Chula Vista

My old band use to do Suite Madam Blue, which nobody knew cause I don't think it was ever a radio hit or anything, but it would always go over amazingly well.

Absolute killer synth work on that track!

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Queen Boo

To me Styx were the ultimate jack of all trades master of none band of the 70s. Hard rock, prog rock, yacht rock, they did it all and always with a generous topping of cheese.

Todd in the Shadows once compared Dennis DeYoung's vocal style to that Dana Carvey "Choppin' Broccoli" song from SNL and now I can't unhear it.

Well that and it's an absurdly racist Japanese caricature like something straight out of a WW2 Warner Bros cartoon.

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Chula Vista

Looks like a villain from a Kabuki theater production.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Trollheart

All right then, on to the second example I’m going to take. I’m reliably informed this is one of their best regarded, and it comes two years after the previous one. It also has the hit “Wind Him Up”, which I’ve heard of, but not heard, and two more of those Chapters things. Let’s see if this changes my mind, or reinforces it.

Worlds Apart (1981)

I don’t want to judge an album by its cover, but my god it’s pretty awful. I had to check twice to see what it is: seems to be some sort of sorcerer or demonic guy holding a map while everything either explodes or steam covers everything. What’s the idea there I wonder? Do I wonder? Not really. Don’t care. It’s certainly a step down from the first album I looked at, in terms of covers. Very unattractive. Well, let’s see what the music is like.

Got a bit more of a punch to it as it begins, kind of a military beat to “On the Loose”, which was a hit, and I see it says Michael Sadler, the singer who annoyed me so much on the previous album, changed his vocal style at the urging of the producer. Much better. It’s very early, of course, but does this sound prog to me? At this particular moment, not really, but it has a certain charm. Not sure what makes it so much better than any of the previous Saga songs that it became a hit, but whatever. There is a more mature sense about it, so that’s something. Still using that APP main melody though. Hmm. “Wind Him Up” is next, and apparently this became a hit - mostly in Canada - due more or less to its heavy rotation on MTV. That can be a good or a bad thing: if the song became a hit because people liked the video the song itself may not be that good. Of course, it could also be that both are good. That stuttery riff runs through this track as well, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mhNM4XqTN4
It’s decent, perhaps even better than decent. Is it changing my mind about Saga? The jury are still in the box, never mind retired to consider a verdict. Evidence is still being presented, Your Honour. “Wind Him Up” is another playful, boppy, uptempo song but again it froths rather than slays, for me anyway. I will admit that I was singing “Mouse in a Maze” this morning, so they’ve made some impression on me. That was the last album, of course. Can this one do something similar? Well, “Amnesia” is slower, and conjures up, of all things, images of 80s Genesis, around the time of the self-titled oh no it doesn’t, just went into another bippity-boppity rhythm which robs it of the sort of gravitas it was beginning to attain. Meh. And meh to the next one too. A common problem with bands like this, with me anyway, is that songs tend to blend together and I can never remember any of them after the album is over. This is not an issue with bands like Arena, Threshold, Marillion, Big Big Train and a hundred others. I take it as an indication that, to me at any rate, the band, and possibly the album(s) is or are not very interesting, at least not enough to keep my attention.

This one is called “Framed” and the only real thing I can tell you about it, other than being yet another uptempo pop/rocky thing is that there’s a very annoying voiceover about people being framed, and then a pretty decent guitar solo and instrumental part, which almost, but not quite, saves the song. Other than that, like a lot here, it’s more or less passed me by. “Time’s Up” isn’t bad, to be fair, but again it’s not going to remain in my head afterwards. “The Interview” has a return to that tougher, marching beat the opener had, and the arpeggios are good. I’d actually say it’s the first really good track on the album to date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYA6ZXjkow
Okay, “No Regrets”, the first (only?) ballad is pretty damn fine, and I’d say close to being the first song of theirs I would consider truly progressive rock in its style. I like that one a lot. Great ambient sounds, kind of tubular bells somewhere in there too, and the vocal really suits the music. So two good tracks one after the other: are they going for a big finish here? Let’s see. Oh, and that’s one of the Chapters things, if you care. Next up we have “Conversations”, which has a sort of confused speech thing at the beginning; not exactly ground-breaking but at least it fits in with the title. Good opening instrumental - or is it all instrumental? Again very much more prog rock here, perhaps Saga are beginning to come of age. I don’t know if this would be classed as an instrumental, but the only vocals on it are the - presumably taped - snatches of discussion and talking going on, so maybe.

The closer then finally gets a little closer to the kind of song length you might be expecting on a prog album, though at just seven minutes it’s not quite what you’d call an epic. Not that length of track equals quality, but just generally, when I’m looking at new albums that are - sometimes mistakenly or undeservingly - labelled as prog, I do often tend to check the track lengths. It’s not the only yardstick by which I measure prog, of course, but overall, in a general sense, you don’t find too many other genres with songs over ten minutes, apart from maybe Atmospheric Black Metal, Ambient and a few others. “No Stranger”, then, opens with some sort of dark chant going on, quite moody in its atmosphere, slowburner perhaps, and it’s another of those Chapters. It’s, well, it’s all right, but it goes through too many changes and certainly does not leave me singing it at the end like I was with the last album’s closer.

Track listing

On the Loose
Wind Him Up
Amnesia
Framed
Time’s Up
The Interview
No Regrets (Chapter Five)
Conversations
No Stranger (Chapter Eight)

I can see a little more promise in this one, at least on the second side, says he, showing his age. But I’m still not convinced. I had hoped for a big blockbuster ending, and what I got was a fairly half-decent but in the end limpwristed shrug. So it seems to me anyway. Still, there are a few good tracks here, but like they say, in the same way that a few good tracks don’t make a good album, one good album (which I’m not convinced this is) does not make a good band. And this being acknowledged as their best, most commercially successful and loved album, kind of makes it look to me as if there’s only one way to go from here, and that’s down.

You want me to say it, don't you? Go on, admit it. All right, I will. I'll say it.

At this point, it seems Saga and myself are still... worlds apart.
Bum-tish!

Has anything on this album impressed me at all? Oh yeah. Much more than the previous one. I liked “No Regrets” and “The Interview”, though “Framed” (despite the very decent instrumental section) and “Conversations” both annoyed me, and I was disappointed by the closer. Overall though, I'd say this is a more progressive rock album than the other one. A step in the right direction, but we've a long way to go yet.

Result for this album:

Result so far:

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Trollheart

And so Saga have one last chance to impress me. Is it likely? At the moment I would say I’m slightly less meh towards them, but not much. This, then, is the third album I’m taking, going on recommendations from their fanbase, and as it’s a good deal more recent than the first two, who knows what might happen?



House of Cards (2001)

So we’re now twenty years ahead of Worlds Apart, and it’s interesting to me to note that this album did not chart, nor have any hit singles. Could it be better for that, or will it be a really poor effort? Still no long tracks, despite this having twelve, the most of the three I’ve looked at so far. The opener, “God Knows”, has a long-ish ambient sort of intro but then turns into another sort of uptempo boppy thing, though there is a harder edge to this, I will admit. The speech samples are quite annoying, and this is not the first time Saga have done this. I can’t say this excites me anyway. It’s not terrible but it’s still kind of meh, and really, I’ve always been a believer that you need a good track to kick an album off, and this isn’t it. Maybe it’ll get better. “The Runaway” has a sort of AOR feel to it, which has always been where I see Saga more positioned than as a prog band. It’s pretty guitar driven, and again it’s okay but not what I would call a breakout track. Sounds a little like something maybe Pat Benatar would have put out in the mid-eighties.

Could “Always There” be that breakout song? It’s certainly caught my attention, so that’s a start. Sort of a slow-ish acoustic guitar riff running through it, with a nice hook in the melody. I have to say, I like this one. Again though it has more an kind of maybe indie vibe rather than anything prog, but then Marillion have “After Me” and there are plenty of non-proglike songs in the catalogue of any prog band you care to name, so that’s not really a minus against them. I don’t think i’d call this a ballad, but it certainly is the slowest track so far. And, at the moment, far and away the best. “Ashes to Ashes” is a lot more proggy now, and I think I may also like this one. Got a sense of mid-era Arena about this, for sure. Another of the Chapters things. Good keyboard parts, with some ambient sounds in there too. It is a little repetitive though. Far better is “Once in a Lifetime”, a sort of waltzy semi-ballad that sounds like it could really have what it takes, as long as they don’t blow it as they tend to do so often.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CkmEb32jjE
No they didn’t try to overextend it or make it into something it wasn’t. That was very pleasant, and a good hook in it too. If they wrote more songs like that it’s possible Saga might impress me more, or at least induce me to look into their other albums (this is fourteen of twenty-two, so far), and in fact “Only Human”, rather surprisingly, continues the trend set down by “Once in a Lifetime” (there is another track, called, rather appropriately, “So Good, So Far”, but it’s not on my version, being only available on US and Japanese pressings). Another kind of semi-ballad with some nice soft percussion and picked guitar, it has a good sense of emotion in the vocal, and even an almost Rotheryesque guitar solo. Impressive.

And it more or less keeps going with “That’s How We Like It”, which ups the tempo but resists the urge to do their usual and stomp and bounce along, keeping well clear of the pop side of things, and again putting me in mind of Arena and maybe It Bites too. The chorus is perhaps a little cheesy, but I can probably forgive them that, seeing as, after a shaky start, this album is proving to be much more enjoyable than I had expected. The short piano instrumental is lovely, and then another uptempo but no less great song in “We’ll Meet Again” with some fine guitar work and a driving beat, and this is another of the Chapters. That leaves us with only two tracks, and to be fair, even if they’re shit - and at this point I don’t think they will be - this album is still a quantum leap forward for me in my attempt to get into Saga. Maybe the later albums are where it’s at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFI-YlJZK8I
Okay well there’s a somewhat embarrassing semi-rap or chant at the opening of “Money Talks”, but once it gets going it’s a pretty damn fine song, even if it does tend a little too far into pop, even (shudder) boyband territory. The hook is enough to earn it forgiveness for that though, and I’m still engaged. We end then on a sort of descending piano line into a guitar riff and a strange laugh as we pile into the title track, with a sort of boogie blues tune which confuses me a little, and I would have to say it’s not the ending I would have hoped for. “Money Talks” would have been a much more satisfying closer, not to mention that they bring those speech samples back in and really I find the track quite a mess. It’s a poor final taste of this band, but I’m still happy enough with this album, head and shoulders above the other two I listened to.

Track listing

God Knows
The Runaway
Always There
Ashes to Ashes (Chapter 11)
Once in a Lifetime
Only Human
That’s How We Like It
Watching the Clock
We’ll Meet Again (Chapter 15)
Money Talks
House of Cards

So at the end of my little excursion through the music of Saga in three albums, have I changed my mind? Well, a little, to be honest, mostly based on this one. I still don’t see them as a band I would be too interested in pushing myself to like, and if, as I imagine is the case, it’s only the later albums - say, those in this century - that might appeal to me, well then there are another, what, eleven albums I’d have to listen to which I might not like. And it’s not worth that. Not to mention that, should I find I do like the post-2000 ones, there are only eight more of them to listen to. I can’t see that it’s worth my while, whichever way I look at it.

All I can say is that I’ve gained a smidgeon more respect for them as a band, but as a progressive rock band, I’m afraid that, a few tracks here and there apart, I really don’t see it. If I had an icon that was a partial smile, I’d use it, but I can’t say Saga have put a smile on my face yet. Still, it’s a better result that it was before I began, and I guess that’s something.

Result for this album:

Result so far:

Final result (for now) on Saga:

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Trollheart

Here's a new section where I'll look at a single track, whether it's one I've just
discovered, one I know well, a classic or one I consider to be criminally ignored, and I'll waffle on about it in my usual style. And the name I shall give this section shall be


Title: “All Hands Lost”
Artist: Tinyfish
Nationality: English
Year: 2006
Album: Tinyfish
Running time: 12:26
Subject: Shipwreck? Not sure; no lyric sheet available

Tinyfish are a band about whom I know little, though they seem to have something a lot of prog bands do not, which is a sense of humour, calling themselves “the world’s smallest prog band”, despite there being five of them, making them larger in terms of personnel than many I can name. Not that I mean all prog artists take themselves too seriously, but undoubtedly some do, a carryover from the over-indulgences and complacency, and, let’s face it, arrogance of their forebears from the seventies. I have not heard this, Tinyfish’s debut album, released now over fifteen years ago, nor indeed any of their others; they remain as one of the many many bands I have yet to experience through the medium of the album, and wait patiently on my hard disk until I get the time or have the inclination to sample them, but this track came up on a playlist and I was, I have to admit, damned impressed.

It’s a long one, as you can see, and goes through many changes, opening on a sort of acoustic ringing slow guitar line, the vocal of Simon Godfrey very pleasing in a sort of Big Big Train/Spock’s Beard way, guitars handled by he and co-founder Jim Sanders, and Tinyfish appear to be somewhat different in that I can’t see any mention of keyboards. In a prog band? Unheard of? Not quite, but certainly very unusual. They do use guitar synths, so maybe that’s how they get around the keyboard parts, or maybe they don’t care. The guitars in the opening section do make enough of a melody on their own, so perhaps they’re not needed. A pretty fine guitar solo in the fourth minute accompanied by powerful percussion from Paul Worwood and a fluting sound that I guess comes from the guitar synths.

Building up now in the sixth minute on the back of a really long-held vocal note and then another breakaway solo, though a short one, the melody now reminding me of Twelfth Night as it picks up speed. Everything slows down then in the seventh minute for a - well, I would say keyboard or synth part but I guess it must be guitar synth - kind of effect that puts me in mind of Pallas’ “Queen of the Deep” and the melody becomes more low-key and slower with a sort of Mike Oldfield idea in the electric guitar. Now heading into the ninth minute on a reflective guitar solo and the last three minutes seem to run out instrumentally, with a somewhat disconcerting sudden stop and loud guitar riff then fading out.

I will admit, on second listen it’s not as great as I thought it was when I first heard it, but it’s still a pretty decent song and for the length of it, really doesn’t flag or lose my interest. The ending could be better but overall it’s a pointer to check out this largely ignored band and see what else they have in their locker.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58QoKfUUE94

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Queen Boo

Love the banner, you make it yourself?

I'm impressed by what you did with the title font there, how'd you do that?

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Trollheart

No I don't create that well. I steal from others.


The banner was used in my history of prog journal, and it can be found by simply typing "progressive rock" into Google. The font I had to search hard for. I wanted the Yes one, obviously, from their album covers but it was proving hard to track down (searching on a font site for "yes font" yields some interesting, but ultimately not usable, results). So in the end I found a forum where someone has a link to what is called "Classic Yes font", and that was the one I used. If you want the link I can pass it to you. Once I had it in Paint Shop the rest was simple, just a little tweaking to get the size right and I thought yellow was the best colour to use against the background.

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Trollheart

It’s been over a year since I began this journey, and let’s be honest here, I didn’t get far. Mostly I think it was due to a flat battery, which left us drifting in space battling various nasties, most of whom thought we were food. But then again, what can you really expect when you buy your craft from Honest Urkel’s Used Space Vehicle Round-Up? I mean, in my defence, it seemed a bargain.No, I don’t think he was wearing a cowboy hat. Looked like a homburg to me. Oh, I see! The other head! Always forget to check. Oh well, live and learn.

Anyway, now I’ve had to call out Infinity A and have lost a no-claims bonus larger than the GDP of a small galactic empire, we are at least now on the way again. Therefore I advise you to strap yourselves back in and relax as we bid farewell to assorted blue and green and red and yellow amorphous creatures and head back into the highways and byways of my record collection, to

Like I say, we didn’t get very far last time, so let’s see where we did get to. A.C.T. was our, well, first and at that point only stop. So what’s after that? Well, now, what’s this black and gold thing coming up in front of us?

Oh right: ABBA Gold. Well, everyone loves ABBA, but no way are they prog. What about Abraham Music Project? Can’t say I’ve ever heard of them. Let’s check them out. Well, I see Lee Abraham; we’ll be checking him out later. Has this anything to do with him? It would appear not. What else can I find out about the artist? Well apparently the prevalent wisdom is that yes, this is prog, at least partially. So let’s give it a spin, shall we? And can I once again ask you all to remain in your seats? We do not want to lose any more of y … not that we did lose any of you … that memory-supressant is still working I hope? Good, good. So stay inside: there’s nothing out there but blackness and cold, colder and blacker than a Florida Republican’s heart, and it’s warm in here. There’s also beer. And music. What kind of music? Let’s find out.




Artist: Abraham
Nationality: American
Sub-genre:
Formed: 2019
Number of albums: 1
Owned by me: 1
Listened to: 0
Album selected: Abraham Music Project, 2019
Position in discography: 1

Comments: Seems this guy is one of those who either couldn’t afford a second name, or thinks it’s more cool and mysterious to just use the one. Anyway the only information I can dig up on him is that he worked with other bands before striking out on his own, is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, and has some vague connection to Supertramp. Right. Tagline is “First the honesty, then the promise”. Well, it’s better than “first the money, then the music” isn’t it? Anyway, according to the esteemed Prog Magazine, “Aor marries prog rockin fine fashion”. Sounds lovely. Nice sweet guitar opening and for some reason I thought “Horizon” would be an instrumental. Must have been thinking of Genesis. Good singer, if it’s him, sort of a sense of Alan Parsons about the music with a touch of maybe Pendragon in there too. Sort of a semi-ballad with a lot of crooning and some vocoder work too; a very good start.

There’s very much a sense of ELO on “Mr. Mastermind”, impressive vocal harmonies, though whether they’re all him or not I can’t tell you as there is very little information on this guy. Discogs don’t got it, Wiki shrugs and even the mighty ProgArchive looks embarrassed never to have heard of him. His own website gives the track listing but that’s about it. No actual details other than a lot of faff about how great he is, which to be honest after two tracks I find myself agreeing to. I will say this though: he notes many of the artists he has “worked with” - whether that’s writing, composing, playing or producing I don’t know, it’s all a little vague - including Paul McCartney, Santana and, as already mentioned, Supertramp, there’s no clarification as to what he did with who, and I kind of find myself wondering if he was a session musician or something?

Well, whatever, he certainly knows his way around a song, and I’ve no complaints so far. “Here I Am” is a much more uptempo, almost country style of song with a large slice of AOR and not the smallest pinch of pop. I’m not so sure about this one to be honest. Yeah this one is just silly, with its kind of African chant and I keep expecting ****ing Black Lace to dance in any moment and start singing about pushing pineapples and shaking trees. Bollocks. There’s also not much in the song. It’s a pass on this one. “One Day at a Time” gets things back on track with a stately guitar intro and some fine piano, the first ballad I would say. There’s a very epic, dramatic feel to this, its grandeur making “Here I Am” more silly by the minute, but luckily it’s easy to forget now, a rapidly-disappearing bump on the road barely visible in the rearview as we power ahead.

Another power ballad in “Two by Two”, with some fine evocative guitar and a sort of slow blues beat. Some very good vocal harmonies and backing vocals here, kind of a sense of gospel about this too. Touches of Queen in the chorus, while there’s a much heavier guitar powering through “Resist the Devil”, perhaps as you might expect with a title like that. Some superb organ too. Turns out this is an instrumental, quite a dirty rock one to be fair. Can’t say I love it but it’s not bad. The epic then is the “GLORY BE Suite” (yeah, the first two words are written in capitals like that) and it opens on a really nice vocal harmony against a soft acoustic guitar, picking up a little speed as it goes along, the whole thing running for over sixteen minutes. It seems to be some sort of concept (or maybe the whole album is) with the main protagonist called Horizon, so go figure; I haven’t enough - or indeed really any - information to work out what the thing is about.

It goes into a powerful uptempo proggy keyboard instrumental in the fifth minute, then slows on a sort of church organ thing which gives way to a soaring guitar solo and borrows rather a lot I think from Yes around the 90125 era. Very nice slow sort of trumpeting keyboard run in the eighth minute, and vocoder with choral vocals, hear a lot of Pallas in this too, as well as Twelfth Night. There’s a lot of really good instrumentation in this piece, in fact I’d say about eighty percent of it is instrumental, however I would have to allow that it’s not quite what you’d call original, as for me, Abraham draws a little too liberally on influences from other artists, as mentioned. Not that he’s copying them, but you can definitely hear those bands in his music.

“There You Are” is another short little bopper, but a million times better than “Here I Am” (I imagine that’s intended, that they’re both kind of the same title) and this one has a much more singalong melody and a catchy tune with some cool brass. I know for a fact I’ve heard “Hey You! Come Back with My Heart” (mostly because it’s one of the most stupid and annoying titles I’ve ever heard) but I don’t know where. I thought it was Cressida, but it appears not. Anyway I can assume then that this is a cover, as is the final track, the Beatles song “Dear Prudence”. I don’t think much of the former, and sure everyone knows the latter, and he makes a good job of it.


Track Listing and Ratings

1. Horizon (9)
2. Mr. Mastermind (8)
3. Here I Am (5)
4. One Day at a Time (10)
5. Two by Two (9)
6. Resist the Devil (5)
7. The GLORY BE Suite (8)
8. There You Are (8)
9. Hey You! Come Back with My Heart (2)
10. Dear Prudence (6)


What did I like about this album? Very good instrumentation, the guy can sing and can certainly compose. Might have preferred more keyboard and the covers were a bit pointless, but overall decent.

What did I not like about this album? After such a gushing review and introduction, while the music was good it was not life-changing. Not that it needed to be, but I really expected something better than special, and while it was not a disappointment in any way, I’m not now salivating for the next album, if there is one. I could also have done without the covers and the guitar solo instrumental was just wank. I find myself wondering is there an undercurrent of Christianity here, listening to the lyrics of some of the songs. It’s not mentioned or hinted at, but there’s a sneaking suspicion of a quiet, unobtrusive agenda here.

Will I be listening to more? If there’s another album I’ll probably give it a go, though I won’t be waiting in anticipation for it. I get the feeling, however, that this may be it for this guy.

Album rating


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Sj-lQix9s

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