Wed 6 May, 2009
Found this posted on http://demonkid666.blogspot.com/ a blog I follow. It is a clip (from you tube) of Edward James Olmos speaking at the United Nations
There are of course deeper issues to what was being talked about at the UN that day but I liked the sentiment.
Mon 5 Jan, 2009
I got around to watching “Prog Rock Britannia: An Observation in Three Movements” last night (thank goodness for recording technology!). It was thoroughly entertaining. I was really surprised though that there wasn’t a lot about Pink Floyd and I may be wrong, but no mention of Van der Graaf Generator and Peter Hammill. Maybe the intention was to focus on the more successful bands?
It would have been nice to have a passing mention at least on the non British bands that were around at the time, and modern bands that are carrying the prog flag as it were.
It also bemused me more than a little that as part of the Prog rock “season” that the Genesis concert shown was from their least proggy phase.
Mon 15 Dec, 2008
I was more than pleased to see, as I was looking through the Radio Times Christmas edition that BBC4 are going to be showing a series called Prog Rock Britannia. Prog has been a long standing passion of mine and the Folk Britannia series was excellent. I learned a lot about british folk music from it and discovered Davy Graham (there is a also a clip on Youtube of the Folk Britannia bit about Davy) for the first time and had to come to terms with just how much folk music I really did like.
Prog or Progressive rock as it is fully named, is an odd one though. People cringe at the very name. I’ve even heard it said that Punk was a direct reaction to its excesses.
I remember in my early teens hearing prog and related bands for the first time. I wasn’t “into” music that much at the time, didn’t have any records as such, and only really listened to the chart music of the time, which thankfully did contain a few gems as Punk was just rearing its spiky little head. A friend had an older brother whose record collection was huge and full of the cream of early seventies rock. It was an education from which grew an eclectic love of music.