Yesterday evening I had a pretty good time at a Rush concert in Rotterdam Ahoy. The band was very energetic, probably also due to the fact that they are recording material for a Live DVD there yesterday and today. We heard 8 tracks off the latest Snakes & Arrows album and about 20 older songs in a 3 hour concert. Tracks that have rarely been played live over the past years were included, like Natural Science, Entre Nous, Circumstances and the infamous 1974 song A Passage To Bangkok. The latter was sandwiched in the encore, between One Little Victory and the magnificiently performed closing instrumental YYZ.
Sound was better than I ever heard at Ahoy, someone must’ve done something right in that respect – and the stage show and lighting are just brilliant. In fact the light was so good that I was able to take blurfree pictures without using flash, camera stands etc. Proof included below.

Technorati Tags: Progressive Rock, Prog

This weekend I really enjoyed the Symforce 2007 festival at 013 Tilburg.

Opening act Focus showed a really vivid Thijs van Leer, accompanied by his band. Jan Akkerman replacement Niels van der Steenhoven did a brilliant job – he’s about a quarter of Thijs his age (who is a 120 by now I guess) and he really knows how to combine rock, blues and feeling. A great gig.
Next, Riverside from Poland surprised. I had never heard them before, only heard about them. These guys know what technical play is, and managed to get my attention.
Party rockers Pendragon – that’s no offense, they do have a party on stage without loosing their grip on great rock music – followed suite. I wanted to see Beardfish, but got so tangled up in the Pendragon show that by the time I got there the small venue was completely full. All I could do was listen in from the hallway, about next to Arjen Lucassen (Ayreon) who was there too.
After Beardfish I slipped into another small venue to see The Aurora Project, a Dutch progressive metal batallion. Great, loud and enthousiastic.
After that – I skipped The Flower Kings, they simply never did what Riverside managed to do today, which is to arrange a click in my head.
Instead, I visited Bootcut, which is Beardfish’s organplayer together with a drummer friend. Great stuff, only drums and Hammond – if you like the sound of the Hammond beast.

All in all, Symforce was a great festival and we have good hopes that next year 013 will organise Symforce 2008. At least they announced it for the third weekend of september that year. If so, I’ll be there.

Technorati Tags: Progressive Rock

John Wesley, the singer/guitarist who teamed up with Porcupine Tree on many occasions (both live and in the studio) published the text below on his MySpace blog last Friday. Sad in a way, but also a sign that artists are not in it just for the money. I think it’s worth supporting people like John Wesley, by downloading their music, but also by buying their albums from regular channels.

“Sharing the Wes”

For me to continue to create music, I have to know that people are hearing it. Elements of cost and lack of distribution have made most of my catalogue very difficult to acquire. So rather than go into a long diatribe about how the industry is changing, I am just going to post this blog to announce a new “Share the Wes” policy.

My entire catalogue is now available through links on this site as MP3 downloads – at no cost.

The only thing I ask in return is that if you choose to download the music and add it to your collection, you “Share the Wes” with everyone you know that may have an interest in the music that I create.

Point them to the site and encourage them to discover the music I have created over the course of my career, and then encourage them to share it!

If you like the music, go to the “Demand it” button on my site, tell me where you are, and hopefully at some point in the future I can come near to where you are and “Share the Wes” live.

I am driven by a need to create and perform. Sharing my music in this manner will help to remove some of the barriers that I have encountered in exposing the songs to a wider audience.

In regards to income, music is not free to create. There are heavy costs in the time, money and expense it takes to create, record and perform the music. Many people also still enjoy having the CD and artwork… Some like to have it signed to collect, and let¹s face it, CD’s are higher quality and sound better than MP3’s. So to help defray these costs and still make the music available to the fans that love having the discs, I will still offer the music in CD form online and at gigs, although most of the music I am offering is now out of print, which again, is a major factor in my decision to “Share the Wes” for free.

I’ve added a Paypal button on the site for donations to go towards covering the expense of creating new music. If you download the music and you love it, and you want to be a part of supporting my quest to create more, click the Paypal button. Any amount helps and will go to covering the cost of creating new music.

When I create new music, there will be an initial period where it will only be available on CD or Snocap, again, to help cover the costs.

The bottom line is, there are now over 50 songs on this site to have, to share, and to help you become a part of the entire history of my journey of creating music.

Please take it all, listen to it, and enjoy… and share it!

John Wesley

Technorati Tags: Progressive Rock

Thirty three people, mainly students, got killed by a gunman at Virginia Tech.

Again and again such tragedies occur, and more often in recent years. Who or what is to blame is not clear, and my thoughts are with those left behind by the victims.What is scary is that this happened on the day Porcupine Tree released this video, that shows some of what is going on in the lifes of certain young people these days.

Eric Beaudin at Prog Archives” introduced me to his two bands, which are both pretty good. If you’re looking for a bit of heavier (prog) rock, with french or female vocals check out Parabole” and Oddyssey“. Both sites contain music samples, but for Parabole you need to visit this MySpace page” to get complete tracks.

I proposed to have a random review/random album feature on ProgArchives.com a couple of months ago. Right here, I put up a simple sample of what it could do – please forgive me for the occasional error page, I am not the Prog Archives admin, so I can’t check the database for existence of (removed) records. Enjoy, and who knows one day you’ll find it on the actual Prog Archives web site.P.S. If you are into any kind of progressive rock or derived style of music, this site is worth a visit!

Here’s a little album review I wrote for “
Prog Archives.com“, for the album “Past times with good company” by Richie Blackmore’s (former Deep Purple, Rainbow, …) band Blackmore’s Night. I thought it would be nice to copy it here – so here you go.

Have you ever fallen in love with someone’s voice?

I know I have… I remember that years ago, when my wife was still my girlfriend, I would just sit still and listen to her singing in another room. The joy and happiness from that voice did miracles to even the worst of moods.Listening to Candice Night singing Home Again on this album has the same effect. What voice this is – crystal clear, great range and you can hear how much she enjoys singing to the crowd. It really made me feel like ‘coming home’ the first time I heard it – watering eyes…

I’m not an export on folk, nor on renaissance or medieval music, but I do like tracks like Ayreon’s Ye Court Yard Minstrel Boy on The Final Experiment. I have to reconsider though, because that’s nothing compared to 83 minutes of great music on this album. Folk, mixed with classic and rock (driving beats combined with acoustic snares, brilliant!) – well, it works for me.

I’m not going to go into a track by track discussion here, but the following needs to be mentioned. Songs like Shadow Of The Moon, Under a Violet Moon and Renaissance Fair have a great modern sound to them, and really make you feel like going to a big banquet and enjoy yourself. Candice’ voice, mixed with the beat and the string melodies work mix perfectly. Home Again I already mentioned, nothing to add there.

When the electric guitar kicked in for 16th Century Greensleeves the first time I played the album, I was disappointed – why ruin the atmosphere with an electric guitar. Yet, after mere seconds that feeling was gone – the guitar lead at the start somehow fits in with the rest of the album, and Candice’ voice (again, sorry…) makes you forget about Ronnie James what was his last name again? I can’t explain why, but this album brings ‘old’ music, yet in a way it rocks – and it’s going to be on my list of favourites for quite a while I expect.

Just to have something else to write about I added a new category today, progrock. It’s empty for now, except for this post, but I’ll write some things about my favourite bands (Rush, Dream Theater, Shadow Gallery and the likes) every once in a while.