad record, isn't it? I mean, it starts off, if I remember rightly, the opening track starts off with a sort of doinky, doinky, doinky, almost like a bluegrass country thing. And then you end, the end of the record, you end with this church organ and this choir. I mean, it couldn't be thinking more big if it tried, could it?
Speaker 2Although what is interesting, what you pointed out there, is it begins with a kind of rock and roll country style riff. And it ends on that, because the very end of Awaken, which I agree with you, might be my favourite, yes, epic as well, actually has that really sweet country line from Steve
Speaker 1Howe. Oh, the little lick at the end, yeah. Yeah. Which almost sounds like he just did it, you know. Totally spontaneously. And they kept it in. Yeah. You know, he's just thinking, I'm just tuning my guitar up here.
Speaker 2Well, this is another album where, you know, we're at the top of the game and, as you say, it's as un-self-consciously ridiculous, flamboyant, fantastical. Anything they've ever done, totally untouched by what's seemingly surrounding them. But equally, they're being very true to themselves, because, you know, Steve Howe, lest we forget, he comes from that kind of Les Paul, Chet Atkins background, never pretends to do anything else. And I think that's what made, you know, I think when you get a special band, and I think, yes, we're a special band, Roxy Music equally, is when you get people from very different musical disciplines. And so Steve Howe is ostensibly in this pompous prog band. Actually, he's closer to Chet Atkins, he's closer to Les Paul than he is John McLaughlin at times. You know, I know he can go off at wild, almost Coltrane-esque tangents, but.
Speaker 1I think that's always the difference, isn't it, between a first-generation band and a second-generation band, is a first. But by. Yeah. What I mean by that is that the first generation of quote-unquote progressive rock bands never thought of themselves as progressive rock bands. There was no precedent. Exactly. So they were basically a bunch of creative musicians that came together and, whether by luck or judgment, somehow created this melting pot that just worked. Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, all come from different backgrounds. Yeah. And then the second generation of progressive rock bands are basically the bands that have listened to the first generation. So you get this kind of reduced palette of tropes that they've taken from this first generation band. And then the third generation, the fourth generation, eventually. Eventually, you end up with, you know, something that essentially is just a bunch of cliches and, of course, refutes the whole notion of progressive music.
Speaker 2Well, I think the thing is that we said before, you know, the whole sort of underground revolution in the late 60s, early 70s, they were defining themselves. They were discovering this music. And you can still hear it. You know, yes, 1977, they're still defining themselves, still finding themselves in fresh spaces. And you're right. It's partly because, you know, Hal might come from a country background, Anderson. At times, you can certainly hear the Beatlesque influence, but also classical and Motown. And then Wakeman brings in an entirely different set of influences. And it's a collision of quite interesting musicians at a particular point. And this album, I suppose, the closest comparison, because to a certain extent, they've reined themselves in from Relayer and Topographic, just to a certain extent. In the sense that Melody is stronger on this. And there's more of a pop element. But again, I don't feel it's a pop element that they brought in to hit the charts. It's because that's what they do. That's where they came from. They come from Beatles, The Association, Simon & Garfunkel. Bee Gees, yeah. Bee Gees, exactly. Totally, yeah. So it's a natural distillation of their tastes. And yeah, it's got several of my favourite tracks of theirs. And I suppose in some ways, it's a continuation of the Chris Squire. And John Anderson albums that preceded it about a year before, which I think, again, although they're both quite experimental, they were also both richly melodic recordings, slightly simpler than Relayer in some ways, slightly simpler than Topographic. And so I think this is a really, like Close to the Edge, which is my other favourite Yes album, it's a really, really nice fusion of the band at their most experimental and accessible.
Speaker 1I think what I like about Awaken on this record, and it's true also of the title track of Close to the Edge, is there actually is a beautiful rigour in the way the epic is structured. It is a series of themes that are explored, returned to. So it's almost like this pop sensibility in the sense that it's structured like a great pop song that returns to hooks and themes. And this is something I'm always disappointed with, with so-called, you know, modern or neo-progressive rock music. And I probably include myself among this. Some of my tracks also probably suffer. Some of my longer pieces suffer from the same thing, which is just a series of bits strung together to give the impression of some kind of conceptual rigour. And actually, when you listen to something like Awaken, you realise how beautifully structured that is. Yeah. The way that the climax of the piece comes with that kind of cycle of fifths, chord progression that's first introduced at the beginning of the song, the way the symmetry of the song, it begins with this ethereal section in which is reprised at the end. But obviously in a variation of the way it was in the first part of the song. and that structural rigor you hear in the very finest progressive music and you and i miss it in some of the poorer examples of the genre and i think yes we're always very good at that in fact they didn't always have it gates of delirium arguably is a more rambling it's just like a bunch of bits strung together and i think that's why it's it's definitely not at the same level as something like as you say close to the edge or awaken and it's you know by their standards actually it's quite tightly arranged as well it's 15 minutes as opposed to 21 or 22 minutes or whatever and then wonder stories as you say it's just a glorious piece of pop i mean it's off with the fairies yeah it's actually a beautiful piece of pop um and to have them on the same record and i think they're on the same side aren't they they're both
Speaker 2yeah and turn of the century as well i think it's got a similar feel in terms of that timelessness and spiritual quality that they seem to define very successfully i mean i think it's probably the last i mean i think the last unselfconscious and strong yes album in the sense is tomato although i realize that tomato is a mess it's a complete and utter disastrous mess but in a way that's creatively natural you can see that they're trying to find a way of expressing themselves and i think the failures make it compelling see i don't think it is
Speaker 1unselfconscious i think that's the first time you can hear yes are aware of how things have changed how the times have changed and they are responding to that um on that record i really like tomato i think it's a very underrated record i think we've talked about it on the show before i also love drama i think that for me is the last great yes record and i say that with the caveat that that actually 90125 is a brilliant reinvention of themselves as a pop band but i think that that's in a sense they have sacrificed some of their identity in order to achieve that uh that transition whereas i think drama they still sound quintessentially like yes it's a great record tomato is a mad record where i feel like they're flailing a bit and i like the fact that they're flailing a bit because it's kind of taking them into new directions yeah
Speaker 2it's a bit like i always compare that to queen's jazz album where queen's jazz on one level is supremely confident and supremely queen but on another they are trying so many different things simultaneously half of which do not work but it's fascinating because of that really you know they are messes and again i think queen were lucky that it had don't stop me now as the big hit from that album so it kind of rescued although that wasn't
Speaker 1actually the funny thing bicycle race as well yeah don't stop me now wasn't a big hit at the time it's funny it's become almost the i would say outside of bohemian rhapsody it's almost the most well-known queen song now because it's been it's been used in so many movies and it's one of those i mean queen were always great weren't they the slogan songs we are the champions we were rocky don't stop me they're great the sentiment is so adaptable yeah to so many different contexts at the time i remember don't stop me now was like a middling you know number 17 maybe it got to one week and then it was out of the church but it's funny it's become a classic but yes you're right that album is is um is all over the place stylistically anyway we're digressing we're coming we're coming back well this is
Speaker 2i think this is a this is a yes album that is really kind of focused and i guess the only thing that defines it 77 is the production is more spacious than it would have been a few years earlier it's kind of it's area more ethereal i think as a record even though it's got going for the one which is quite a gritty piece it's more ethereal
Speaker 1overall it's readier it's thinner it's got more use of reverb on it doesn't have that that sort of very upfront closeness that they had on things like the yes album fragile close to the edge but maybe it's a time thing you know at the time that would have sounded more contemporary it would have been the records from the early 70s that suddenly very yes sounded a bit old-fashioned but now when we listen to the difference i think the records from the early 70s have probably aged better than than this particular record it's a record that that um i would have liked to have been able to to do as part of the series of of remixes but no no tapes ever showed up for it unfortunately right
Speaker 2no that would be perfect for it and i think because again there's so much space in the arrangements in some of these tracks and then also of course when you have going for the one the title track yeah i think it's one of the the strongest records and it's unselfconscious and it's unashamedly them so always one of my favorites and it's as i say i discovered it wonder stories top of the pops and then i think a couple of older brothers of friends had the albums in their collections and it's that when you're looking at the sleeves and going for the one in particular had that kind of triple gatefold and you know when i was that kind of age these things seem quite mysterious quite miraculous quite unusual it's completely
Speaker 1off with the fairies in in exactly the way you want yes to be yes i personally i think yes are at their best when they are completely you know reaching for the stars um and i think that's why this is the lot as you maybe that's why you as you say this is the last classic yes album in the sense that every album after this you felt they were more aware and more self-conscious about perhaps what was going on around them yeah i mean i think
Speaker 2you're right nine to five actually is a very good album only of only heart is a justified classic rock classic but it feels to me like a producer's record it feels to me like an anr record it's brilliant but there's not much of the band in there as brilliant as it is and i think that they never really recovered i know that they tried to sort of rehabilitate aspects of close to the age topographic awakening and in their mid-90s work but it seems like a self-conscious attempt to do that thing yeah and i think anderson probably did do it though i think me personally i think a few of the things he did with vangelis those seemed like genuine improvisations into fresh territory so i think you know friends of mr carrie's got some great stuff short stories have got some great stuff and there's that very private collection yeah yeah that's a great album and what's interesting is that is completely fresh in terms of its electronic electropop terminology and technology um but it's 100 anderson away with the fairies as well you know that feels like a voyage of discovery in a sense talking of being away with the
Speaker 1fairies the enid airy fairy nonsense the music is it's it's rock music it's progressive rock music but it has pretensions of being serious classical music i think it defines the word flowery and yet i quite like it for the same reason that i like yes being unselfconsciously absurd uh and and reaching for the stars and ironically there's something a
Speaker 2bit punk about that attitude isn't there there is and they are an extraordinary band i mean very distinctive i suppose they're one of the last of the first wave of progressive bands that have got an instantly recognizable sound and there's something in it that i think is really important in it that's very cloying as well there's something about their sound the harmonies quite unique harmonies they've got the dynamics of an orchestra i suppose this is where the classical element comes in that whereas certain rock bands playing orchestral themes the enid at times actually are almost like an orchestra playing rock because they've got the dynamics well also there's an
Speaker 1orchestra we talked in the last episode about bands or artists that have no influence from jazz at all in their music yeah they're not they're not they're not they're not this band is completely it it's so drawn from the tradition of classical music as opposed to the traditions of black music or jazz music there is none so it's classical music and it's progressive rock isn't it basically
Speaker 2yeah and i think that had they emerged maybe three or four years earlier with this sound they'd have been more successful i think so they they were i mean i think it's testament to the music that they're still being talked about and these albums are still being reissued because an awful lot of progressive music during this period was poor or you know was you know we were in that era slightly before neo-prog but of people regurgitating ideas and it being fairly exhausted this was actually a fresh injection into the the genre even though you kind of feel that it should have been released in 73 74 really they sound
Speaker 1like nothing else they do sound like nothing else i mean it is if you step away from it and you kind of look at it look at the music objectively it is tasteless beyond belief but i love music sometimes that doesn't care about what is good taste or bad taste i mean this this idea of rocking the classics i mean has ever a more horrendous concept been conceived of than rocking up classical music and yet essentially that is what the enid are doing isn't it it is
Speaker 2but there's something about them which is also quite emotional so there's a kind of distinctive harmony and stephen stewart is a very distinctive guitarist as well it's the whole band it's not just robert john godfrey's compositions well francis licorice also so
Speaker 1the original life on this album actually francis licorice was more of a contributor than stephen stewart at this moment i think he wrote the song of fan which is a 18 minute piece that takes up the whole of one side of this record i mean this is a piece of you know unashamedly flowery airy fairy progressive rock in an era when that's probably not what people want or expect. But as you say, it has stood the test of time because it is is so out on its own and it has the courage of its convictions and i think that's the difference in a way that love beach by a mistaken bomber sorry to keep coming to back to that as a touchstone as a touchstone of everything that went wrong an officer and a gentleman's good no it really isn't a touchstone of everything that went wrong with progressive rock and because it's it seems like it hasn't even got the courage of its own convictions to me anyway yeah so let's move on to another album that somehow seems to have bucked the trend this this year a great record a first division progressive rock record at a time when people shouldn't have been making progressive rock records apparently or so so history tells us a farewell to kings by rush yeah um i think one of their their best records in fact probably the best record for me of the so-called progressive years not their best record i think moving pictures is their best record to come but yeah but of the sort of era when they were unashamedly making sword and sorcery influenced progressive rock or ayn rand influenced progressive rock whatever neil pett was writing about at the time this is the one for me uh from from the early years and i had the privilege to to remix it but there's something about it that also maybe it's something about the fact they were canadian it's much tauter and leaner and more rocking than the earlier generation of progressive rock bands yeah and that's kind of what gave rush their their identity this this very small guitar bass drums unit that had this very taut sound that at the same time it was quite epic it also rocked it really rocked in a way that progressive rock had not rocked before this i'm sure there's a there's probably an exception that proves the rule but for me rush are the ones that really mastered that thing you know of being able to rock and play and play and play and play and play and play and play these epics as well i
Speaker 2think you're right i mean i remember sid smith hearing this because he wasn't who generation who sid smith who that i see and he thought who is he you have to explain to our
Speaker 1listeners who sid smith who sid smith i know sid smith everybody knows
Speaker 2who sid smith is certainly sid smith knows who sid smith is sid smith might know who sid smith is sid smith is uh renowned renowned music journalist music commentator and also robert fripp king crimson biographer and so on thank you now we can go on and sid i think went to one of these album evenings where they were playing a farewell to kings and he wrote about it in his blog and just said well coming to it for me because he was somebody who was kind of a first generation progressive fan but then got into jazz and got into post-punk and experimental electronic music and he just said oh just sounded like every genesis cliche put together in different ways and i thought no no not at all and i just didn't see this because i think there's something quite fresh about it and it might be because they're canadian and isolated as you've pointed out but there's an energy intensity and hysteria to this music that you don't get in the british progressive bands um perhaps van der graaf maybe there's a kind of hysteria and energy well you know i i
Speaker 1sorry to interrupt i would say the closest precedent for me for rush and i think this is probably what was their perhaps their their biggest influence in some respects is when led zeppelin went as far as they did in the direction of progressive rock yeah on tracks like um in the lights on physical graffiti achilles last stand which kind of contemporary to what rush were doing here anyway 1970 the year before to me that's probably the closest comparison in the sense that this is a band that are kind of harnessing riffs that jimmy page might have played but in this context of these long epic tracks which have got progressive structures to them but no one rocks like them except perhaps zeppelin at their most progressive for me in that in that way yes
Speaker 2and i think it's interesting that both the bands in different ways had a huge influence on their music and i think it's interesting that both the bands in different ways had a huge influence on their music and i think it's interesting that both the bands in different ways and punk and grunge artists one thing i've said to you which i don't think you necessarily agreed with was that rush i think have got the intensity and hysteria and and rush if you like of a lot of punk music that friends i knew who like new wave and punk bands rush were one of the few rock bands or epic rock bands they'd listen to and like and i think partly it's if you explained there's a tautness there's a tightness they're even tighter than led zeppelin in terms of their sound it's a very raspy reedy rock sound and geddy lee's voice is not remotely pretty it's quite shrill and i think that in some ways it kind of communicated to the age in the way that animals does it's accidental entirely but i think they kind of sit where is awaken and fanned you know the enid yes they're as far away from year zero as possible they're so far away from year zero as possible that they're so far away from year zero as possible there's something in a farewell to kings that is at one with year zero it's that talk guitar bass drums trio and that squealing you know temples of syrinx in some ways it's a short no that's on 2112 i get it right error it wasn't an error i was going back you can't do 2112 it is as much of a short sharp shock as the ramones they rock i mean i think that's the
Speaker 1simple reality of the matter at the end of
Speaker 2cygnus x1 yeah it's
Speaker 1demented that's a bit vandagraphy isn't it yeah the harmony is very dissonant it's very vandagraphy but some of the riffs are are you know pure zep as well um
Speaker 2yeah i mean but zeppelin i think what's interesting with zeppelin is that when we do 1987 we find out that zeppelin i think continued to hold sway and have an influence because they were such a great basic rock band in an imaginative way and the who i'd put in that category as well of basic four-piece rock bands that do something so unique with the formula and so special and sound so wonderful with such a simple lineup but interesting both the who and the zeppelin were
Speaker 1kind of at a low point i agree yeah they i think they were having a little bit of crisis of confidence so rush in a way came in to fill that void it you know i mean being able to write a great sub three-minute pop song like close to the heart that's not something a lot of so-called quote-unquote progressive rock bands could have pulled off no but there is something more earthbound about them i mean if john anderson and yes sound like they are completely off with the fairies ditto the enid rush sounds somehow more tethered to earth despite the lyrical subject matter maybe it's the fact that geddy does sound you know you can kind of hear the president of robert plant uh maybe someone like roger chapman from family or the guy that david's dog david surkamp from from pavlos dog yeah there's there's a definitely present it's there's a similar thing there's a similar thing that i think it's a similar thing i think it's a similar thing i think it's a similar thing i think it's a similar thing i think it's a similar thing that if you didn't discover them when this is interesting what you're talking about sid if you didn't discover them when you're a teenager you'll never get it and i think kiss are another example of this kind of band i know a lot of people whose opinions i really respect who love kiss and it's because they fell in love with them as teenage boys right and i listen to kiss now and i don't quite understand the appeal and i think there's a similar thing that's going on in the going on with rush i did discover rush when i was a teenager and i still love them to this day if you play a farewell to kings and i think sid's reaction is a good example of this if you play rush to someone now a grown-up person i think they struggle to understand the appeal and i wonder if they are one of those bands that you have to discover as a teenager do you know what i mean
Speaker 2there are certain bands like that no i do know that um difficult to know because yeah like you i think i probably discovered it when i was 13 yeah i remember i did go to pro bradley records and try and buy did they let you buy it no they didn't let you buy it pete burns told me to fuck off and go to virgin instead a young lad like you you shouldn't be listening to this shit go to fucking virgin well he did the same but he did the same when i tried to buy teardrop explodes um only about a year later when i tried to buy i think it was treason said i mean early 1980 or late 79 the zoo records version and it was really reluctant to let me buy and there is a payoff to the story well that's because he probably him and joe and
Speaker 1julian hated each other didn't they well they
Speaker 2worked at the store at the same time but they might hate each other and i love treason what an amazing thing yeah and i remember trying to buy sort of rush and teardrop explodes and pete burns serving me and not with with teardrop explodes he let me have it rush he didn't let me have it and jeff davis who's the shop manager said you can't do that we're a shop right i'm not having any young lads it's not gonna listen to this shit
Speaker 1i think farewell to kings this is why i think this is where they got it just right in terms of their more quote as i say quote unquote progressive years this is where they got it the balance just right and i i would probably recommend this as a good this and moving pictures for me as well
Speaker 2that's it i think that out of all of those albums when i've listened back to them those are the two that i come back to and think are good farewell to kings moving pictures and the cover of um fell to kings as well which has that kind of slight echo of led zeppelin four as well where it's not quite what you think it's a really interesting sleeve but yeah the payoff with the pro plus was that um jeff davis who was trying to let me have the album the manager of the store um steve one will know the very first no man single ended up on pro plus records that's right so jeff actually put out some no man so the man that
Speaker 1refused or you know well yeah not technically it wasn't him but the man who store refused to sell you a copy of rush's hemispheres yeah ended up releasing your
Speaker 2first single ended up releasing the first single and that was funny because i went in and i said would anyone be interested in listening to a tape and they let me upstairs played it and they said yeah we'll release it how easy was that it was very easy that's 1990 can it sounds like something out of obviously you know like the brian epstein cellar full of noise it's like yes boys i'll release it it was like that i went with a demo tape played it said this is great do you want
Speaker 1to put it out the good old days right so let's i remember them let's move on to the next one so now this is a band i don't i know absolutely nothing about so i'm hoping you do because you put it on the list i'm assuming you do kansas point of no return now i have to say in my mind yeah i do speak from incredible ignorance here i will concede that up front i've always thought of of progressive rock as a very british thing in the sense that if you were going to put together a list of the top 10 progressive rock artists yeah you'd probably have eight english ones one canadian one and frank zapper as the token if even if you concede frank zapper was a progressive which i kind of think he was you know the other the all the other entrants in the and i'm i'm obviously i'm slightly discounting some of the german bands here because i don't think they really played that's there was a few bands in germany that did but the real first division progressive rock bands for me they almost all come from the uk so i have this blind spot i i always lump these bands like kansas sticks star castle um toto boston ario speedwagon i'm probably comparing bands here that have nothing in common but in my mind yeah they all seem to be around at the same time and and whenever i've heard them i found it difficult to tell you which one was saga uh i think they were canadian yeah well there was fm and saga were the canadian right bands so and i've not really and i've to be fair i've not really liked anything i've heard it always seems like a very watered down it sounds like they've listened to yes and genesis and then they've kind of filtered it through an fm rock yeah kind of sort of uh perspective and what's come out the other end it's got no appeal to me whatsoever is there anything that you want to disabuse me of in terms of that notion tim in relation to kansas and point of no return
Speaker 2it's it's a difficult thing here isn't it because
Speaker 1assuming you do know this record yeah it was a wikipedia albums really
Speaker 2tonight 77 kansas point of no return i'm going to write it down i wrote everything down on wikipedia because obviously all truth comes from there um i uh we did you know because in the shows we tend to edit this ruthlessly and there are a few areas there are quite a few areas that steven knows that i don't for example he is an industrial fan we'll come on to that later yeah i don't really know that much yeah and i tend to know more rock and roll country and even american fm rock than steven and uh we did do a whole section on fm rock that we edited out because i didn't feel i'd express myself particularly well what was the what was the band under discussion on that i think it's probably journey's escape album which i'm sure yes so they're another band
Speaker 1i put in this exactly i put this in i put them in this category um i
Speaker 2think it's probably journey's escape and sticks paradise theater albums that i was defending all that stuff yeah and we also did a marvelous bit on country music concept albums from the 70s johnny cash and william elson which i think are fantastic quite wayward releases by the bad boys of country but yeah i was kind of aware of this because a few people listen to it again it's more older brothers stuff than it was my generation stuff and some of it was interesting and you are right i think you capture it with bands like sticks and kansas they'd been clearly super powered by yes and genesis but they also had a kind of down-home rock and pop rock sensibility that you could almost associate with lynda you know lynda skinnard in a sense and point of no return is probably the band at their most text of this and left overture it's the album where they're the closest to that kind of bass pedal symphonic prog but they're still the big fm rock harmonies and so on and i guess sticks is equivalent of this was the grand illusion but sticks also had an extra influence from queen i think in the vocal harmonies it's never been particularly favorite music of mine but i'm aware of it do you own any
Speaker 1of it do you own any of these records do you like them do you listen
Speaker 2to them no i think i listen to them for research okay um and i have a couple of blue oyster cult albums if you count that well i
Speaker 1quite like the first four blue oyster cult albums i i like um but they don't fall into this cat this category for me because it's much darker i can hear the influence of stuff like sabbath um in blue oyster cult but but you're right there's probably a there's probably a crossover
Speaker 2isn't there yeah i think also i think that blue oyster cult you know they were close friends with the patty smith group and patty smith co-writes a couple of pieces yeah they and so on um they had the best song titles
Speaker 1ever as well what is that 18 screaming disbusters just the best song titles ever blue oyster cult
Speaker 2and a few glorious epics but what i think again about blue oyster why i suppose they appeal to me is you can still hear and this is maybe the link between them and patty smith group because the sound of let's say um you know specters and easter couldn't be further away from each other but what both bands have as roots is clearly a love of that kind of american psychedelia when the birds become a little yeah off color yeah don't fear
Speaker 1the reaper is the is the birds if the birds come out 10 years later that would have been there and i think that's it
Speaker 2you know there's a kind of bird that permeates patty smith and um blue oyster cult despite their very different sounds so no you know i kind of it's just some of the music i found um i could listen to it and a few of the albums i mean again kill roy was here the concept album from 1983 where they partly go electro pop sticks this is it's absurd and i quite like anything that is absurd in that sense that it's out of context paradise theater concept album about a cinema i quite like the idea of that or a theater you know it's kind of a building nice idea i can always
Speaker 1go for absurd now talking you mentioned him a moment a moment ago actually talking of absurd yeah utopia todd rundgren's utopia yeah raw um now we love todd on this show don't we we love todd we talked about i think we talked about on the very first episode we did one of the very first episodes and of course he produced
Speaker 2bat out of hell this year we've got to remember we'll come
Speaker 1on to that but we talked about his album a wizard of hell and we talked about his album a wizard of truth star as being one of the great sort of diy jack of all trades albums you know this is him with his band uh utopia now i did listen to this record as part of the research for this it's utterly ridiculous in a way that it's almost taking it's an early example of a band of an artist that is taking the blueprint and using that as the basis for something itself by which i mean that the influence on utopia was progressive rock bands where the influence on progressive rock bands was classical music jazz music you know whatever whatever r&b music this is an example this is what must be one of the first examples of a band that have been formed in the image of the progressive rock blueprint and what's interesting is being done by an established artist in his own right who has fallen away from the idea of progressive rock he's fallen in love with i don't know what he's falling in love with close to the edge or whatever and so i want to put a band together that's going to play this kind of music but takes it to an almost ludicrous extreme there's an something like an 18 minute epic on here called i forget what it's called it's the something glass harp and the sing circle yes yeah it's awful it's it just doesn't work at all for me and i love todd yeah i absolutely love todd and i would love to hear what i mean in a way you know i can hear the influence that the band has had on utopia that that kind of music has had on some of other todd's some of todd's other music where it's also him being todd as well and i kind of like that on albums like initiation but here he's trying to make almost a stereotypical at least on that side a stereotypical piece of conceptual progressive rock and for me it's as bad as all of the bad neo-prog bands that started to try and do that in the 80s and it just doesn't work and i think it's a really good idea to do that and i think it's a really good idea to do that and i think it's a really good idea to do that and i think it's a really good work at all what's your take on it tim totally agreed i mean
Speaker 2i really like a wizard of true star you know todd master amazing stuff you know um and this just goes off the rails really badly he was obsessed with close to the edge i think he still says it's one of the albums that completely blew his mind and you can see why it would blow a musician's mind even ian mcdonald it was interesting who was one of the more self-conscious intellectual enemy writers still felt close to the edge was it was a masterpiece and um and i'd sort of agree with that you know it's an instinctive bizarre piece of work but utopia's take on it is it's horrible to me it's kind of a weird thing to say but i think it's a really good idea to do that and i think it's a kind of the worst of Mahavishnu and the worst of Yes. It's got no heart. It's very clever. And this is the person who's written some gorgeous tender ballads and will do so again, you know, and how he embraces some of the new wave and electronic pop elements. I think he does some great stuff after this. But yeah, these, you know, this Utopia album, I just never got.
Speaker 1This is the only aspect of Todd that I don't like, which is ironic, you know, coming from me, who's someone that, you know, most people would consider that I came from the tradition of progressive rock. And I do, but maybe that's why I don't like this. I mean, I've just looked up the title of that song. It's 18 minutes long. It's called Singing, Sing Ring and the Glass Guitar, an Electrified Fairy Tale. And the Electrified Fairy Tale is in brackets.
Speaker 2Well, see, yeah, I would take, you know, Styx, Grand Illusion, Point of No Return, Kansas and Starcastle over this. Fair point. Fair enough. Starcastle are kind of interesting, though. Have you ever heard them?
Speaker 1I think I listened to one song. The popular wisdom, isn't it, is that they were sort of a sort of a watered down yes, wasn't it?
Speaker 2Well, it's not really even a watered down yes. Their first album from 76, which obviously came below, is hilarious because they have one influence and it's yes. OK. And they do it brilliant. It's a bit like Gibriath with David Bowie. Right. But what's also interesting with Gibriath and Starcastle is they're so yes, and they've obviously taken the harmonies, it's got a kind of a mid-70s, lush production, which anticipates going for the one. It's so yes. They anticipate areas yes go into. And I think Gibriath sometimes does as well, a bit with Bowie. There's something he takes Bowie so literally that actually anticipates a couple of moves. But yeah, so Starcastle, the first album, is 100% epic yes, in a way that's sort of entertaining, really, because it's so accurate. But it's not as heartless. You know, there's some lovely melodies. There's some. There's some crazy sequences in a way that, you know, Ra is kind of charmless for me. Thank you.
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