Prog Rock (Roger Waters and more)

[Yorick]

More on Roger and Gilmour

None of the following are my words, but, today at http://www.pinkfloydz.com/:

From Roger Waters...
So here's what happened.
Last year, 'The Hoping Foundation' a charity that supports Palestinian refugee kids, (www.hopingfoundation.org) put on a fund raiser at Ronnie Scott's Club in London, the idea of which was to raise money by auctioning karaoke performances by various celebrities. David was there as a supporter and was moved to perform an impromptu rendition of George Gershwin's 'Summertime?' which he performed aided and abetted by supermodel Kate Moss.

In the wake of that evening, someone, I think it was David himself, came up with this 'Wouldn't it be funny', idea.
What if he (David that is) were to sing the old Teddy Bears song 'To Know Him Is To Love Him' with me (Roger that is), what with us having been so famously at each other's throats for years and years. Get it!

Anyway he E-mailed me with this suggestion and I loved it, so then it was just a question of juggling dates and deciding to do 'Wish You Were Here' and 'Comfortably Numb' to round out our little set. Or so I thought, until he sent me a number of very musical and eloquent demos of how we could do the song in two-part harmony. I listened with a sinking heart, knowing that David, with his superior vocal skills, could sing either part standing on his head, whilst I would have to search for a different key and then struggle through hours and hours of routining a performance that lay way outside my vocal comfort zone. To my eternal shame I bottled out and told Dave I would happily do 'Wish You Were Here' and 'C. Numb', but that 'To Know him is to Love him' was beyond me.

Some weeks passed with David cajoling me from time to time, telling me how easy it would be, but I clung resolutely to my fear of failure until one day he made one final entreaty.
I quote "If you do 'To Know Him Is To Love Him' for The Hoping Foundation Gig, I'll come and do 'C. Numb' on one of your Wall shows".

Well! You could have knocked me down with a feather. How ******* cool! I was blown away. How could I refuse such an offer. I couldn't, there was no way. Generosity trumped fear. And so explaining that I would probably be sh*te, but if he didn't mind I didn't, I agreed and the rest is history. We did it, and it was ****ing great.
End of story. Or possibly beginning.
Roger
PS. Just heard from David, he will decide in due course which gig he wants to do, it will be a surprise!

 

[Kiki]

This is such a good thread so therefore it should be bumped.

^ Basically.

This is such a great thread because I'm able to discuss proggy goodness with people (which, admittedly, I can't do a lot outside of the internet), so to start the barrel rolling has anyone bought a prog album lately? And also...
are we able to discuss psych here?

 

[Yorick]

I say Psych is indeed fitting in this thread. After all, Roger Waters (I love that his name is in the thread's title...I wonder who did that? Ha!) was a founder of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett, and some of the songs on their (amazing and eclectic) first album (The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn) are Psych at it's best!

And Psych of that time was pretty progressive, I feel. The Soft Machine had jazz elements and just unique elements in their stuff. So while I can't claim to be a Prog expert, I think Psych is linked to it, though I may be one of the few* to think so.

Though I haven't gotten a prog or psych album lately, I have been listening to more Peter Gabriel. While he may not be called Prog anymore, he's a founder of Genesis and he's still great!

*song from the last album Roger Waters recorded with Pink Floyd (The Final Cut).

 

[The Shoe Fairy]

Significant throwback to that whole transitiony period with stuff like early Porcupine Tree, the record Voyage 34 is a single song, half an hour long, but based entirely around the concept of a young man's bad trip, his 34th experience with LSD. The fact it is a 90s record is shown with the use of sampling, but both the subject matter of the "Lyrics" and the guitar breaks in the song have a strong pysch connection in a progressive context.

 

[newsmanfan]

A note regarding both Muppets AND Prog: although I felt the "Muppets Wizard of Oz" was overall a mixed bag, the bit when Dorothy and Pepe step into Munchkinland, and Pepe turns to the camera and tells the viewers if they have "Dark Side of the Moon" to press play...made me lose it completely.

 

[Kiki]

I say Psych is indeed fitting in this thread. After all, Roger Waters (I love that his name is in the thread's title...I wonder who did that? Ha!) was a founder of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett, and some of the songs on their (amazing and eclectic) first album (The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn) are Psych at it's best!

And Psych of that time was pretty progressive, I feel. The Soft Machine had jazz elements and just unique elements in their stuff. So while I can't claim to be a Prog expert, I think Psych is linked to it, though I may be one of the few* to think so.

Though I haven't gotten a prog or psych album lately, I have been listening to more Peter Gabriel. While he may not be called Prog anymore, he's a founder of Genesis and he's still great!

*song from the last album Roger Waters recorded with Pink Floyd (The Final Cut).

I totally agree, esp. regarding your reference to the rather fantastic Soft Machine. I reckon psych is a very important component in most prog I know, and certainly jazz too (though some bands are jazzier than others, obviously).

And I totally agree! 'Piper' is terribly psychedelic, so I definitely agree that we should be able to discuss it here. I listen to /a lot/ of it, I think it's a great genre to explore beause there is just /so/ much of it (though, that said, depending on where you live it can be very rare to come across, luckily I have a lot of record shops round my area where psych is plentiful... but often expensive). Because I don't know where to start and I have to many artist names in my head right now, lol, I'll just mention the last two psychedelia albums I bought, both originals from the 60's, which is nice, and I got them for a good price. Anyway, they were 'Psychedelic Lollipop' by Blues Magoos and 'The Zodiac' by Cosmic Sounds. I haven't really given the latter a really good, proper listen but it's pretty wacky, they sure like their sitars. The Blues magoos one is actually really good, very groovy and I tiny, *tiny* bit bluesy in some parts.

Oh, and Peter's great. Except he cancelled his Australian tour last year- ARRGGGHH!

Significant throwback to that whole transitiony period with stuff like early Porcupine Tree, the record Voyage 34 is a single song, half an hour long, but based entirely around the concept of a young man's bad trip, his 34th experience with LSD. The fact it is a 90s record is shown with the use of sampling, but both the subject matter of the "Lyrics" and the guitar breaks in the song have a strong pysch connection in a progressive context.

Concept albums are awesome, I have to say, the more pretentious and far-fetched the better. ;P I agree what you mean by the 90's sound, too.

A note regarding both Muppets AND Prog: although I felt the "Muppets Wizard of Oz" was overall a mixed bag, the bit when Dorothy and Pepe step into Munchkinland, and Pepe turns to the camera and tells the viewers if they have "Dark Side of the Moon" to press play...made me lose it completely.

Ah yes, I thought that was an awesome addition to the movie, I like little references like that. c: Btw, on the subject of films, did anyone see the film on Rush? I have yet to see it myself. ><