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OCTOBER 31, 2002
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Source: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
http://cf.democratandchronicle.com/
Lonely hearts, united
By Jeff Spevak
The e-mails poured in after this newspaper's review of a concert earlier
this month by the progressive-rock band Rush at the Blue Cross Arena at the
Community War Memorial. Fifteen or so, triple what any previous pop-music
review has drawn here in years.
The message? Do not poke a dinosaur with a stick.
One Rush fan compared his favorite band to the Beatles -- bass player vs.
bass player, drummer vs. drummer, etc. -- and declared Rush to be better.
After a string of unflattering comments about the review, one fan from
Australia concluded with, ''I will leave you to go back to your Britney
Spears now.'' Ouch.
''And don't flatter yourself over reading this e-mail, thinking that
pissing people off is a good way to get your name out or whatever,'' wrote
a faithful reader from Florida. ''I have read some of your other 'articles'
and they all suck.'' ''Yeah, I've encountered that before,'' says Dan
Hanley, director of media relations for the Rochester-based
progressive-rock label, Magna Carta. ''There's a certain humorlessness
among many of their fans.''
Progressive-rock fans, in fact, appear to be a tightly knit, worldwide
cult, extraordinarily loyal to their bands, many of which have not produced
any music of relevance for 20 years.
Now we have the defining act of progressive rock, Yes, coming to Rochester
for a Tuesday show at the Blue Cross Arena.
To head off any e-mail threats, let's just say that it is this newspaper's
belief that Yes has really imaginative album covers by Roger Dean:
fantastic images of gothic planets with spidery topography for Yes fans who
have never felt comfortable on Earth. Even Yes concedes that packaging
played a big part in the band's success.
''It was huge because it gave the atmosphere,'' says Yes drummer Alan
White. ''They were great for people smoking marijuana, hanging around on
couches and seeing these wonderful artistic illusions, and get into the
illustrations in depth. Roger Dean is the sixth member of Yes.''
There is also some musical depth to Yes, the band that launched the
prog-rock thing. For better or for worse.
''They're definitely one of the early defining bands, as well as bringing
in the whole symphonic thing,'' says Hanley. ''I have no doubt that when
they've been at the top of their game, they're amazing. But a lot of times,
it's like buying a bag of Sour Patch Kids and watching pro wrestling on TV.
It's not necessarily the most nourishing thing.''
Prog rock is apparently tasty enough to have fans in Australia wondering
what was on Rush's set list on an October night in Rochester, New York.
Imagine the stomach rumblings when bands that have built an even bigger fan
base over the years are on the move.
''Yes, Genesis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer are the big three that made it,''
Hanley says. ''Even Pink Floyd gets thrown in there, but a lot of people
disagree with that. I even think the Beatles were in that group, but you'll
get even more arguments with that.''
Actually, that's not such an outrageous statement at all. The Beatles were
among the first to experiment with synthesizers and classical-music string
arrangements, some of the favorite tools of the progressive-rock genre.
But true prog rock has a fascination with a sci-fi, fantasy future and
other worlds, as evidenced by the Yes album covers. The music uses odd time
signatures, creating compositions that are often more soundscapes than
song. And as the word ''bombastic'' generally turns up in any conversation
about prog rock, that's where the Beatles part company with acts such as
the ossified Magma, cited by Hanley as the finest specimen of prog rock
under glass.
''They were so over the top,'' he says of the French band whose series of
concept albums beginning in 1971 depicted a futuristic Earth rendered
uninhabitable after years of war with the planet Kobaia. ''They were even
more bombastic than Yes and Rush put together, right down to creating their
own language to sing in.''
Although Yes' Jon Anderson was singing in English, not Kobiana, it was Yes'
1974 album, Tales From Topographic Oceans, that really kicked open the
cosmic door. Sometimes achingly beautiful, undeniably overblown, the vinyl
double album was just four songs, 20 minutes each, one to a side. They bore
unwieldy, faux-mythological titles such as ''The Ancient -- Giants Under
the Sun.'' Tales From Topographic Oceans was the first big-selling album to
address the otherworldly needs of prog-rock fans.
''The cultist kind of movement?'' says White. ''The Yeshead kind of thing?
Was that the start of it? Probably. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that was
the first album I played on. It's a great album. A lot of people I meet
reflect on that album. It stands the test of time.''
Yes' sound has fluctuated some over the years. 90125, a 1983 release, was a
studio-slick break from the art-rock sound and featured the band's biggest
hit, ''Owner of a Lonely Heart.'' But the return of classically bent
keyboardist Rick Wakeman several years ago revived Yes' interest in its
'70s prog-rock roots. The band's most recent studio recording, last year's
Magnification, with Yes accompanied by a symphony orchestra, could have
been released 20 years ago.
''In some respects it could have. That's a very good observation,'' White
says. ''It's just something that came out as we all sat in a room for a
month, looking at each other and playing with tapes rolling.''
White, 53, has teenage children. One attends a recording-arts school in
Florida, where White was asked to visit and present a few seminars. In
question-and-answer sessions he discovered that these students were
familiar with the three-decades-old band that might have inspired a few of
their parents to hang around on couches, exploring the depth of
fantasy-planet illustrations tacked to the wall, like Deadheads from
another planet longing for home.
''Someone asked me what new band reminded me of Yes, and I told them
Tool,'' White says. ''They were all, like, hip to Tool, which is kind of a
modern version of what Yes was.''
Well, maybe. Tool -- loudly pretentious in the way of King Crimson and Rush
-- is certainly the metal version of art rock.
''We have kids who are 17, 18 years old discovering it from their parents
and on the Internet,'' the 39-year-old Hanley says of prog rock, pointing
out that bands from Magna Carta have recorded tribute albums to both Rush
and Yes. ''So much gets shoved down your throat on the radio, and this is
stuff you've never heard.''
But does it matter? Gregorian chants seem to have disappeared from the
Billboard charts -- but that won't dissuade the admittedly small audience
for monk-based music.
''I think there'll always be fans of all types of music,'' Hanley says.
''Whether the music has the relevance of modern-day events to back it, or
it's burying fans in Lord of the Rings mythology, there will always be
people doing it. And people looking for it.''
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