Van der Graaf Generator / Peter Hammill S& D, C or D?

you get half'n'half re-mastered or live versions of the supposedly crucial tracks so you get all but the best song off "H.." as bbc alternative takes, 4 of the 5 songs of imo least interesting "world record" as studio re-masters, most of "still life" half live and half studio, almost half live of "godbluff" and too little or nothing of early and late albums

the re-mastered studio versions do sound very good if you want to hear all the home-made fuzz/wah/boo noises added to the super-customised organ or the 2 saxes played through effects pedals operated via elbow as fashionable '70s mo-width belt -- the lyrics are crisp too -- re-mastering seems to have given the tracks back their crucial resonant pulse-wave-modulation bass, the heavy malevolence that the cd re-issues i'd sampled lacked and that everyone admitted vinyl couldn't do justice to in the first place with a track like the 22 minute "..lighthouse keepers"

so buying the admittedly handy vaguely career spanning box-set is a catch-22 since individual cd re-issues do not contain the re-mastered versions.. yet ? when ?

I consider VDGG seriously flawed (mostly by bombast), but at one time I was pretty crazy about them. The only thing I have much interest in hearing occasionally is "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers," which I think has some really gorgeous moments.

Solo Peter Hammill has held up even worse for me. I think the beginning of "Black Box" is beautiful, but then he has to go and express all the conflicts and complexities of modern life, through lots of changes of direction, and the whole thing is ruined. (In fact, it sometimes sounds as though he wants to make a mini-epic like "A Plague. . ." every time he records a song.)

the organ sounds as though you're inside it, ie it doesn't sound in the least bit tinny or dinky, as the old cds and lps sometimes do -- songs like "arrow" have their own special devices and appeal and again benefit from the re-buff, sounding menacing and harsh despite the "jazz-rock" first impressions

why include three gloom ballads from hammill (from "H ..") at the expense of "the general and his war room" when that song with secret guest fripp would have rocked best given the same treatment ? (ok, the mandatory hit studio track "killer" does sound a bit droney and dated but it's still fun and the re-mix gives it real wollop)

if you listened to old versions of this bands music they sound silly/heavy, cf: the sparce array of remixes on the box,
which whilst maybe wacky, gloomy, dated, eccentric, hammillesque etc.. all sound heavy in a way that maybe explains why the band was such a hit live (big in italy), heavy as a result of "mad scientist" hugh banton evolving four increasingly powerful versions of his organ over six years, each with numerous wah, growl, fuzz, sub-oscillate etc. capacities, some of the time whilst starring as engineer for the organ manufacturer itself

it amuses me somehow that johnny rotten would claim any positive influence on his vocal style from anyone, let alone that he claimed hammill, a semi-retired prog rock band's head meglomaniac -- if the sex pistols et. al. hadn't come along, maybe we'd look back on prog rock quite differently

I do like those organ sounds. It seems that more could be done with those particular prog. textures, but then I'm sure there are other things which work with similar sounds but which I just haven't heard.

I would really like to like this music, since it does offer some distinctive sounds, but mostly it doesn't work together as a whole for me.

if anyone has a spare copy of "The Long Hello volume 1" on zomart CD theyd like to sell me BTW, contact me off list. I have lost my copy, & want another one bad, like.

Solo Hammill? I like "A Black Box" quite a lot, was disappointed by "Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night". Some of his later albums, like "Fireships" and "Out of Water" are okay...

Currently listening to that there box set right now. And very good it is too. The keyboardist is agreeably nuts, but I think the sax guy is even more so.

the one prog/ex-prog band/dude I can't seem to shake, even though I haven't listened to for years
when I did, top LP picks:

Van Der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts, Godbluff, Still Life and The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome (which anticipates postpunk)

Peter Hammill - Nadir's Big Chance and The Future Now
(though there's interesting tracks scattered throughout his albums)

lovely record I still do throw on:
The Long Hello - The Long Hello 1973 instrumental 'solo' album featuring most of the band without Hammill
anyone know if Long Hello Vol.2 is any good?

http://students.washington.edu/joemcg/vdggnow.jpg

http://students.washington.edu/joemcg/vgddnow.jpg

http://students.washington.edu/joemcg/public_html/vgddnow.jpg

www.progressiveears.com

click on "Photos" then "Musician's photos" then "Van Der Graaf Generator nowadays"

anyway i think their musical logic is as compelling in its own way as 2x-youth period sonic youth, or mid-period Roxy Music if rocking out ten minutes per song -- am just investigating Hammill side projects at this stage, and i don't know about "Least we can do ..",
"Vital", "Aeresol .." and "Quite Zone.." yet -- nice that there's still plenty of material to eat through

I'm having trouble with this right now. I want to love this song so much. Want to proclaim it the greatest forgotten/failed/alternate uni pop great. Anyone else know it? Anyone have the first VDGG?

P.S: Another non-comformist opinion: they only really
got good starting with _Godbluff_. Better drumming,
better songs.

harsh dawns to come

'sleepwalkers' is too pompous (yet somehow that suits the ceremonial bullshit of 'gentlemen's' warfare, 'arrow' so catchy that i've maybe made myself sick of it, 'undercover man' intiguing and leaving me wanting more, 'scorched earth' an absolute gem, with its two harmonic threads merging very sneakily leaving me going "how did that happen ? will have to listen to part of it again" -- my favourite VdGG song

this was their 'comeback' album -- why was this not embraced as the smarter improved side one of led zep iv ? -- more intelligently heavy than the truly pretentious competitors 'the who' -- more coherent lyrically than bowie

i suppose the misanthropic snarl of hammill simply put people off, no matter what the lyrics were about or what the band did -- i have to agree with rock-sci that they _are_ heavily flawed -- what a pity -- a rock band with saxaphones and organ and lyrics (and songs, not 'prog' jams) was just what popular music needed, not more guitars

Now, have to give Skin and X My Heart a play...

Van Der Graaf Generator: An Introduction
1. Darkness (11/11)
2. Refugees
3. Killer
4. Theme 1
5. Man-Erg
6. Sleepwalkers
7. Still Life
8. When She Comes
9. Sphinx In The Face

I picked up the 1st set of 3 reissues "the least we can do is wave to each other", "H to he who am the only one" & "pawn hearts". Great mastering job, nice packaging/notes. One of the bonus tracks (on "h to he..." is this thing called "squid1/squid2/octopus" good grief it's mighty. deranged mix of fucked up free jazz & demented doomy church organ, heavy and as gothic as fuck!! it's 15m long too...

As far as solo, I have Hammill's Nadir's Big Chance and Over. I could get The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, and The Future Now for $8 each at alldirect.com, but since those versions came out in 1990, I'm afraid remasters will pop up soon. Anyone got info on that?

As far as solo, I have Hammill's Nadir's Big Chance and Over. I could get The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, and The Future Now for $8 each at alldirect.com, but since those versions came out in 1990, I'm afraid remasters will pop up soon. Anyone got info on that?

I'm sure others will get the re-issue treatment in due course - to be hoped for, anyway.

Inside Van Der Graaf Generator (2005)
Progressive rock pioneers Van Der Graaf Generator opened doors for groups including Genesis and Pink Floyd and remains one of the most influential yet unappreciated bands of the genre. This inside look features rare archival performance footage, plus critical reviews and in-depth analysis of the band by former Van der Graaf members Judge Smith, Nic Potter and David Jackson, as well as a team of prominent music critics and rock journalists.

Van Der Graaf Generator: Godbluff Live (2004)
Recorded on September 27th, 1975, prog rock legends Van Der Graaf Generator take to the stage to deliver some astounding rock sounds. Recorded on a tour of France, the show concentrates on the "Godbluff" album.

And on a side note, I have a VHS of a VDGG tribute band called Van Der Graf Jr. that was shot at Barnsdall Park's auditorium, where today's Arthurfest is occuring.

No Americanization just a sweeter bulk import deal, according to Artist-shop. I'll be sitting next to Phil in the waiting room.

I remember being really disappointed with VDGG after reading a rave about Pawn Hearts, the music just sounded ridiculously bombastic and too 'prog' for my ears at the time, then I suddenly had some kind of epiphany and love the whole thing - I don't think there's a bad moment on the album. My second fave is The Least We Can Do Is Talk to Each Other - those last doom-as-fuck organ chords in the coda to White Hammer!!!

Start with "Least We Can Do...", then buy "H To He", then you get "Pawn Hearts" (all re-mastered editions)...then "Silent Corner & The Empty Stage", "In Camera", "Nadir's", "Over", "The Future Now", "ph7" (all not-yet re-mastered).

Thank you.

is usually the best place to check for news.

LJ i am drunkenly flailing at emails. eventually one might get thru.

*promises to listen to NMTBHTSP after VdGG*

Nadir's Big Chance is great - if his other solo albums are similar it's about time I gave them a try as well. *mental note to get on SoulSeek tonight...

They aren't

The three albums after Fool's Mate were due for a re-issue and then yanked from schedule for some reason - I'm quite sure I saw them advertised in a mag along with one batch of VDGG re-issues, but then nothing. I have seen promo copies of the remasters with bonus tracks on eBay, minus the finished artwork.

Anybody care to rank his solo stuff?

I love MAIDA VALE. It's BBC sessions. Can't recommend it enough.

Saturday Morning = BLASTING VdGG

Peter Hammill interview in the Terrorizer prog special, jim.

Sweet. Thanx Herman.

Thread about it here Anyone got Terrorizer Prog Rock Special (part 1)? actually.

Tony Iommi's looking well.

"La Rossa" is the most demented trawl thru un- or barely-requited love that anybody ever wrote. I'm listening to some bootleg versions that end with the band carpet-bombing every fragile emotion you ever thought you might've had.

I mean, for alleged prog musicians, these boys were only interested in rocking the fuck out and bringing the terror back in the 70s.

I need to find lots of cheap VdGG real soon. The 'Killer' riff popped into my head earlier today, under no provocation whatsoever.

Damn straight. The boots I've acquired thru t0rrentz are rilly interesting because the band play so rough. I kinda thought that Hammill's emphasis on the noize element when they reformed for Present was a bit revisionist but he was totally right: they played really loose and ferocious and flat-out noise.

Cool! I'll get my download-savvy brother on the case...

Really liked "Pawn Hearts". That's all I've heard so far.

Also according to Hammill's website there's a new 3-piece Van der Graaf album on the way. I've said before I'm disappointed they won't be working with Jaxon but I'm really looking forward to hearing this.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/Trisector.jpg

has anyone heard this yet?

No, but I want to.

Noodle Vague's online atm so now's a good time to say that while I was absent, Still Life became one of my favourite albums.

Still Life is still my fave, mate. Kind of sums up everything they went after, although perhaps, just perhaps, it's more Hammillcentric than the other rekkids. For a long time I wanted "Childlike Faith" played at my funeral, but now I recognise that people are essentially shallow fuckers so I've plumped for "Agadoo".

Hahaha! I think lyrically and conceptually it sums up a lot of thoughts I'm having at the moment. La Rossa and Childlike Faith especially. The former is a sort of "look at yourself, this is you" song, and I can't pay it a higher compliment than to say it actually affected the way I thought about myself. The latter has the most epic moment in 70's rock (barring maybe "Eclipse" from Yes' And You And I), namely the bit when Hammill sings "naked to the galaxies": at that moment my jaw drops and all is lucid

Alongside Will Oldham Hammill is the lyricist that speaks to me most closely about what goes on in my head. Early on that kind of overshadowed VdGG for me and I think it's easy to forget what a dope band they are and how much they bring to the table that you just don't get on PH's solo output.

Also I've just realised I haven't heard the new one yet, and whilst I alway mourn when Jaxon's not there, I think I need to put that right quick sharp.

Okay I put it right. This is some good shit. I wish Chaks was still here.

This is BANGIN'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fzhqfr9rcg

These guys are still total badasses

Sounds pretty good if a bit reminiscent of "You Really Got Me"...

On the album that track is just kicking tremendous quantities of ass. I just mailed my bruv about it, to the effect that the first 3 or 4 tracks are kind of angular and difficult and distancing, and then the rest of it is - "Every Bloody Emperor" aside - the best stuff they've come up with on this go round and up there with a lot of the 70s tunes.

Haven't listened to em yet but thought you guys might be interested in this
http://www.eggcityradio.com/?p=323

NICE! thanks for the link there.

been really diggin ph7 lately.

Thanks for the link! I'll put on ph7 now in tribute to my friend in the post above.

Courtesy of Spotify, I've just been handed pretty much their entire discography (sans first album) on a plate.

"Lemmings" is doing strange and beautiful things to my head.

Is that the one with weird sax riff?

One!

lol

I'm saving Godbluff for a bit later

oh shit that bit like 12 1/2 minutes into APOLK
oh shit
oh shit
oh shit

I listened to Pawn Hearts on the walk to work yesterday, it's pretty disorienting when you're trying to cross the road.

this album is a more convincingly-rendered and genuine clusterfuck than almost anything else i've ever heard

and the end of APOLK is *astounding*

Like, it should go on for another five minutes astounding.

Awesome Julian Cope review of PH: http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/albumofthemonth/766

From the footnotes to that review:

"... Mark Smith auditioned for Henry Cow"

... uhhhhh, what!??!?!??!

Also tried to pass himself off as Damo Suzuki.

That Julian Cope review is awesome, in a very Julian Cope way.

His Dagmar Krause was less convincing it seems (xp)

"... Mark Smith auditioned for Henry Cow"

I did not know this. I did know that Peter Hammill and Smith made tentative steps towards a collaboration at one point, both the other's work. Hammill I believe decide not, saying he disliked the jam session or something, perhaps not realising that Smith's idea of a jam session is to tell the musicians to get on with coming up with some tunes, going to the pub, then getting back to the studio before commencing to fuck everything up.

Having heard Pawn Hearts once through (and APOLK twice more, just to check I wasn't hallucinating), I'm on the Godbluff now. Will be enthusiastic of babble in just a sec.

'both the other's work'

needs an 'admiring' in there somewhere. Little synaptic failures becoming increasingly common in any attempt to express myself.

Counting down til "Scorched Earth" splatters Louis' brain all over again.

LOL

"As swift as any ARRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!"

A Motorhead/VdGG collabo in 1976 would've been something.

I'm not actually sure what happened during "Scorched Earth". But it was heavy. And real.

"Arrow" currently unfolding, slowly, slowly. I sense explosions in the offing.

Hmm. Good stuff so far, esp Scorched Earth, but this isn't quite touching Still Life or Pawn Hearts yet. It'll probably take a couple of listens (although dammit, PH got me first time...it's about 20x more truly insane and sonically all-over-the-place than I expected, and I expect a lot)

wtf ok lounge-salsa section

this is a great band. I need to crawl the solo Hammill albums at some point, years ago I randomly bought a copy of 'Patience' because of the Gabriel connection, and there were three songs on that record that I can still remember every word of.

but mainly posting to thank Turtles for linking that blog, which I give 5 stars for linking an mp3 of the complete director's commentary track to the film Zardoz

the last 3 minutes of "APOLK" are totally fucking incredible music

but mainly posting to thank Turtles for linking that blog, which I give 5 stars for linking an mp3 of the complete director's commentary track to the film Zardoz

― Milton Parker, Thursday, March 12, 2009 7:45 PM (2 days ago)

The blog is really great, he used to have one under the name of Post Punk Junk and a youtube series called Post Punk Junk
all really great stuff.

I still haven't had time to listen to the Van der Graaf Generator stuff
All I have of theirs is World Record and The Least We Can Do Is Wave, so i'm excited to hear this

I'm listening to the Zardoz commentary track now!

Arrow rocks so hard

Much as with Still Life, Godbluff seems to be getting better with repeat listens. Well, this is my second and it's clicking. Doubt it'll quite ascend the same heights but then SL is pretty much decade top-3 for the 70s for me, maybe even the very very best.

I like Still Life more than Godbluff, yeah, but I feel I understand parts of Godbluff a bit better now thanks to this rather good new-ish PH site:

http://peterhammill.com/phx/

:D oh man, that's an awesome performance, at least in the way they attack the song...I was transfixed! Banton's still got it big-time. Hammill too, at least vocally. I'll forgive the odd guitar slip-up (and the fact they slightly duff the "siiiiilence...crash" bit)...that was fucking rock...

That looseness is such a key part of what they do, I've got an unnecessary quantity of 70s bootlegs and they always had it, preferring to vamp and rock out than toddle thru reproductions of the album sound. You get a feeling with all of the albums that they're markers for the live sets.

I was flipping through classic rock radio today and thought for an instant I heard Peter Hammill's voice. I got really excited, then realized it was actually "Under Pressure". Total letdown.

i just got the 2005 remaster of "pawn hearts." my GOD is it an improvement on the late-80s cd. it's audible, for one, and you can hear more than one instrument at a time.

Did they reissue this on vinyl too? My old LP is pretty well played out...

A Place To Survive starts off a bit unpromisingly, then gets more awesome the more it goes on. Am thinking I might rather like World Record.

Masks is pretty great. Meurglys III is interesting. I *really* like the closing reggae jam/guitar solo. The first five minutes are superb! That bit about 3 minutes in needs to go on for wayyyy longer.

Unfortunately, the midsection is basically an attempt to be Pink Floyd followed by an attempt to be Still life, both of which fail (at least until the latter section starts shifting around gratifyingly in the 2 or so minutes before reggaeness).

The guitar changes the band's dynamic quite a bit.

Wondering starts a bit boringly but then becomes :O really lovely! Wow! What's happening?

As for When She Comes, it's ok but the hook seems ripped-off from another VDGG song, maybe Arrow.

I think Quiet Zone/Pleasure Dome is slightly better than this album, but this is by no means ungood.

As for When She Comes, it's ok but the hook seems ripped-off from another VDGG song, maybe Arrow.

Haha wait shit it's basically like a cross between La Rossa and Scorched Earth which are like my two favourite VDGG songs o_O

Present is GREAT!!

My 'favourite bands' roster is taking shape nicely.

Oh shit, get rid of 'In Babelsberg' (or at least cut it down to 2 or 3 minutes) and we're maybe talking one of the top 20 albums of this decade o_O

Like, I'd rank it almost alongside their 70's peaks. And this is on first listen.

Now listening to 'The Least We Can Do...' for the first time...

WHITE HAMMER

awesome album, awesome band. why are they not loved by everyone who claims to be interested in good music?

The end of White Hammer is ridiculously heavy. Love it.

Just listening to Godbluff on repeat now! This band just didn't release bad music. Live BBC version of Masks is tremendous btw

White Hammer is such a lovely song for 6 or 7 minutes, too. Then it becomes the most evil thing ever. Fucking amazing.

(Oh, and I listened to some of Vital and oh shit was it intense...need to give the whole thing a go)

i go on binges with this stuff. nothing by VdGG for a day or two... and then i can't listen to it again for months. shit is intense.

nothing BUT VdGG, i meant to type

am having that sort of day with the song 'the sleepwalkers'...the bit that starts just after the 6 and a half minute mark is like some sort of new high in epic

THE M-M-M-M-MASOCHISTIC M-M-M-MUMBLE OF HIS ACT

btw 'After The Flood' seems to unwittingly chart VDGG's path from dinky and kinda lame acoustic psychedelia into righteous doom-power mayhem better than any rock critic could

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC7EW5X54F4&feature=player_embedded

^^ dope trailer for a dope movie

Awesome Julian Cope review of PH: http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/albumofthemonth/766

― This is the day when fisticuffs happened everywhere (country matters), Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:28 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

From the footnotes to that review:

"... Mark Smith auditioned for Henry Cow"

... uhhhhh, what!??!?!??!

― Free the Northampton 1 (Tom D.), Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:35 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark

even though this seemed like internet rumor mill stuff, I did ask Frith about this last time I saw him after a show at Mills. there was never an audition, though he did remember Smith coming to Cow shows and being sociable. after Dagmar bowed out, they considered Phil Minton before realizing she was irreplaceable.

Just re-listened to Present last night and now my opinion has flip-flopped. The studio album disc is better than the studio "jam" disc.

"The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other" has turned out to be practically as good as the three monoliths. I'd rank it well above H To He. It's phenomenal, beautiful and brilliant. The repeated, quickening breakdown in 'After The Flood' is maybe one of their top 5 moments ever.

There were also suggestions that Smith and Hammill were going to collaborate, in the late '80s I think. Hammill said later that it never came about because he didn't like jam sessions. Although given what you suspect are Smith's working methods, I'd imagine the fear was fairly groundless and that there were other reasons.

Also PH is a bit of a control freak and is very reluctant to collaborate for that reason. probably the same goes for Smith as well.

the thought of more than one of my all-time hallowed musical geniuses in the same room attempting to work on the same project has blown my mind a little; it just wouldn't be possible

i mean if you put hammill, MES, a bedridden tim smith and garm in a room together and told them to come up with something good, it'd be war

I fucking adore this cover

http://www.leyline.com.br/show.jpg

I heard it was taken at Alcatraz.

"Aguarian" on the first LP - CLASSIC!!

'afterwards' is one of my fave vdgg songs, 'octopus' is gr8 too...

THX for reminding me to change my name!

First album is underrated!

Yeah, I like it better than "Least We Could Do"; it's a lot more melodic and goofy than their later material, but I think it holds up well.

I remember the song that got me into VDGG was "House With No Door"; I thought "Killer" was insanely good too, but "House" really make PH seem like a freak. That second (?) chorus - "I don't know you, you say you know me, (in ridiculous falsetto) THAT MAY BE SOOOOOOOO...."; one of my friends and I used to try to imitate that line all the time. I shied away from this stuff because I always saw it as being like a second-rate version of Genesis or Yes or King Crimson...perhaps from reading too many review sites that said "Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" was garbage. I admit the first half of it is slow but when it gets rolling - boner.

I also noticed that the first half of "Sleepwalkers" sounds a lot like a demented game show theme. Really cool.

Oh yeah...new VDGG album out now - "A Grounding in Numbers". Anyone hear it yet?? Early reviews seem to indicate it's good but there's not much out on it yet.

yeah it's good but not great. it's an album of short songs – quite aggressive in places, which is nice. Hammill's guitar is more prominent this time than it was on Trisector. Banton's organ work is miraculous of course but I still miss Jackson sorely.

i just got the 2005 remaster of "pawn hearts." my GOD is it an improvement on the late-80s cd. it's audible, for one, and you can hear more than one instrument at a time.

yeah improvement is immense. Totally changes your idea of what they were about. The earlier cds sound intentionally anti-groove.
You can hear how wrong that was on the mid 00s ones.
You can also hear how big an influence they had on the Italian early 70s scene.

I'm just thinking I need to sort out my hard drives. My V.D.G.G. live sets are all out of reach from my computer cos the drive isn't connected. & it's also got my VU, Thin White rope, Henry Cow and a couple of other bands on.

absolutely. picking these up are really what made me a fan again. some of the bonus tracks are killer too.

it's strange; i'm in kind of an anti-prog phase right now after burning out on Yes and Genesis and especially King Crimson, but VDGG don't really fit into that mould and their discs seem to take on a greater importance. like, good prog was not all about your chops. I've seen VDGG derided quite a bit by prog-lovers as second-rate or mediocre, but they really seem to be something else. they have kind of an ELP quality to them in that they really seem to just go for it, but they know how to create atmosphere and write songs rather than just play fast.

well the thing about VdGG is that they were unlike most other prog groups, including Yes and Genesis but also certainly ELP, in the fact that their gigs contained significant elements of randomness and chaos. not saying they improvised like KC did but there was always this element of danger about them. you never quite knew which way they were going to go, whereas with other prog groups the performance would be the same night after night. other prog groups to which this applies would have been people like KC and Henry Cow.

yeah I'm kind of leaning now towards "none of those guys ever made an album as ridiculous and incredible as Godbluff"

there's not a lot of consensus among VdGG fans as to their best album. yeah Godbluff would certainly be up there but I would go with Still Life myself. others would choose Pawn Hearts

and as I often say on these threads it's not possible to talk about VdGG without talking about Hammill's solo albums as well, three or four of which are right up there with the best VdGG albums

Have you heard any of his stuff post-VdGG breakup? They don't really get talked about much so I don't really know if he went the route of Genesis or hit some sort of artistic decline.

I always thought Pawn Hearts was the consensus favorite, but you really have to be on board with the group to appreciate it. I'm surprised that H to He doesn't get talked about more. To me it is the equivilent of Fragile.

yeah, I'm a completist so I've heard them all

personally I prefer Hammill solo to VdGG, again you'll get different views as to the consensus favourite but the first post-VdGG break-up record he did was Over which is this wrist-slashing post-(romantic) breakup thing and imho is the best thing he or VdGG ever put their name to

in the late '70s/early '80s he went through this excellent new wave/post-punk phase, short songs, tons of energy and glorious riffing

short answer, no Hammill has never been in any sort of artistic decline

i've heard most of his records too but not in ages, my feeling was post -80's they god kind of inconsistent (fireship, the margin, none of the above....I have NO memory of these albums!). But In Camera, Nadir, Ph7, a black box, I like these as much as the VdGG albums.

also i'm not so sure I like the remasters, they are pretty no-noised and weird. the original cds didn't sound good either. I bet the vinyls sound amazing but I'm not in a position invest in those.

the new VDGG album is really good though, btw, better than the last two; not sure it's "stands with pawn hearts/still life/godbluff' the way some reviews have said, but it's certainly worthy.

Just listened to Fool's Mate for the first time...sounded decent but not as good as any of the VdGG stuff I've heard

Kind of funny how people refer to it as his "goofy" album...musically it is not really heavy, but these lyrics are pretty depressing (and self-centered).

"Fool's Mate" is all old songs, he wrote 1967-1969 when he was like 19, 20

Kind of funny how people refer to it as his "goofy" album...musically it is not really heavy, but these lyrics are pretty depressing (and self-centered)

don't think people do really... there is "Sunshine" which is probably the closest he ever got to goofy

I'm trying to remember where exactly I read that...I guess I'm kind of assuming his solo albums get better from here. Kind of hoping for more things like "Scorched Earth" or "Arrow" that just blow the lid off everything.

If that's what you're looking for then you might want to seek out The Silent Corner & the Empty Stage, Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night and In Camera (in that order). These were mostly written and recorded in between bursts of VdGG activity and they are just as great as the VdGG records. The first two both have the other VdGG members playing on them and are basically VdGG records in all but name.

I already got Chameleon on order, I'll let you know what I think

In Camera, totally!

listened to Over a few times over the past few days, always shocked at how dark it all seems. The final track, Lost and Found is amazing, maybe my favorite song of his, with it's uncertain final line (also has a line later ripped off by Marillion on Script for a jester's tear, for better or worse).

also, after some time with it, I think the new album is one of my favorites. the song 'bunsho' ranks right up there with anything he/they have done.

Over is my favourite PH/VdGG album. On the Marillion front, you can see the cover of the album lying on the floor on the back cover of their Fugazi album.

it was a Fish interview on the radio that pointed me at VdGG in the first place, he always acknowledged his love

Hammill tried him out for the role of Montresor in The Fall of the House of Usher but didn't go with him in the end b/c their voices sounded too similar. The role went to Andy Bell out of Erasure in the end – a pairing that always surprises some people

I just picked up The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, what an intense listen; it's not as instrumentally interesting as the VdGG stuff but it opens PH to do a lot of weird and sick stuff. Also, Chameleon is finally clicking for me after like, 9 listens.

really liking "mr. sands." between a grounding in numbers and the new yes album this is a nice year for classic prog

Jo Bogaert, known in a previous lifetime as Technotronic, asked if I’d be interested in contributing to an ongoing project of his with Yannic Fonderie. I gave my usual (if my interest’s been tweaked) response of “send something and if I think there’s something I can contribute I’ll send something back”. So stuff was sent and, as it happens, I found vox & lyrics stuff that seemed to make sense both for myself and for the stuff in hand.

Eventually I sang on four or five banging tracks. But as I write they still haven’t found a happy label home and so remain secret treasures…

!

Yeah, I'm starting to have problems with "The Silent Corner". It seems to always make me tense up and get really jittery and paranoid; it really seems to get more intense every time I listen to it. Guess its time to move on.

oh yeah, so now I hear In Camera, sounds very cool thus far, "Gog" is the sort of thing I've wanted to hear him do for a long time. This album has the intensity of his other stuff but it doesn't feel as real as Silent Corner did, which is both good and bad.

Its two weeks now that I listen only to VDGG and Peter Hammill solo stuff - lots and lots of great music. Vital seems to me particularly overrated: it is truly terrifying.

You can definitely take that long, as for me most of the albums take a while to really click (especially the solo albums). I really did not like Pawn Hearts at all the first few listens and then all of the sudden it sounded amazing. I don't think VdGG/PH ever did much to try to win the listeners over but in the end that's part of their appeal. Right now I'm digging the In Camera bonus tracks, which are just solo versions of a couple of album tracks and VdGG's "Emperor in his War Room" and they are surprisingly intense w/ just Hammill's voice and piano

Singularity and Thin Air are two great albums I've spent the past few days listening to, maybe some of his best work?

I would say they're certainly two of the best of his more recent albums, yes, although I doubt you'd find many PH fans who'd rate them alongside his work of the '70s. Singularity is the post-heart attack one, a dread sense of mortality pervades it.

If it weren't for 1998's This, which is one of my top 3 picks for solo PH, I'd agree that these two albums represent his best work since he disbanded the K group. Hammill's ability to work at this level of quality at this stage in his career is kind of uplifting.

I'd still go for Roaring Forties and X My Heart as his best since those days.

somehow I managed to never listen to world record until just now...excellent. I think I just forgot this album existed, or for some reason had heard it wasn't very good or something.

new PH album: Consequences out April 16

1. Eat my Words, Bite my Tongue
2. That Wasn't What I Said
3. Constantly Overheard
4. New Pen-pal
5. Close to Me
6. All the Tiredness
7. Perfect Pose
8. Scissors
9. Bravest Face
10. A Run of Luck

exciting

i wish he'd play the west coast. weirdly (after not really listening to him much over the past few years) I had a really vivid dream taht I saw him play an intense show at some tiny venue, which started me diving back into the catalogue. could probably listen to nothing but Hammill/VDG for three weeks straight without having to repeat any albums.

now, a new VdGG album? (well, kind of...)

Following on from A Grounding in Numbers released in March 2011 Esoteric Antenna are delighted to announce a new title with Van Der Graaf Generator--ALT release date 25th June 2012

'ALT' is a new studio album by the legendary VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR and follows on from the release of "A GROUNDING IN NUMBERS" in 2011.

"ALT" is no ordinary Van Der Graaf Generator album (if the term "ordinary" could ever be applied to this visionary group). PETER HAMMILL explains; "Instrumental Improvs & Experiments - Most of the music on "ALT" was made while we weren't really looking, or perhaps only while the left side of our collective brain was engaged. The album is a mixture of improvisations recorded at sound checks and in the studio and more considered sonic creations which often verge on Musique Concrete. The thirteen pieces here offer a fascinating glimpse into an alternative Van der Graaf Generator sound world. Perhaps the closest comparison would be with the second CD of "Present", but even the link with those recordings is tenuous. Even by Van der Graaf Generator standards, this stuff's at the whacky end of the scale!"

alright. time to bump this one more time.

Now i have all the VdGG original discs along with the remasters. I hate to say it but listening to them side by side I'm starting to find I like the originals better, at least when it comes to The Least We Can Do/H to He/Pawn Hearts. In the case of The Least we Can Do - I don't think there's a good sounding version of this anywhere. I have one copy where the sax is barely audience. The remaster turns the bass up way too high. I did a spectrum analysis on them and find that they are very much victims of the "loudness war" that ruins a lot of remasters. Hence why the 2005 version of Pawn Hearts always leaves me with a severe earache (obviously, you gotta listen loud). I'm kind of wondering if there are good vinyl versions out there. They blast Godbluff with loudness too and give it a lot more kick but I find you can just crank up the original and get the same effect.

i'd've sworn my old copy of The Least We Can Do sounded fine but i was young and maybe inattentive

a lot of people on fanboards were complaining that the remasters swapped noise for detail

RIP bassist Nic Potter.

This via Chaki, so word probably just went out.

https://www.facebook.com/thinair/posts/10151169842843414

http://www.sofasound.com/latest.htm

he's been sick for a while, hasn't he?

damn, gonna have to crank 'the least we could do...' which is definitely their most underrated album and definitely has the second-best song called 'after the flood' ever written on it

Oh no! RIP Nic. That's my old dopperganger dead! See, I was once at a gig and a hippy came over to me and said "Has anyone ever told you, you look exactly like Nic Potter of Van der Graaf Generator?". Luckily my flatmate at the time had a lot of VDGG albums, so I checked out a few and found it was true! One photo, I think it was in the inner sleeve of "Vital", was esp. unnerving. I mean, I don't remember ever playing bass with Peter Hammill but this photo suggests otherwise...

http://www.joyello.net/fardrock/potter.jpg

(Should point that Nic ket his hair and I lost mine so the resemblance has faded over the years... once again RIP Nic)

:(

RIP

Sad news. Top marks for his fuzz bass line on "The Sphinx In The Face".

can't believe I had never heard Vital before. I heard it had a bad reputation so I avoided it...now that I think about it the people who told me it sucked weren't really big VdGG fans. so there you go. Starostin calls it "hands down, the worst live album ever made by a giant of progressive rock". Dunno what to say about that - you have to buy into the theatricality I guess but for my money I am going to listen to this a hell of a lot more than stuff like Genesis Live or Yessongs, both of which are damn impressive, but nothing compared to the raw energy of this one. Plus there are 5 songs on it I hadn't heard before! (the jam at the end of "Door" is fucking incredible, by the way)

It's the first one I ever bought, and can't say it's my favorite. But I do owe it a spin in the modern age.

yeah Vital is the bomb. Shame though that there was no official live album from the classic line-up. there are no soundboard-quality boots out there either.

Good to hear this on the radio last night, David Jackson admirably ultra-skronky:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kBL1zVGmp0

are there any particuarly good boots? how's the Maida Vale thing?

I guess its nice that they're releasing all this live stuff now, but I'd love to hear them 30 years younger!

Maida Vale is great but it's BBC sessions so they're not cutting loose to the full. As regards live concert boots there's not much from the '70s, the one that normally gets touted is Rimini 9 August 1975 (evening show). Some of the tracks from that were released officially on The Box comp and also as bonus tracks on the Godbluff reissue a few years ago, but it's a pretty raw listen.

yikes, I couldn't stand the bonus tracks on Godbluff...the sound quality was abysmal.

I did find something on SLSK called "Skeletons of Songs", looks to be a Jammill solo performance from 78 or so. Haven't listened yet

ooh you're in for a treat, that's my favourite PH solo boot. totally out there performance.

for my money the '75-'76 band had a totally different vibe from the original line-up- but all the tapes of the original band are super rough listens, those times when they were touring italy for the fifteenth time in 1972, so forth. there's some nice tv sessions- some clips from the french "pop deux" tv show out there on yt- and you can get a feel for what they sounded like from the squid 1/squid 2/octopus on the "h to he" remaster- it's live in the studio, but really the biggest difference between it and an actual concert is that the electricity doesn't randomly short out on them.

Holy shit, is that rushomancy from RYM? *starstruck*

Just announced VdGG European tour in June will include performances each night of "Flight" (epic long-form PH solo piece, already played in N America last year) and, be still my beating heart, "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers".

why did he name his 8th album ph7. wtf, pete

I think that was one of those jokes for which PH is so renowned.

"pH7" was, of course, the eighth solo album, not the seventh. As a measure of acidity/alkalinity pH7 signifies perfect neutral balance; but these recordings are neither neutral nor balanced. The album is, therefore, both jokey and in disguise.

Aha! So it is just a way to annoy spergies like me.

I have no idea where you're located. Are you going to get to see one of these?

Yeah I'll make the Prague show I think. The premiere!

Hopefully they can still bring it. I really enjoyed their show in Milwaukee even though I only recognized two of the songs (both from Pawn Hearts). That was my first time hearing Sleepwalkers!!

should really see these guys at some point before it's too late huh

you should! especially since "one of us might die soon" is the whole reason they reformed in the first place!!

weird to think that the 3rd VdGG administration (2005-???) is actually the longest they've been together as a band

have booked tickets for the barbican, see you all there

Will probably go to the Barbican show even though it's not the same without the sax, still 3 out of 4 members ain't too bad I suppose.

I had H To He on my 3 changer for a lot of last week, think tht was just cos it happened to be lying near the player when I wanted to swap over from the discs I'd had on for the previouis few days. As per ususal it had me thinking i should listen to them a lot more. Just wish I had developed as ystem so I actually knew where the rest of the discs were. Have everything from the 70s run by them, just don't have Aerosol Grey Machine which is really by a different band who just have the same name and singer isn't it? Or is the interchange between solo Hammill and band confusing even then , I'm thinking that it was originally supposed to bne a solo lp but he put a band together for it. Is That right?

the solo lps by him are great too, at least the 70s ones, haven't progressed beyond that yet.

Also love the boots from '77 which really are very edgy. Punk energy if not directly punk, & nobody needed another generic punk band did they? But did make a good model for obsessive edgy rock anyway, not sure who actually followed it.
You can hear the influence the earlier band had on the Italian scene at least, not sure about elsewhere apart from Bowie around Diamond dogs etc.

Or is the interchange between solo Hammill and band confusing even then , I'm thinking that it was originally supposed to bne a solo lp but he put a band together for it. Is That right?

The album was originally intended as a solo album by the band's lead singer and main songwriter, Peter Hammill. When the band signed with Charisma Records, a deal was worked out whereby The Aerosol Grey Machine would be released under the Van der Graaf Generator name, in return for Mercury Records releasing Hammill from his earlier contract with it

Aerosol isn't that great really, "Afterwards" excepted. Definitely pick up the late 70s/early 80s solo LPs first.

Afterwards is a pretty big exception. If they'd saved that for the next album and ditched Refugees (and maybe What Would Robert Have Said and Out Of My Book, which are both nice but basically there to make up the numbers), it'd have been up there with their hiatus-straddling trilogy

A
Darkness 11/11
White Hammer

B
Afterwards
After The Flood

*drools*

*winces at track-title clash on side B*

*drools*

no way should they have ditched "Refugees", that is top 5 VdGG

hmm, well if you MUST

A
Darkness 11/11
Refugees
Afterwards

B
White Hammer
After The Flood

...which gives us probably the most apocalyptic side of music ever recorded

No love for Aguarian??

Octopus is the only other one I'd really go for

The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other is the record to get.

I remember 'acquiring' their entire discography a very long time ago. I only listened to about half of it, and I never heard most of it more than once, but that record is great.

+1 for Refugees. I remember listening to that track a lot and putting it on numerous mixes.

I'm going by memory here (I've not heard VDGG in a long time), but I also remember listening to Killer, I think it was, from H to He, Who Am the Only One.

Might get the old HDD out and have a listen.

listening to The Future Now for the first time, what the hell was he thinking? did a drunk Mark E. Smith produce this?

great album. one of those to play people who persist in calling him a prog rocker.

well those last few 70's VDGG albums + Nadir kinda cemented that even if he is a progger at heart that Hammill generally just follows his muse without any regard for what people want/expect out of him. also that he tends to not train himself very much when learning new things; if he had this wouldn't be half as interesting/terrifying as it is

sooooo stoked for tomorrow, anyone else coming?

I think a friend has sorted out a ticket for me. Should be a good night.

you sir have hidden multitudes

They do Plague of Lighthouse Keepers and Gog from what I hear, pretty cool!

Like some others, I've become a much bigger fan of his solo material. I'm going to be listening to Over soon and I'm excited by its reputation.
There really isn't a whole lot here about his 80s/90s/00s solo albums, is anyone here that comprehensive on him? The reviews I've read of those are very divided.

omg

that might have been the perfect gig. open with brilliant recent song (over the hill, performed to stunning heights of intensity), proceed with unhallowed and yet superb material from latter day and mid-period, mostly from solo records (amongst which my introduction to 'flight', fucking hell), and then end with the hits :D

including a 'childlike faith...' encore :D :D

also I genuinely could not believe how brilliant they were, despite them being a close 2nd behind cardiacs in my all time roster

three men made that chaos, that confluence. three men who've been rocking that existential horror groove for 45 years

i was in the front row, four metres from hammill

fuck

Third time I've seen them, Hammill still can't play gtr, wouldn't have it any other way. Shame there's no sax though.
"Arrow" would be good for the next tour.

I guess I really should have seen them.

Over is far more varied than I had imagined from looking at the cover, I thought it would all be soft and weary stuff. "Time Heals" is incredible. I think it's really funny in the first song when he says "your excuses are so crappy", because it really contrasts with his usual eloquence. The bonus track version of "Autumn" is amazing. Really great album.

I like how the first song is basically Hammill telling himself to stop being dramatic, and in the second he's saying that they would have been miserable in the long run anyway. And THEN come all the depressing, world-weary breakup songs.

I've been really into The Future Now and ph7 lately. Funny that as the Steve Howes, Keith Emersons, John Wettons, and Tony Bankses of the world started to go AOR and mainstream, Hammill only went deeper into his own world.

Over is my favourite PH/VdGG album out of the whole lot of them. He never bettered it.

Just listened to Over twice, then Modern and A Louse Is Not A Home too. He did all this and VdGG in his fucking twenties.

A Louse Is Not A Home is every bit as good as any VdGG song

^still this

in fact, if you're drifting through, here it is in its miraculous entirety. A songwriting pinnacle of sorts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwZ_tOZB1Qo

I'm trying to listen to World Record. Such a loose & unfocused album compared to virtually everything that came before. With a serious fucking edit-job it could have recaptured the incredible brilliance of the previous 3 records (4 if you count The Silent Corner). Here are my problems with it:

- The opening few seconds. Prissy Regency clarinets poncing around. Since when has a VDGG album opened up with meek filigree?
- The rest of When She Comes. A clear candidate for their worst-ever song. Reprises one of Scorched Earth's riffs without any of the punch whatsoever. Urgh.
- The fact A Place To Survive starts really really strong and then jams around *not going anywhere* for about 5 minutes at the end
- No problems with Masks. It's a fucking demon.
- Right, my biggest problem here. Meurglys III. None of it is bad music at all. The closing reggae jam is kinda groovy. But it completely deflates the momentum of the opening 12 minutes, which if isolated might be some of the best 12 minutes in the band's history, up there with that video I just posted and Man-Erg and all that jazz. Edit function sorely lacking. I'm listening to this song now and it's one of the most terrifying & spectacular demonstrations of their narrative mastery*. With a massive anti-climax.
- Wondering is nice and all but it's how Yes should be ending their albums, not VDGG. Feels a bit sickly-sweet.

They'd just released a solid run of the best music ever made, which should hopefully put these criticisms into context. You may wish to defend World Record, of course. Or simply agree with me that TQZ/TPD fortunately dropped by to kick its arse :D

*Hmm. On returning it's a bit disjointed and some of the sections go on a bit. But each section is very, very good.

I listened to Godbluff recently again. I love a lot of parts of that album but I still dont agree that it is sharing top spaces at the Hammill canon.
I dont need albums to be totally albumy but sometimes it seems like it needs a bit more of something. I know they wanted a live sound on this, but I think certain elements would have been better if they were accentuated/highlighted more.

My last thought on World Record was, "this is better than I remembered", so there's that

For me, Godbluff has the length of an album but the gravitas and scope of a very, very good EP. Its four pieces are superb but Still Life is more powerful, more wondrous (for me)

Songs lengths are dragged out a bit on "Godbluff", I assume in order to fill out the album but not as grotesquely as on "Meurglys III", what were Pete and the boys thinking with that reggae bit? I hate the last track on "Godbluff" too.

I disagree with all that. Godbluff is perfect!!

Vital - Live is the one that's been blowing me away lately. I only really knew of that album from the WRC, who pretty much unanimously hated it.

there's nothing *wrong* with godbluff at all, but i find it a more minor document than pwn <3s, silent corner or still life - and the final track is definitely the weakest (despite exultant TONIIIIIGHT BEEEEEFORE YOU LAY DOWN bit). if 'a louse is not a home' had rounded off that album it'd be just as good as pwn or still

Don't get me wrong btw, I still think Godbluff is one of their better albums

At the risk of inducing an embolism or somesuch in imago, the whole 2nd side of Still Life leaves me cold

:o

The least-brilliant track is My Room, sure, but but but but

but

Did I ever tell you I've got a signed copy of that album? I bought in a bargain bin for £1! Signed by Nic Potter, so someone else is missing, poss. Hugh Banton?

I know I'm in the minority, but I adore World Record and listen to it more than Godbluff (but not more than Still Life or most of Peter Hammil's solo albums).

some fantastic stuff suddenly on Youtube

Hammill plays a gig up a mountain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=406Yy0gbcVI

BBC doc i'd never heard of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd7dCGpJkMQ

Yeah those are great. I knew about that gig in the Dolomites, was debating whether to fly over for it but reason prevailed.

new album comes out next week. it's getting pretty good reviews...lots of "best of the reformation albums"-type claims, which is very good. I'm pretty pumped. lets go

ooh link me some reviews

this is like the best year for music ever

http://www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk/donotdisturb.htm
http://www.goldminemag.com/blogs/spin-cycle-blogs/reviews-van-der-graaf-generator-rob-clarke-wooltones-year-country-anthony-phillips-brinsley-schwarz-oodles-interviews

really stoked. these guys are the best

ty, this seems like it'll be something

opening track started really promisingly but there was just a really horrible slow distortion-guitar bit to ruin the flow. i hope the album doesn't have many more of such impositions - they've been ruining nu-era vdgg imo

nah sorry this is shit

well i like it. but i liked their last one too.

last one was solid, this is not there at all

godbluff came on immediately afterwards and it's frankly embarrassing

i'm really not hearing whatever it is you dislike so much in this record. i put on godbluff and he can't sing like he could in 1975, but that was pretty obvious already.

this is leaden, plodding - the changes don't work - the guitar is awful - the melodies are turgid - it's got none of the old wild magic - probably time to pack it in

hammill's always been an awful guitarist, but i can tolerate it better here than i can on "world record". honestly they do sound like they're about to pack it in, particularly if you listen to that last track, but to me they're going out on a high note. it doesn't have that old wild magic- forty years is a long time- but it's got a magic all its own. about as good as "prog rock" gets in 2016, imo.

only just dipping my toe in but imago is v wrong, there is some great stuff on this album. "Aloof" sounds horribly produced and doesn't work very well but, y'know, try listening to the rest of the album?

"Aloft", obv. you know what i mean.

I bought and listened to the whole thing! I will definitely return to it a few times, but the initial impression wasn't good. Also, every reunion has at least one stunner (Every Bloody Emperor, Over The Hill, Your Time Starts Now) and I can't detect what this album's high point is. I guess Almost The Words seemed like it might be decent.

i do find them more akin to Hammill's solo records when Jackson's not there tbf

maybe not, scratch that. i like some of what's happening musically more than the songwriting i guess, but Hammill's solo stuff is frequently a bit thin on hooks too so

it's nice to hear vdgg taking on the bacharach/david songbook but honestly "bunsho" sticks with me probably more than "your time starts now" does.

the post-jaxon records are for me some weird middle ground behind the older band and his solo stuff. reminds me of nothing more than stuff like "skeletons of songs". i love "skeletons of songs".

I'm not entirely convinced by any of the post-Jackson records but I think this is the best of the three so far. Thought the last one was fairly underwhelming.

3rd listen and it's sitting better with me as a whole, in fact i think it might be rather legit good

I'm enjoying Sitting Targets v much rn. Got a post punky thing going on.

Yeah that's a great record! I feel like it's really overlooked.

https://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/down-a-different-river/van-der-graaf-generator-things-went-bit-mad-108028

Good interview

Amazing footage of them performing "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" (all 24 minutes!) on Belgian TV in 1972:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asPDvjUYFy4

Wow

I love that clip. Hammill's toast the camera at the end. :)

Happy 70th big guy :)

Fun fact: Peter Hammill guested onstage with The Stranglers in 1980... there's a version of 'Tank' that has Hammill on vocals and Robert Fripp on guitar.

As for VDGG, of course I rate everything from the first LP up to World Record highly.

whoa, HB dude haha

Yes, Hugh Banton dude.

this could turn into an "is your child texting about Van Der Graaf Generator" meme quickly

My wife who, in general, is very tolerant of whatever noise I'm blaring around the house (the Fall, P Ubu, "Lulu", skronk-jazz, etc) but VDGG is on the strict "no play list", haha

only halfway through it but this collaboration album with Isildur's Bane is pretty awesome and not at all what I expected

how so?

I haven't heard a note from Isildur's Bane but I kinda assumed they were just another neo-prog band (I just looked 'em up...they're not), so I was pretty surprised by how modern and chaotic it sounds. Plus it's odd to hear Hammill's voice processed like this. My only gripe is that it's not produced very well.

am going to have to break down and buy this since it doesn't seem to be on streaming services.

A few UK gigs for VdGG just announced, with European dates to come. This may well be the last VdGG tour, so interested parties should make efforts to attend.

The vers of "Still Life" on Vital is so good

Man, Flight (from 'A Black Box') is sooo damn great.

Flight was my first experience with Peter Hammill. Hadn't yet witnessed VdGG although I knew the name from the Chrysalis inner sleeves on my Genesis lps. A Black Box had just been released and a campus radio programmer decided to play its entire second side. I remember being blown away by just that single listen for a few days afterward. Wished I'd taped it b/c the album was import only in Canada and not easily found. It took me another year before I could locate a copy and hear it again. In the interim, I'd picked up a couple of other Hammill solos from the same era (The Future Now, pH7) but none brought the same effect.

A Black Box is still my favourite of his, alongside Sitting Targets and This.

FSOL and paul weller, too???

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/the-amorphous-androgynous-and-peter-hammill/we-persuade-ourselves-we-are-immortal

Interested to know how this turns out.

A really interesting Swedish TV performance with PH in '74 has just surfaced, some fans opted to buy the license to the footage after being given the nod by the man himself - who says he cannot remember doing it - to share on FB.

https://fb.watch/4bzKWtk4Hu/

Swiss actually

Ooops sry

That's a fascinating discovery. His piano playing alone is a little too crude to capture the subtleties of the songs, a guitar number in the middle might have broken it up a little.

Dunno, have you heard his guitar playing?

Yes, he's not a great guitarist. His piano playing is his piano playing, that's what he does! Anyway, these performances are not that different from the recorded versions, which are very much based around his piano, crude or not.

Right, but without backing vocals, Mellotron, etc. his piano style can get monotonous. The Silent Corner stuff is also at an unrelenting pitch of intensity; I saw him twice in 2008 and the mix of songs from throughout his career helped create variety in mood and playing style.

Enormous 20-disc VdGG box set just announced for autumn release:

https://store.udiscovermusic.com/*/*/The-Charisma-Years/70JW0000000

CDs of his late 70s solo albums are dwindling away, I hope they're reissued soon, I haven't heard anything past Over, it's been a long time

Wish they'd abandoned the CDs-in-cardboard-slits approach and give the discs solid mini-LP sleeves. Packaging- if not content-wise the Bowie boxes do this best (hardback in line with spines).

The remastering of these albums c.2004 was on the loud and harsh side, so hopefully the new versions will be less so.

Oh, looks like there are 3-disc sets for each album getting the 5.1 treatment (H to He, Pawn Hearts, Godbluff, Still Life) with both mixes on CD and blu-ray, plus bonus tracks on the CDs.

And yeah, a Hammill box would be useful.

The remastering of these albums c.2004 was on the loud and harsh side, so hopefully the new versions will be less so.

Ha, holy cow yeah they were and yes a Hammill 70s solo box would be great cuz I always feel like I have everything and then it turns out he's got ANOTHER solo jawn

Oh good I’m glad the album are getting individual releases!

albums

This is a weird one, why shoot a video for this song? Did they think they could get a hit single with it? And who are the motley crew of people watching?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxWoYmb3MKw

It might have been shot as part of a TV appearance, I guess it's the most likely song on World Record to appeal to a casual viewer.
The ending revealing the people watching foreshadows the "Shout" video by Tears for Fears a bit.

those crowd shots are a real trip, everyone seems a little uh...unsure about these guys

Masks surely the obvious single off World Record

Giant box set alert!

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/814RENuri8S.jpg

CD 1: The Least We Can Do is Wave to Each Other
Darkness (11/11)
Refugees
White Hammer
Whatever Would Robert Have Said?
Out of My Book
After the Flood
BONUS TRACKS
Refugees (single version) – A-side April 1970
Boat of Millions of Years – B-side April 1970
Darkness (BBC Radio ‘Top Gear’ session 20 Jan 1970)
After the Flood (BBC Radio ‘Top Gear’ session 20 Jan 1970)

CD 2: H to He Who Am the Only One
Killer
House with No Door
The Emperor in His War Room
Lost
Pioneers Over C
BONUS TRACKS
Killer (first version) – Previously unreleased – Recorded at Trident Studios in July 1970
The Emperor in His War Room (first version) – Recorded at Trident Studios in July 1970
Lost (BBC Radio ‘Top Gear’ session 12 Oct 1970) – previously unreleased
Killer (BBC Radio ‘Top Gear’ session 12 Oct 1970) – previously unreleased

CD 3: Pawn Hearts
Lemmings (including Cog)
Man Erg
A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers:
a) Eyewitness b) Pictures / Lighthouse c) Eyewitness d) SHM e) Presence of the Night f) Kosmos Tours g) (Custard’s) Last Stand h) The Clot Thickens i) Land’s End (Sineline) j) We Go now
BONUS TRACKS
Man Erg (BBC Radio One Sounds of the Seventies session – 10 June 1971)
Theme One (BBC Radio One Sounds of the Seventies session – 10 June 1971)
Vision (BBC Radio One Sounds of the Seventies session – 10 June 1971)
Darkness (BBC Radio One Sounds of the Seventies session – 10 June 1971)

CD 4
Theme One (A-side of single Feb 1972)
W (B-side of single Feb 1972)
Squid / Octopus (from Pawn Heart sessions)
Angle of Incidents (from Pawn Heart sessions)
Ponker’s Theme (from Pawn Heart sessions)
Dimunitions (from Pawn Heart sessions)
W (first version) (from Pawn Heart sessions)
Theme One (original mix) (from Pawn Heart sessions)
Man Erg (BBC Radio One John Peel Concert 23 Sep 1971)
W (BBC Radio One John Peel Concert 23 Sep 1971)
Killer (BBC Radio One John Peel Concert 23 Sep 1971)
Refugees (BBC Radio One John Peel Concert 14 Dec 1971)

CD 5: Godbluff
The Undercover Man
Scorched Earth
Arrow
The Sleepwalkers
BONUS TRACKS
Scorched Earth (BBC Radio One John Peel session – 3 July 1975)
The Sleepwalkers (BBC Radio One John Peel session – 3 July 1975)

CD 6: Live in Rimini 9th August 1975
A Louse is Not a Home
(In the) Black Room / The Tower
Forsaken Gardens
Lemmings
Scorched Earth
Man-Erg

CD 7: Still Life
Pilgrims
Still Life
La Rossa
My Room (Waiting for Wonderland)
Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End
BONUS TRACKS
Gog (live) – Recorded at the Theatr Gwynedd, Bangor, Wales 10 May 1975
Still Life (BBC Radio One John Peel session – 1 April 1976)
La Rossa (BBC Radio One John Peel session – 1 April 1976)

CD 8: World Record
When She Comes
A Place to Survive
Masks
Meurglys III (The Songwriters Guild)
Wondering
BONUS TRACKS:
When She Comes (BBC Radio One John Peel session – 11 November 1976)
Masks (BBC Radio One John Peel session – 11 November 1976)
Part One (Approx. 35% of) Meurglys III (The Songwriters Guild) – B-side of single Oct 1976 – Previously unreleased on CD

CD 9: Live at Maison de la Mutualite, Paris (6 Dec 1976 – previously unreleased)
Arrow
When She Comes
Masks
Still Life
Lemmings
Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End

CD 10: Live at Maison de la Mutualite, Paris (6 Dec 1976 – previously unreleased)
Meurglys III (The Songwriter’s Guild)
Gog
Sleepwalkers
Killer
Man-Erg

CD 11: The Quiet Zone / The Pleasure Dome
Lizard Play
The Habit of the Broken Heart
The Siren Song
Last Frame
The Wave
Cat’s Eye / Yellow Fever (Running)
The Sphinx in the Face
Chemical World
The Sphinx Returns
BONUS TRACKS
Door
Ship of Fools (B-side of French single from Sep 1977)
The Wave (demo version)
Cat’s Eye / Yellow Fever (BBC Radio One John Peel session – 24 October 1977)
The Sphinx in the Face (BBC Radio One John Peel session – 24 October 1977)
(Fragments of) A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers / Sleepwalker’s End (BBC Radio One John Peel session – 24 October 1977)

CD 12: Vital (live album)
Ship of Fools
Still Life
Last Frame
Mirror Images
Medley: A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers / Sleepwalkers

CD 13: Vital (live album)
Pioneers Over C
Sci-Finance
Door
Urban / Killer / Urban
Nadir’s Big Chance

CD 14: H to He Who Am the Only One (New stereo mix)
Killer
House with No Door
The Emperor in His War Room
Lost
Pioneers Over C

CD 15: Pawn Hearts (New stereo mix)
Lemmings (including Cog)
Man Erg
A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers:
a) Eyewitness b) Pictures / Lighthouse c) Eyewitness d) SHM e) Presence of the Night f) Kosmos Tours g) (Custard’s) Last Stand h) The Clot Thickens i) Land’s End (Sineline) j) We Go now
BONUS TRACKS
Theme One (new stereo mix)
W (new stereo mix)

CD 16: Godbluff (New stereo mix)
The Undercover Man
Scorched Earth
Arrow
The Sleepwalkers

CD 17: Still Life (New stereo mix)
Pilgrims
Still Life
La Rossa
My Room (Waiting for Wonderland)
Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End

Blu-ray #1: ‘H to He Who Am the Only One’ and ‘Pawn Hearts’
BOTH ALBUMS IN HIGH RESOLUTION 5.1 SURROUND SOUND MIX / NEW STEREO MIX / ORIGINAL STEREO MIX
H to He Who Am the Only One
Killer
House with No Door
The Emperor in His War Room
Lost
Pioneers Over C
Pawn Hearts
Lemmings (including Cog)
Man Erg
A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers:
a) Eyewitness b) Pictures / Lighthouse c) Eyewitness d) SHM e) Presence of the Night f) Kosmos Tours g) (Custard’s) Last Stand h) The Clot Thickens i) Land’s End (Sineline) j) We Go now

Blu-ray #2: ‘Godbluff’ and ‘Still Life’
BOTH ALBUMS IN HIGH RESOLUTION 5.1 SURROUND SOUND MIX / NEW STEREO MIX / ORIGINAL STEREO MIX
Godbluff
The Undercover Man
Scorched Earth
Arrow
The Sleepwalkers
Still Life
Pilgrims
La Rossa
My Room (Waiting for Wonderland)
Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End

Blu-ray #3: The Video Vaults
Darkness (‘Beat Club’ – German TV 23 June 1970) – previously unreleased
Whatever Would Robert Have Said (‘Beat Club’ – German TV 23 June 1970) – previously unreleased
Lost (‘Pop Deux’ Filmed at The Bataclan Theatre, Paris 18 March 1972 – Previously unreleased)
Killer (‘Pop Deux’ Filmed at The Bataclan Theatre, Paris 18 March 1972 – Previously unreleased)
Octopus (‘Pop Deux’ Filmed at The Bataclan Theatre, Paris 18 March 1972 – Previously unreleased)
Theme One (‘Pop Shop’ Recorded 23 March 1972 for RTBF, Belgium) First official release.
A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers (‘Pop Shop’ Recorded 23 March 1972 for RTBF, Belgium) First official release.
The Undercover Man (Live in Charleroi Palais des Expos – 27 September 1975) First official release.
Arrow (Live in Charleroi Palais des Expos – 27 September 1975) First official release.
Scorched Earth (Live in Charleroi Palais des Expos – 27 September 1975) First official release.
Sleepwalkers (Live in Charleroi Palais des Expos – 27 September 1975) First official release.
Wondering (Charisma promotional film 1976) Previously unreleased
Cat’s Eye (Charisma promotional film) Previously unreleased
Van der Graaf in Concert (The Kohfidisch Open Air Festival, Austria 17 June 1978 recorded by ORF TV). Previously unreleased

how are the new remasters?

shit, apparently they're pretty good

It's already out? I should get this

is any of this being released separately. Can't afford the full box.
Did prefer the previous remasters to the original cds but I think a lot of people didn't .

Yeah there are separate reissues of H to He, Pawn Hearts, Godbluff & Still Life.

if they pressed those on vinyl they'd make a killing - VdGG albums are pretty hard to come by

Yeah, vinyl reissues of those four are planned.

Listening to Still Life now, I'm taken aback by how good it is to hear Peter's voice again (it's been several years since my last Hammill) but getting the CDs out the packaging of the new reissues is a bitch, I ripped the cardboard by accident.

still life is the best one! that 20cd box set it up on streaming things!

"House With No Door" is so fantastic. Reminds me of his solo stuff quite a bit (which I tend to prefer).

Don't know anything about Isildurs Bane, 2 albums with them, didn't expect so many collaborations.

Regret not getting those remasters of The Future Now, pH7 and A Black Box when they were cheap. I still haven't registered at Discogs yet.

Streamed a bunch of the box over the wknd, new remasters def improvement over the last round which were basically unlistenable, am really tempted to buy the thing

still bothers me that the recent vinyl reissues don't use the new mix. I am pretty sure it's not the brickwalled 2005 mixes either. I've only got The Least We Can Do and I'm starting to think there just isn't a good sounding version of that album. I think it was just recorded lousy.

Isildur's Bane is one of those Swedish prog groups that's somehow been around for like 40 years. I've heard parts of the albums they did with Hammill and they are really chaotic in spots, kind of electronic and really dissonant sometimes. I need to listen to them again, they were really fun I thought. definitely not for everyone though.

Always impressed how they were able to reinvent themselves as a post-punk band for The Quiet Zone / The Pleasure Dome & Vital

Also I haven't listened to Present in a minute man I forgot how great this record is

Fuckin hell A Black Box is amaaaaazing isn't it

I'm listening to samples of his 2023 remake of his 1988 album In a Foreign Town, and I'm afraid his voice is in very rough shape. His tone, range, and pitch are all worse for wear; there were points when I could have mistaken him for modern-day Roger Waters. I believe he smoked for many years but quit a while ago.
I saw him a few times fifteen years ago and his voice had held up very well till then; obviously 60 is not 75, and he is still delivering the sense of the songs, but it's humbling to hear this (inevitable?) decay, highlighted on songs he first recorded 35 years ago.

I wouldn't say he's anywhere near as bad as Waters. I agree he's starting to sound his age a bit but his voice has still held up a lot better than some of his contemporaries. tbh I'm not sure why he decided to re-record these two. I guess they do sound less plastic but removing Jackson's sax parts is a bummer.

the whole relationship with Jaxon has been a mystery for forever

have to admit i've not been attentive to Peter's work for ages, i hope he's free to do whatever takes his fancy for as long as he's around, but i feel like ever since the heart attack whatever happens is just a bonus

yeah it's bizarre especially given the whole point of the reunion was the realization that they weren't gonna be around forever. I mean I respect them for not making it public like a lot of bands do but it feels like there's still a lot of bad blood there for whatever reason.

I haven't really kept up with him either, though I remember his mid-00's albums being pretty good. I liked the album he did with Isildur's Bane called "In Amazonia"...there's another one out there but I haven't heard it yet. as brilliant as Hammill is I never found him to be totally engaging as a solo artist. feel like he needs other musicians around him to truly bring out his best. hence why the mid-70s albums which featured the VdGG lineup were my favorite. as I suspect they are for most people. the K-group stuff is quite good too. but yea the albums where it's just him with a guitar and synthesizers....I mean yeah the dude writes great tunes, but his voice has such power, he needs more than that.

btw I am guessing probably none of you have heard of Isildur's Bane, but I will point out one of their early albums has a nude male ass on the cover, so their bona fides are legit

yeah maybe K-Group is as close as we get to Hammill outside of VDGG. it doesn't even matter to me, maybe it matters more to him. a lot of the public reasons for VDGG breaking up were purely practical/financial but you wonder if there's other things going on in private and that's ok, they can stay private, not my business

i have not heard Isildur's Bane frogbs but god loves a Tolk ref

wait is the nude male ass a "ring" reference 😮😔

yeah it's bizarre especially given the whole point of the reunion was the realization that they weren't gonna be around forever. I mean I respect them for not making it public like a lot of bands do but it feels like there's still a lot of bad blood there for whatever reason.

:woman_shrugging: i mean none of my fucking business. just because they worked together for a long time doesn't put personal details like that within my scope as a fan.

btw I am guessing probably none of you have heard of Isildur's Bane, but I will point out one of their early albums has a nude male ass on the cover, so their bona fides are legit

― frogbs, Friday, January 12, 2024 1:34 PM (twenty-five seconds ago)

_never heard of isildur's bane_? the third act on the bill on day one of NEARFest in 2002? you _wound_ me, friend. do you think i am wholly ignorant of scandinavian prog? i have heard every single artist named in the Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock, even that ones which do not actually exist. my friend, i am so enthusiastic about prog that i boof prog every single day. and here you suggest i do not know isildur's bane!

i admit that i've never actually _heard_ isildur's bane before, though. i'm listening to a compilation called "lost eggs", because the title is a heckin' mood. the first track is really bad. the seventh track is twenty seconds of synthesizer fart noises. tracks 3-6 are legit tho.

i'd also never seen the cover of "sea reflections" damn that is a fantastically terrible '80s private-press rock album cover. the artist, catharina rysten, has a swedish wikipedia page tho. so the naked guy is standing in water staring at a UFO which is beaming up a saxophone?

ass is probably not a "ring" reference although one of the tracks on the album is entitled "Bilbo"

i don't think you can truly love any of the VDGG people without having tolerance for very questionable aesthetic decisions and in that spirit i hope they all carry on for eternity

I had heard that Jackson was let go because he had signed off on, or otherwise participated in, some European VDGG concert or documentary DVD that the others didn't want officially validated; and/or that he was not making himself available for agreed-upon schedules around recording and touring.

Nothing salacious hidden in the paragraph above, just didn't want to accidentally make any revelations for those who don't want to know.

the fact that they were billed above Echolyn is a crime if you ask me! that 2002 lineup is pretty dire but the years after looked pretty good!!

I have heard some of their 80's records, they are hilariously bad, but also kinda fun. from what I've heard of their 90's stuff (the "Mind" records) they definitely got better but they're good in sort of in the way the Flower Kings are, they seem to love to pump out hour-plus CDs with like 10 minutes of good stuff on them

on the records they did with Hammill it sounds like they're trying to ape VdGG and IMO they do a pretty good job of it. no organ or sax but they get the doom riffing right!

fwiw I did hear some rumours about the situation with Jaxon, nothing controversial but more a question of commitment and creative ambitions.

xpost

do you mean K-Group? honestly never realised that existed beyond a PH backing band

and without going into all the contradictions that i might argue later, i figure Peter's failingest failing is he doesn't care very much about how his music *sounds*, or idk i'm not saying that right but he feels like a "message over context" guy more than any other

yeah big problem for him from like the mid-80s throughout most of the 90's, I think his albums from like 1998 on sound a bit punchier and more interesting but even still a lot of them feel like the last 40 years of Todd Rundgren, where they sound more like demos than a finished product

the VdGG remasters he did in 2005 were pretty awful too, totally brickwalled and blown out. I've heard the recent remasters were a lot better but for some reason the vinyl reissues don't use them. I got a copy of The Least We Can Do... and it sounds horrible, just like every other edition of it I've heard.

currently listening to the other album with Isildur's Bane, called In Disequilibrium. not sure where the actual 'songs' are but still it's pretty interesting, moreso than the reformed VdGG albums I guess. Hammill sounds good on it too, even though this was recorded only a few years ago.

"Every Bloody Emperor" is arguably the best thing they ever wrote which just makes me sad about all the other reunion stuff

and without going into all the contradictions that i might argue later, i figure Peter's failingest failing is he doesn't care very much about how his music *sounds*

Seems to be an issue with a few prog musicians, I had a solo album by the guy from Univers Zero that sounded like it was being played on a cheap Korg factory strings preset. Totally unlistenable.

I've noticed that with some full bands as well, specifically in the neo-prog stuff that isn't IQ or Marillion, or some of the various imitators from the 90s like Glass Hammer or Citizen Cain. the musicians sound like they're up to the task but there's no power in the music - ugly guitar sounds, cheap keyboards, drums that sound so thin it's hard to believe they're actually real. I agree, it's basically unlistenable, even if the music itself is good

Halfway there pretty much has it right with regard to Jackson’s dismissal from the group in 2006. Hammill hasn't gone into the gory details but he hasn't exactly made a secret of the reasons either, he addressed the issue with some frankness in a 2007 newsletter.

I like the reunion albums. They don’t all feel indispensable but there are great things on each.

Peter's failingest failing is he doesn't care very much about how his music *sounds*, or idk i'm not saying that right but he feels like a "message over context" guy more than any other

...

I've noticed that with some full bands as well, specifically in the neo-prog stuff that isn't IQ or Marillion, or some of the various imitators from the 90s like Glass Hammer or Citizen Cain. the musicians sound like they're up to the task but there's no power in the music - ugly guitar sounds, cheap keyboards, drums that sound so thin it's hard to believe they're actually real. I agree, it's basically unlistenable, even if the music itself is good

I reviewed their 2016 album and yeah, that was exactly the problem.

I've noticed that with some full bands as well, specifically in the neo-prog stuff that isn't IQ or Marillion, or some of the various imitators from the 90s like Glass Hammer or Citizen Cain. the musicians sound like they're up to the task but there's no power in the music - ugly guitar sounds, cheap keyboards, drums that sound so thin it's hard to believe they're actually real. I agree, it's basically unlistenable, even if the music itself is good

― frogbs

it can cut both ways. i mean, the lowrey is just about the cheapest, shittiest, most obnoxious organ i can think of. i swear to god i sometimes think a stylophone has a more mellifluous tone. doesn't keep soft machine from being all-time.

you're right, though, that a lot of prog focuses on CONTENT to the exclusion of form. '80s frank zappa might be the apotheosis of this. i know this is a man who valorizes ugliness, but there are far better ways to be ugly than the way those fucking '80s albums sound. zappa isn't abrasive, he's just demonstrating a more advanced version of the profound timbral bad taste exhibited by emerson, lake, and palmer.

in general, though, i think prog's often-questionable aesthetic decisions* constitute a great deal of its appeal. so much of gentle giant's music is completely antithetical to...

i don't know _how_ to describe gentle giant, other than to say "WHY THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE HETEROSEXUAL?!?!?!?!?". gentle giant's music would be _so_ much better if it was _queer_. prog rock got put down all the time for being fey and mincing like those were bad things. there's so much queerness in prog rock. keith emerson in his leather-boy getup thrusting his knife into his keyboard repeatedly. everything ever produced by genesis between 1971 and 1974. kevin ayers' eyeliner. peter hammill's over-the-top theatricality. _synthesizers_, oh my god, combine synthesizers, kink, and communism and you have transfem culture. even when jethro tull lucked into having a trans woman in their band, there was nothing remotely trans about them _musically_, despite their being fronted by a panto flautist in an oversized codpiece. prog bands kept putting artwork of wonderfully callipygean men on their album covers and have consistently been trying to "no homo" those creative decisions ever since. This shit ought to be the APEX of queer culture, but damn near everybody involved in this shit was disgustingly heterosexual. (shout-outs to bob drake, though. thank christ for bob drake.)

* (i'm listening to _facelift_ now and woo boy it is a BONANZA on that front... someone once postulated that the master tapes were soaked in bongwater for six weeks before being pressed to vinyl, and honestly, i find this theory plausible)

ELP are incredibly hetero, have you not seen the cover of Love Beach?

I believe Robert John Godfrey is gay and when I saw The Enid in 2013 I guessed their singer might be too based on the way they were joking around.

From 1968 to 1971 Godfrey became resident musical director with Barclay James Harvest,[2] making musical contributions to early recordings which established their full, orchestral style of rock music. The relationship fell apart and accounts differ as to why.[3][4] Godfrey is gay, and claimed this was one reason he was fired from BJH. "It was the band’s girlfriends who forced the issue," he told Classic Rock magazine. "They were from the Lancashire/Yorkshire area and couldn’t handle the idea of a gay man like me with a plummy accent."[5]

Still have never fully engaged with The Enid, I think they have the same disregard for sonics I moaned about up there, but Godfrey being gay a) doesn't surprise me and b) makes me want to have yet another try at digging their scene which has always felt removed from the boring normativity of a lot of the Prog boys

I love their first two albums but haven't kept up, some of their more recent bigger orchestral music sounded incredible.

I've got a feeling Carmen weren't all straight. All I can say for sure is that David Clark Allen is a sexual anthropologist and well known fetish photographer/author.

In many cases I guess prog musicians really genuinely like "ugly" sounds and I think it's part of what makes the genre interesting, even rewarding and it's hard to say if it's a disregard for sonics. Kind of reminds me of seeing Garth Hudson in Last Waltz, loving all these ugly keyboard sounds he's making.
However, prog and metal definitely has a problem with overpolishing and there has to be some kind of aesthetic deafness involved in that. And yeah sometimes the keyboards and guitars sound just too ugly.

The word "message" suggests lyrics to me and I don't think prog has ever prioritized lyrics to the extent of diminishing the music.

Trying to think of the best examples of awesomely ugly vs ugly-ugly.

I definitely don't want to delimit "good" sounds from bad, it's definitely not that simple, I guess I'm thinking about ugliness in the service of interesting versus ugliness as inattention to what music can be

RJG is a sociopath and his account of quitting BJH is bullshit, as is everything else he's ever said about anything. But yes The Enid are about the one overtly gay prog band, shame it has to be that guy really.

I know Godfrey tried unsuccessfully to sue Barclay James Harvest not too many years ago; I also remember him making the quizzical statement that the Enid were loved at punk clubs because they were so "un-punk" that they were actually perceived as punk, or words to that effect.

I tried getting into them because Voivod spoks so reverentially about them but it was hard since they were so damn prolific.

I still have a couple things on the shelves.

I like plenty of Voivod and that shout totally makes sense but aren't we talking about another band too interesting to get appropriate respect from their genre peers?

Yeah and I guess Voivod is somewhat prolific too but the difference is I was along the whole time for Voivod and came in late to Van der Graaf Generator.

I know Godfrey tried unsuccessfully to sue Barclay James Harvest not too many years ago; I also remember him making the quizzical statement that the Enid were loved at punk clubs because they were so "un-punk" that they were actually perceived as punk, or words to that effect.

― Halfway there but for you

yeah greg lake made the same claim about ELP. see: rick wakeman's "i'm so straight i'm a weirdo". which is _almost_ right. the truth is that being straight is just fucking weird. i mean fundamentally ok a lot of the time, don't get me wrong, but _weird_.

ELP are incredibly hetero, have you not seen the cover of Love Beach?

― frogbs

just don't ask d3n1s3 sh4rp3 about carl palmer

i definitely need to check out carmen, a lot of this stuff is like... niche symphonic and symphonic has never really been my jam. also definitely interested in david clark allen's fetish art lol.

but yes The Enid are about the one overtly gay prog band, shame it has to be that guy really.

― where did the times go (Matt #2)

i mean that's kind of queer shit in general, though... being queer means you go through a lot of shit that cishets don't and that fucks a person up, queer pioneers tend to be kinda fucked up people. if you look at a lot of the people trans people like me try to reclaim as trans, they're kinda awful. elagabalus? terrible, fucked-up person. ed wood? incredibly bad filmmaker and racist drunk. doesn't excuse it, but there's this desire for queer pioneers to be like tom hanks in _philadelphia_, which to me, from what i've seen of that movie and its legitimacy narrative, it kinda distorts a lot of what makes queer people _queer_.

i guess that's the other thing, just being queer doesn't make a person's work queer. i heard dee palmer's solo album just because i wanted to hear what kind of music she would make. i don't hear anything queer at all in it. it's just kind of an ordinary prog record. which is good! i defend that strongly. trans people don't have to make "trans music", like, our entire lives aren't about being trans.

anyway i'm gonna have to listen to their stuff but given that one of their best-known records is "aerie faerie nonsense", yeahhhh that sounds pretty queer. didn't stand out because faeries are _standard in prog_ except it's usually invoked by cishets for some reason? just... to me they're missing out on the best shit about this stuff.

I get what you're saying but I think you have to separate queerness from sexuality somehow, because prog music is pretty nonsexual as a whole to me. and when it does get horny it always comes off very weird. imo "Ladies of the Road" is worse than just a filler track, it almost ruins the band's entire image (though tbf Crimson was kind of falling apart there anyway). its not just a sex thing either, when prog bands sing about any sort of normal thing (see Triumvirat's concept album about getting laid off at the factory) it just comes off strange to me

there is a modern prog band called The Tangent that sorta pulls it off though, mainly because you just know the dude is an IT worker doing this in his spare time

"when prog bands sing about any sort of normal thing (see Triumvirat's concept album about getting laid off at the factory) it just comes off strange to me"

surely that's good?

I think Fandangos In Space by Carmen is an essential prog album, just amazing. On David Clark Allen's blog he writes about new flamenco bands.

I always thought the faeries and other fantasy cliches weren't that prevalent in prog but just appear more than in most rock genres. Same with power metal, I expected epic fantasy full time but a lot of the songs are about the things anyone sings about.

That Gentle Giant album "Three Friends" sounds like a pretty normal mundane story.

it is about a gay ogre orgy

Troll Throuple

I get what you're saying but I think you have to separate queerness from sexuality somehow, because prog music is pretty nonsexual as a whole to me. and when it does get horny it always comes off very weird. imo "Ladies of the Road" is worse than just a filler track, it almost ruins the band's entire image (though tbf Crimson was kind of falling apart there anyway). its not just a sex thing either, when prog bands sing about any sort of normal thing (see Triumvirat's concept album about getting laid off at the factory) it just comes off strange to me

there is a modern prog band called The Tangent that sorta pulls it off though, mainly because you just know the dude is an IT worker doing this in his spare time

― frogbs

King Crimson's image is really interesting to me! I think they're a very... like not musically complex, but _personally_ complex band. The image of King Crimson often doesn't accord with the reality. That's what I found so fascinating about the recent King Crimson documentary. It really delves into that.

This idea of King Crimson as this non-sexual, intellectual, cerebral band is, as far as I can tell, completely divorced from the reality. The impression I get from Fripp's statements about this period is that he was pretty much a huge slut. "Ladies of the Road" isn't even their first paean to groupies - "Cadence and Cascade" is also on that theme. In the "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" period there were a fair few references to analingus, as well.

I definitely do... I mean I don't differentiate queerness from sexuality in an _absolute_ sense. My gender identity isn't the same thing as my sexual identity. (My sexual identity is one that I've seen described as "WTFSexual", as in "What even is sex?" I'm not asking that ironically. I genuinely do not know what "sex" is supposed to be.)

I guess when I talk about queerness and the lack thereof I look at it kind of along the same lines as Natalie Reed's "Null HypotheCis". The default reading for me of prog isn't asexual or non-gendered. It's cisgender, heterosexual music, whether it's _explicitly_ sexual or not. There are a lot of implicit assumptions in there, things that aren't even noticeable to cishets but just don't track with my own experience and understanding. I mean, look, I don't want to get too sociologist here, but the music of, say, Magma, which is propulsive, repetitive music that drives towards an explosive finale... I'll just say that it _parallels_ normative cis male sexuality. I understand the appeal of that kind of sex. It's not the way I do things. That's not to say that Magma's music is explicitly sexual music or that music is all about sex or whatever whatever. There's just a level of resonance with cis male sexuality that's just _there_, it's congruent in a way where the presence or absence of congruence isn't even a question. And to me, I feel that incongruence pretty strongly.

A lot of what I like about prog rock is what I've seen referred to as "padding", as being "aimless". King Crimson talks of their name being evocative of a "man with an aim". I'm a woman and to the extent that I have an aim, it's mostly to live in and embody the moment. (Which, actually, is King Crimson's aim too... we get along a lot better than the name might suggest!)

Prog rock songs can be very long and while they do tend to eventually get where they're going, it's a long, often scenic trip. They don't get in and out within two minutes. Which, again, I'm not condemning. I think that's pretty cool, having that quick hardcore blast of energy. When I think about myself, how I express myself, that's not how I do things. If I arrive at a conclusion at all, it's almost by accident. That's the feeling I get from my favorite prog - oh, that actually makes sense? I didn't expect that to make sense, I thought we were just wandering around aimlessly. When I do stuff that's... _maybe_ sex? Anyway, that's kind of how I go about things. I'm very fond of the "fuck around and find out" approach.

And there's a sort of tension between that sort of structural _queerness_ I find in prog with the way so much of it is cishet coded. That's kind of what I mean when I talk about music not being queer, I don't necessarily mean explicitly, I mean sometimes people's queerness informs their work, the way cishet people's cishet-ness informs their work. Honestly maybe that's why Palmer's album disappointed me... it's missing any kind of implicit sense of gender or sexual identity whatsoever. It's just kind of _there_.

That Gentle Giant album "Three Friends" sounds like a pretty normal mundane story.

― Bulky Pee Pants (Tom D.), Sunday, January 14, 2024 8:59 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is about a gay ogre orgy

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm)

six of one, half a dozen of the other

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videos

^uploading VDGG and Hammil bootlegs in roughly chronological order every day

Oh balls, I bet this doesn't work either -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTq5H7Di7Bc-

Oh it did, good then.

v nice resource/project, Maresn3st - thanks for posting.

I was once at a gig and a hippy came over to me and said "Has anyone ever told you, you look exactly like Nic Potter of Van der Graaf Generator?".

I've got to admit the resemblance is or rather was uncanny, this is exactly what I looked like in my 20s.

https://www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk/pawnhearts/nicpotter_vital2.jpg

just saw there's a massive Hammill box set on the way:

https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/peter-hammill-to-release-20-disc-the-charisma-and-virgin-recordings-1971-1986-box-set-in-september

looks very nice though this is far more Hammill than I need in a physical format (I already have the majority of these on vinyl). Past forays into remastering of VdGG and Hammill stuff have been bad, but not sure who is handling these ones.

just don't ask d3n1s3 sh4rp3 about carl palmer

ok I need this explained to me, I googled and landed in very old usenet discussions about the Division Bell and Publius Enigma.

The Hamm!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eG4bW1tCZQ