“The Bee Gees from very near the beginning of things, psychedelic and strange, and as good as they ever got (to my ears anyway) giving their all as every Christian Lionhearted band should, complete with chanting monks and mellotron from days of future past. They really are as good as the Beatles here.” (Philip Random)
How could the Beatles have been even better? More stuff like Flying. Mellotrons and backwards flutes, and melodies your grandma could hum, on and on. More George.
Installment #38 of the Solid Time of Change aired on Saturday May-27-2017 (c/o CiTR.FM.101.9).
Youtube playlist (sadly 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.
Part Thirty-Eight of the journey went as follows:
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.
“Aphrodite’s Child are a weird one from the 1960s, a sort of pop-psychedelic outfit that managed to be both sonically extreme and sentimentally cloying, sometimes in the same song. And oh yeah, they came from Greece. You Always Stand In My Way goes resolutely for the extreme edge of things, with singer Demis Roussos (who would eventually settle into a prosperous career as an easy listening fave) giving his wailing all, whilst keyboardist Vangelis (yes, that Vangelis) tears things up on lead mellotron. I actually found this one in a yard sale sometime in the early 90s, maybe paid a buck for it, the guy who sold it to me sort of scratching his head and mumbling, oh yeah, this bloody record.” (Philip Random)
In which the Moody Blues go deep and wide and high, and remind us why they were once considered pretty darned cool. Philip Random recalls listening to Melancholy Man a lot while reading Lord of the Rings for the first time “… as a mostly uncool, pre-driver’s license teen with absolutely nothing better to do one long hot summer, stuck in somebody else’s cottage, there being only one even remotely decent album in the vicinity – This Is The Moody Blues (who knows how it got there?). I still think of Bilbo Baggins finally getting old whenever I hear Melancholy Man and I didn’t even know what melancholy meant at the time, just felt it anyway, all that deep sorrow and regret, particularly once the mellotron sweeps in for the kill.”
Randophonic 