By the three rings of banillinyon (the initiation of a young mage into the seven spheres of Dylniff)
Thu. September 2, 2004Categories: Abstract Dynamics
I’m sorry Mark s but even by your standards of contrarier than thou, wouldn’t knowingly sign up to any position that might be described in some quarters as orthodoxy (I’m teasing – lol), rehabilitating this is about twenty diplodocus steps too far IMHO.
(And yeh, dinosaurs are nice to look at, – I very nearly wept with delight when I saw Jurassic Park – but, like, I wouldn’t want to be one especially… Big, lumbering, top-down machine with tiny brain… yeh that’s Really Existing Capitalism alright….)
Anyone who can look at the lettering alone and not simultaneously (a) feel involuntary physical disgust and (b) laugh uproariously, just geddoudda here….
And look look, you gotta check out the Flash sideshows… obv my machine has trouble loading them, but hey that’s Prog Tech, nice to see that Rog has moved with the times and made sure even more time and energy is wasted on these progstrosities…
Look, look, the water like moves, man…. cosmic….
And people say Dali was kitsch — gimme a break —-
Linda Trent tells me that in Lemurian ‘Roger Dean’ is equivalent in meaning to both the English ‘irredeemably naff’ and ‘anti-sorcerously pernicious’….
How so? Well, speaking personally, it took me years and years of deprogramming (but not by the Kowalsky brothers) to dissociate the concepts of ‘sorcery’ and ‘mysticism’ from the nauseating image of white-bearded wizards walking through a windswept airbrushed Deanscape…. No doubt called ‘Xantranadon’ …. or ‘Phalmalmador’…
Hey readers, how about a little creative writing competition? Who can come up with the best story ‘inspired’ by one of Dean’s flash animations?
Mine’s going to be called ‘In the Caverns of Xilliakanis: The Annunciation of Jezopod Andalyias (Part 1)’….
(By comparison with Dean, most of the covers on the page that Carter McBeath links to [see comments below] are pretty mild stuff; I can cope with all that sunshiney overexposed pyschedelic stuff much more than Dean’s nauseatingly hilarious Sword ‘n’ Sorcery Fantasy lands… but Carter’s right, the Gryphon cover does take the biscuit, I mean the airbrush, I mean the Flash animation….)
As Carter says:
‘For my money, the Gryphon album is the clear winner here: wise old man playing chess, whilst the killings of inevitably cruel nature take place outside his cloistered quarters. I can’t figure out if the old git is supposed to be god (y’know, controlling the paces of our clockwork existence via the astonishing parallel movements of baldy’s chessboard – HEAVY!) or maybe he’s just cloistered cos he’s wise enough to be saddened by the inherent cruelty of clockwork existence, blah blah, et cetera.
Somehow I have the feeling that, back in the salad days of yore, Toney Blur spent many a dazed, glassy-eyed evening with chillum in one hand, Gryphon sleeve in the other – and just FREAKING over the DEPTH of it all and the
FRAGILITY of existence.’
O, and I should make it clear that, in addition to loathing without reservation Star Wars and all its PROGeny, I fucking detest Lord of the twatting Rings too. And no, I haven’t wasted time and energy on seeing the films. The arguments people make for seeing them are EXACTLY THE SAME as those kids at school made for seeing Alan Parsons Project and their ilk: ‘hey, you might not like the music, but you gotta respect the SHOWMANSHIP and the LIGHTSHOW.’
No I have fucking not.
The Fantasy genre is shit. Categorically.
And Mark, do you think that the idea that the Millennium Dome is an excrescence is a doxa in need of deconstruction? 😉
Atop his breastplate, so were cut the most magical of tiny little runes. “M’lord, the secret paths I’ve trod! Like a perched dragonfly, from which green eyes flit.”
To which the aquatic tin faerie soldiers rejoiced: “Saxon feet, forward march!”
Dawn breaks: the woodland shivers. Magpies scurry amidst moles. Banish now thy doubt, verily, I say. Yea, the peapod nymphs of whom you speaketh, of whose bite she perished, bow down ye, forward and aft, lest the mirrored chainmail grows dark in Albion Village.
“Oh, cruel Gryphon!”, exults the faerie queen, “though the nations hail thine divine cloak of moons, there be no syren lips more fondly sound than that of the Octopus King of Niflheimland.”
Did I win the writing contest, then? Please tell me the top prize is an hour in the cage with Ms. Jones.
Would someone care to lend me $1,750 so that I can buy this?
http://rogerdean.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=56&osCsid=f506ac61b57ce5b075e18402001ca174
As the sales blurb states, “It was inspired by the patterns in the landscape, a very geomantic vision, each of the rocks having a symbolic significance.” And who can ask for more inspiration than that?
I’m hoping to at long last woo Guinevere with this print.
to quote nina, or nearly rwwoooooooarooooooarrrrrr — that would be much closer than lol
as for the prize, well, let’s wait to see if there are any more entries, but I CANNOT IMAGINE yours will be bettered
literally quivering with laughter
k-punk has been forbidden from offering the prize of time in the cage with Grace Jones.
(looks up from copy of Spare Rib dated 1973 then down nose through pince-nez spectacles, switches off Radio 4’s Women’s Hour)This is suggesting that women’s bodies are a commodity to be bought and sold by men! (picks up dog-eared yellowing copy of the Female Eunuch)
What, what, young man, you’re JOKING? JOKING! This is a very serious matter — what could be more objectionable, more disgusting, more oppressive than a man finding a woman attractive? That’s no laughing matter. Sackcloth and ashes and a good strong dose of PC must be administered, young man..
What, what feminism has moved on from 1973? What’s that? (Sound of radio 4 chitchatoisie and seething resentment drowns out everything else)
Is this a joke???
(haha i just did an interview w.Childrens Literature in Education abt tolkien book-and-film: remains to be seen if dr vick can edit it down to useable length though)
(i genuinely and non-contrarianly recommend tolk’s 1937 essay “on fairystories”: i think his project as a whole wz a failure – so did he, plus also he HATED his co-optation by hippies, whose ideology of childhood wz much less conflicted than his – but to me it’s a v.interesting pro-active nerdpower waystation between two things i have a lot of time for: late victorian post-morris kids lit as it links to gothic horror on one side and the radical arts-and-crafts movement on the other, and eg today’s high-tec soap-myth-magic interface: xena, buffy et al as they elaborate intuitive-brechtian slash-fiction democragothic de/sedimentation of doubts-abt-the-politix-of-technics into/out of collective nu-media work) (obv) (haha also xena is currently on TV like RIGHT AFTER THE POWERPUFF GIRLS!! way to complicate the sexuality of next-gen teens!!)
yeah my default position on the dome was indeed pro (what else?) but i never actually visited it so i.my heart i guess wasn’t in the defence, and ii.apart from enjoying the flashglimpse you get of the object just b4 you drive into the blackwall tunnel i haven’t got much concrete to say abt it: ppl’s descriptions of what wz inside reminded me of mostly the West Midlands Show as i visited it when small, ie a tradefair but indoors 🙁 and no tractors 🙁 🙁
you shd get RD in as gif designer for whenever you need to use words like katak etc!! hurrah for neo-art deco emoticons ~:p
(what i like abt prog when i do like it is its genuine total lack of common sense and proportion)
(and don’t forget the brit popfigure most in hock to tolkien is marc bolan) (no bolan no morley no us!)
gryphon incidentally are a real lost oddity, at least in their earliest manifestation: they took the folk rock idea (cf unhalfbricking etc) and went WAY out w.it, combining w.the fashion in classical performance for authentic instruments – crumhorns! – and the reconstruction of pre-baroque (ie medieval) dance music
i own a tremendously dotty book in which the author – a professional bassplayer – demonstrates at winning wordy length that yes w.have been adorno’s favourite band if we are to take “the philosophy of modern music” seriously: i mentioned this to ben watson once and he said “BUT THEY’RE CALLED YES!” (deleuze wd point out that it’s adorno that’s therefore undermined here surely?)
maybe i’m not up with the facts but I never imagined tony blairs music had much in the way of proggishness about it. I always imagined he was sort of pub rock with flares kind of musician (like brewers droop, the early dire straits incarnation). I enjoy the conceit but…..
if have time will pursue tht of t.h.white’s “once and future king” as key post-tolk work (ie de-idealising insertion of arthur-as-wimbly-wambly modern libdem in malory’s storystructure) (tolk’s central similarly de-idealising argt – much-missed hence = why his work is a failure on his own terms let alone anyone else’s – is that to Save the World we have to accede to the banishment of the elves and get on with life w/o them)
also will reread the owl service and post abt that poss
Sorry, wbtnk, but Blair proclaims his favorite song to be “21st Century Schizoid Man” (lol) by King Crimson:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4662805-103680,00.html
“21st century schizoid man” = punk!! cf fripp and small mobile units etc
if you just build on the blair-king crimson link i think you get a much more interesting dissection (KC”s “ladies of the road” is i think w/o doubt the ugliest white blues song – it’s abt groupies – ever recorded: which makes it interesting not boring but it is still hideous)
but yeah, ugly rumours were themselves pubrocky and lame, surely? unlike fripp, blair had not even vague dreams to record w.offshoots of the brit free improv scene (keith tippett), or eno-bowie-sylvian or EVEN TOYAH! 🙁 🙁 🙁
(politicians’ “hinterland”, as denis healey calls it, is a mesmerisingly and underexamined weird area btw – douglas hurd’s sexy spy novels! ken clarke’s ornette coleman fandom – but you have to be pinpoint precise, eg blair is a declared crimson fan not a yes or a genesis or a van der graaf generator fan)
lol because … 1) Robert Fripp is a Tory, and 2) I’m imagining the song playing while glancing at Blair’s Joker Hysterical Face on the k-punk page.
Plus I’ve nothing against the song. One of KC’s better moments.
Nor am I indiscriminately prog bashing. My musical background began in the 70s with much progressive-related German and Canterbury-related music, and I remain fond of most of it. To be sure, Amon Düül II’s brand of fantasy – cold-edged, hard, sinister, not to mention great typography! – was aeons removed from Roger Dean-embossed shitfest bloated nymph ditties. (And a case of similar distance can be made for Bolan as well.)
(ps in ref the inspired-by-roger-dean prize: dean’s pix have no ppl in them EVER so all mimsy pixies etc featuring derive from secret sexwishfulfilment of writer only!)
haha before or after archigram??
bah i wz meant to be tidying my flat today CURSE ALL ELFIN-HATAz
“21st Century Schizoid Man” = punk. How so?
The “productive” path for the likes of Fripp turned out to be …
“21st Century Schizoid Man” = bloated ‘double trio’ KC line-up I had the grave misfortune to endure in concert back in 1995.
Please spare me the revisionist Wire party line. Fripp has spent far more of his time in the company of types like Adrian Belew and Tony Levin than any “small, mobile, intelligent” pursuits. What the hell is so punk about that?(In other words, his rhetoric falls flat in the face of evidence.)
In some new magazine or other Tony Blair says his favourite song is “Crossroad Blues” by Robert Johnson! The fickle jade.
not wanting to sound snide (to CarterM) but methinks thats him rewriting his history a bit. glossing it up for the guardian readership. as per mark s’s comments and Tom’s “Crossroads Blues” revelation I’m pretty sure clapton is the model here….
21CSM = punk in sound and lyric content obv!!
“small mobile unit” = crossover between punk and tory (ie anti-dinosaur) ideology
the only fripp-involved record i much like is sunday all over the world, i think – the “wire revisionist” genealogy is there as an undeniable material fact, so we don’t JUST have to continue in dreamless uncritical obeisance to the niche-marketing categories of the mid-80s, but i don’t have a v.high opinion of the music that got made as a result (the quality of wire revisionism nosedived after i stopped being editor!)
hey my wire covers didn’t have ppl on them either! if influence existed ths wd be roger d’s on me!
“21st Century Schizoid Man” = punk. It’s in that ballpark. It’s too obliteratingly harsh to be placed in the fantasy traditions of prog, a crushingly dystopian tune with no space for you to breathe. Much more NO FUTURE than the Sex Pistols.
The live version from Earthbound has the singing through a vocoder. It’s like being stalked through apocalyptic streets by 100ft Daleks.
LOL — this thread has really cheered me up what with unpleasantness elsewhere… like Carter I don’t have any particular problems with much of what is called prog music — and I too appreciate its absurdity and overreaching ambition (better than that Snow PatrolMark what you say about Tolkien is brilliant — I like both those things too —-
but I really _was_ under the impression that Bliar was into prog….
as for Katak, get away from me…. Dean’s world is nowhere near appropriate for the afro-germanic consonontal hardness of lemurolingo — it’s KIRBY who should have drawn Katak for sure…
but I really _was_ under the impression that Bliar was into prog….
I reckon he just said these things to to impress his ‘cool’ mates at university. I can’t help noticing that he hasn’t given Fripp a knighthood yet…
On the subject of Roger Dean, I’m surprised that nobody has yet brought up the subject of Rodney Matthews whose record covers are even worse.
lol… this is great…. what did he do john?
LOL… just seen some — physically maniacally laughing — yr right, definitely worse, they fit Carter’s story even better!!!
http://www.rodneymatthews.com/main.htm
Yikes! Amon Duul 2 Prog? N-no flippin’ way, man…it’s Acid Rock, not Prog. We don’t play Prog in our house 🙂
And, yes, The Earthbound version of 2.1K Man is a monster. They played it at ball-quaking volume in the interval last time I saw Melt_banana. It sounds like demented Improv-Metal-Punk (More in common w/ someone like Peter Brotzmann maybe…).
And the Triad of Lark’s Tongue/Red/Starless and Bible black were never really Prog & hold up reasonably well…but, yeah, Pete Sinfield should be tried for (Nursery) Crimes against humanity…
It really is the case surely that the album covers are the worst thing about prog — apart from Yes, they’re actually WORSE than the Dean covers… and that’s saying something….
If you guys want bad prog covers, check out Starcastle by Starcastle.
http://hard.mallkun.to/jacket/starcastle.jpg
And the Triad of Lark’s Tongue/Red/Starless and Bible black were never really Prog
Let’s not mess about here: If you can argue that anything Crimson have ever done isn’t prog, then nothing is. Crimson are without doubt as prog as it gets. They are easily as prog as Yes: Fripp even gets Jon Anderson to guest on ‘Lizard’!
The only reason Earthbound sounds more raw is that it was recorded on really shit equipment.
I rather like King Crimson; in fact I own all their ‘proper’ albums, but there’s no getting away from the fact that every note therein is plucked, blown, or struck in the service of the God of Prog.
“the God of Prog”? Ha! Love it…
Who d’we reckon the God of Prog is? Does he have a name, attributes…? Is S/he a Vengeful or Forgiving God? Is there a Prog pantheon?
Crimson more Prog than Yes? Never! Well, certainly the first couple LPs. 🙂 Blame it on Pete Sinfield. Love the Idea of a Prog-Scale.
There’s more to Earthbound than just bad recording… there’s a tense/hateful/agressive Un-Prog vibe running thru that LP…visions of off-stge punch-ups every night of the tour, etc. But it’s def. a one-off aberration.
Mid-Late Crimson is, of course, Prog too: Dry ‘Technical’ Sesh-un Player Prog. It passes itself off as being part of the Late Bowie/Talking Heads Art-Rock Axis but it’s Prog in Wolf’s clothing. Tried desperately to like Fripp’s solo-LPs: God Save The Queen/Under Heavy Manners, but, Frippertronics aside, they’re too dry, dry, dry.
Still don’t reckon an LP with Jamie Muir on it could ever be Prog, but what can ya do, huh?
The God of Prog is not an interventionist God. He is too busy practicing obscure eastern European scales.
Everyone have a look at that starcastle thing if you haven’t yet ha ha ha ha ha ha — guess what? It’s a castle….. in the stars……
Blame it on Pete Sinfield.
You know you’re in denial! Every lyric on every King Crimson album is embarrassing. For people who aren’t up to speed with KC, I should point out that the aforementioned Pete Sinfield’s role in the band was simply to write dreadful lyrics. When he left what did they do? Employ another lyricist. Here’s an example of the sort of quality he came up with:
Shine, shine, the light of good works shine
The watch before the city gates depicted in their prime
That golden light all grimey now
Three hundred years have passed
The worthy Captain and his squad of troopers standing fast
There are six more verses in a similar vein. I bet Mark K-P now has visions of elves and Mordor buzzing round his head but no, this sorry song is actually a description of Rembrandt’s Night Watch. There is nothing more to say…
Except, lets have another competition. I defy anybody to come up with a single KC lyric which is not ridiculous. It has to be a whole verse, not just a couple of lines pulled out of context. Obviously I can’t judge this, as I’ve already heard them all and made my opinion plain, so somebody else will have to volunteer (NOT YOU, BRUCE!)
as for Roger Dean I’m with Half Man Half Biscuit, quoted on the seminal semiological Barthology “Back Again in the DHSS”. (Fervently moaning: “More, cock, More cock, Michael, More cock”). And yes, Brian Moore’s head DOES look uncannily like the Milennium Dome…
You can’t find a KC lyric that isn’t cringe-worthy, so I think we’ll just have to change the contest to “Lyrics that will make mark k-p choke on his bile”. (Very sorry, mark! If it’s any consolation to you, it has the same effect on me!) Here is my candidate for the worst of the worst. Yes, a Sinfield lyric from KC’s ‘Lizard’ lp that’s even stupider than my faerie story above.
(To really rub salt on the wounds, this also happens to be the song sung by none other than special guest vocalist Jon Anderson!)
This is the kind of shit that scared me off reading Robert Graves for years and years (every time I saw a copy of ‘The White Goddess’, a distinct queasy feeling overcame me and I grew nervous, flashing back to the “tarnished devil’s spoons”)and is probably ther worst lyric in the history of the English language. So, without any further ado, I present to you the flaming pile of woodland pixie shit known as …
PRINCE RUPERT AWAKES
Farewell the temple master’s bells
His kiosk and his black worm seed
Courtship solely of his word
With Eden guaranteed.
For now Prince Rupert’s tears of glass
Make saffron sabbath eyelids bleed
Scar the sacred tablet of wax
On which the Lizards feed.
Wake your reason’s hollow vote
Wear your blizzard season coat
Burn a bridge and burn a boat
Stake a Lizard by the throat.
Go Polonius or kneel
The reapers name their harvest dawn
All your tarnished devil’s spoons
Will rust beneath our corn.
Now bears Prince Rupert’s garden roam
Across his rain tree shaded lawn
Lizard bones become the clay –
And there a Swan is born
Wake your reasons’ hollow vote
Wear your blizzard season coat
Burn a bridge and burn a boat
Stake a Lizard by the throat.
Gone soon Piepowder’s moss-weed court
Round which upholstered Lizards sold
Visions to their leaden flock
Of rainbows’ ends and gold.
Now tales Prince Rupert’s peacock brings
Of walls and trumpets thousand fold
Prophets chained for burning masks
And reels of dream unrolled . . . . . .
[Eh! … vote : coat, as boat : throat …….. yea, know I know alchemy. And why do I have the sneaking suspicion that Peter Sinfield owned a rhyming dictionary or two? That’s our bard! Hahahahahaha.]
Crikey! Guess I have to eat my own words, because further poking around in the shit mines of that Sinfield site yielded this gem:
The sea goat reads the flight of birds and writes upon the
sand;
Gold waterfalls of autumn wheat slip through a pointing
hand
Whose fingers stiff with sentences still beckon to the
band
To play the “Best Foot Forward March” and deafen all
the land.
With hollow words, it’s so absurd!
“Take your stand” sang the sea goat “the night goes on
and on.”
“Unwrap your plans” sang the sea goat “tell everyone
you’ve gone
To touch the earth and to see the birth
The smile, the style down an unspun mile of life.”
It fills the air! It fills the air!
The song of the sea goat shaking in the domes
The song of the sea goat as endlessly he roams,
Between the sunset’s crimson veil
On smooth grey streets where the drunkard spins his
tale.
I’ll buy the drunkard spewing bullshit part. The rest just leaves me … dumbfounded. Spinal Tap is becoming less and less impressive by the second.
ELP get philosophical:
People are stirred
Moved by the Word
Kneel at the shrine
Deceived by the wine
How was the earth conceived?
Infinite Space
Is there such a place?
You must believe in the human race
Do you believe
God makes you breathe?
Why did he lose
Six million Jews?
Touched by the wings
This angel brings
Sad winter storm
Grey autumn dawn
Who looks on life itself?
Who lights your way?
Only you can say
How can you just obey?
Don’t need the word
Now that you’ve heard
Don’t be afraid
Man is man-made
And when the hour comes
Don’t turn away
Face the light of day
And do it your way
It’s the only way
Don’t know about choking on my own bile, laughing like a twat more like…..
Worst Marillion lyric?
Worst Marillion lyric? They are probably worse ones than this, but I’ve always thought this was a terrible song, written by an emasculated twit–just look at the first line and start choking! Sorry, Fish, but I’d sack your sorry ass, too!
Kayleigh
Do you remember chalk hearts melting on a playground wall
Do you remember dawn escapes from moon washed college halls
Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square
Do you remember I thought it was confetti in our hair
By the way didn’t I break your heart?
Please excuse me, I never meant to break your heart
So sorry, I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh is it too late to say I’m sorry?
And Kayleigh could we get it together again?
I just can’t go on pretending that it came to a natural end
Kayleigh, oh I never thought I’d miss you
And Kayleigh I thought that we’d always be friends
We said our love would last forever
So how did it come to this bitter end?
Do you remember barefoot on the lawn with shooting stars
Do you remember loving on the floor in Belsize Park
Do you remember dancing in stilettoes in the snow
Do you remember you never understood I had to go
By the way, Didn’t I break your heart
Please excuse me, Never meant to break your heart
So sorry, Never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine
Kayleigh I just wanna say I’m sorry
But Kayleigh I’m too scared to pick up the phone
To hear you’ve found another lover to patch up our broken home
Kayleigh I’m still trying to write that love song
Kayleigh it’s more important to me now you’re gone
Maybe it will prove that we were right
Or ever prove that I was wrong
that’s bad but surely script for a jester’s tear beats it on title alone… i mean just what did that script consist of? and did the tear follow it? or did it fluff its lines?
Or this one, in which Fish declares his poetic brilliance!
Three boats down from the candy, vacant deck chairs on a floodlit beach
Three boats down from the candy, rollers coast invade the deepest sleep
Three boats down from the candy, carnal dancer let their senses preach
It’s a social disease, it’s the new moral cancer
Don’t think crying wolf will give you the answer
You ask for my love on the strength of a kiss
But can’t you just play for experience?
I’m a poet, I’m a poet, I’m a minstrel, I’m a minstrel, I don’t need your chains
Romance lies in ruin let debauchery reign, let it rain
Wipe the tears from your eyes, wipe the sweat from your thighs
Don’t crawl to me with sentiment, my laughter drowns your cries
You’re a memory trapped on Polaroid, a puppet drawn on celluloid
So drink the wine, confess your sin, just flotsam in a silent void
Three boats down from the candy, I’ll remember you
Three boats down from the candy, much to much to lose
Three boats down from the candy, those words were never true
Three boats down from the candy, I’ll remember you
I’ll remember you, I’ll remember you
I’m a minstrel, I don’t need your chains…
he he he
So, what’s your favourite Yes line=up?