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Instrumentals.


grasbo
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For the last few days I have been listening to a lot of rock/prog/jazz rock instrumentals and most of them are long winded wank fests that would go down well if you had been smoking some left handed cigarettes.I even managed to sit through Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew straight(i’m off the grog at the moment).I followed that with YYZ.Now don’t get me wrong I love Bitches Brew and it is totally different music to Rush but I felt that YYZ said more to me than four sides of zoning out free form noodling.The Grateful Dead Dark Star then gave way to La Villa and immediately I sparked up.But even more technically more superior music like Dream Theater,The Aristocrats,Alan Holdsworth,etc,had me thinking Rush can put together an instrumental in four to five minutes and say it all and not in half an hour or more.Even La Villa at nine minutes never falters.I think Rush were masters at short structured succinct instrumentals.Btw I absolutely love Where’s my Thing and Limbo.
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For the last few days I have been listening to a lot of rock/prog/jazz rock instrumentals and most of them are long winded wank fests that would go down well if you had been smoking some left handed cigarettes.I even managed to sit through Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew straight(i’m off the grog at the moment).I followed that with YYZ.Now don’t get me wrong I love Bitches Brew and it is totally different music to Rush but I felt that YYZ said more to me than four sides of zoning out free form noodling.The Grateful Dead Dark Star then gave way to La Villa and immediately I sparked up.But even more technically more superior music like Dream Theater,The Aristocrats,Alan Holdsworth,etc,had me thinking Rush can put together an instrumental in four to five minutes and say it all and not in half an hour or more.Even La Villa at nine minutes never falters.I think Rush were masters at short structured succinct instrumentals.Btw I absolutely love Where’s my Thing and Limbo.

 

Um....yes. Pretty dang much. :)

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I never liked Limbo until I watched the Molson show. Now I like it.

 

Rush had a way with instrumentals. There's only one La Villa.

Yes the Molson show is great.
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Three shortish instrumentals by other artists that hold my interest without too much waffling.

LED Boots -Jeff Beck

Watermelon in Easter Hay-Zappa

Hoedown-ELP

Surfing With The Alien-Joe Satriani

Far Beyond The Sun-Yngwie Malmsteen

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Instrumentals can easily become pretentious junk. Same goes for extended solos. Edited by Principled Man
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Instrumentals can easily become pretentious junk. Same goes for extended solos.

Thats exactly what I was getting at.I liked how Rush made light of La Villa as an ‘an exercise in self indulgence’but somehow kept it listener friendly.
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I heard one on SXM last month 'Fanfare For The Common Man' by Emerson Lake & Palmer I liked

Elton John wrote some really good instrumentals too...the proggy Funeral For A Friend is the best of the bunch

On the long version of Fanfare it sounded like Emerson was murdering his keyboards(and no not with the daggers)
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Sorry to ruffle any feathers round these parts but I wasn't all that crazy about Rush's final instrumentals. Malignant Narcissism and Main Monkey came across to me like warmed over retreads of songs they either already did (Mal Nar is very YYZ like) or just were sort of phoning it in. Hope sounded like Alex recorded screwing around on an acoustic and it ended up on the album.Never cared much for Main Monkey because its too repetitive
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The comment about "pretentious junk" is why I could never get into guys like SRV, Satrianni, etc. Tremendous talents who could play guitar in their sleep 1000000 times better than any of us can no doubt about it but their music just sounds like overlong wankfests. Same reason I can't get into Dream Theater. Too many notes too fast by everyone. I like prog but a little goes a long way
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It took me a good while to get into Dream Theater.I used to believe what a journalist said about ELP and apply it to Dream Theater-“a tremendous waste of talent and electricity “But somehow the penny dropped and I love DT now.
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I heard one on SXM last month 'Fanfare For The Common Man' by Emerson Lake & Palmer I liked

Elton John wrote some really good instrumentals too...the proggy Funeral For A Friend is the best of the bunch

On the long version of Fanfare it sounded like Emerson was murdering his keyboards(and no not with the daggers)

 

It goes on too long and becomes distorted noise. I listen to the first half and then skip to the next song. That's my one beef with ELP. They don't know when to stop.

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