cygnify

3 updates to my 2022 concert plans: Paul McCartney - May 28 Orlando The Aristocrats - July 21 Orlando Porcupine Tree - September 30 Los Angeles

I'm in for LA! Which feels very strange for me because I'm from the Northeast - but my friend that introduced me to PT is dead set on LA (and for a good reason... more on that later ;-) )

I'm surprised there isn't a thread; I know I've made numerous Marillion comments over the years here... Love the Fish era. Do not like the Hogarth era at all. I made an honest effort; It didn't take. I actually went to see Marillion just a couple years back - got to meet Ian Mosely outside the venue, and was happy to discuss some of the drum parts from Misplaced Childhood and Clutching. Nice guy. Unfortunately, I was bored to death at the show. I really can't find much at all that I like about their current direction, which always amazed me - considering how much I loved their first 4 albums (and the great live album - La Gazza Ladra!!) Other than the huge change with Fish's departure and the new singer, I feel that musically they made a big effort to distance themselves from their early prog influences. One criticism I've read of the early (probably on Prog Archives) is that they were so derivative of Genesis (and maybe a couple other classic prog bands.) While it may be true that they wore their influences on their sleeves, it was that sort of adventurous writing, playing, and the brilliance of Fish's lyrics and concept that made the magic. From day one with Hogarth, I just felt the magic was gone. The music writing, arrangement, and playing was all fairly bland and often predictable. All great musicians, I just didn't dig their direction and they never caught my interest again.

It's almost criminal not to include the EPs - especially Jar of Flies (while it is short is a significant work and stands on it's own!!) Sap is also cool. For me, Dirt was the album that made them a real original band and I would give top nod to. As for the new albums - while I felt Ranier Fog was a little "meh" and Black Gives way a little inconsistent, I really liked The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here!! Easily my favorite of the new ones; Hollow and Stone are just mammoth grooves. Perhaps it got a little more experimental, but I dig it.

RIP

I hope for your kids' sakes they don't do Suck My Kiss. No one in the crowd says kiss... Ha! I'm sure my kids (in High School) have heard alot worse!! Don't forget, this is the generation that grew up with "WAP" among dozens of others... lol

Love it; can't wait to see it - it's been a long time coming! One of my very favorite bands (saw them 3 times last year!)

I like it! So looking forward to this album! I have tickets to see them in Orlando later this year... taking my kids!

I believe it's for sale on Modern Drummer.com. It was part of the 2020 MD Festival - A Tribute to Neil. It was an online "festival" and they sold tickets that allowed for viewing throughout the year

I saw this cool video today with my favorite living drummer, Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree, King Crimson, The Pineapple Thief) - along with the editor of Modern Drummer magazine (David Frangioni) and some guy from Audioholics. At about 28:12 he describes meeting Neil around 2003; apparently Neil actually e-mailed him (got his email from Praetorian - good job!) It's neat to hear about how they met up and had lunch and hung out in Neil's man-cave. I wish Neil had done the duet with Gavin that they describe (he turned it down as it made him too anxious; I believe this is the duet that Simon Phillips ended up doing with him.) Anyway, enjoy!

Yeah, he did a great job with it! Very cool how they stitched all the songs together (he played it in one take!) He chose mostly groove portions of the songs - of course, if he just did all the crazy fills, it would be just one big drum solo! As a drummer, I know what was most challenging about what he did was getting all the subtle tempo changes down. He did a super job of this - everything sounded smooth. Really enjoyed it!

that was really cool!! Excellent job - especially considering all the subtle tempo variations! (he did it in one take!)

Wow - great collection. Brought me to tears... (probably won't be the last time today.) Thank you for sharing.

Also - waiting for Porcupine Tree to announce US dates; I'm hoping to do a couple of those shows!

My wife surprised me for Christmas with tickets to see Roger Waters! So far, my tickets in-hand for 2022 (all Orlando, FL shows); 1.) Tool (they were the last band I saw pre-covid in Feb 2020; up until I saw King Crimson 3 times, Primus and Jason Bonham in 2021.) 2.) Steve Hackett - I bought tickets for this in November 2019! Postponed twice and, ironically, I ended up taking lessons with his drummer (Craig Blundell) throughout the pandemic. Looking forward to seeing him in person! 3.) The Pineapple Thief - one week after Craig, I get Gavin Harrison! 4.) Roger Waters - my surprise Xmas gift 5.) Red Hot Chili Peppers - this is probably the one band that my whole family can agree on - and so, we all go!

I still feel it. My drumming hero since ~1982. THE reason I picked up the sticks and got serious - and he was THE inspiration that kept me playing for ~40 years now.... Every gig I play, I think of him. Lots of drummers have influenced me, Neil was much more than that. I have experienced a fair amount of death in my life - I've lost both of my parents, my grandparents, several beloved aunts and uncles, and some very close friends. Although I never met Neil - the closest I got were treasured postcards he sent to me (via Modern Drummer magazine), a pair of sticks Larry Allen gave me, and a couple friends that worked with him professionally - his passing did indeed affect me as though I had lost a friend. I have lost other musical inspirations - Chris Squire, John Wetton, Greg Lake, and, more recently, EVH, among others - but Neil was so much more than just a drummer I liked, or a musical inspiration, or a lyricist I liked, or someone I travelled to see in concert (49 times!), someone whose art I shared with basically every friend of my teen and adult life, etc. I suppose it started as a form of obsession in my young teen mind - wanting to play like him, to look like him, maybe even to think like him (Lol), but as I grew-up, I understood my own thinking and my own musical style and where it was similar or differed from his. I found a different relation to him as my life moved through various phases - but always my #1 drumming inspiration and Rush's music continued to feed me spiritually. I had accepted the end of Rush (as I think Neil so clearly and thoroughly explained in his last book, Far and Wide) and I have come to accept the passing of all those that meant so much to me in my life. Still, there is something so unfair and cosmically unjust about the way the Neil went down - after being "reborn" after all his personal tragedies, getting so little time to share with his loved-ones in retirement, and so soon after making that enormous life-changing event of leaving his love/hate relationship with being a professional musician, and it all being due to f***ing brain cancer - for a man so cerebral and vibrant. Really, just brutal. My mother passed away young, and due to cancer - and many of the same feelings that I have struggled with for 30+ years since her passing reverberated with Neil's. So, yeah, I still feel it.

It's spelled Gilmour

Another thought I had after watching this and reading various opinions and history - obviously, the band were in a state of dysfunction for multiple reasons and everyone knows that the break-up was imminent. But that is also very hard to reconcile with the fact that they wrote, recorded, and released "Abbey Road" (among their most definitive works) in the months that followed the "Get Back" studio sessions. While various aspects of Abbey Road were individual efforts, they were still collaborating - and at a very high level. (Even if John was just tolerating Paul's "Granny music", and Paul dismissing John's "Acid trip set to music" lol) I think most people that did not live through that era or that searched out the timeline after seeing "Get Back" might miss that the taping preceded the whole "Abbey Road" chapter. For example, my wife's impression was that "Get Back" was the story of The Beatles 'last album' - technically correct, and it was presented as such in the advertising, but they hadn't even written (at least partially as some AR racks are shown in the film in rough form), recorded, or released freakin' Abbey Road yet!!

Cygnify - I feel like as drummers we need to discuss Ringo's drum sound in Get Back! His bass drum was so great sounding to me...and really the whole kit was just perfect in the mix. When the band was at Apple studio and they were hitting their groove with I Got A Feeling, Dig A Pony and Get Back I was thinking, man, drums can't sound better than this. They were very groovy sounding; I always liked Ringo's tea towel / muted sounds. It suited what they were doing so perfectly!

Part 3 of Get Back (prior to that The Pineapple Thief "Nothing But the Truth")

I loved watching this (thankfully, my son has a D+ ID/PW from a friend of a friend of a friend... lol) My wife really enjoyed it too - though she pointed out to me that it is probably more for diehard fans & musicians (fortunately, I am both!) Sure, it is long and lots of goofing and noodling, but it is an honest depiction of the creative process. I think it is important that PJ left all that meandering in there; it was the reality of those sessions. The amount of creative juice that was still pouring out of these guys was amazing (as dysfunctional as they were at the end...) There is a scene in the first episode where the management/label is discussing/pushing/arguing with John, Ringo, etc about the potential show in Libya and set design and Paul is off in the background on the piano - some chords start to fit together, some basic words are sung... I'm sure he had some of it already floating around his head, but it was like watching child birth... of "Let it Be" (!!) It is also remarkable the seismic shifts in energy that happen across the 3 episodes. Paul certainly was holding everything together in E1. Clearly George was not into it - and John wasn't either (I think on an acid binge for at least one of those nights... his discussion with Peter Sellers was like way out there! Lol!) However, when they moved back to Apple, John seemed to come back to life - once again creative and into it. It was night and day transformation. Especially when Billy Preston came in - he just added life to everyone in the room. Paul also ceded some of his control. Even George shared some ideas (love the "preview" of "Something".) The focus of E3 was the rooftop and really a shared experience. If I have this correct, they did more of John's songs up there (no piano for Paul's songs.) But E3 they felt like a real band again. All in all, I really enjoyed it and it has led me to a couple weeks of Beatle binging. Much respect. Also, gotta mention, I checked out the alternate version of that final album "Let it Be" - what they call "Let it Be - NAKED". Stunning. I was blown away - it is like discovering a new Beatles album. IMHO, so much better than the Phil Spector over-production. Let It Be Naked is stripped down to the basic organic (and live) tracks = exactly what they had originally intended the "Get Back" sessions to be - a Live recording with no/minimal studio fuckery. Paul initiated this project. The sound is flawless; and I much prefer the energy and vibe of all of the tracks (and it includes "Don't Let me Down" which should have been on the original! Also, "Across the Universe" at normal speed/pitch is the best recording of this song, IMO.) Check it out!

1.) Rush 2.) King Crimson 3.) Pink Floyd 4.) Led Zeppelin 5.) Yes 6.) Porcupine Tree / Steven Wilson 7.) Frank Zappa 8.) Tool 9.) Genesis 10.) King's X 11.) Opeth 12.) Jethro Tull 13.) The Who 14.) Peter Gabriel 15.) Red Hot Chili Peppers 16.) Alice In Chains 17.) The Grateful Dead 18.) Van Halen 19.) Jimi Hendrix 20.) The Beatles 21.) The Doors 22.) Dixie Dregs 23.) The Pineapple Thief 24.) Smashing Pumpkins 25.) Queen I made a cool graphic a few years back; merging the logos of all my favorite bands - I had to figure out which bands were my "favorites". I would say the top tier ~1-8 is pretty clear for me. After that, I used a spreadsheet and developed a complicated algorithm to figure it out - rated each band that appears in my I-tunes (digitized from my CD, DVD-A and vinyl!) in various categories - percentage of their discography that I love/like/dislike, how broad is their discography (for example, there are bands that I love that have one album. Can they compete with bands that I love that have 11 albums?) how many times I'd seen them in concert, how far would I travel to see them in concert, emotional connection to the music, etc, etc. The above list has been modified from my earlier takes - I have about 180 bands/artists represented on that list. It gets tough for me as a drummer - because there are certain drummers that I follow throughout their career - for example, Bill Bruford. Loved him in Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, UK, his band, etc. Then, there are drummers like Marco Minnemann that I follow - I loved him with Steven Wilson; but also really love The Aristocrats and McStine/Minnemann (Probably one of my top albums of 2020) - I debated how can I include a new artist that I love; they haven't really stood the test of time yet. There were some bands that I loved in 1988 that I can't really anymore, etc.

http://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/13381221/officers "Porcupine 3 Limited" probably registered when they were writing new music... back in May. Steven was quoted somewhere that he was working on a more guitar oriented band as well....

Audio from the tease - reversed and sped up 5x

the audio for that clip - has been reversed and sped up 5x - most definitely Gavin's drums and Steven's voice! Then I got a text from a friend, who has a friend... it is happening! Also, back in May, in the UK a new company was registered: "Porcupine three" with Gavin, Steven and Richard (not Colin Edwin... it's not clear why.)