Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1015 in the Series) is Chris Squire, Fish out of Water I can’t give you the date. I wish I could, but I remember it like yesterday coming home as a wasted teen, turning on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and seeing  Bill Bruford with his Boston Bruins cutoff jersey, Chris Squire with his signature cape and Patrick Moraz standing in front of an orchestra performing the first two tracks on this gem of music.  I recognized it well, as I got it on vinyl as soon as I could. It would later remind me of Peter Gabriel’s first solo record, not sounding all that much like the famous and great band they...

Today’s Cool Album Of the Day (#976 in the Series) is Genesis, Seconds Out. How much do I like this album? Well, if I could only take ten albums to a desert island, I might have to take two copies of this and then eight others. This was the album that made me fall in love with Genesis.  I don’t know why I didn’t get into them earlier. After this was released I did go back and loved all the Gabriel era works. For some reason I missed it when it was happening.  I remember seeing all those ads about them playing the Auditorium for three nights. I can kick myself now for not going. I guess I did...

  Genesis and the BBC have been working together over the last few months on GENESIS: TOGETHER AND APART A feature length documentary on one of the most successful bands in rock history. From its first beginnings as a band of songwriters in the late 1960s to its final incarnation as a rock giant in the 1990s – via full-blown theatrical progressive rock in the mid-1970s and the subtler jazzy pop of the early 1980s – Genesis could perplex and enrage the die-hards, whilst exciting and exhilarating the newer disciples. Made with the full co-operation of Genesis, the film reunites all original members of the band together – Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Mike Rutherford – for...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#936 in the Series) is King Crimson, Discipline. King Crimson is quite the unique musical act. They’ve completely reinvented themselves numerous times.  This was probably the most straight forward of those reincarnations. Contributing to the straight forward sound was the newly slimmed down line up. King Crimson was now a tight little four piece. This would be the debut of two members that would eventually be considered King Crimson mainstays. They would be Adrian Belew on guitar, lead vocals and Tony Levin on bass and Chapman stick. Bill Bruford returned on drums along with the main man, Robert Fripp on guitars and “stuff.” Discipline also received a decent amount of airplay for a band that...

  Transatlantic Reveal New Studio Album ‘Kaleidoscope’ and 2014 World Tour Progressive-rock super-group Transatlantic, featuring Mike Portnoy, Neal Morse, Roine Stolt and Pete Trewavas will release their brand new fourth studio album ‘Kaleidoscope’ on the 27th January 2014. The track-listing for the forthcoming record is as follows and the beautiful artwork for the release can be seen at our left. ——————————————————————- Transatlantic Kaleidoscope  Track Listing  Into the Blue Shine Black as the Sky  Beyond the Sun  Kaleidoscope  The band will also embark on a 6-week World Tour that will see them joined once again by Pain of Salvation’s Daniel Gildenlöw as a 5th touring member. As part of the extensive tour, the band will also headline the Progressive Nation...

William Shatner will be releasing a “Prog-Rock” album next month. It appears to be just that as well since it’s a collaboration with former Yes members Bill Sherwood and Tony Kaye. How did Shatner describe prog-rock to Rolling Stone Magazine in a recent interview? “Prog rock is the science fiction of music . . . has the same concept of exploration into the parts of the music world that hasn’t been explored.” There will also be a few live performances. 82-year-old Star Trek icon William Shatner will perform the album titled, Ponder The Mystery, in its entirety along with progressive rock band CIRCA which features  Sherwood and  Kaye. William Shatner is a film and TV icon with an intense...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Playing The Game” Live 1978 by Gentle Giant They were one of the premier Progressive Rock groups in their day…right up there with King Crimson, Yes and Genesis. Highlighting the stellar musicianship of brothers, Derek and Ray Shulman, Kerry Minnear, Gary Green and John Weathers, the Giant were adept multi-instrumentalists who would dazzle in concert with their intricate vocal arrangements and odd time signatures. The group’s “purple period” of greatness was roughly from the 1972 release of Octopus through 1975’s Free Hand, and encompassed the albums In A Glass House (1973) and The Power And The Glory (1974). In America, their early albums were released by Columbia Records and starting with...

  New White Trash has an album coming out in July 2013 ~ “Age of Authority“. We are still collecting our info for a full post. But, you can hear a few songs tonight on the Lifeboat Hour, 9pm Eastern on the Progressive Radio Network, hosted Michael C. Ruppert. Check out the show!   Until then here’s a taste… Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Karn Evil 9 1st Impression” by Emerson, Lake & Palmer There was a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I’m not talking about the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Hadrosaurus, or even your garden variety Pterodactyls. These dinosaurs wore coats of proggy sounds typified by 20 minute epic-length, multi-movement suites of music. These were dinosaurs that went by names like King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Genesis, PFM, The Moody Blues and Yes. There was no pretention in what they were doing, yet many of them were very, very pretentious. And if you were a rock fan of the 1970s, you ate it up. You loved it. There was nothing better. But a funny thing happened...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “The Holy Drinker” by Steven Wilson If you thought that the progressive rock dinosaurs that dominated the musical landscape of the 1970s were all but extinct today, think again. Sure, bands like Yes and Jethro Tull are still churning out the classics on stages around the world, but in recent years the prog-rock scene has seen a full on rejuvenation starting in the ‘80s with Metallica, whose brand of progressive metal made them superstars and in the ‘90s The Mars Volta rose out of the ashes of the punk band At The Drive In to begin dressing their music in proggy clothing. In recent years there’s been a plethora of...