Mongo like. Most of your posts here have sax in them, do you play? I played alto then tenor in high school, so I'm a big sax fan. Thanks for that cool track. I'm searching for more already.
Neal.
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Calling all prog fans!!
- Thread starter strangiato79
- Start date
Mongo like. Most of your posts here have sax in them, do you play? I played alto then tenor in high school, so I'm a big sax fan. Thanks for that cool track. I'm searching for more already.
Neal.
BassHappy
Supporting Member
Hi Neal
Yeah, actually I started in school on alto sax, my Dad was a big jazz fan, but a teacher bullied me at a young age and I gave it up and switched to bass and got my chops outside of the school system. Started on bass at age 12 working my way through the Carol Kaye bass book. Don't even really play guitar, don't even own one. Bass player only. You must be a bass player too? Still a huge fan of sax and all the woodwinds.
Here is the first band/first song I ever heard in an odd time signature in like 1968 or 1969 - The Flock with Jerry Goodman later of Mahavishnu. These guys were so good "live" it would make the hair stand out on the back of your neck. With apologies once again that there is no video content - although you can probably find some "live" stuff of The Flock around on the web or on YouTube:
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I dabble. I don't think I'm anywhere near the cats we've been listening to in this thread, but I do aspire to. Maybe some day...
Attachments
BassHappy
Supporting Member
Neal
Nice variety of VERY COOL instruments! And I love the obligatory bass pedals, and wow, what is that intriguing looking foot switch system on the floor? How are you getting along with the upright thing? Is that your primary or secondary? Can't really tell, what are you playing through? When you have something you are really proud of send me a link!
Here is another VERY influential ancient band called "Touch". A cool background piece - you have to have a little perspective, these guys were from 1969ish and reminded me of an even more wacked-out version of Vanilla Fudge. As far as I am concerned DEFINITELY the first prog band in America, along with The Flock:
Touch
I once read that bands like Yes, Uriah Heep and Kansas were influenced by a band called Touch. You would expect that this band would have become famous too, but that's not the case. Kerry Livgren from Kansas once said about Touch: 'I first heard their music while driving back from a gig in western Kansas sometime in 1969 or 1970. It was about 2AM and I was listening to a powerful AM-station out of Arkansas. I got about halfway through the song Seventy Five before I had to pull off the road and listen. The next day I bought two copies of their album, one to absorb and one for prosperity. Their songwriting, musicianship and arrangements were quite an inspiration to me. They were way ahead of their time and one of the best American progressive bands.' Touch consisted of John Bordonaro (drums), Don Gallucci (keyboards), Bruce Hauser (bass), Jeff Hawks (vocals) and Joey Newman(guitars). The album Livgren bought was their eponymous debut released in early1969.
This album can be considered to be one of the first progressive rock albums from the USA or even in the history of prog rock. Touch were led by Don Gallucci, a keyboardist who played with The Kingsmen when he was only 15 years old. They had a hit single with Louie, Louie in 1963. Unfortunately he couldn't tour with the band because of his school age. By 1966 he formed a band called Don & The Goodtimes that scored a top twenty hit. It was while recording a follow-up that Don decided to do something completely different. In 1993 he stated: 'The album was first and foremost a spiritual quest put to music, a search for the holy grail of its generation by way of sound. It was designed to go where no-one had musically gone before in order to break down barriers and walls in the mind to cause the listener to achieve an altered state of consciousness. Not through meditation or drugs, but through music.'
At the time Touch established a record deal by signing a contract for 25,000 dollar in advance, after much competitive biddings from other labels. They used the money to record the album at the Sunset Sound studios. Famous people like Mick Jagger, Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane) and Jimi Hendrix were spotted when they recorded the album, which sold very well when it came out. However, when the record label wanted them to tour, the band refused. They thought it to be impossible to recreate the studio album on stage. The label no longer wanted to support them and Touch disbanded within months. Gallucci became a record producer and worked with musicians like The Stooges and Tom Waits. Newman, Hauser and Hawks formed the hard rock outfit Stepson.
I think you may call it a treasure considering the era it was recorded. It was written and recorded in 1968 and released in early 1969, just before the release of King Crimson' In The Court Of The Crimson King and the eponymous debut album of Yes. The psychedelic sound of Pink Floyd is clearly present on the album, but also a band like Vanilla Fudge came to my mind, especially because of the sound of the organ. The keyboards played by Don Gallucci are certainly on a par with the music Keith Emerson made with The Nice during that same era. You'll hear the same kind of strong organ and piano playing throughout the album. Also frequently noticeable is the sound related to bands as Yes and Genesis of which Friendly Birds and Seventy Five are good examples. At other times I heard influences of the albums recorded by Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention. However, I believe they must have listened several times to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from The Beatles as well. So the music of Touch is very structured using rock and psychedelic influences, but classical and jazz influences as well. Sometimes all these influences are well integrated into one piece of music.
I love this song - I think the lyrics are even relevant today, as published below:
We Feel Fine
Wake Up people and feel it in the air
It’s a time of new HOPE for man
Jesus was right, sensitivity reigns
And yet the fighting and the hatred go on and on and on
It really doesn’t matter
Cause there’s nothing you can do
To make it any better
Or to even stay the same
So move with the change
We’re all gonna get there
Through the Dawn of a New Age….
Mary Mary come with me
On a hill we’ll take some tea
And watch L.A. fall in the sea
We Feel Fine
We Feel Fine
We Feel Fine
We Feel Fine
This is cool because I was getting bored with my (known) prog collection. Now I'm realizing there is a wealth of new prog also known as; 'prog I missed in the '70s', lol. Obscure-Prog? I'm feeling a little inundated by it all, but it's great. It makes me want to play more. So, kudos to the thread and kudos to prog!
BTW, nice to meet you today, Rick! (currently digging Seventy Five, by Touch. Nice!)
Cheers,
Neal.
BTW, nice to meet you today, Rick! (currently digging Seventy Five, by Touch. Nice!)
Cheers,
Neal.
I just realized, I forgot to answer you queries. How rude. So, quick answers (so as not to derail - if you want more detail, PM me); a) The floor system is a Digitech RP 1000 [EDIT]- It's also used by Pete Trewavas, of Marillion. It has fairly nice effects (Dist/Flange/Chorus/Reverb/Comp, etc.), a Volume/Wah pedal, tuner, some amp modelers and other stuff. You can save your settings in banks of 10. 10 banks with 10 presets each = 100 preset sounds. b) The upright thing and I get along very well. Plucked, it's very upright sounding. Bowed, it's powerful. c) No, the upright's not my primary bass. My primary is the Rickenbacker 4001CS. d) I play through an Ernie Ball HD-500 watt, single tube head, into a matching Ernie Ball 2X10 cab. They were originally made by the guy who does MarkBass amps, I believe. Works for me. e) Will send a link, if I do get a good one.
Cheers, Rick.
Neal.
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The keyboardist was Julian Colbeck (of ABWH). I gotta edit the post. The title I copied left out the bass player...doh!...which was kinda important (Sorry TLev).
Wait, did you say rehearsal sessions with Gabriel?
Wow.
BassHappy
Supporting Member
Hey Neal
Sounds to me like a really really nice set up! My drummer Joe is a huge Marillion fan.
I started with a Jazz bass through a Hiwatt stack I picked up in London when I was in the army in Germany. I also bought a Jazz Bass in 1972 in Germany so that was my original rig. The Jazz had 4 deadspots on both the G and D string and there was zero sustain on those notes. The band made me sell it and our singer at the time loaned me his fireglo Rick 4001. I liked it and found it easier to play, not realizing that it was a 33.25: scale instead of the 34" on the Jazz. I went out and found a nice mapleglo Rick and put a mahogany pick guard on it - I didn't like how cheap that white plastic looked to me. Anyways, I was having PRS make me a custom bass, he made me serial number #7. It was medium scale, I didn't realize that either - I only knew that his necks blew me away and were the easiest basses I had ever played. When we were recording the first album the PRS arrived at A&M Studios just after the basic tracks were recorded. I talked Ken Scott into going back and re-doing "Knee Bitten Nymphs In Limbo" with the PRS but the rest of that record was the mapleglo Rick. A short time later, the neck warped on PRS #7 and Paul loaned me PRS #11 while he tried to repair it.
In the end, I kept #11 which pissed him off - he needed to sell it for rent - but i played that bass exclusively from 1978 - 1999. I had already sold the Rick. In 1999 when the band reformed, the bass was appraised off the charts and I knew I could no longer take it out of the house. I had Keith Roscoe make a medium scale for me and I took the PRS to him and he copied the neck exactly. I used an RMC 13 pin midi system along with a Roland V Bass as my main bass, and later had him make a twin so I had a spare on stage.
I love the V bass because I can program in really good representations of the sounds I used on all the records - including uprights and fretless - and dial though the changes either with my foot or at the guitar. I don't really use any "effects" per se and run in mono although there is a pinch of mono chorus here and there. I have gone through a variety of rigs, but I find with all the PA support I just need a little stage monitoring and the Eden Metro does the trick for me quite nicely.
I really got into the medium scale bass thing and my collection now numbers 16 with a Fender Performer medium scale being built right now, which is here:
http://www.talkbass.com/threads/fender-performer-build.1103935/
Also, the detailed history and build diaries of the basses are here - most of them are pretty unique. They don't make many medium scalers so I can get a few off the rack but mostly I have to build my own:
www.innertainment.net
Yes, it's kind of no secret, I had a good friend I grew up with in Indiana named Dale Newman, who befriended Yes on their very first US Tour and he became Steve Howe's guitar tech for a very short time on that tour. The word leaked and when Genesis did their first US tour Mike Rutherford got ahold of Dale and told him he was carrying a lot of guitars, and if Dale could keep them in tune he would have a job. Well, long story short - Dale just retired from the Genesis organization in December. He lived at their studio in Chiddingfold and was the caretaker when they were off the road and Mike's guitar tech for over 40 years. Dale had passed along some of the early demos of Happy the Man to the Genesis guys and when Peter left Genesis we were the first call he made. We spent a weekend getting to know him, swimming and playing volleyball and on that monday in the summer of 1975 we spent a grueling day working with Peter in our rehearsal studio, on the tunes which would eventually become the tunes on his first solo album. He was a little strange, in that - he would be playing a song on the piano for us and singing and then he would stop and stare blankly into space. We couldn't figure out if he forgot the lyrics or if he was making them up on the spot. Probably a little of both, but in the end he would only accept that we were his band and we would have to commit to his music and abandon ours. Frankly, Genesis was such a cult act who imagined how big Peter would become? We wanted to do our material and open for him, then have him join us for his set but he didn't want that. In the end we believed more in our material than we did in his and made our decision accordingly. Arista and a few other labels caught wind of the Gabriel interest and we were signed by Arista shortly after. As a side note, my good friend and fellow bass player Craig Schertz from Showco mixed FOH for Genesis for all their tours until his untimely death - and also engineered their "Live" albums.
Be sure to catch some of the tunes of my rock band "Vision" as well - with Stan from HTM on guitar. We were signed to Eddie (Zeppelin/Hendrix) Kramer after Happy the Man and you can hear those tunes here, on the same site as the basses:
http://www.innertainment.net/visiontunes.html
Scroll down and you will see the streaming player. Much more straight ahead and rocking that HTM ever was, but a very fun band.
Cheers!
Rick
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BassHappy
Supporting Member
Great to meet you too Neal - keep rocking!
So glad you are enjoying Touch. There isn't a bad song on there and the record grows on you like no other.
Yes, always a pleasure meeting players and fans of progressive music alike. Funny, we had no idea we were even a "Prog" band until NEARFest called us and asked us to headline a "Prog" show. We were like: "What - really? We actually fit into some kind of category now?"
Klaatus' second album was very prog-ish, IMHO. Starting my day (2 pm?) with Hope and a little courage. Sounds nice while reading about Ricks beautiful basses. The contra-basoon solo in 'We're off you know' is one of my favorite sounds ever (@ 3 min). Basoon GAS? Never saw that one coming!
Klaatu - Hope (1977) John Woloschuk and Dee Long sharing the bass duties;
Klaatu - Hope (1977) John Woloschuk and Dee Long sharing the bass duties;
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Magellan - Hour of Restoration 1991 Wayne Gardner on bass
YES - DON'T KILL THE WHALE Magellan Version
YES - DON'T KILL THE WHALE Magellan Version
In a somewhat different vein, I've gotta put in a vote for the Adrian Belew Power Trio, with (the totally awesome) Julie Slick on bass. Their studio album "e" from a few years ago is high on my all-time-favorite-albums list. Here's a recent live version of the title cut:
BTW, they're in the middle of a North American tour right now. If you have a chance to see them, don't miss it!
BTW, they're in the middle of a North American tour right now. If you have a chance to see them, don't miss it!
Porcupine Tree is definitely in the school they call "nu-prog". No relation to nu-metal, thank God, it's generally a "modern" take on prog-rock, frequently with some alternative influence. Steven Wilson's a great producer for sure, though; he's been remastering King Crimson's backlog if I remember right. Plus he produces Opeth's records since Blackwater Park. If anyone hasn't checked out Newpeth (that is, Opeth's last two records) it's pretty cool. Mikael Akerfeldt is in general known for his heavily prog-influenced songwriting even amidst the death metal fury that Opeth started out as. Bassist Martin Mendez is not terribly prominent in the mix, and apparently he's much more entertaining to listen to live due to his propensity for improvised fills, but he still holds it down here. He mostly uses Marcus Miller Jazzes, regular Jazzes, and Sandberg basses, though I've seen him use a Precision during a proshot live show in Sydney (which you can find on Youtube). Here's the opening track from the progtastic Pale Communion, "Eternal Rains Will Come".
Another great older prog band that I love to bring up is Anyone's Daughter, a little-known band from Stuttgart now known in some circles for sounding a lot like classic Genesis, minus the twelve-string guitars. Their bassist, Harald Bareth, as you can see in the video, is using a Fender P into what looks like an Orange head and an unknown cab. I can't find the full version of their 20-minute opus "Adonis", but here's a live-in-studio recording of Part 1 from the suite. The whole suite is, as I call it, a "wonderwork". Beautiful stuff, especially sonically: great bass and guitar tones that also sound great together.
BassHappy
Supporting Member
Hey - wow!
Thanks for all the new music folks! I am familiar with Porcupine Tree and Adrian Belew and I have heard of Magellan and Klaatu, but not at all familiar with them
Speaking for myself - I have my work cut out for me, but absolutely appreciate the postings and the suggestions on the bands.
i can't get enough eccentric music, so please for my sake, share whatever hits you hard.
Kudos, will check back in on this when I have had a chance to digest!
Have a great rest of your weekend.
Thanks for all the new music folks! I am familiar with Porcupine Tree and Adrian Belew and I have heard of Magellan and Klaatu, but not at all familiar with them
Speaking for myself - I have my work cut out for me, but absolutely appreciate the postings and the suggestions on the bands.
i can't get enough eccentric music, so please for my sake, share whatever hits you hard.
Kudos, will check back in on this when I have had a chance to digest!
Have a great rest of your weekend.
Thanks for that. JULIE SLICK ROCKS! Targeting the Adrian Belew Power Trio for 12/17/2014 - Mod Club Toronto, ON.
Coolness. Found the whole suite. Cheers.
Anyone's Daughter - Adonis: Part 1/4 Come Away
Anyone's Daughter - Adonis: Part 2/4 The Disguise
Anyone's Daughter - Adonis: Part 3/4 Adonis
Anyone's Daughter - Adonis: Part 4/4 The Epitaph
Good find CanadaNeal. I saw those, but there used to be a video of the full suite that probably got taken down.
Really diggin' the Opeth, Ta! Here's one that'll really show my age;
Triumvirat - Spartacus 1975 Helmut Köllen on bass It debuted at number 27 on the Billboard album charts.
Triumvirat - Spartacus 1975 Helmut Köllen on bass It debuted at number 27 on the Billboard album charts.
Invalid Link Removed (link: wiki)
Paul Newton – bass (1969–1971)
Mark Clarke – bass (1971–1972)
Gary Thain – bass (1972–1975; died 1975)
John Wetton – bass (1975–1976)
Trevor Bolder – bass (1976–1981, 1983–2013; died 2013)
Bob Daisley – bass (1981–1983)
Davey Rimmer – bass (2013–present; substitute - 2013; substitute for Trevor Bolder)
John Jowitt – bass (2013; substitute for Trevor Bolder)
Uriah Heep - The Magician's Birthday Party 2001 Trevor Bolder
Uriah Heep - The Wizard 1972 Mark Clarke
Uriah Heep - Easy Livin' 1972 Gary Thain
Paul Newton – bass (1969–1971)
Mark Clarke – bass (1971–1972)
Gary Thain – bass (1972–1975; died 1975)
John Wetton – bass (1975–1976)
Trevor Bolder – bass (1976–1981, 1983–2013; died 2013)
Bob Daisley – bass (1981–1983)
Davey Rimmer – bass (2013–present; substitute - 2013; substitute for Trevor Bolder)
John Jowitt – bass (2013; substitute for Trevor Bolder)
Uriah Heep - The Magician's Birthday Party 2001 Trevor Bolder
Uriah Heep - The Wizard 1972 Mark Clarke
Uriah Heep - Easy Livin' 1972 Gary Thain
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