This continues to be Randophonic’s main focus, our overlong yet incomplete history of the so-called Prog Rock era (presented in countdown form) – 661 records from 1965 through 1979 with which we hope to do justice to a strange and ambitious time indeed, musically speaking.
Part twelve of the journey went as follows:
Yes – America
Yes- a venture
Strawbs – midnight sun
Renaissance – can you understand?
Soft Machine – hope for happiness
Soft Machine – why are we sleeping?
King Crimson – epitaph
King Crimson- exiles [live]
Guru Guru -oxymoron [immer middle]
Bill Bruford – Sahara of snow [part-1]
Bill Bruford – fainting in coils
Vangelis – to the unknown man
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.
Podcast (Solid Time begins at around the 5 minute point). Youtube playlist (probably inaccurate).
The Solid Time of Change will be Randophonic’s main focus for the forseeable future, an overlong yet incomplete history of the so-called Prog Rock era (presented in countdown form) – 661 records from 1965 through 1979 with which we hope to do justice to a strange and ambitious time, musically speaking.
Part nine of the journey went as follows:
Rick Wakeman – white rock
Rick Wakeman – lax’x
Love – alone again or
Love – the good humour man, he sees everything like this
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Pluto the Dog
Emerson Lake + Palmer – take a pebble [edit]
America – sandman
Moody Blues – higher + higher
Moody Blues – house of (three) doors
Moody Blues – legend of a mind
Caravan – the dog the dog, he’s at it again
Caravan – the love in your eye [unpop edit]
Pink Floyd – fat old sun
Jon Anderson – ocean song
Jon Anderson – meeting [garden of Geda]
Jon Anderson – sound out the galleon
Jon Anderson – transic
Jon Anderson – naon
Daevid Allen – only make love if you want to
Van Morrison – almost independence day
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.
Also known as as the 661 Greatest Records of the so-called Prog Rock era, the Solid Time of Change is Randophonic’s latest countdown — an overlong yet incomplete history of whatever the hell happened between 1965 and 1979 – not in all music, not even in most of it, but definitely in a bunch of it.
What is Prog Rock? Is it different from progressive rock, or for that matter, rock that merely progresses? Four programs in and sixty-five selections down and you’d think we’d have a solid answer to these questions, but like the proverbial zoom into an old photograph, the closer we look, the murkier things get. Which isn’t to say the music isn’t great and thus, here’s to the best kind of confusion and a year’s worth of radio to figure it all out.
Part four of our journey went as follows:
Focus – harem scarem
Frank Zappa + The Mothers – Inca Roads
Strawbs- tomorrow
Rick Wakeman – Catherine of Aragorn [+ excerpts]
Rick Wakeman – Anne of Cleves
King Crimson – moonchild (part 1)
Moody Blues – the word
Justin Hayward + John Lodge – nights winters years
Sweet – love is like oxygen
Procol Harum – Grand Hotel
Klaatu – prelude
Klaatu – so said the lighthouse keeper
Klaatu – hope
Gentle Giant – Mister Class + Quality
Gentle Giant – three friends
Steve Hillage – om nam Shivaya
Steve Hillage – hurdy gurdy glissando
Cream – as you said
Installment #5 of The Solid Time of Change airs Saturday, June 4th at 11 pm (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and download options available within twenty-four hours.
We’ll give this one to Lester Bangs, because without his review, Philip Random would never have been on the lookout for a copy of Live at the Paramount, which he found at yard sale, 1980s sometime. Cost him at least a dollar. “The Guess Who have absolutely no taste at all, they don’t even mind embarrassing everybody in the audience, they’re real punks without ever working too hard at it […] In case you wondered about the drug commercial, it’s in a song called Truckin Off Across The Sky, the main character of which is the Grim Reaper. There he is … grinning, outstretched arms holding bags of you-know-what. Positively the best drug song of 1972. And this may well be the best live album. F*** all them old dudes wearing their hip tastes on their sleeves: get this and play it loud and be first on your block to become a public nuisance.”
Randophonic’s first ever attempt at a proper Christmas show aired December 20th on CiTR.FM.101.9.
Here it is in two Mixcloud streams.
Plus a very special Movie of the Week — Monty Python’s Pleasures of the Dance.
The podcast of the full program is available for download here …
A special program in which we look back with fondness at cherished memories of Christmases past. Try to anyway, as it turns out the Jukebox is still stuck in minimum 49-percent prog-rock mode after the previous week’s 1974 blowout.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of highlights, seasonal and otherwise.
Sorry about that. The rest are guaranteed highlights, presented more or less in the order they were broadcast.
Van Der Graaf Generator – theme one
Written by George Martin for some TV show or other. Reimagined for drums, keyboards and various horns by Van Der Graaf Generator at their 70s freakout peak.
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Joybringer
Ripping off Gustav Holst, and owning it.
Jethro Tull – King Henry’s Madrigal
They don’t say which King Henry, though this strikes us as decidedly Shakespearean. Which raises the question. Where the hell are all the rocked up Shakespearean Christmas carols?
The Clash – if music could talk …
… then we truly would have peace on earth.
Delaney + Bonnie – where the soul never dies
What it’s really all about.
Beatles – Christmas time + The Word
The word is love. The time is now.
Emerson Lake + Palmer – Jerusalem
An interpretation of William Blake’s cosmic musing on Britain’s industrial revolution (those dark Satanic mills) and Jesus Christ himself taking a little walk ‘cross England’s green and pleasant. ELP at their least annoying.
Waterboys – December + Spirit
December even mentions the Christ child, but it’s not so much a Christmas song as a meditation on the gloomiest time of year, and how we always seem to find the light to see our way through, which seems to be what spirit’s all about.
Van Morrison – St. Dominic’s Preview
A song about many things, most of them indecipherable, but there is homesickness at the root of it. You think Buffalo’s a long way away? Try Belfast.
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – father of night, father of day
In which the Earth Band manage in ten minutes what Bob Dylan’s original accomplished in less than two. And yet, we’re pretty damned sure that the good Lord has love enough for both.
Philip Random’s favourite Christmas carol is not completely ruined by this sort of jazz rock arrangement … with small orchestra.
Gryphon – second spasm
The band that brought bassoons and krumhorns to rock. And one more time, why is there not more of this sort of Shakespearean groove available this time of year?
Part One of Randophonic’s three part celebration of the 40th anniversary of 1974 aired November 29th, on CiTR.FM.101.9.
Here it is in two Mixcloud streams. All Secrecy No Privacy:
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (an extended Movie of the Week):
The podcast of the full program is available for download here …
Think of it as a halfway cool radio program from forty years ago — a few guys running through some of the essential records of the year, not ranking them so much as just shouting them out. This is the important stuff. This is what has kept the flesheating robots at bay for the past three hundred or so days. And they might have been stoned while they were doing it, so stuff is out of order and maybe a little confused, but in a good way, 1974 proving rather difficult to really pin down.
But there was certainly no shortage of darned fine music.
Kraftwerk – autobahn
Wherein some very smart German guys decide that what the world truly wants and needs is a sort of stretched out and techno-fied version of the Beach Boys’ Fun Fun Fun. And they nail it, a hit single and album world wide. The future is suddenly very cool.
MFSB – TSOP [the Sound of Philadelphia]
Disco wasn’t really a SOUND yet in 1974, so it wasn’t really annoying at all. Not yet anyway.
O’Jays – for the love of money
The root of all that evil. Same as it ever was.
Camel – freefall
Introducing progressive rock, the elephant in the room, which it’s safe to say peaked rather gloriously in 1974, with Camel as solid an example as any. Tight playing, complex arrangements, no fear of cosmic overload.
Alice Cooper – teenage lament ’74
Does it always suck to be a teenager? Probably. But as far as we know, 1974 is the only year that had an actual teenage lament.
Sensational Alex Harvey Band – the man in the jar
Straight outa Glasgow, and not just a little glam, but you would not want to mess with any of them.
Rolling Stones – fingerprint file
74 was not a great year for the Stones with Keith Richard heroin comatose pretty much the whole time and Mick Taylor (the best player they ever had) calling it quits. Yet they still nailed it big time with Fingerprint File. All secrecy. No privacy.
BTO – not fragile
Big meat eating, truck driving riffs and melodies that rocked pretty much the whole world. Nothing pretty about any of it …
ELO – boy blue + Laredo tornado
ELO finally just went all the way technicolour with their fourth album, the concept known as El Dorado. These two flowed nicely together through the middle of side A.
10CC – Wall Street Shuffle
Blood sucking brokers ripping the whole world off, laughing all the way to hell and back. Some things never change.
Genesis – The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway [an extended Movie of the Week]
It’s hard to grasp now, but forty years ago Genesis were pretty much the epitome of strange and complex cool, with the four-sided Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Peter Gabriel’s last album with the band) believed by many to be one of the genuine monsters of the so-called prog-rock genre, by many others to be simply monstrous.
What’s it about? To be honest, we’re pretty sure not even Peter Gabriel knows, and he wrote the lyrics. That said, it seems to begin with an apocalypse of sorts. On Broadway. But nobody notices except Rael. Who’s Rael? He’s the (sort of) punk hero of the thing, whose weird adventures will take us deep into subterranean regions of mystery, pleasure, torment and lifeless packaging.
What’s the significance of the lamb? Not much, it seems.
Meanwhile from out of the steam a lamb lies down. This lamb has nothing whatsoever to do with Rael, or any other lamb. It just lies down on Broadway.
Randophonic 