Rick Wakeman
My Mom sent me a DVD with a Rick Wakeman concert recorded in Australia (mostly Voyage to the Centre of the Earth). I watched to the 1975 footage as if it were scenes from life in another planet! How much did the world change in 30 years!
Still, the guy played over an hour of complicated music without having any notes, without the help of computers or sequencers. You should see the guy playing one keyboard with the right hand and programming another with the left, real time!
Why did she? The guy in the store told her it was a rare DVD. 
There are a few of his CD’s available for download at Emusic. They have the new Solas, too!
I was a big progressive rock fan in the 70s. I remember thinking Wakeman was really cool. The world HAS changed in 30 years! When art rock died out, Wakeman sort of vanished. I think he made some pretty vapid “new age” CDs.
I did have occasion in the 70s to play a Mellotron, which was the weirdest and coolest keyboard ever.
Dale
Oh yes, the world’s first sampler. Tape loops for each note. They’re making them again, i think they cost $5000 which is a bargain. There were still a lot of original parts that hadn’t been used, and someone bought all that and all of their sound library, and is selling them again. I’ve never had a chance to play one. Hammond is back too with new B3 and B6 models, and even some of the old analog synths with patch cord programming are back…
What shocked me the most in the DVD was the way people looked. Nobody would be caught dead performing with big hairy chest open, these days. And all the glitter. And Rick’s ears are bigger than Prince Charles’!
And the narrator “So we descended into the crater of the Snuffells…” etc, sitting on a wicker chair and speaking with the kind of voice that you only see in video games these days…
Speaking of bands from the seventies, I saw Caravan last night down the road from me. Really good They even played tin whistle, Clarke Sweetones all black to be precise. They played Golf Girl, Nine feet underground, For Richard etc. Doug Boyle from Robert Plant’s band is on guitar so LOTS of guitar solos. A great blast from the past.
Now only 2 days left and then we are off to see Peter Gabriel play again
If you get the opportunity to go and see him DO, even if you have to travel to get there. Such a brilliant showman and what a voice.
Colin
A lot of the “classical music with rock feel,” usually a synthesizer and drum set, seemed cool through the pot haze but sounds pretty silly to me now. But the guy was talented, though I think Keith Emerson was maybe more so.
Have you seen the Darkness??!
Artrock never died out; it just went underground. It went through a lull in the '80s when the retro that was cool was largely 50’s and garage-band '60s. But, from the early '90s, it has made a huge comeback. It doesn’t interest majors nor does it seem to interest marketing folk so it would seem, from your local record store, to have died out except for a few old Deep Purple and Pink Floyd albums. Actually there are more albums being commercially released now than you could even listen to.
The new bands consist of some of the usual suspects but mainly of kids whose parents had prog rock collections who got into it and geezers who were there at the time but, with the help of home studios, are now able to make their own albums in their spare time. I’ve actually done session work on one of these new-wave albums.
There is a big market for digital simulators of the old analogue equipment and even for those old machines that survive. Nobody has ever made a better transportable organ than the Hammond B3 complete with Leslie speakers.
Around 1974/75,my mates and me used to listen to ‘Art Rock’- Genesis,Yes(I was never a big fan),Gentle Giant,Gong,‘Jazz Rock’-Mahavishnu Orchestra,Miles Davis’ electric bands,also ‘Kraut rock’-Can,Tangerine dream,Amon Duul etc. Also the Velvet underground.
Then…Punk Rock arrived in 1976!
Most of my mates got into Punk (well it seems to make sense if you are ‘working class’,living in a grimy northern town.Some formed bands.
A few of us got into Jazz,working ‘outwards’ and ‘backwards’(historically) from ‘Jazz-Rock’.
The German electronic bands also led to Stockhausen,cage,european free improvisation etc.
Certain old Punks,go on if Punk was formed fully fledged and that was all they had ever been involved in musically,BUT,I can remember Johnny(Rotten)Lydon of the Sex Pistols hosting a radio programme where he was playing his favourite records.
It consisted of 50% ‘Hawkwind’(Hippy Space rock),and 50% ‘Van der Graaf Generator’(wordy,miserabilist art rock-actually very good stuff,I saw them in '76).
I heard my first 'Chieftain’s album around 1976.
In my earlier post I forgot to add that the new artrock and progrock CDs are available on the internet via artists own sites but also from several large mail order distributors, one of whom I believe is a neighbour and friend of Chas.
I also forgot to say that this style of music enjoys very big support in several countries. Off hand, Brazil and Mexico come to mind. All over the world, it blends in not only with the classical and contemporary concert scenes but also with the jazz and roots scenes. Music is not compartmentalised in the same way all over the world.
Allright!
This is true. Roque Progressivo is alive and well in Brazil, though it probably peaked in the 1980s. Rick Wakeman was huge in Brazil; he performed there to overflowing stages. At the time he made the front page news when the customs authorities didn’t know what to make of over 10 tons of equipment he brought over. 
I still remember this stuff, 30 years ago. It started a big trend in electronic music. Yamaha sponsored touring artists to demo their electronic organs in schools all over the country. Even i took organ lessons… we actually had an organ at home (which eventually got donated to a church after i left the country). There are many native bands that assimilate elements of progressive rock in their sound.
Just one more thing about R.W.: he released a remake of Voyage to the Centre using updated technology, and expanded to over an hour (i think the original was about 36 minutes). I bought it and listened a couple of times, but it just doesn’t have the same feel as the old version. I guess part of it is that it isn’t a big deal anymore, you can do it in a studio without much sweat these days, and even sequence most of it (the original had to be recorded live with symphony orchestra, choir and rock band).
So i guess even in non-trad music, the “pure drop” is better.
I have a Roland alpha-June I synth, c. 1987. Anybody want to buy it? I’ll make you a deal.
Dale
I think my Rick Wakeman records are at ex-wife’s house. I could probably arrange to sell them too… 
I am kinda embarrased that I ever liked that fake Elizabethan-cover one.
Roland -Alpha Juno I
Rick Wakeman is back touring with the Yes group… they played in Fort Lauderdale this past weekend. I saw Yes with Wakeman around 1974 and would have loved to have seen them again but couldn’t make it to the show.
Too modern! Where are the ADSR buttons and the patch chords?
That would be Cuneiform Records: http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/ ; they’re now (maybe always have been) affiliated with Wayside Music, which has a really extensive of old and new prog rock. I’d love to say that Kit Watkins (proprietor of said operation) is a friend, but I’ve never met the man. He was a member of Happy the Man and Camel, as well as having had a solo career for the past 20 years doing some prog-type stuff and some that’s more new-agey.
I still love prog rock, even the dated stuff like Wakeman and the Moody Blues. (I’m an old fart, but not ashamed of it.) Some of it is timeless, though. The Gentle Giant records that were so heavily folk-influenced, for example, or much of the work of Renaissance.
I have a DVD of a concert Yes did in Amsterdam a couple of years ago with a full orchestra (probably mostly made up of college students on break). It’s wild to see these 50-somethings up there doing Close to the Edge and Starship Trooper. And to see Steve Howe, balding and with coke-bottle glasses, ripping of mind-boggling riffs, then picking up a classical guitar and playing Vivaldi.
Weeks, are you possibly speaking of The Six Wives of Henry VIII? I love parts of that.
Yeah, Charlie, that’s the one. It’s been a long time since I heard it though. I just remember reaching a point of feeling silly about all of the classical-y stuff where they add a drumtrack so the PEOPLE will listen to it…probably when I went to Music School and became a SNOBE.
There are a number of Celtic and Renaissance influenced prog-rock bands even today. Here are a few:
Jethro Tull (of course)
Blackmore’s Night
Broceliande (a.k.a. Avalon Rising)
Bohinta (with Martin Furey)
Iona
.
.
.
Maybe even the latest Dervish, with only two tunes clocking in at under 4 minutes. Maybe that’s Prog-influenced Trad!
Wow, Beeb, I was surprised that you included the local Avalon Rising. I have only heard them as Broceliande, their Early Music-Celtic-y incarnation. They must be more famous that I thought. I exchange email pleasantries with Margaret Davis, the harpist.