Monthly Archives: February 2017

836. wardance

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Killing Joke were mixing metal with repetitive beats with their own unique apocalyptic take on life-the-universe-everything long before it was a thing, and to solid, intense effect as Wardance makes abundantly clear. “It’s a 1980 track but I didn’t hear it until 1982, with the Falklands War in full weird roar far, far away. An apparently civilized nation going enthusiastically to war for a more or less random chunk of rock in the remote South Atlantic. It had to be a joke, definitely a joke. And it would kill almost a thousand people before it was done.” (Philip Random)

837. Hiroshima

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Utopia was initially formed because Todd Rundgren felt a need to rock progressively, some would argue excessively. Which was definitely the case come 1977’s Ra, their third album, with material ranging from an overlong children’s fantasy concerning a glass guitar to a genuine communion with the sun god of ancient Egypt. The singular highlight was Hiroshima, a blistering, metal-infused ode (with guitar and keyboard freakouts) to the worst split second in the history of mankind (also Nagasaki, three days later). Don’t you ever f***ing forget.

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838. your silent face

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so-L12LFRR8

If the summer of 1983 had an official soundtrack album, New Order were on it. Or perhaps Power Corruption + Lies (and the non album monster single that preceded it, Blue Monday) was that soundtrack. Because power, corruption and lies were all the rage that summer – Ronald Raygun in the White House, the wicked witch of the west Maggie Thatcher running things in the UK, the Cold War in full acceleration mode, nuclear winter in all the forecasts even if the sun was shining. Your Silent Face seemed to be a love song, except if you actually listened to the lyrics, you realized it was packing as much bile as anything else. It was that kind of summer.

neworder-1983

28. The Solid Time Of Change

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Installment #28 of the Solid Time of Change aired on Saturday February-4-2016 (c/o CiTR.FM.101.9).

Podcast (Solid Time begins a few minutes in). Youtube playlist (somewhat inaccurate).

The Solid Time of Change is our overlong yet incomplete history of the so-called Prog Rock era – 661 selections from 1965 through 1979 with which we hope to do justice to a strange and ambitious time indeed, musically speaking.

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Part Twenty-Eight of the journey went as follows:

  1. Jethro Tull – Dharma for One [live]
  2. Strawbs – where is this dream of your youth?
  3. Strawbs – Benedictus
  4. Alice Cooper – I Love the Dead
  5. Tiny Tim- the other side
  6. Vangelis – he-ho
  7. Vangelis – we were all uprooted
  8. Moody Blues – melancholy man
  9. Procol Harum – a salty dog
  10. Yes – to be over
  11. Doors – The End
  12. Pink Floyd – careful with that axe Eugene
  13. Van Der Graaf Generator – my room [waiting for wonderland]

Fresh episodes air pretty much every Saturday night, starting 11 pm (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and download options available within twenty-four hours via our Facebook page.

839. one o’clock tomorrow

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FM, straight outa Toronto, hit the so-called prog-rock scene just as everything was falling apart amid the combined assaults of punk, disco, overall societal skepticism toward heavy and bloated concepts. But their first album Black Noise was still a cosmic delight, particularly One O’clock Tomorrow. “It forever abstracted my sense of space-time-everything, though LSD was also a factor.” (Philip Random)

840. crunchy granola suite

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Neil Diamond‘s Hot August Night, possibly the greatest live album ever released, starts well indeed with Crunchy Granola Suite, the power of which is only slightly negated when you realize it really is about eating well, lots of nuts and berries. From the album’s liner notes: “Then softly, the music begins, the lights dim. The music rises, the stage is a smoky, opalescent jewel in the darkness. But one light shines brighter than the others, a white pool in the brilliance, and for an instant, sound hangs suspended, only the air breathing. Then he’s there, the crowd exploding, Neil Diamond, casual, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, those 5000 people demanding his soul.  And for the next 107 minutes, he gives it to them.”