Prog Trading Cards

Epignosis wrote: My holdings: The Revealing Science of God Bringing it Back Clear Days Apercu Death of Mother Nature Suite Vermicide At the End of the Day Chris Squire Robby Steinhardt To Be Over The Sound of Muzak Mike Rutherford My Ashes On the Other Side Angels Have Fallen Stay Out of Trouble Tarkus Mellotron Scratch

Epignosis wrote: MovingPictures07 wrote: http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=189549 Expect heaps of hate mail soon. And do entertain us.

Hate mail #1

'Rambling piece of absolute nonsense.'

'Your collection can definitely go without the unnecessarily dramatic vocals of Hammill, the lackluster songwriting, and the uninteresting instrumentation.'

'It comes across as overly emotional and bland to me.' ?!

'though this is again the best track lyrically in that regard (that doesn't say much, however)' ?!

The point... you have missed it

The thing about Van Der Graaf Generator, especially Pawn Hearts and Still Life, is that you have to put something in to get something out. You need to involve yourself with all the little subtleties in the music to enjoy it that much, and I guess you need to feel an emotional link to the pieces to even start doing that. I mean, I can appreciate that they're not for everyone, but that album is extremely clever if you do look at how it achieves its aims. It does everything it wants to do. Probably my eighth or ninth favourite album.

On the production: I think it's meant to create an atmosphere, and to help them express emotional ideas such as confusion or fear, which would be completely undermined by very clean production... Again, not remotely conventional, but that's the fun of it. Fair enough if that's a particular gripe of yours, but I'm fairly confident there really is a reason for what the band are doing throughout that album. If you don't like it, fine, but it really is a lot more than just 'rambling'.

Anyway, I'll try not to be too argumentative here, it's a nice thread... guess I have pretty much the reverse syndrome about some classic Rush (lots of Moving Pictures and Hemispheres, in particular... not emotional/emotive enough for me, lyrically messy, and not doing a lot of the whole 'expression' thing, which is basically what I listen to music for). It's mostly about tastes.

Oh, and, good job on the CTTE review It remains pretty much the definitive prog album for a reason, even if there are three or four I'm slightly fonder of.


Edited by TGM: Orb - November 17 2008 at 14:44

Machine Head

PS - now you know how us Rush fans feel, Rob . Although you didn't give Moving Pictures a 1...


yeah, I disagree with you harshly David, but it's your opinion, so whatever

King By-Tor wrote: Machine Head PS - now you know how us Rush fans feel, Rob . Although you didn't give Moving Pictures a 1... yeah, I disagree with you harshly David, but it's your opinion, so whatever

Hey, hey, it was a low 3... that's not too cruel, and I came up with arguments for it and everything Would probably have been a 2 if I wasn't so fond of Vital Signs. I like Rush when they're clever, emotional, enigmatic or expressive...  on that album, I think they flick on and off between achieving those. And it has The Camera Eye, which I've never been a big fan of, for some reason.

(oh, and Hemispheres, but you'd probably forgive me if you realised how much I liked the original Cygnus X-I)

Rob, you lilke Vital Signs, have you tried the band's Signals album? Imagine an album of Vital Signs-like songs...

che-ch-ch-ch-che-ch-check it out
Digital Man


I still have about a 100 or so albums on my 'to-get' list, but I'm a little strapped for cash at the moment. Revisiting all my other albums has been superfun though!

Rob, Have you heard Discipline/Matthew Parmenter?  Matthew Parmenter is a big fan of Peter Hammill's and at last night's gig, he out-Hammilled Hammill at times.  He definitely includes the emotions in his singing.

TGM: Orb wrote: birdwithteeth11 wrote: Also feel free to hit me up for this later on, if I don't get dragged to the gallows first. http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=189563 Dear lord... that's the second best album ever made. I’ve tried and tried and tried with Hammill and his little group so many times that I’ve lost count, and whenever I listen to them, they come off as either dragging their music out way too much or trying to be as emotional as possible, but not really taking it anywhere in developing songs. How so many people think these guys were major developers in progressive rock, I don’t know. I find them to be anything but that. Hammill could actually be a good vocalist if he wasn’t going back and forth in between barely comprehensible whispering and shrilling his lungs out. He’d make a fairly decent vocalist in a metal band for certain, or even an emo band, and it works here with the music, but the music isn’t of very high quality anyway. Except for Killer, the rest of the tracks are absolute chaos. And even still, Killer doesn’t reach mediocrity. To me, the ideas take way too long to develop or they try to develop them and then they end up going off to nowhere. This is a band that prefers to ride off of emotional highs (drug-inspired or otherwise) rather than work on trying to be competent instrumentalists, something that many other musicians I feel are much better at doing anyway. If Hammill knew just to tone down his vocals a bit instead of trying to be highly emotional, and the band developed these songs at least some, this would be an enjoyable album. I know some prog fans would want to drag me off to the gallows for saying such things, but I need music that actually takes ideas and sees how far it can run with them. For this album, the main idea is going for mediocrity, and failing at even that. I’m sorry, but I can’t give this album anything other than 1 star. If you never listen to VDGG, consider yourself lucky. I swear we're listening to different albums. Hugh Banton, in particular, is a fantastic instrumentalist, and anyone who says otherwise had better provide me a better example of incorporating an organ fully into a rock group. Hammill's range of vocals is done for a purpose. i.e. to express the emotions in the songs. Of course he's trying to be highly emotional... he is highly emotional... he's expressing emotional ideas. That's simply his style. *takes aspirin* Anyway, not really trying to change anyone's opinions here. I think people just need to appreciate that Van Der Graaf Generator are a band based mostly on emotion and finding new ways to express things. In the process, they have done things with rock music that really are too individual and organic to copy. I can understand why you don't like them, but if you think they weren't one of the progressive pioneers... listen to Killer... there is nothing in that song that I've heard elsewhere, and certainly I don't know anything like that pre 1970... *rambling over* Sorry, I'm a bit emotionally attached to that band edit: anyway, to sum up in a couple of sentences what I've been trying to say in the last two posts: Please take a look at what a band is trying to achieve, how they try to achieve it, and how successful that is, rather than simply whether they do what you like before you call it rambling or aimless or not running with ideas or whatever. Sure, whatever you or I say might be extrapolation, and you have every right to not like something even when it does exactly what it means to, but it just might get you to like an album a teensy bit more, or to at least understand a bit better why you like some of the music you do like if you look at what it's trying to do.

Actually to be honest, H to He is the worst of the classic VDGG albums for my tastes. I'll review some more VDGG eventually, but I won't be giving any more of their albums 1 stars. I know I could probably suck it up and give Godbluff a 4 however...

Epignosis wrote: moreitsythanyou wrote: Epignosis wrote: My holdings: The Revealing Science of God Bringing it Back Clear Days Apercu Death of Mother Nature Suite Vermicide At the End of the Day Chris Squire Robby Steinhardt To Be Over The Sound of Muzak Mike Rutherford My Ashes On the Other Side Angels Have Fallen Stay Out of Trouble Tarkus Mellotron Scratch Things I have an interest in in Bold Could we possibly work out a deal for Rick Wakeman?

Epignosis wrote: I know, I know, I owe a lot of people cards.  You card whores.   How do you like that my Internet connection and cable connection got disconnected even though I paid the bill? I was on the phone with the company, and he sorted it out.  I agree to take his 5 question survey using our touchtone phone (which for some reason was still working even though the cable and Internet weren't).  Midway through, the phone got disconnected too.  "But now I'm back again, and babe it's gonna work out fine." I'll dish out cards in about an hour or so.  There's some things I'm in the middle of right now.

Hm. That don't sound too fun.