As a bit of a diversion, I've been thinking about a post each week featuring something other than health - fitness. Lot's of bloggers out there do Sunday doggie blogging; I could too, but how about kick-ass, deep dish rock & roll?
Trust me. You're not likely to get a lot of stuff you've heard on the radio. Why? The radio is designed to sell advertising. Albums are created to find popular appeal on radio; and so, modern music is largely what it is in order to make it rather ubiquitous and always on your mind, paid for by big corporations who want a bit of your attention. Decent tradeoff. No complaints. But does that render the best music? Unlikely. Here's what always makes me interested in an album:
A 10-20 minute track. Unplayable on radio, except maybe on the hardest-core album rock stations; and then, only between 2-4 am. Where else will you find that? Classical music, that's where. That's why classical music stations are either public, or exist with teeny tiny market shares.
OK. Here we go for tonight. Because of the so-many emails I got from my Rush post the other day, here's an encore. Because the original is about 10 minutes, this is in two parts on YouTube. It's from perhaps my all-around favorite album, Caress of Steel: "The Necromancer." Little known, The original track comes in at 12:29.
Part 2:
Maybe next week, The Fountain of Lamneth, from the same album. That track comes in only 2 seconds shy of 20 minutes.
Rush has always understood their fans, have produced for them, and it has worked out. For most, it won't. Do 3-minute songs for mass consumption, or die. Very few get to flaunt that. You might want to pay attention to those few who can.
They are the classical composers of our age.
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If you like Rush (as do I) you might like Dream Theatre. They do some good looong songs
Happy New Year
"Bacchus Plateau" is my favorite from that album
Yea, I actually caught them on YouTube while looking up Rush links. Good stuff.
That's actually part five on the 20-minute Fountain of Lamneth:
I. In the Valley
II. Didacts and Narpets
III. No One at the Bridge
IV. Panacea
V. Bacchus Plateau
VI. The Fountain
Yep. I kind of wish that they had indexed the CD with the sub-parts (perhaps newer ones are; mine isn't). Nothing against the rest, of course, but sometimes I just want to skip right to it.
Caress of Steel was the 2nd Rush album I bought (the first was Farewell to Kings). I bought it on cassette, and the track order was actually different. "Didacts" was on side A, instead of being part of "Fountain." Probably had something to do with the length of the tape or something.
Yep. Lovely.