I remember before I bought Drama in 1994 on LP, I heard a lot of bad things about the album, mainly because Anderson and Wakeman aren't there, but I have to say I like Drama quite a bit over their largely disasterous previous effort, Tormato. I never thought I had anything good to say of Geoff Downes, because of his involvement in that awful Asia, but on Drama, I much preferred his synth sound over what Wakeman was doing on Tormato. While Wakeman started using rather ugly, plastic-sounding synth sounds by '78, Downes was using great synths like the Mini Moog, Hammond organ, and Solina string synths and it shows on Drama. It's strange to be hearing such synths still being used in 1980, mainly because such keyboards were beginning to lose its popularity by that time (but remember, this was before digital synthesizers, the Yamaha DX-7, the first practical digital synth didn't hit the market until 1983). Trevor Horn might not be Anderson, but that doesn't seem to bother me any. In fact, he even tried to sound just like Anderson on the opening cut, "Machine Messiah". You can tell that Yes wasn't really wanting to shake off their prog sound, as songs like the aforementioned "Machine Messiah" and "Tempus Fugit" clearly demonstrates. "Does It Really Happen" more points to the 1980s Yes sound, it also reminds me of Asia, but it's a lot better than anything Asia can come up with. The only song I can say I honestly don't care for is "Into the Lens", especially the verse that kept repeating "I am a camera, camera camera". What I also liked of Drama over Tormato is it has a more rocking sound, and no cheesefests like Anderson's awful "Circus of Heaven" to ruin things. To me this is definately Yes' best since Going For the One, and if you don't mind Anderson isn't here, chances are you might like this album.

I just saw this on ...TV and I was really surprised to see something like this on television to begin with. I am not a Deadhead (but do enjoy the lifestyle of many of them), but Tie-Died: Rock's Most Deadicated Fans is, for the most part, an excellent documentary that shows life at a parking lot before a Grateful Dead concert. Plus it plainly shows that the countercultural scene was still alive and well in the grunge and alternative rock dominated culture of the mid 1990s. But just be careful not to believe everything these people being interviewed are saying. On numerous occasions, I found what they were saying a bit insincere, but there were still quite a few people who not only sounded very sincere, but had very valid things to say. They seemed to put a large emphasis on the under 18 crowd, for some reason (although they interview enough people who were old enough to been there in the 1960s, to not be totally biased), perhaps because people are surprised that they'd chose this lifestyle, instead of the grunge/alternative rock lifestlye. The documentary also showed a few people who were becoming disillusioned with the lifestyle, which I don't blame them if they keep getting bad vibes, in fact that's the one thing that brought down the original countercultural movement by 1970 (like the Altamont riots in December 1969, and Kent State in 1970), and you could tell from watching Tie-Died, that that attitude could bring down the current generation of hippies (which it did come 1999 with the disgraceful, greed-driven event known as Woodstock '99). So basically you get a combination of good and bad vibes throughout the documentary. But there were some fundamentalist Christians as well in the film, three guys with beards, if I remember right, who were trying to convert some of the kids to Christianity. They liked to brag on the success they had, but there's no proof. Another disturbing thing was someone mentioned how much jail time you would serve for just a gram of LSD, and that multiplies for each gram you have. Makes you wonder if America is really a democracy, or a police state after you hear what was said on the documentary. Because of the increase of undercover police officers, people advised never to buy and sell LSD at a Dead concert. I have some objections to this film. They tended to make the hippies (particularly the young, under 18 crowd) as completely stoned and unbathed, but liked to show the older hippies (the ones who have been with the Dead since the beginning) as sober and clean. In other words, it would have been much nicer if they showed some of the younger people a little more with it. Basically this documentary won't give outsiders (non-hippies) any better opinions about hippies, although I'm glad to see that the cops you see were rather surprised how little trouble these people at the Dead concert created. Plus I'd like it better if they also included some footage of the Dead playing, and historical footage as well, to compare the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, with the 1990s. This documentary is also a sad reminder that these were some of the last Dead shows before the untimely death of Jerry Garcia. I took a star off just because of some of the flaws (and the occasional stereotyping of hippies), but it's still a great documentary on the counterculture movement, the way it was in the 1990s.

Prog rock fans must have been thrilled in the early 1980s to hear the likes of Steve Howe (Yes), Geoff Downes (Yes, Buggles), Carl Palmer (ELP), and John Wetton (UK, Uriah Heep, Family, Mogul Thrash, Roxy Music) get together and form a group. If I lived through the '70s and then heard about this in '82, I would have felt the same way (I did not, since I was born in 1972 and lived through the 1980s and only started learning about prog starting in my teens). Instead, the results turned out extremely disappointing. Rather than continuing on the prog rock excellence these musicians had, they went and recorded bland, radio friendly pop aimed at Top 40 success. I guess they just simply followed what Genesis was doing at the same time. I remembered as a kid hating songs like "Heat of the Moment" and "Only Time Will Tell". It was stuff like that that made the early 1980s really difficult for me to bear through (as well as having to put up with Duran Duran and A Flock of Seagulls and other such bands that would never had stood a chance had MTV not existed). I always thought "Sole Survivor" was more bearable. I have since heard the whole album, and if it wasn't for the mundane and pedestrian music and songwriting, many of the compositions just sounded weak. Asia did reach a big pop audience, as record sales back in '82 demonstrated, it's really sad to think that most of these people who bought it knew nothing of what kind of bands these musicians were previously in, and mostly just bought it because they liked "Heat of the Moment". The few prog rock fans who bought this album back in '82 were rightfully disappointed. I know that there's times that bands might need that little extra money to get them through, but in Asia's case, it's taking it a bit too far. It's really unbelievable how much the prog rock scene changed in five short years (1977-1982) and it wasn't for the better. And Asia was that really depressing example of the state of prog in the early 1980s. The band sounded good on paper, but because of the changing tide in the musical climate at that time, it just sounded like the band bowing down to those changes, rather than creating music that they actually liked.

The early '80s weren't exactly the best times for Tull. They decided to do a more synth heavy approach with the likes of "A", Broadsword and the Beast, and Under Wraps with less than spectacular results (or sales, for that matter). After Under Wraps, Ian Anderson started suffering throat problems and it was uncertain if he was able to sing again, but it turned out he was able to by '87. By the time of Crest of a Knave, Anderson decided to do the right thing, and return to guitar-oriented rock. The synthesizers are pushed more in the background, and deservedly so. I bought the cassette of this back at the end of 1991, which is missing "Dogs of the Midwinter" and the "The Waking Edge", those were only available on the CD, making this one of the earliest recordings to feature tracks you can only get on CD. I remember very well back in 1990 when I was 17 years old watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel entitled "Fish 'N' Sheep 'N' Rock 'n' Roll", which documented Anderson's life how he raised sheep and a fish hatchery in Scotland, and while at the same time showing him recording Crest of a Knave (the song I remember hearing on that documentary was "Farm on the Freeway") at his home. That documentary inspired me to get Crest of a Knave and I was not disappointed. My favorites are "Farm on the Freeway", "Raising Steam", and "Mountain Men". It seems that only Anderson, Martin Barre, and Dave Pegg were on this, and so that means that drum machines are used, but surprisingly in a rather inoffensive manner. This was the album that beat Metallica's ...And Justice For All for "Best Metal Album", a little strange for Tull indeed, I know for a fact many Metallica fans felt a bit insulted over that. As far as I'm concerned Crest of a Knave is by far Tull's best release of the 1980s, and I very highly recommended, but if you're new to Tull, of course try their classic albums like Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, or even Songs from the Wood first.

Beatles fans are obviously divided over what their favorite albums is. Some prefer Sgt. Pepper, some prefer The White Album, for me, it's Abbey Road. In my opinion, I found The White Album a mess. That album sounded really uneven to my ears and difficult to sit through both discs. Plus the McCartney ballads did not help, like "Mother Nature's Son". So with Abbey Road, the Beatles continued the more down-to-earth approach they did on The White album, this time succeeding with flying colors. The album features some engineering help from a certain 19 year old named Alan Parsons. The Beatles went for perfection and it seems that was the idea Alan Parsons had in mind (that idea obviously went for Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, since Parsons was involved in that album, and the Alan Parsons Project, since he wanted to continue his studio perfections to his own musical ideas). Perhaps the biggest surprise of Abbey Road is the presence of synthesizers! Yes, synthesizers. People often like to think Emerson, Lake & Palmer's self-entitled 1970 debut was the first rock album to use synthesizers, but Abbey Road pre-dated ELP by a year, and several songs use the synth: "Because", "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", and "Here Comes the Sun". Simon & Garfunkle used synth on "Save the Life of My Child" on their 1968 album Bookends, which also gets overlooked as the earliest pop recording with synth. I don't think a whole lot more can be added about Abbey Road that hasn't been said millions of times, but seeing how the Beatles progressed from teen-oriented love songs of the early to mid-1960s to more sophisticated, polished rock at the end of the 1960s is really impressive indeed. Abbey Road works better than the White Album in my book because the band was actually trying to make some effort in being a band again (didn't last, of course). I might have not listened to Beatles albums in some time now, but it's really impossible to ignore the impact these guys had on the world of popular music. Abbey Road was the Beatles' offical last album (Let it Be was recorded before Abbey Road, scrapped, doctored by Phl Spector, then released in 1970 to go with the movie documentary), and in my opinion, their best.

Couldn't believe I would actually like this movie. Simply because Dolly Parton is on this film and I'm no fan of her's at all because I don't like country music. I mostly watched this because of Lily Tomlin since I hadn't seen much of her lately except for A&E airing Tea for Mussolini and re-runs of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In on Trio TV. Turns out that 9 to 5 is quite hilarious. The movie is about three secretaries, played by Tomlin, Parton, and Jane Fonda who decide to get back at their male chauvinist boss (Dabney Coleman). To me I think the acting, the clothing, and the hairstyles are really bad and you can tell this was from 1980, but that's actually the charm of the movie. Since this is from 1980, you'll notice, instead of PC computers, you see plenty of electric typewriters and calculators (I was 8 years old when 9 to 5 came out so I should know how an office was like in those days). I liked the scene of Lily Tomlin daydreaming that she was Snow White and you get Disney animation in that part of the film, a little strange, given the content of the film. Bambi even makes an appearance here, and this is where Tomlin wished her boss was on a seat that springs out and he falls out the window. As far as I'm concerned, 9 to 5 isn't a movie I'd watched every day, but for something totally corny and off-the-wall, this is worth watching.

Just to let you know I am not much of a Fleetwood Mac fan. To me, I feel their Buckingham/Nicks-era material is vastly overrated, and overexposed. If it wasn't for the fact the music of that era was overly commercial, and overplayed to death, the well-publicized soap operas, ego clashes and drug abuse from the band members is enough to make me puke. I find some of the Bob Welch-era material good (particularly Bare Trees and Mystery to Me), but some of their material a bit uneven (particularly Penguin). Then Play On, released in 1969 consisted of Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer, a young Danny Kirwan (not yet 20 when this came out), and of course Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. I heard English Rose as well, with the same lineup, but I thought it was too straight-up blues for my liking (I'm not a blues fan, but I'm not bothered when certain rock bands, like Jethro Tull explored the blues since it still sounded rock enough for my tastes), so I was surprised I'd like Then Play On as much as I do. The band was moving away from the blues, which was actually a good move here. The music is actually more eclectic, with some killer jams ("Fighting For Madge"), acoustic ballads ("Closing My Eyes", "When You Say"), hard rocking numbers, and of course a couple of bluesy numbers like "Show-Biz Blues" (although with a more rock quality than their previous efforts). My version is the American Reprise LP without "Oh Well" and with "When You Say" instead. Many people believe Fleetwood Mac moved away from the blues when Green left, when in reality they were already moving away from the blues when he was still in the band. I can truly recommend Then Play On to even those who thought they couldn't stand Fleetwood Mac (which I don't blame if having to be exposed to the likes of "Dreams", "Go Your Own Way", and "Don't Stop" constantly). Way better than Rumours will ever hope to be, and it comes with my recommendation.

I don't think I can totally blame Gentle Giant for Civilian, their final album from 1980. I more blame the record company execs, who by that time no longer cared for music and was interested in the largest profits. Civilian follow the some straightforward path as The Missing Piece (1977) and Giant For a Day (1978), except now, they modernized their sound and trust me, it's definately not the best move for the band. I never found The Missing Piece all that bad. There's still a couple of really great songs, like "As Young As You're Old" and "Memories of Old Days", and the rest of the albums sounded very '70s, which I like. But just look at the cover to Civilian, which looks like countless new wave album covers you expect from 1979-1982 or thereabout. One really misses the smiling giant that you see on their 1970 debut or the U.S. version of Three Friends. The music on Civilian really rocks, that's the great thing I can say of this album, like "Number One". But a lot of this album has a rather modern, new-wavey sound combined with stadium rock. "Shadows on the Street" actually isn't bad, it's the only piece Kerry Minnear sings. I also happen to like "Underground" and "Number One". "Inside Out" sounds too much like Men At Work, definately not good news for a '70s prog lover like me. Certainly if you like new wave, fine, but if you don't, that song gives you an example of what was wrong with the early 1980s. The lyrics are very un-'70s, the album addresses the problem of technological progress, greed, selfishness, and materialism, the band already knew the tone of the decade that represented Thatcher-era Britian, and Reagan-era America (even though Carter was still president in '80). Not exactly the best thing for a prog band to do when I got so used to surrealistic, sci-fi, and fantasy-oriented lyrics. I have less to blame Gentle Giant for Civilian, and more the record company's idea on how the band should sound. Gentle Giant was a '70s band, fans knew that, the band knew that, and so Civilian became their final album. Gentle Giant knew that there was no room for bands like themselves in the 1980s. Of course just about any album they did from 1970 to 1976 was way better than Civilian, so you start with any of those albums. Civilian is basically for diehard fans and completists only.

Freak Out, from 1966, marks the debut from The Mothers of Invention. This is the original recording lineup of Zappa, Roy Estrada, Ray Collins, Jimmy Carl Black, and Elliot Ingber (later of Fraternity of Man). This is one of the few Zappa albums I know where there are no wind players (no Ian Underwood, no Bunk Gardner, there are horns on the album, but not played by band members). The first disc, while it does have some great stuff, it's mostly very straight forward, 4/4, song-oriented material, often R&B-influenced which I can understand, given this was from 1966 (the progressive rock I so dearly love had not quite surfaced and the Beatles had just started to move away from their "Yeah Yeah Yeah" phase with albums like Rubber Soul and Revolver, which culminated with Sgt. Pepper the following year in '67). Some of the songs off Freak Out are rather '50s influenced doo-wop (no surprise, since that's what Zappa grew up on), like "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder" (which sounds very outdated for 1966). I think he was seeming to mock that style of music with lyrics you wouldn't find on real '50s doo-wop (i.e. "You cheated me baby/and told some dirty lies about me/fooled around with all those other guys/That's why I had to get my khakis pressed"). I prefer the more '60s sounding songs on the album like "Hungry Freaks, Daddy", "I Ain't Got No Heart", "You Didn't Try to Call Me" and "You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here". "Who Are the Brain Police", particularly some of the vocal sections oddly sounds a whole lot like Nine Inch Nails (think "Head Like a Hole"). Did Trent Reznor hear this album and got inspired? Who knows. There are a couple of songs I didn't care for. One was "Any Way the Wind Blows" which the tone of the song seems to rub me the wrong way. Sounded like one of the Mothers was having marital problems. "Wowie Zowie" just is plain dumb with such dorky lyrics. Like "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder", this was another one of that '50s sounding pieces. It's the second disc that is extremely shocking and revolutionary. This is the type of thing neither the Beach Boys circa-Pet Sounds nor the Beatles would be caught dead doing (well, except perhaps "Revolution #9" and that wouldn't be until 1968). "Trouble Every Day" expressed Zappa and the Mothers concerns about the riots of Watts (a section of South Central Los Angeles) that happened in 1965, I have never heard such angry lyrics anywhere, no angst-ridden alternative rock band can even come close. The Mothers were so angry that you can tell that they were doing a protest song against the violence and senselessness. After that, anything that even resembles music is totally thrown out the window to early electronic experiments. Like "It Can't Happen Here" where you hear strange vocals spouting out how "it can't happen here" and "who can they imagined they they would freak out in..." (insert areas of the country long thought of as conservative bastions like Kansas, the suburbs, Minnesota, Washington, D.C.). This whole second half of the album is definately in the "love it or hate it" category. Nothing like this in the world of pop music was ever made in 1966 (only avante garde classical composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgar Varese, and John Cage was doing this stuff way before 1966). Certainly the sound quality isn't the best (this is 1966, after all) and many of the songs seem rather dated or not sound so revolutionary in light of what came after, like the psychedelic and the prog rock scene, but if you think of it in a 1966 context, this is a very revolutionary album and is a great place to start to see where Zappa got many of his ideas.

Wind & Wuthering marks the last studio album to feature Steve Hackett. I think he saw it coming when the album featured songs like "Your Own Special Way" and "Afterglow", pop songs that would define where the band would be headed, although, particularly "Your Own Special Way" still sounds '70s (whereas "Follow You, Follow Me" off their next album from 1978 sounds very 1980s). But of course there's still some great progressive rock, particularly "Eleventh Earl of Mar" and "One For the Vine". There's the wonderful largely acoustic "Blood On the Rooftops" which obviously shows that the strings Hackett was using on his guitar on that song was nylon. Plus there is some really killer Mellotron. Plus there's the excellent story song "All In a Mouse's Night" which was written by Banks. But perhaps the biggest problem is some of the instrumentals tend to meander a bit, and so the album ends up sounding a bit uneven. This is truly the last Genesis album where Tony Banks' Mellotron is used so proudly (the Mellotron was used less and less after this until it was completely dropped by Duke). Although Genesis will become more famous after this album, selling more albums than ever, they obviously became less interesting, and so Wind & Wuthering remains, as far as I'm concerned their last true venture in to prog (I happen to like And Then There Were Three, because it hadn't became totally pop, despite the inclusion of "Follow You..."). As far as I'm concerned, W&W is definately one of the better post-Gabriel efforts, who knows where Genesis might have been headed had Hackett stayed.