Hi,
I, honestly, do not have any suggestions ... I kinda look at the different shows as different anything, although I've jokingly named one show "King Crimson Two", and another "Guitar Chops Ten", and then ... "Progressive Thoughts about a Non Existent Past".
But there are some very subtle things that should be studied. Just recently I was checking out one of Guy's shows from 2019 and he played something between 2 other things. And you know the interesting thing was that the middle piece was from the PFM album that first brought on Bernardo Lanzetti, and all of a sudden, the first thing that went through my head was ... where's that from? (Wasn't Paper Charms) ... and it sounded really nice and very enjoyable. When that album came out, everyone disliked it ... and Bernardo's voice was not appreciated, specially as he had brought along a really fine Acqua Fragile in two very fine albums. And still today, many dislike "Chocolate Kings" ... and I kinda thought that when played on its own, away from what we "know", all of a sudden, it sounded great and better than we thought.
It's something that pretty much shows how important it is for the stuff that you work on/with be well selected, so they are not quite the same sound or style, so the "difference" is more notable, specially for something considered "progressive", or "prog". I think my rejection of some of the other shows is more about the fact that too much of the stuff is so similar, and sometimes sound the same ... and that takes the thrill of enjoying those shows for me ... thus, even playing something from 1971 or 1972 (for example) is quite OK ... but I would not play the stuff that most play ... or the "hits" (so to speak).
My old show was an hour, or two, and a few times more than that for some bands, about ONE BAND and the surprise is that I got a lot of comments from the artists, themselves. The "Man Band" was a great example (2 and a half hours). The "Hawkwind" show was another (2 hours plus). Caravan (2 hours plus). Gong was 2 hours plus. And in those days I had to upload the shows to our Unix box at the ISP, and the surprise was that the average listener on that Real Audio (25 feeds), was nearly 30 minutes, meaning that folks had ears for a lot of the stuff. An ECM show, had the most listeners and amount of time.
I might return and do something like that again ... though I think that many folks today, will want some more modern stuff ... and I certainly will have that ... but a lot of things can still be done in longer time slots, that give some new folks a lot of a chance to glow.
It's just too many ideas floating through my noodles and I'm not sure I even feel like putting them all together ... sometimes, I get disappointed and frustrated with the listening state of things and the non stop top ten thing in various places all over the Internet ... something that I don't think fits "progressive music", but then, I'm considered the dinosaur ... and then some ... but at 73, what do you expect?
------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com
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