Wish You Were Here has overtaken Thick As A Brick

Guy Guden of Space Pirate Radio will tell you a similar story ... and how folks at the station would find the stupidest of thoughts and ideas to play down Guy's choices and obvious different talent in choices of music. And one example, to give you an idea of how stupid things can be, Guy was playing Golden Earring (Are You Receiving Me?) and the other DJ thought he was cool in getting over it on the microphone and say ... it's not rock'n'roll! ... to which Guy slowed the record to a stop ( a la PF in the movie) and said out loud ... who cares? It's GREAT MUSIC ... and re-started the record and finished it!

Likewise, was the self-fulfilling prophecy that if it wasn't in the record stores, it was not worth buying ... well, I wanted to ask you ... how could you hear it if it wasn't there? And no one in Santa Barbara or LA (including Tower in those days!) was going to answer that one ... because it wasn't there, so that another person would go ... anyone know what this is about?

But, you never saw ... Moby Disk ... in Van Nuys and a place that was all imports, all of the time, and the folks that went in there, would immediately ask ... you got the new Banco? You got the new Triana? ... and now and then you looked at the ceiling and laughed ... and cried in the same breath. 

It's the idea that if you don't know or see it, it can't exist ... and we, here, need to fight that ... because a lot of folks are believing in the "hit songs" simply as a validation of their enjoyment, because there is not a whole lot of discussion as to why they like it ... or they say it in such a way as to make it look like they know something about the numbers that makes them more intelligent than everyone else, and there for "more correct" than anyone else ... lest you find that your "numbers" and "likes" are imaginary ... and you have to redefine your self.

richardh wrote: ... My take on the whole thing is that there was only a short space of time in history when the stars lined up an everything was in place for free artistic expression. As we readily know the record companies don't want this. The music industry doesn't want this. The corporate idiots don't want it. It was nearly dead even on the early seventies launch pad and it didn't take long to crush it. ...

What we don't see, is how the media, and even things like Melody Maker and Rolling Stone, spent so much time and effort trying to kill all that music, all of a sudden to become fans of it ... and this was the case of GENESIS, when MM really only became a "fan" when PG left ... and PG became a song maker which for them was perfect, and GENESIS was not as good, but went on to eclipse everything and everyone else around them!

In 1972, long cuts were fine, and FM radio was still independent ... in the West Coast here in America ... and that meant that the different personalities played whatever they wanted ... so in some places you really got some off the wall mixes, but it made radio fun to listen to and in pure STEREO, it made a huge difference, when most people did not even have a "stereo" little radio to listen to at the beach! The music was more interesting and Black Sabbath sounded awesome on FM Radio and like total crap in the AM Radio ... if they ever considered any of it a "hit" ... which gladly they didn't, or they would have killed the band by the quality of the sound!

By 1976, with the huge bruhaha of DSOTM ... things were already changing ... FM Radio was now becoming a sort of memory lane for the better known hits ... and thus the line up, for example, for one hour in Santa Barbara might be ... LZ, Who, Lola (Kinks -- no one ever listened to anything else!!!), PF, Moodies, Willie Nelson, Lou Reed, Doors, JA/JS, Terrapin Station (GD), Steve Miller, Boz Scaggs, BS ... all of the material that you "knew", and they rarely played odd ball stuff DURING THE DAY because they did not wish to lose the number one audience. Already, the idea that no new music could be played was being asserted, and later made it very difficult to play anything else, without the station's "approved" song to be on the air.

richardh wrote: ... but I still believe a song can be a beautiful creative thing. I am puzzled a little by your attitude towards songs. I mean I know you love Kate Bush like me and she is almost exclusively about songs. What am I missing?

The issue itself is not "songs" .... it's more about the attitude towards "songs" and them creating an atmosphere that permeated the board, that makes it seem like this is what "PROGRESSIVE MUSIC" is all about, which, of course, is not true.

Kate Bush, btw, might not be good example that you want to use these days ... specially when her last album was almost a complete "anti-song" bunch of pieces ... that just flowed and they were not run by a beat or a "theme" ... they just flowed continually, and even listening to Steve Gadd, "un-drum" in a couple of places, is just such a treat ... that a piece of music could fit his touch ... it reminded me of the first 2 albums by Rickie Lee Jones, when he did almost the same thing ... and made the albums so special. Try explaining that drumming to a drummer! It's a dead end! The worst thing drummers never learn is when not to do anything ... even Bill Bruford states that!

I kinda look at Kate Bush as probably being done with "songs", and it would not surprise me if she does something which comes off like songs, and instead is really just a long piece of music, in various parts. For me, a lot of KB was about how she felt and how she described her feelings, and did not really have a stronger connection to "music" than it did "poetry", and her style of delivery ... thus, for me, she is very different and probably one of the best women artists out there ... putting together something like she did in that last album is not something that musically we usually accord to women at all ... and reducing it to songs, for me, is kinda sad ... because they are much more than just that! Just close your eyes when listening to it at midnight, outside under the moon! Play it loud so you can hear the touches and details!

All you have to do, is listen to Rachel Flowers play TARKUS on the piano (she also does other pieces and material by Keith) ... to realize what a superb and magnificent piano concerto that piece is ... however for the time and place, it took the form of ELP.

And there are many others out there that have done "serious" work. Many trash Frank Zappa (including academia), but he did more work with orchestras in Europe that we even care to accord a lot of rock folks ... not to mention that 200 Motels done at UCLA with that choir is an incredible piece ... very modern by classical standards, but adding all the fun parts the things that a choir would want to do for music that can be so stuffy that you want to leave the room! Darryl Way, Jan Garbarek, Keith Jarrett, Francis Monkman, Eberhard Schoenner, Jean Michel Jarre, Riuichi Sakamoto, and many others in Europe ... and the list goes on ... by folks that will end up in the listing of "classical" because of the amount of work they did.

My words kinda suggest that our own folks, sometimes even here, can not "see" what a classical music piece is ... and how it stands up against 300 or 400 years of music ... and many of the classical folks in academia (sorry about the generic term!) will no doubt say that TARKUS is not that great compared to Satie! Nothing like Eggs and Melons on the same breadth.

My own dad had 3K LP's of classical music ... over 600 years worth of history there.... and even for him, it took the better part of 5 years for him to listen to Debussy done by Tomita ... but he thought (originally) that W. Carlos was "interesting", which is the academic way of saying ... I won't bother with it! 

That's like saying that the original synthesizer was not an instrument, therefore music could not be done on it! And hundreds of pioneers have shown that academia is wrong on that account!