Preparing for autumn

Autumn is my fave season. Especially September. Then the colour of light changes, the dark yellow turns into pale yellow, the warmness decreases a little, and silence sets. Beautiful landscapes are being created then. And a new season gets new music in our minds, too. Autumn is for me about the revival of jazz and progressive rock, which I rarely listen to in the summertime. Soul's got to move into the background.

For example, as Septembers defeats August, I always listen to Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' else. On that album you can hear the best performance of the jazz standard, Autumn leaves. In the autumn I really like jazz standards. I recommend Billie Holiday's Recorded from Carnegie Hall live, that's cool for early autumn evenings, when the Sun disappears sooner and sooner each day. Horace Silver's Song for my father and Herbie Hancock's Maiden voyage are also connected to fall in my thoughts. The first because its cover and also the slight mysterious mood that crawls into the melodies and cause uncertainty, the second because that's really contemplative*. Coltrane's music has to be listened to again, too, starting with for ex. Ballads then heading on more serious pieces. I'll also pick Chick Corea and Return to forever's Light as a feather, and of course, the season autumn, more precisely the colder, darker kind of it is also the ECM season, as I called it earlier. But the transition between summer and winter isn't only about people turning inside and becoming contemplative, more silent, and calmer. The calmness often walks with doubt, uncertainty hand in hand, and that side of autumn is represented by progressive rock for me. I think about King Crimson's Lizard, Islands, Emerson, Lake & Palmer's ELP, some Pink Floyd albums...

More:

Gabor Szabo - Spellbinder

Al Di Meola - Elegant gypsy

Sophie Zelmani - Love affair

Kuupuu - Unilintu

* "Autumn in poetry has often been associated with melancholy. The possibilities of summer are gone, and the chill of winter is on the horizon. Skies turn grey, and people turn inward, both physically and mentally." (Wikipedia)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

(John Keats - To autumn (first verse))

Have a nice autumn.

Summer things

Summer just walked in - but I didn't realize it, because the weather is very strange in Hungary. But if I glance at the calendar I can remember that in one simple moment the 31st of May turned to the 1st of June and yes, that was the first day of summer. It's always an important day to me: the first and last days of each season. Now I just slipped into the summer. I regret.

But we don't have to wait long, summer will be here in its whole reality, and I can't help proposing albums which are connected to this season in my mind.

1. Pop: Pet Shop Boys - Actually
2. Pop: Roxy music - Avalon
3. Pop: Wham! - The final
4. Jazz: Modern Jazz Quartet - Porgy and Bess
5. Jazz: Dizzy Gillespie - Jambo caribe
6. Blues: Lightnin' Hopkins - Country blues
7. World/folk: René Aubry - Invités sur la Terre
8. Progressive rock: Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Love beach
9. Progressive rock: Camel - Breathless
10. Reggae: Bob Marley and the Wailers - Rastaman vibration

Genesis - Trespass

To start the new year most of the people would propose a happy or soul-stirring music to listen to, but somehow January is cold and very uncertain for me. It's the middle of the long and dark winter, and it doesn't want to be over. The last year has gone, and no one knows, what will the new year give. Now, because of these things, I would listen to Genesis' second album from 1970, Trespass. That music is cold, too. And full of energy. Emotions, which can reach your deepest mind, and give a nice colour to this month. "Nobody needs to discover me" - Peter Gabriel sings, and it's a cool sentence, another kind of expressing loneliness. "Trying to find a memory in a dark room... trying to find a needle in a haystack" -it's the first song, Looking for someone, a hard start for the album. These thoughts are true to the month January for me. Man has to put the pieces of his mind in their correct place again, revising them or overwriting them. And in White mountain, as it starts, that's the perfect emotional expression, it always remembers me to the cover. Amongst the serious emotions there's some lightness on the album, too, for example Visions of angels, which is light, yes, but also has a hiding melancholy and a celebrational mood. This is true to the whole album. The whole feeling becomes clear by the last track, the wild and faster Knife, which also cuts apart the cover. Nice! You can see it as you bend out the cover of the lp version (or on the back of the cd).

Looking for someome (just music):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD6MZ4SSVWw

The knife (live):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XhDHJNuyXw

Visions of angels:


Read about Foxtrot and Wind & wuthering.

Camel - Moonmadness

It's always a pleasure when time passes and I get to a post which I have been waiting for for a long time. Now it's one of the best prog rock bands' best album, I think.

Camel has stood very close to my heart since I knew it. They have an interesting and very special talent - maybe just for me - that they can create friendly melodies. This word has already appeared some times in my blog, because it's important for me. When you hear this sort of melody, you feel it somehow friendly, with a good intention and feel that it plays only for you, you are that who can understand it the best.



Camel is an English progressive rock band, but not as well-known as for instance Genesis, Yes, etc., somehow, I don't know why they had a smaller fan group. Somehow they were other as well. Their music and the band is connected with space, by its covers, and the sounding, they used more electronic instruments. But the result is perfect. Moonmadness, their fourth album from 1976 is very nostalgic to me, both because the types of melodies, and because I used to listen to it a lot in my early university years. From faster, energic songs, like Another night, to the one the most beautiful songs for me, the ballad Spirit of the water this album proves again the value of the genre progressive rock, and gets 6 stars from me in the 5 stars-grade. I can't tell you anything more, it's a must-hear-piece! I share you the nicest song on the album, a Song within a song.

The official website:
http://www.camelproductions.com/

Another night:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFZFclE6Ubk

Spirit of the water:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5M1AizuI9s

Song within a song:

Spirit of the water

See the lights out on the water
Come and go, to and fro
In the time it takes to find them
You can live, you can die
And nothing stops the river as it goes by
Nothing stops the river as it goes.

All alone and all together
Every day, come what may
By the time we find each other
We can live, we can die
And nothing stops the river as it flows by
Nothing stops the river as it goes.

King Crimson - Lizard

Speaking about progressive rock doesn't take any effect on people whom I talk to, perhaps they don't really know this genre or don't understand what I like about it - or what I love. But this is a new world which comes from the past and can revive in our minds in any moment. Maybe it belongs to a special kind of personality, who has similar emotional waves and alternating silent-energic moods, just like this music has.

King Crimson's Lizard from 1970 is perfectly on the middle point of the beautiful/emotional atmosphere and psychedelic experimental line. For example let the starting point of this line be Lady of the dancing water, with its softness and fragility, and let the end point be Indoor games, which is a strange and also joyful mixture of moods. The whole album is a mixture, as well - a mixture of different arrangements with interesting parts (from dissonant elements to crazy solos, like in Happy family). After listening to the shorter songs, we meet the almost must-have extremely long ending song, with the same title, Lizard. Many parts, feelings and changes after each other, to prove its genre more perfectly. These highly long last tracks are very important on prog rock records. So it's a must-hear album. I don't know for which reason, but it's always connected with autumn in my mind.

Now this is a good possibility to share you one of my newest thoughts about fall (there's a lot). Walking and watching the colourful fallen leaves on the pavement, I got that fine mood which we get when we see the changes of the seasons and get fascinated by it. I wondered why does this fascination get me... because I've seen these colours, lights and natural elements twenty-one times in my life. Or why does this fascination get all the people, perhaps they have these visual properties of autumn in their collective mind, but the surprise never disappears. This is an ever-changing and renewing thing. The nature and the universe is above us, every happening there can take a huge effect on us - by moods, feelings, new creative thoughts. Live the autumn, not just watch it passing by.

Cirkus live in 1971:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTNMZXkwxvU

Lizard (intro):

Genesis - Wind & wuthering

For a long time I have believed that Genesis was only good when Peter Gabriel was the band leader and singer. They were so unique and full of energy, and listening to records which were made later, I didn't find them interesting at all. But it seems to be that there are expectations, for example Wind & wuthering from 1977.

It's less forceful but more melancholic than the earlier albums, maybe (amongst several reasons) because Phil Collins' softer voice. Peter Gabriel's was very energic, he sometimes shouted, creating a strong atmosphere. I miss it.
Fortunately they have again those very cool kind of melodies. The best example for this is the second track, my favourite, the tipical progressive-structured One for the vine. Starting with the nice melody and soft singing, we can foretell that something very good's coming. And yes, the feelings get stronger, and everything gets silent, until 4:44 where the fast part of the song starts. One of the best melodies I've ever heard is the very energic part at 5:31. Later, in Wot gorilla, we meet another version of this melody again. Beside this harder feeling, there are also soft things on the album. For example the nice light song, Your own special way, or the ambient-feeling 'Unquiet slumbers for the sleepers... It's good to hear again the advantages of progressive rock, the always-changing moods and many types of musical parts, flowing into each other.

So the album is varicoloured. Like its cover, there's an uncertain but somehow beautiful mood in it.

One for the vine (part):


One for the vine live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2M3fpA0Fjw

Your own special way live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdLigj_XJTE

Genesis - Foxtrot

It was precisely two years ago when the connection with my girlfriend was getting worse and worse, and I was really depressive emotionally. In that time this music was a big energy source for me, and something which I will always remember of, something which will always be connected with that time.

"Contrast" is an important word for this album. It's tipical of the whole progressive rock genre, too, but on this album it means more properties. For example the 1:41 minutes long Horizons with its gentle glass guitar sounding against the 22:54 minutes long Supper's ready, which is kept the best progressive rock song ever by some fans. Perhaps they are right. It took a huge effect on me. The contrast is also very evident in this track - there are many little parts in it. From the direct, impressive start we head on farer in our thoughts, in our depression - and later the energetic feelings shoot out again and again. I like the starting theme, which comes back at 5:44 and at the end, in the most forceful version. Genesis proves that how many feelings, energy and atmosphere can be placed in one song!

But let's get back to the album. First I wanted to write "the coolest/the most interesting" parts of it, but that would be too long. Just only a few:

- in track 1, the hard initial for the whole album at 1:03,

- in track 2, the bass melody in the refrain, at 1:44,

- in track 4, the beautiful part with deep bass, at 1:21, the brave change at 4:00, but it's only the first in that track, there will be more (this is my favourite track on this album).

And I would continue this list for a long time. Be prepared when your hear this album for the first time - it's full of mood changes, interesting musical solutions, but if you know the progressive rock genre, that won't be newness. I am sure about that Genesis was far better in that time when Peter Gabriel was the singer and Phil Collins the drummer - Foxtrot was made in this time, in 1972, so you can hear as Peter Gabriel sings or sometimes even shouts: that's inimitable and I think it's intensely belongs to Genesis.

Walking across the sitting-room, I turn the television off.

Sitting beside you, I look into your eyes.

As the sound of motor cars fades in the night time,

I swear I saw your face change, it didn't seem quite right....

And it's hello babe with your guardian eyes so blue

Hey my baby don't you know our love is true.

Coming closer with our eyes, a distance falls around our bodies.

Out in the garden, the moon seems very bright,

Six saintly shrouded men move across the lawn slowly.

The seventh walks in front with a cross held high in hand....

And it's hello babe your supper's waiting for you.

Hey my baby, don't you know our love is true.

(from Supper's ready)

Watch the Supper's ready live version on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzWdDCtC1IM&feature=PlayList&p=BC441316418965E0&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=15

(there are more parts of it)

Watch the Watcher of the skies live version on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8EkU3Ta5Ys&feature=related