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What Music?
I've heard it a hundred times…
"You make old fart music."
"But I wrote a lot of this stuff in my twenties!"
"Wow. You were an old fart in your twenties?"
Maybe so.
I grew up north of Detroit with a love for all the new hard-hitting rock music on the new devilish FM stations. Found a band to join with some schoolmates when I was eleven. Fifty years or so later, I'm still at it but working solo in a fruit cellar studio called the Pooka Blind. I can play keyboard, drum pads and guitars passably as long as I stick to my idiom. I sing like a radio announcer. I did my own tracks anyway. I do them as written. Others had reputations to consider.
Twelve years of distant safaris in the Pooka Blind have bagged a modest set of Progressive Rock Concept Albums. Five are newly gleaned in the digital realm and the rest are old tape-based salvage operations of dubious merit. All of them represent the crazy plans in my head way back in the 70's and 80's. Prog-rock albums made a big impression on me with their broad canvas of media and wide scale of complexity. I know the urge to coordinate their creation can satisfy. I always liked stuff that took more than a glance to digest. There's lots of other stuff that folks can dance to or fill in the background at work. PRCA's are more like movies that one sits through from start to finish. And maybe again every few years I was determined to make some PRCA's of my own..
Besides, Sea-sides and A-sides…
Many of my generation consider the early seventies as the extra late sixties, which is when I started playing in bands. Everyone bought records. All was vinyl but singles or 45's had given way to albums. Albums have two sides and two square feet of stuff to stare at and it was too much fuss to lift the dust cover and pilot the tone arm once the side is playing. No one chose songs. We all chose sides. Bands and listeners adopted them as a twenty minute palette of sound. An overarching narrative could be attempted so song order mattered. Songs could be short, broken up or endless or not a song at all. The most egregious examples were called Concept Albums where even the order of the sides mattered. It was long ago but my brain is still wired to think in twenty minute Sides or Books or batches or parts. Songs can overlap or have silly bits between them.
Here are five PRCA's served up in side form. If that seems too silly, and it is, click on the cover art to go to the PRCA's more CD-like home page.
The Better Bozos of Our Nature (2021)
The cowboys are back… Will we get the future we deserve?
The Better Bozos of Our Nature grew from some of my ancient roots including coffee, knotty pine and The Firesign Theatre. Especially 1971's I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus where, after a short bus ride, the Brotherhood Of Zips & Others arrive at the future and gather under the Big Blue B. While the Bozos strive to live in the future ("It's just starting now!"), the round-up has come and the Cowboys are demanding that the past is here to stay. These old-school lads know how to have a cow. Saving the past means punching you in the face really hard. That's why the Bozos have to wear a rubber nose. Can we save the future? Can we share the future?
I know my own mind
I could spot it in a crowd
aggreeable and in line
obedient and loyal
and it comes when I call
most of the time
In the War Zone (2017)
A political rock-musical from the 80's updated for our current crisis
Book 1 part 1 (Side 1)
Book 1 part 2 (Side 2)
Book 2 part 1 (Side 3)
Book 2 part 2 (Side 4)
In the War Zone is composed of slightly updated tunes from the Reagan Era that addressed the social and political issues of that time. Thirty years later, well… there we go again. Songs and incidental music are filled with sounds from the archives of C-SPAN. In speaking to the future, voices from the past warn us about the present. The music accompanies the story of Strumbozo and Ahklem- a rock musician and an Afghani freedom fighter who cross America heading for Washington DC to change politics forever. They arrive just in time to embark on an outer space adventure. Finally, there is hard rock and high-end silliness in one convenient package.
An accompanying sci-fi-satire-story-scenario thing is presented here.
Cast the doubters from the list
Cast a stone if they resist
Say the words and we'll forgive
Think these thoughts and you can live
Beefcake Madness (2016)
A raucous send-up of manliness
Beefcake Madness is a weirdly-vulgar misandric satire of misogynistic culture set to over-reaching symphonic prog-rock made by one lad in a fruit cellar studio.
The title is a term invented in a pizza parlor in the late seventies to describe the culturally infused insanity of the average lad's understanding of females. This concept for a concept album festered in my mind for decades. The project kicked off in 2015 and consumed me for 18 months. In that stretch of time, Trump went from campaign freak-show to President-Elect. Some of the album's frequent skit segments are taken from the Republican debates. Others feature patrons of the Sam Harris Forum, where a chronicle of the project can be found. The music is inspired by many Russian composers. Particularly Arabian Nights type of orchestra-intended stuff like Scherezade. Track 5 is The Legend of the Calendar Prince done as a western saloon song. Granted, those were Ruskies pretending to be Arabs pretending to be Supermen. So what? I will only add to the pretending. Keyboard-triggered synthesizers will pretend to be orchestra instruments. I'll pretend I'm a power trio and that I know what to do with Prokofiev's Scythian Suite. While many items are vulgar enough to warrant an explicit advisory, it is all done with comedic intent and heavy sarcasm.
The world's a mess and we know why
Those playful boys who smoke the sky
They kissed the girls and made them cry
Pity the boys will have to die
Hats Off tO Us All (2013)
Suitable for All Hallows Eve and better in the dark
Hats Off tO us All was the first PRCA to be done in one year's time with regular reports. It appeared in progress as an evolving set of draft mixes while layers of instrument tracks were sorted out. The layout and sound were inspired by Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies… a gruesome way to learn the alphabet but an often-told tale of children destroyed by the world that raises them. Lyrically, the songs tell the tale of the letter A and the events that led to her unfortunate escalation.This expedition tracked a particular specie of vintage progressive rock- pre-synthesizer and pre-sequencer- where everything was played in real time and bands explored new sounds out of their dad’s old jazz and R & B instruments. Likewise, no half measures here. No, this is prog rock. There’s lots of half measures. And, like most concept albums, there’s actually only five songs that have been jumbled together seventeen different ways.
My garden fills with efin' faeries
with each silly answer to my queries
Better not say what weight it carries
No Ma'am, I said elves and faeries
A Strange Gesture of Contempt (1998)
Featuring real reel to reel stuff from the Twentieth Century
A Strange Gesture of Contempt is a PRCA from the late 90's made in my usual fashion of borrowing gear for months or just a weekend and trying to make serviceable demos for a band. I shied from posting it because it is sonically inferior to what the newer Pooka Blind can grind out. This was a chance to update the ancient electric drum voices with less ancient drum machines and replace the electric guitar tracks that were made in less than ideal circumstances. How hard could it be? It all became a much bigger and engrossing commitment. As any worthy PRCA should be.
Let me show you my resume of pain
it says your respect is my right to claim
cuz I've been hurt by the whole of creation
I'm a shiny beacon and a pillar of salt
Not my fault for this vengeful display
stand aside or be swept away
by the blast as I self-destruct
…and two more solo PRCA's served without opposing sides.
The Boy/King at the Battle Of Dickland (2018)
An Instrumental pseudo symphony and a bonus track with a bonus track
The Boy/King at the Battle of Dickland was started in the spring of 2015 with a plan to create an epic poem that lyrically fits an orchestral piece but is not heard with the music. The story of the golden haired boy-king who dominates with destruction and gibberish was outlined before candidate Trump came down the escalator. It was inspired by President Reagan whom I remember well. In the story, a fire turns the boy-king's hair a crimson red. In a Reaganesque context, it was satire. There was no avoiding Trump twisting the tale into a documentary. There are no specific characters assigned to instruments though the boy-king is often portrayed as a single piccolo. There are real guitars and drumsticks at work with a keyboard triggering sampled orchestra sounds. Imagining a real orchestra might be a stretch so instead, imagine a rock band with an elaborate theater organ sounding a jungle of voices. The goal was to make something melodic and playful with the rock instruments in a mostly secondary role to the orchestra sounds. The music matches the more heavy-handed sibling album Beefcake Madness made at the same time.
Welcome to the puppet show
here we dangle to and fro
painted eyes painted world
strings are pulled fists are hurled
spin a verse we'll rehearse
that's all we know
Let us pray
the verse is an old cliché
We are just the dangling parts
we take the course the body charts
if we take things one by one
then we'll know what must be done
Courting the Apocalypse (1995)
More from the Twentieth Century
Courting the Apocalypse was assembled in 1995 from semi-coherent solo demos for my bandmates and odd items often made with toy electric drums like a Mattel Synsonics Kit. The songs span from 1982 to 1994. These were worked on here and there during the other PRCA projects. Just a few were still around in multitrack form. Most were only available as mixdowns to which I have added a part there wasn't room for before. TV and film were made inevitable the day Muybridge took his famous horse pictures. Both would turn out to be essential to our self-destruction.
What's this God a-waitin' fer?
Certainly He sees what's goin' on
When will the guilty pay?
When do we get our way?
Zug Island: An American Dream (1987)
An ancient radio-comedy about the future
ZUG ISLAND: An American Dream is a radio comedy about reality and politics and stuff from 1987. There are four half-hour episodes. It’s here because… why not.
“Mr. President, in your speech, you often mentioned reality. What changes does the administration plan in this area?”
