A concert recommendation - if Brit Floyd is playing your area, by all means move heaven and earth to go see them. The playing is better than the original in many cases and the stage show just first rate. As good as the original but on a smaller scale. They also played all 17 minutes of “Dogs” when we saw them in Huber Heights this month. Great show.
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I had a similar experience with Brit Floyd two years ago. Truly excellent, vocals and musicianship.
Soen is another concert I highly recommend, powerful musically and evocative emotionally. They’re still touring currently, shifting to the Pacific and, briefly, Canada. This morning I saw they’ll return stateside in September.
Interesting. I have always just ignored them but honestly never heard or seen the band. They will be here in Phoenix this month. Now you got me thinking…
I feel like we are reaching the era where popular music has become less different than classical music, and in order to keep it alive, we will need to move past the “they’re just a ‘cover band’” to “this is a performance of music I love”. I dunno. YMMV.
I do not understand your post, but I expect there’s something interesting behind it, which I’m just not perceiving.
Sorry, I was being brief because I was on my phone vs an actual keyboard (usually a good thing as I go too long when I actually start writing anymore, but that’s a whole other can of worms. I’m a victim of “if I had more time it would have been shorter” syndrome).
So, when we approach classical pieces, we don’t do so with the sense we would have if we had seen them conducted or performed by the composer (like an actual Bach performance on the organ or maybe Mozart conducting as we saw portrayed in “Amadeus”.). We go and see the music performed by musicians that never knew or experienced the piece as it would have been performed contemporaneously to its creation.
Seeing these very serious “re-creation” acts now like Brit Floyd or The Musical Box who try and give fans the experience of an act at their prime is what I’m getting at, not the cover band at the city festival. Last year, I saw the Musical Box perform “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” as it was performed by Genesis. They studied photos, listened to boots, read and consulted with the band to try and re-create the experience. Brit Floyd does the same, with “Mr. Screen”, lots of lasers, and even an inflatable pig onstage. But the thing is, if the MUSIC and the MUSICIANSHIP isn’t there, it wouldn’t matter. In both cases, they are OUTSTANDING. They’ve gone beyond being a cover band and into the realm of a time machine. Which is similar to the experience you get with some of the really dedicated conservatories (that’s probably the wrong word) like the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Mozart. Where they try and find period instruments and techniques to give audiences the experience of what it must have been like to hear music as it was when the original artist was actually creating the music vs. just writing it. Like, maybe, a small chamber group that performs using a period harpsichord or violin vs something made in the last 100 years.
So, as the rock pioneers die out or stop performing, we are going to become more dependent upon these deep enthusiast musicians touring the MUSIC of a band to be able to engage with it live, much as we go to a symphony to experience the music of Beethoven. It’s the music we are going to see, not the performers, which is the paradigm shift I was trying to get to in that short blurb.
There’s probably an essay in this somewhere, but even if I wrote it, I don’t know who’d bother to read it. Thus why I write so seldom these days. There’s so little appetite for the written word when it can be transmitted via video or spoken word (podcast?). Like yesterday, I wanted to adjust the carburetor on my lawnmower, but didn’t want to watch a 45-minute video by “Mr Mower”. Just give me a diagram, tell me where the screw is, and which direction of turn enriches the mix. But you can’t monetize that I suppose. Again, go read “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman. But I’m rambling again.
Does that help? Or do I need to clean up the explanation more?
Mike
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Just to emphasize…they performed “Dogs” in its wonderful 17-minute entirety. They’re coming back to Dayton in July - I’m game to go see them again if anyone around here wants to. It was an amazing performance. (The lady they had for “Great Gig in the Sky” was LEGIT.)
I understand you raise a very interesting point.
I have long thought popular music has its own “classical” pieces and recordings.
Thank you for the additional explanation, very thoughtful.
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I get exactly where you are coming from Mike. The newer generation benefits greatly from being able to see performances (good ones faithful to the original artists) so they can experience what we were able too. As you said, not some casual cover band. Good example is Brit Floyd now that I have watched some of the videos. These are very talented musicians and some of whom have toured with Pink Floyd. I think my son (now in his late 20’s) would be in awe if he were to see them. Now some bands on the other hand are just untouchable.
I was born too late to see Genesis in their prime. I saw the real deal in 87 and 92. Given a time machine, I’d go back and see Genesis in ‘77 with the 747 landing lights depicted on the cover of Seconds Out before even seeing The Beatles or Elvis or Floyd or Bach for heaven’s sake. That would be my “one wish”.
I’ve seen The Musical Box twice now and Steve Hackett performing Seconds Out in its entirety. Phil has said that Musical Box actually sounds better than they did, but there’s no substitute for the real deal. That being said, seeing the Lamb live completely changed my relationship towards that record. I’d always been a bit lukewarm on it, but after, I finally grokked what it was aiming for. And that was in a hall that was too small for them to use the slideshow (they got copies of the original from the band itself).
Seeing Hackett do his thing from WAY up front was magical. I don’t know how he can still do it as well as he did fifty years ago, but he does. His approach is entirely different from Steurmer, who does a great job, but very differently. Hackett is a “less is more” soloist while Daryl is a “more is more”. And seeing it live really awakened me to what I was hearing. A lot of what I’d always heard as keyboards was actually guitar, or guitar and keyboard both. (Like when I say ‘In early Genesis, when you hear Pete sound really sweet, it’s when Phil is singing harmony’. The guitar-keyboard thing is similar in character)
There’s no substitute for live, and the only way we’ll ever get it now is from the ones who truly breathed the music and want to take it to the next generation. And I’m glad I finally woke up to that.
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We had a group of local musicians do a one nighter of Pink Floyd back when the Pulse DVD was hot - they were absolutely sensational! It was chilling. The (vintage) slide guitar started crapping out during the guitarist’s solo on “One Of These Days” and he ran & grabbed his guitar and finger slide and pulled off the remainder of the solo with award worthy performance. And yes, the backup gals were goosebump inducing.
Speaking of PF…
(Switzerland)
Cosmos - Contact (youtube.com)
if you wanna listen…
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Y’all miss me? 
Ya, didn’t think so. No, I’m not (fully) dead… got my new house so have been TRYING to move in (about a 30 foot move) whilst still pulling 6 days/week working… tends to leave very little time for R&R… And I turned SIXTY - I’m TIRED!.. And I’ve been in that house since I was NINE. Moving is nature’s way of weeding out the crep you don’t need to keep. So you can just imagine. 
Here’s a couple tracks that I found worthy of a screenshot to later recall.
The Wishing Tree - Night of the Hunter (HQ) (youtube.com)
A Steven Rothery side gig - for not being a huge fan of female prog lead vocals - this is quite good indeed.
Can’t find it online and don’t remember it - but I saved it so guess I’ll wait to hear it again. Alan Reed of Pallas and I like Pallas so… I recall it being right up my Neo-Prog alley. And that it started out sounding like 70’s Poco…
Daniel From Anathema - Do I remember what I liked about it? Nope. Good guitar?
Morow or TMB are my alarm clock so sometimes it’s an early morning half awake assessment… so there’s that. (Technically it is the relay in the Denon that actually wakes me up before the music. The curse of a ridiculously light sleeper)
I put Sonos 5 speakers in me new en-suite bathroom - I KNOW 
… Sonos… but in a small bathroom - those things ROCK. Plus one of my suppliers is a Sonos dealer so I get 'em at cost. Which ISN’T much below retail!! All on presence sensors - enter and lights come on, Sonos plays, turn the shower on and the volume increases a few notches, exit & everything turns off… ('cept the fan which times out 10 minutes after exit.)
New house - GREAT.
No more sound room - Horrific.
Finances to build a new soundroom? Apparently I got a new septic system instead. A literal crap deal.
Sigh.
I WILL move the old soundroom into the old living room which is about 150% larger than the current one so that ought to sound 3.7i-ncredible.
Until it REALLY falls apart.
My life is one big house of cards atop a Jenga tower teetering on one of the nose of the Tip*It game dude all balanced on a swinging tightrope unwound down to the last thread.
What is the unit used to measure burnout? Is there one? I submit Stressles. I am one stressle away from full-on burnout.
PS - why the new house?
Lets just say there’s an antique buffet in my old living room who’s feet are butted up against the wall. The top of the mirror of said buffet is SEVEN inches from the wall. NOT a floor to play marbles on. I am having a hard time in my new house getting my level legs.
And last share - I am not a fan of anything mixed with beer (lime, grapefruit, orange, ANYTHING) but OH MY GOOD GAWWD these are delicious!!! Give 'em a try!!!
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It pleases me that I’m not the sole Sonos fan on the board. It was my gateway drug to better sound and I’m unapologetic about that. The original Play 5 was legitimately a premium design inside. I am so invested there’s no going back, but I do think they have focused a bit too heavily on cost.
Thanks for the recs. I’ll give them a listen. Congratulations on the house.
I had (rare) Webb Scorpions in my old bathroom running off the Zone 2 of my Denon. Lights were motion activated but the sound was activated by a set of relays and turned on by pulling a modified one of these:
So I needed active speakers in the new house. And fully automatable.
It’s all about the automations…
Shower tunes - grossly underrated and thoroughly necessary.
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Agreed, they ARE pricey. I also got the Sonos Port - JUST so the bedroom and en-suite audio sync up. Playing internet radio on 2 different sources would just never sync. You KNOW you’re an audio geek when you’ll spend an additional $500 for a 3 millisecond aggravation.
And truth be known - I actually do have a Bose Acoustimass set.
Shhhh.
It’s not hooked up to anything.
Josh, like Bjorn, Clapton, Gilmour, Knopfler - an outstanding guitar master who has such a unique tone, texture & sound. Without the need for shredding. (I’m not knocking shredding…)
Gilmour MUST have been a huge influence for him tho.
Years ago I made a mix of much of their earlier stuff - mixing much of the guitar but editing out some of the gal’s vocals… 
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