stoopid

I'd buy some CCR in surround if that were a thing. Otherwise I have their best of, and that's good enough for me. Great band, wish they lasted longer in their peak form/output.

Jeff was one a handful of guitarists I owned their recordings just because they were THAT GOOD. Clapton, Vai, and Eric Johnson being the others that immediately come to mind.

He was 78, that's a long life by any generation's standards.

BTW, the fix for #1 is a personal VPN. But those tend to slow your connection down. I don't use one and never have, and can't see why I ever would. 99% of the software I use and music I listen to is purchased. I'm not into movie or TV shows aside from what I buy on disc or watch on a streaming service every blue moon.

Honestly, I wish I didn't know why #1 was the case. ;)

Two points of correction. 1) Ask me how I know labels put up torrent traps, especially on new or very popular material, then notify all the ISPs of downloaders and the ISPs then have to send nastygrams to their customers. If you do it more than a couple times, your ISP is forced to freeze your account and you could have your service disconnected. 2) I wrote reviews for a smallish site for about a year, all the major progressive rock releases were available direct from the labels. We always respected the NDA and never shared our files (as far as I know, I certainly never did). Youtubers doing these reviews openly discuss how they get their material (from the labels), to maintain transparency and perceived objectivity. But note that the reviews are rarely published before release day, or a day specified by the label. Some labels know they have a good album coming out and want the reviews to generate presales. If there's a hush prior to release, that's a sign the album is going to stink. Again, most of the bands members of this forum listen to would not be releasing albums of fluff/filler, but it does happen. Piracy is definitely not as big an issue as the P2P peak in the 2000-2010 time frame, but all media makers are actively battling it to keep it stamped out as much as possible. The dark web also has outlets for pirated material, and that is of course harder for them to track people down. TV shows are probably the most pirated media right now, that's been true for a number of years. I don't disagree there's nuance to this topic, but I wasn't writing a dissertation on the subject or being paid to. Streaming changes the landscape, mostly just by reducing the demand as you suggest for pirated copies, but that doesn't mean it wasn't and isn't an ongoing concern and if the labels stopped actively combating piracy that it wouldn't flourish like it once did. And as they creep the pricing on streaming services upward, or increase exclusive deals where multiple services are needed to enjoy popular artists, and start pinching the average music listener too hard with the nickel and diming, you could see a drastic shift back to piracy as the cost benefits of streaming deteriorate or evaporate. The newest albums is the music most in demand, bookmark this discussion and come back in 5 years and tell me how wise I was to suggest prices for streaming services will go up exponentially in the coming years. As long as they control the flow of new music, who cares if you have 40 million old albums at the tips of our fingers. Streaming/subscriptions will only get worse, not better, in the coming years. It's tougher for them to name their price if piracy still exists.

I just happened to check and Amazon has the dual Bluray Empath on sale, I'm in. AND I get the MP3 download to enjoy while I wait. Amazon is tops for buying physical music in that regards. Got the last one shipped direct from Amazon too. lol

I agree, the album on a whole has been a slow grow but it's definitely gaining traction. The bonus material is super strong IMO, some fun stuff but also a few killer tracks. Admittedly I'm behind on going deeper on his albums. I own several, have several others as downloads, and have a hard time committing more time to diving deeper. Devin is an artist I respect a lot, but on any given album there's maybe a 50% love/meh factor song to song. Lightwork on a whole is probably more like 90/10 love/meh, so it's already ranking as one of my favorites. I really like Dark Matters. I don't even own Empath yet, a small bit of regret not getting the deluxe with the surround mix when it was still in stock everywhere and sometimes on sale.

Although there were many albums released in 2022 I didn't buy, there were several I did that objectively warrant some praise (two of them released earlier in 2022 and are still in heavy rotation* ): Tears For Fears - The Tipping Point* Porcupine Tree - Closure Continuation* Charlie Griffiths - Tiktaalika [this is newer to me as I didn't buy it when released in the Spring, but playing the crap out of it] Lonely Robot - A Model Life Big Wreck - 7.2 Honorable mentions: Death Cab For Cutie - Asphalt Meadows Devin Townsend - Lightwork Pink Floyd - Animals (remix, and surround) I did hear quite a few more albums and/or songs from albums and chose to not buy the material as a result of what I heard. It can certainly be argued, and has been by myself and others in the past, that one of the biggest reasons record labels fight so hard against piracy is to prevent 'previewing' new releases because they know half the time on mainstream artist releases that much of the music on the album is filler and they really focus on the one or two 'hit' tracks to sell the whole thing, or as more recent trends would suggest, just focus on the sale of that single song and don't bother with or promote 'albums'. While the ratio of shit songs to good ones on most of the albums WE (members of this forum) listen to is smaller than I'm describing above, it's still a thing as I discovered with say the new King's X album which was for me a song or two I could enjoy, a bunch I never care to hear again.

See that I rarely listen to mine, anyone want to buy it? lol $100 !!!

Based on what I found (I'm not an expert at using this site), it looks like the website hadn't been maintained possibly going back as far as 2004/2005. The later cached pages are blank or 'cannot be displayed'. Also, when I went back far enough to actually see the cached site as it was, there's indications it was written with a lot of Flash content which was deprecated a couple years ago when HTML5 became the standard and Adobe formally abandoned Flash. https://web.archive.org/web/20010401190444/http://www.myfavoriteheadache.com/ Someone was keeping the URL registered through 2022, but now I'm wondering if that was even the record company. That domain name might have been abandoned a long time ago and some bot might have picked it up along the way to redirect people to an advertising page or worse, some malware trap. The fact web.archive.org logs the site as vanishing in 2005 would hint that this was likely the case, and IMO makes more sense than the record company keeping it alive in a diminishing and unsecured state (Flash was known for having security vulnerabilities) for the trickle of copies still being sold after the first couples years of release.

Wayback might have the website cached/saved.

Usually the record label handles all this (their marketing arm), to keep things uniform across the several media outlets they have to manage for the album's sale. Major artists rarely have any interest and/or involvement in the day to day operations of anything. I'm sure the expiration being allowed is written in a contract somewhere. The max you can renew a website domain name is 10 years, so it's likely there was an initial two years then 2 ten year renewals. If the contract is done, it's possible Geddy could bring this in house but I fail to see why he would do that unless he was thinking about making another solo album. At his age and time since last original music, I'd think the followup would have happened by now.

Finally bit on the deluxe set with the Bluray, it's going to be a bit until the Bluray arrives but I got a free MP3 download with the purchase. I didn't buy Empath but did hear some of the tracks from it, and in comparison this mostly a 'Devy-light' release with brief moments of heavier devy. I do like a couple of the tracks after just a single listen, there's more focus on melodic elements from what I typically expect on his albums. It's earned at least a few more listens and I'd recommend it.

It good to see album art that isn't some lazy 3D CAD thing or stock photo.

Just checked, an hour after you posted it dipped to $0.73 then turned negative (yes, the owner pays YOU to take it off their hands). Digital contagion dontcha know.

New single from the next album, set to release March 2023.

Hour+ went by quick. I related on every level with SW's journey and approach. From the parents with a wide variety of musical tastes influencing my genre-sweeping approach to music creation, to not being a scientist in the craft of engineering and mixing (but still able to accomplish what sounds good, which is ultimately the goal of the entire art), to making music that is so varied it seems to be an inherent roadblock to gaining and maintaining fans. The other points about how single songs are driving music appreciation more than ever, leaving artists in something of a bind as far as getting fan support and recognition, are spot on as well. Rick's youtube channel is so well respected now it seems like a defacto safe place for artists to come on and get open about things. Not that SW has been particularly shy about how he feels, but he seemed more open and relaxed in this interview than I recall ever seeing. He also just might be getting better at it with time, he's only in the past 20 years really had enough notoriety to do interviews with any regularity.

It's on my radar, almost bit on a deluxe edition on sale for cyber monday. Probably wait for some similar deal at some point to get just the cd/bluray bundle.

Most Metallica album art has sucked since the black album. I rarely listen to any of their newer albums. I've become a "old Metallica = good Metallica" type codger. In a vacuum, independent of them having ever recorded anything else, it's fine.

Still plugging away at new music. Make Believe

They're both very different albums, which probably explains how they work well as a tandem since they bring different skillsets/interests to the table. My understanding is the Haken album is done and working its way through all the behind the scenes hurtles to our ears. Probably more like early/mid 2023 at worse.

Tiktalika has been coming up a lot in my youtube feed, and I've been tempted to start clicking on the tracks... and now I own the album. It's a really solid, and heavy, effort. New Haken is on the horizon too.

New O.R.k album drops today. Have my amazon mp3s and it's good, worth checking out. https://ork.lnk.to/Screamnasium https://www.amazon.com/Screamnasium-R-K/dp/B0B94GR817

I was reading your post and going to reply, then you said what I was going to at the very end - probably less profitable shows in Florida for whatever reasons (greedy venues, promoters, etc). I think it's a similar issue here in Vegas (*). I enjoyed looking at all the various 'other bands' t-shirts. I wore one of my few band tees (Big Wreck), did not have anyone acknowledge it which is a tiny bit of a disappointment, certainly the diversity evident in the other band shirts in attendance indicated the musical stew represented at a PT show. I did get to see someone wearing my only other band tee (Haken), which seemed very apropos. Fewer Rush and King Crimson shirts but then again, the merch line was insanely long and for all I know the diehards were stuck there while I casually made my way to my seat. Anyway, that's my takeaway. Great show, good selection of shirts. lol The person I went with and stayed at (making the trip a more enjoyable weekend visit like you did with the plane trip, except I only had to drive 4 hours) is my best friend, so anytime I want to see shows it's likely fine for me to do the same in the future. There's obviously a lot of opportunities here in Vegas, but as with PT and Haken and Big Wreck, many bands I like don't bother with Vegas (*) as they're not the kind of music that sells tickets here on distraction alley. It was a good test of future possible concert goings. But my main goal was to check PT off my list of bands I felt like I should see if they're ever touring again. King Crimson might be on that list, but if I'm being honest PT have probably spent more time in my ears.