Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The live Unicorn will be remembered as the worst tour ever, for the simple reason that MP and "same setlist every night" should never be in the same sentence!
But I like the album for its concept, for its "prog-excess", for being absoultely out of any border!
I thought that would have been the final chapter of a "Prog Trilogy" along with LLM and HMF, but then they continued with the two albums with Fiske… I enjoyed Still Life (side A is very good, side B is very bad, and Ratcatcher was much better when it was Dora Peach, often played before Close yr Eyes in the old Baard times – Afterglow is probably the worst MP song ever!). Behind the Sun is very very lame… None of the "songs" deserve any good place in their discography: Cloudwalker, Ghost, Entropy, Promise, Magic&Wonder… all very "meh"… I save Kvaestor just for the drums circus, and partially Hell (but it repeats the scheme of the much better Gullible's Trabail).
I'm a little disappointed with the Tower album: it's a good album with very good songs, but I'd have preferred that they'd have followed the HBM track, instead of going back to hard-prog this way… It's a pity, songs are good, but it's nothing new under the sun.
@Be Well, we just found Darmok, who loves the Slow Phaseout, so I think nothing is impossible
It's very funny to find out that two MP fans may be in each possible first row in the concerts with totally different tastes!
i.e. I give for good that nothing produced after Trust Us is vaguely comparable to what has been produced before. If I'd make a double-CD best-of, it would only contain stuff from Demon Box to Trust Us, including the amazing EPs they issued.
But instead I go on finding people who love Phanerothyme or (ouch!) It's a Love Cult more than everything else and I ask myself how it is possible… Of course everyone has its own tastes, so everything is legit.
I've been deluded by everything from LTEC to BH/BC, possibly except Tristano and the Walking with J EP (the one with Geb's stuff, who at the time was in my opinion the best composer of the band!
). I can stand Barracuda, not loved by quite anyone here, but the four albums are a rolling down to the abyss!Kenneth stuff is better, but the only album that I can compare to the "golden age" is Here Be Monster and its EP HBM2. And I still wonder why they have produced so many double albums full of filler, and didn't make a double album with Here Be Monster, that would have gone straight to the gotha of the band!
A: Sleepwalking – Lacuna/Sunrise – Running with Scissors (best Snah's tune in 15 years!)
B: Here Be Monster 1 – Spin Spin Spin
C: I.M.S. – The Etching of the Seed-Atom – Here Be Monster 2
Sleepwalking Again – Big Black Dog.This would have been majestic. Still, HBM is the best thing from last 18 years MP. Because vocals are clear, intimate and without all those yes-like harmonizations (good for a couple of albums, but boring nowadays), and because Kenneth plays one third of the beats he usually does (also, good for the Unicorn and Kvaestor and the Alchemyst, but I REALLY missed something that even I could be able to play!). It's an album with something to say, and not only a rock'n'roll exercise like most of the latest production.
I'm off topic… sorry, I wanted to shares this thing about HBM, that seems quite overlooked by most of MP people.
About what I expect from the concerts, well, I have a lot of preferences and a lot of non-preferences. The fun of an MP concert is also to see how the setlist meets my tastes, beside the way the guys play and their mood. And anything from Trust Us or Blissard will probably make me more happy than anything from the Tower…!
Hearing and feeling is one thing. Spoiling other people's hearing and feeling by wanting to be the star among the crowd is another. There's no feeling in screaming where the obvious background of a silent moment is silence itself, just ego.
Only 3 songs from the Tower!…
And 2h35 with this short setlist (without K9), I'm curious to know how long the jams were, especially the Wheel!
Yeah, both songs have very high notes. Nothing against that, just wanted to be sure that I'm not a visionary!
Bent did mention it. In Parma backstage he joked saying "Snah will do all the singing"… actually, these are probably the concerts where I saw Snah singing the less!
Bent sometimes missed completely some high notes… in Bartok, for example.
Oh, I also think that Hey Jane in Parma was tuned one or two tones down… is it an impression? Anyone noticed that?
Mountain
In Every Dream Home
Manmower
Go to California
Bartok of the Universe
A Pacific Sonata
The Cuckoo
Upstairs Downstairs
Ghost
Un Chien d'Espace
Ship of Fools
Vortex Surfer
@Great King Rat: no, Ghost is Ghost from Behind the Sun, and despite the efforts of the band, it's been the weakest moment of the show.
2h25, great great great sound! Everything was perfectly mixed, volumes were not too loud, and if you consider that I was in first row in front of Bent, this is real news!
Live Club is very good for sound, infact two "ambient" mikes were pointed to the audience on the far sides of the stage. Let's not forget that here is where the RW4 version of Wishing Well was recorded!
The show was mainly on the psychedelic side, the only easy-rock song was Go to California.
I still find Pacific Sonata weak, even though the final crescendo is good. But the first part is booooring…
Of course the highlight of the show was Un Chien d'Espace, the Space Dog never fails, it's a Cerberus always showing a different face. This one was really intense in the high notes, and very very slow in the changes of theme… I'm quite sure it went over 30 minutes, including the four-five minutes intro with fender rhodes and guitar screams. UN should approve a resolution to force MP to play K9 in every concert!
Once again I dodged Year Zero and also no Black Holes, so I'm quite happy
Still no Internet Explorer, the guys are considering Ubuntu.
No, I wasn't in Livorno, but I know Geb played. Lots of pictures on FB. Federica was there.
I actually knew he would have been in the audience in Livorno because Bent told some friends of ours after the soundcheck in Parma. Didn't expect he would've opened the show. I expected maybe a brief "Waiting for the one" thing at the end of MP show…
