Author: rasiler

rasiler https://thesumofalan.wordpress.com R. Alan Siler is managing editor of kOZMIC Press and author of the books 'Doctor Who's Greatest Hits: A Guide to the Best Episodes from Time and Space', 'Facing the Raven: Doctor Who Series Nine in Review', and 'Star Trek's Greatest Hits: A Guide to the Best Episodes from the Final Frontier' and author/editor of 'Children of Time: The Companions of Doctor Who'. His essays have appeared in 'More Doctor Who and Philosophy' and 'Outside In Makes it So'. He's the co-founder of WHOlanta, an Atlanta-based Doctor Who convention.

The Albums That Shaped Me: PERMANENT WAVES

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albums-permanentRUSH: Permanent Waves
Year of Release: 1980
Year it Came Into My Life: 1980

“The Spirit of Radio”
“Freewill”
“Jacob’s Ladder”
“Entre Nous”
“Different Strings”
“Natural Science”

A few posts ago I wrote a lot about Fly By Night, the album that introduced me to Rush. In that post, I mentioned that Permanent Waves had a profound effect on me when it was released a couple of years later. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I realized that it needed its own blog post. Because this album is one that shaped me tremendously.

I remember quite distinctly when I first heard it. Our local album rock station, Zeta 7, (god rest its soul) used to play complete albums at midnight, and they’d frequently use this time slot to debut new releases. I recall staying up that night to record the broadcast onto cassette (as I did with many other similar broadcasts). The album was so different to anything Rush had done in the past, just as Farewell to Kings had been a drastic departure back in 1977. This was still progressive rock Rush, but they’d found a way to make their brand of progressive rock commercial, radio friendly, accessible. The songs were shorter; the songs were catchy. They had choruses with great hooks. But they still retained prog elements.

Also, the production was perfect. The songs sounded big and full, but every instrument could be heard individually. There was a clarity of sound that some later Rush albums were lacking.

After recording the album that night, I listened to it over and over, playing it, rewinding the tape, playing it again, and repeat. I studied that album. I was fascinated that the styles ranged from the commercial pop of “The Spirit of Radio” to the ethereal, mostly tone poem “Jacob’s Ladder” to the lengthy meandering sonic journey of “Natural Science”, to an actual, genuine, playful love song in “Entre Nous”, and yet it all sounded like one complete statement. No song sounded out of place.

It was Permanent Waves that made me a deep Rush fan. I studied Neil Peart‘s drumming and tried to incorporate some of his licks into my playing. I also studied his way of playing “non-traditional” parts to songs, doing more than just keeping time but accentuating the music, interpreting it, adding to it. From him I learned that the drums can be an integral voice in the structure of pop songs. Drums can actually be musical! I also learned that he was a very busy player, filling in spaces with clever tricks, intricate figures and ornate fills. However, he also knew when *not* to play, and that was a big lesson to me. All this was incorporated into my meager, limited playing, and how I thought about approaching drums.

My study of the material presented on Permanent Waves as well as A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres led me to a greater understanding and appreciation of complex time signatures. I was especially fascinated at how Rush could use asymmetrical meters and make them sound and feel symmetrical. I started to notice the same trick being done in other commercially successful songs, like “Solsbury Hill” by Peter Gabriel and “Money” by Pink Floyd, both of which are in 7/4 time but lope along so casually that the listener never even notices.

I also gained a deeper appreciation for Neil’s lyric writing, and was fascinated that the drummer was the “voice” of this band. Especially “Entre Nous“, which features beautifully poetic descriptions of romantic love. Not the kind of thing you hear often in a Rush song!

Permanent Waves was huge influence on me as a music lover as well as a player, and it remains one of my favorite albums by Rush or by any band. And don’t worry … even though I did record the whole thing onto cassette from a radio broadcast, I still bought the LP as soon as it was released. 🙂

The Albums That Shaped Me: FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE

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albums-FMliveFLEETWOOD MAC: Live
Year of Release: 1980
Year it Came Into My Life: 1980

“Monday Morning”
“Say You Love Me”
“Dreams”
“Oh Well”
“Over and Over”
“Sara”
“Not That Funny”
“Never Going Back Again”
“Landslide”
“Fireflies”
“Over My Head”
“Rhiannon”
“Don’t Let Me Down Again”
“One More Night”
“Go Your Own Way”
“Don’t Stop”
“I’m So Afraid”
“The Farmer’s Daughter”

Growing up in the 70s, I was of course aware of Fleetwood Mac. How could you not be? They were everywhere. They had a string of amazing hits that were on the radio non-stop: “Say You Love Me”, “You Make Lovin’ Fun”, “Go Your Own Way”, “Rhiannon”, “Tusk”, “Dreams”, “Sara”, “Think About Me”, etc., and I heard them all. I have very clear and specific memories of hearing various Fleetwood Mac songs on a rather tinny-sounding AM/FM clock radio. I also remember the first time I ever saw pictures of them in a magazine.

Live was a whole different ballgame, though. The albums created by the then current lineup of FM – FM, Rumours and Tusk – were masterpieces, but they were the products of careful crafting, innumerable overdubs, and retake after retake. The Live album was the same songs, but raw. Where five people can play 20 people’s parts in the studio, onstage it comes down to just the five players. Its music at its most honest (well, not so much anymore, with the prevalence of playing to pre-recorded backing tracks).

I remember quite distinctly, when this album first came out, hearing the live version of “Rhiannon” late at night on our local album rock station Zeta 7. It captivated me, in that it was so different from the studio version. Not only was it played very differently – far more rock than the original version – it was twice the length, with new dynamics, additional lyrics, a long, wailing guitar solo by Lindsey, etc. It was a big lesson to me in how a song isn’t confined to (or defined by) its original shape, length, style or even instrumentation. A song can grow and bend and stretch and breathe and contort. In the case of “Rhiannon”, it goes from a nice little hippy song about a witch to an epic tale of magic, love and power, and Stevie goes into a little bit of a raving possession at the end of it. Its a pretty dramatic and gripping performance.

Once I bought the album, I started to become a real FM fan, rather just a guy who knew their songs on the radio. I gained a serious appreciation for Lindsey as a guitarist; for Stevie as an medium, a channel for an emotion or a character; for Christine as one of the greatest writers of pop songs ever. I’ve found that I much prefer these versions of many of their songs, especially “Landslide” (here it is incredible dramatic and pitched in a higher key), “Sara”, “Over My Head” (the original puts me to sleep, but this one is bouncier, a bit more uptempo), “Go Your Own Way” and the highlight for Lindsey’s amazing guitar skills, “I’m So Afraid”.

My appreciation of Fleetwood Mac has increased over the years, and I’ve invested time and interest in all of their lineups, especially the earlier ones, and have discovered amazing material throughout. One of my favorite albums in the FM catalog is Bare Trees, nearly five years before the advent of Lindsey and Stevie. That lineup, featuring Christine McVie, Danny Kirwan and Bob Welch, created an album that is (nearly) the equal of Rumours in its strength of material, cohesion, variety and “listenability”.

Lindsey, Stevie and Christine all left the band at various points and returned at various points. Christine has just returned to the lineup for the first time in many years and is touring with the band. I’ll be seeing that show in March. Can’t wait!

The Albums That Shaped Me: DREAMS

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albums-dreamsGRACE SLICK: Dreams
Year of Release: 1980
Year it Came Into My Life: 1980

“Dreams”
“El Diablo”
“Face to the Wind”
“Angel of Night”
“Seasons”
“Do it the Hard Way”
“Full Moon Man”
“Let it Go”
“Garden of Man”

As I mentioned before, when I became a fan of Jefferson Starship,Grace wasn’t in the band. She and Marty Balin had just left. Her alcoholism had gotten out of control. Her last tour with JS was disastrous, with the band having to cancel shows because she couldn’t go on, and when she did perform she was belligerent to audiences and unable to sing. Years ago I heard her talk about how her wake up came when she drove a car straight into a wall at 80 miles an hour. It made her realize that many of her friends from the Woodstock era — Janis, Jimi, Jim Morrison, Mama Cass, etc — were all dead, most of them because of drug and alcohol use. She quit the band, quit drugs, and never looked back.

Dreams is an incredible album, and certainly the most personal that Slick has ever written. She’s not one to write about personal experiences; she is more of an observational writer. But on Dreams, she turns her attention squarely on herself and her problems, and holds nothing back. She is scathing in her self-criticism.

Musically, its quite a departure for Slick. It is predominantly orchestra and acoustic guitar-led. The only venture into actual rock that she takes is on “Angel of Night”. The whole album is, in my opinion, her best vocal performance ever. Better than anything she did with Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, other solo albums, Starship, guest appearances on other artists’ recordings, etc. This is the pinnacle.

The influence that this album had on me wasn’t necessarily musical like all the other ones were. This one came out at a time when I was in high school, and I hung around a lot of druggies. There was always pressure to get involved in their ‘activities’. I never wanted to, and I either felt uncomfortable or out of place with them. Dreams  helped me to be okay with my decision, because if Grace Slick, who had consumed more drugs than nearly any other human being, had walked away from it and looked back on her choices so harshly, then I didn’t need to be doing it in the first place. Thanks, Grace.

To this day, this is one of my favorite albums I’ve ever heard by any artist in any style of music. It’s pretty much perpetually in my Top 5.

Grace rejoined JS a year or so later, and found the band to be a much improved and more healthier place to be. They’d had some member changes, they were more focused, were playing harder rock now, and the shows were more fun now that Marty and his lengthy string of love ballads were gone. She came back in as a guest on the Modern Times album, rejoined fully once the album was done, and went out on tour that year. That year was my first time seeing them live and it was quite an experience. I saw them a few times after that as well. She stayed in the band even after Paul Kantner got fed up with and quit, taking the “Jefferson” moniker with him. She stayed during the first two Starship albums, until she couldn’t take it any longer, and quit. I saw her live twice with Starship; not bad shows, but the band didn’t really care about writing material or making meaningful music any longer. She later retired and now focuses on her paintings.

The Albums That Shaped Me: BEBE LE STRANGE

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albums-bebeHEART: Bebe le Strange
Year of Release: 1980
Year it Came Into My Life: 1980

“Bebe le Strange”
“Down on Me”
“Silver Wheels”
“Break”
“Rockin’ Heaven Down”
“Even it Up”
“Strange Night”
“Raised on You”
“Pilot”
“Sweet Darlin'”

High school was a crazy time. I grew up in a very rural area, and was also cripplingly shy as a kid, so I didn’t get exposed to a lot of what other kids did. I pretty much stayed in my own little world. It was around ’75-’76 that I started to discover the world of pop music and Top 40 radio. Once I did, I started to connect with the things that other kids identified with. This was also around the time that Heart hit the scene, so I came along just in time to hear all their early big hits as they happened: “Magic Man”, “Crazy On You”, “Barracuda”, etc. So I knew who Heart was, although I didn’t know much about them. In 1978 they released an album called Dog and Butterfly and went on a major American tour. This somehow escaped my notice at first. Until I got to high school, that is, and I started to get to know other kids, most of them older that I was, who took music very seriously and knew the popular music scene on a deeper level than just what was happening on Top 40 radio.

Another Janis influence on me came at this time and it was her love of Heart. But it wasn’t just Janis; there was a lot of buzz about Heart around our school. They were kind of the hot thing for my 10th grade year. We even had a girl who always came to school all glammed up, modeling herself after Ann Wilson. D&B had been out for a while, and the band was coming to Lakeland Civic Center. As I had all these people around who were into the band, I became more and more interested. At that point I’d never been to a rock concert before (my first was KISS in ’79), and I was thinking about going to see Heart, but didn’t. All my friends came back to school on Monday talking about the show and how fantastic it was, and what songs the band played, etc. This really started to pique my interest and I regretted having not gone myself. I remember going to the public library near our school and checking out a copy of their first album, Dreamboat Annie. It was so different from anything else I was listening to at the time, and even different from what I expected having heard the two big hits. This introduced me to a whole new sensitivity in pop music, to new textures and styles and deliveries. By the time Bebe came out on Valentine’s Day in 1980, I was fully hooked.

But Bebe was another departure in what I expected from Heart.  It was more streamlined, less acoustic, with a bit of an edge to it, and the arrangements were less lush. But I liked it. The songs were great. They had an energy to them, and the band seemed to be turning a corner into new creative territory. It was rather exciting to witness. I started buying the earlier albums and became pretty obsessed. And when their new tour brought them again to Lakeland Civic Center, I didn’t miss it. I still have very vivid memories from that show.

I’ve remained a huge fan of Heart and have seen them in concert more times than any other band. I’ve seen them in the highs and their lows and they always put on a great show. One of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen by any band was in 2013 when Heart did a big summer tour with Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Experience. After Heart played their full show, both bands came out and did a 30-minute Zeppelin tribute that included “Battle of Evermore”, “The Song Remains the Same”, “The Rain Song”, “The Ocean”, “Kashmir” and “Stairway”. It was an incredible thing to witness, and hearing those combined bands play “Kashmir” and “Stairway” was a unique and powerful experience.

They effectively broke up after their 1993 album; Ann and Nancy worked on other projects for a decade. They put together a new Heart line-up and did a big summer tour in 2003. The first Heart new Heart album in over a decade, Jupiter’s Darling, was one of the best albums they’d ever made. They’ve done two since then, Red Velvet Car and Fanatic, both of which are excellent.

The Albums That Shaped Me: FREEDOM AT POINT ZERO

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albums-freedomJEFFERSON STARSHIP: Freedom at Point Zero
Year of Release: 1979
Year it Came Into My Life: 1979

“Jane”
“Lightning Rose”
“Things to Come”
“Awakening”
“Girl With the Hungry Eyes”
“Just the Same”
“Rock Music”
“Fading Lady Light”
“Freedom at Point Zero”

In my 10th grade year I met Janis. Janis was a year older than me in school and we hit it off. She was zany, irreverent, and funny as hell, and I still on an almost daily basis think of something that we did back then or jokes that we shared. She also introduced me to a lot of great music. This was the first. I don’t think she was a big fan of the band or anything, but she liked Grace Slick, and she loved “Jane”, the song that was on the radio at the time. Grace and Marty Balin had just left the band so neither was on this album.

The more I heard “Jane” on the radio the more I loved it. Our local album rock station gave “Rock Music” some play as well. I remembered being on vacation with my family over school Christmas break and hearing a live simulcast of a New Year’s Eve concert by the band. They played a nearly all the songs from this album but also a few classics. I recognized “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit”, and it was weird to hear them sung by Mickey Thomas, Starship‘s newest singer.

I bought the album very soon after this and learned all the songs. It’s an amazingly strong and cohesive album. All the songs, written by different members of the band, all hold together remarkably well and there’s not a weak one in the batch. The early favorites were “Lightning Rose”, “Just the Same” and the title track. It took me a little longer but I grew to love “Just the Same”, “Things to Come” and “Awakening”, and those are probably my favorites after all these years.

I was very intrigued by the band and wanted to explore more of the history. I found a 2-record Jefferson Airplane set called Flight Log, sort of a best-of, which gave me a good introduction. But a lot of it really didn’t grab me. I liked a few songs, but most of them I didn’t connect with. Some of that changed when, a year later, Grace rejoined the band. Originally she just did some guest vocals on the next album, Modern Times, but subsequently rejoined fully. I saw them on that tour, got to see Grace live for the first time, and heard some older songs that I’d never heard before, like “Fast Buck Freddie”.

I continued to love J Starship over the years, and slowly developed a strong appreciation for J Airplane as well. The influence that they had on me was to learn that music could be about more important things than partying, sex, romance, etc. Paul Kantner had a strong socio-political sensibility and his songs were about activism and criticism. They introduced me to all the other Woodstock-era bands, and pop music became a voice of change and revolution. It meant something. It was important.

Over the years, Jefferson Starship became more and more pop, and there was less room for Paul Kantner’s songs in their mix, and he left the band. But he took the “Jefferson” with him and wouldn’t allow the remaining band to use it. They carried on as Starship and had a string of major pop hits. Grace continued in the band for two albums until she too had had enough of it and left. She and Kantner reformed with the members of Jefferson Airplane and they released one pretty strong self-titled album.

To this day, I still consider this to be the best album recorded by the band, in any configuration and under any name (with the Airplane album Crown of Creation a very close second). Jefferson has had an enormous impact on me that I cherish to this day, and they introduced me to many other artists that I love as well.

The Albums That Shaped Me: FLY BY NIGHT

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albums-flybynightRUSH: Fly By Night
Year of Release: 1975
Year it Came Into My Life: 1979

“Anthem”
“Best I Can”
“Beneath, Between, Behind”
“By-Tor and the Snowdog”
“Fly By Night”
“Making Memories”
“Rivendell”
“In the End”

My journey into the world of hard rock started when I got KISS’ Love Gun for my 15th birthday. It opened up a whole world for me. I became obsessed with KISS – all the albums released up to that point, posters all over my walls, action figures, lunch box, books, etc. I listened to them all the time. I drew pictures of them. I forced my parents into subscribing to a new cable service called HBO because they were going to be showing a KISS concert from 1976. At first my parents weren’t too keen on the whole thing, but they eventually got used to it and learned to embrace it, getting me tons of KISS stuff for Christmas.

Well, that just wouldn’t work. I couldn’t have my parents being okay with my formerly rebellious music choices, now could I? When I was first introduced to Rush, it was a friend who brought a copy of the Fly By Night  LP to school. The cover art was kind of cool, but the music was like nothing I’d ever heard before. There were songs that were more than 3.5 minutes. The lyrics were about weird stuff like Tolkien, demonic battles, and Ayn Rand. There was a darkness and a mysticism that I’d never heard in music before. More specifically, the drumming was extraordinary. Everyone knows Neil Peart now, but at the time, Rush was still a bit more underground. This guy played like nobody else; he didn’t just keep the beat, he contributed to structure and arrangement of the song. His playing was clean, intricate, powerful and – and this is the thing that most impressed me – musical. This guy was making the drums just as integral an instrument to the overall setting and interpretation of the song as the bass and guitar. And the fact that it was the drummer who was writing all these hyper-intelligent, poetic epics excited me.

I never learned to play quite like Peart, of course – my biggest drumming influence was still a few years away – but I did learn to think of playing drums in a different way. I also learned that songs could be about more than just love / relationship / party, etc. I began writing lyrics of my own. I wrote one called “The Black Warrior” which I wish I still had a copy of.

Soon after I borrowed Fly By Night from my friend, and I’d thoroughly absorbed it, I was loaned 2112. That shit blew my mind. An album that had a piece lasting an entire album side that told a long, complex story. That was absolutely new territory for me. I went bananas on this stuff. By this time, I was hooked on Rush completely. I got all the other albums, and was surprised by the shifts in style their music took. When Permanent Waves was released in 1980, it had a profound affect on me. It was like all previous phases of Rush folded in together. The songs were mostly shorter, and were pop-y and accessible, but retained the prog-y nature of the late 70s, with a couple of songs – “Natural Science” and “Jacob’s Ladder“ – being longer soundscapes that were big expansions of the band’s musical horizons.

Becoming a Rush fan led to my love of Progressive Rock. I inevitably became a Yes fan (more on that later), and eventually discovered other bands like Genesis, Moody Blues, ELP, Triumph, Dream Theater, Spock’s Beard, IQ, Renaissance (I discovered them very late in the game) and many, many others.

I followed Rush throughout their whole career, and their most recent album, Clockwork Angels, is one of their best, with that tour possibly the best one they’ve ever done. And it all started in ’79 with a loaner of Fly By Night. The best part was that after having gotten used to KISS, my family HATED Rush!!

The Albums That Shaped Me: LOVE GUN

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albums-lovegunKISS: Love Gun
Year of Release: 1977
Year it Came Into My Life: 1977

“I Stole Your Love”
“Christine Sixteen”
“Got Love For Sale”
“Shock Me”
“Tomorrow and Tonight”
“Love Gun”
“Hooligan”
“Almost Human”
“Plaster Caster”
“Then She Kissed Me”

This is where everything started for me and my love of hard rock. Up ’til that point, I was a Top 40 kid, as most teens are. This wasn’t an album that I was interested in or would ever have picked out for myself. And in fact, I don’t know why I was ever given it. I remember that I got this for my 15th birthday. I can’t remember which of my friends got it for me, but I never could figure out why they thought I would like this. I remember at the time I’d had some exposure to KISS. “Beth” had been all over the radio the previous year, and I knew the single of “Rock ‘n’ Roll All Nite” from Alive! from 1975. I liked both songs just fine, but the band itself didn’t appeal to me. And of course, like many kids at the time, I saw them perform on the Paul Lynde Halloween Special in 1976; but unlike many kids at the time, I thought they were silly.

When I was presented with Love Gun for my birthday, I kind of set it aside at first. I kept going back to it and looking it over, though. I remember being really intrigued by the cover painting, I thought it was seriously cool looking. It took a while before I listened to it. When I did there weren’t any songs on it that I knew, so I really didn’t pay much attention to it. Slowly, though, I started to get familiar with the tunes, and the drumming in particular.

It was about this time that I was becoming interested in playing drums. I’d taken piano lessons for a while by this point, and had auditioned to play drums in the sixth grade school band. Listening to Love Gun started to really fuel my interest in taking drumming more seriously. I didn’t have a drum set, so I would line up my school text books like drums. I brought some sticks home with me from school and I hit every one of my books, and then arranged them by the tone they made, higher to lower. The first song that I really took to was “Christine Sixteen”, because it was rather pop-ish and because it had an easily-picked-up drum part. I played the song over and over on my drum set-like arrangement of school books, eventually adding other elements to mimic the crash cymbals and the hi-hat.

I started listening to the album more and more and started developing my favorites – “I Stole Your Love”, “Love Gun”, “Almost Human”, etc. I really didn’t understand drumming too well at this point, but I did try to mimic what I heard on my book set. I did eventually get a drum set, and I was honestly rather confused by how to make it go. It took a while to understand the coordination of all the things it could do. But I learned fairly quickly and basically taught myself how to play by studying “Christine Sixteen”.

I quickly became obsessed with KISS – magazines, posters, the earlier albums, demands for Christmas presents, the works. I covered my bedroom with over 200 KISS posters to the point where walls were no longer visible and I’d started displaying them on the ceiling. By that time Alive II had been released; the following year Double Platinum and the Solo Albums were released. I finally had my first opportunity to see them live in 1979, the opening show of the Dynasty tour. By that time I was so heavily sunk in the KISS quicksand there was no way to escape. They’ve been my favorite band for many years and are still one of my favorites. Maybe one day on my blog I will review every KISS album. Lord, that’ll take a long time!

SNL Review: 40.1

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SNL’s 40th season got off to a pretty good start this week. Here’s a recap:

A fairly average episode, but still solid. The opening with Aidy Bryant making a return as Candy Crowley, this time hosting her show State of the Union, was pretty good. My only negative about this is that Jay Pharaoh’s impression of Shannon Sharpe has become over-the-top cartoonish, to the point where it no longer makes any comedic sense. Host Chris Pratt appeared as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

Pratt was immediately back to the stage for his monologue, and he was as charming as you’d expect. His wife, Anna Ferris, was in the audience. They had sex and a baby popped out! It’s true! Continue reading →

SNL Group at Dragon Con 2015

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One of the things that I’ve been thinking about doing for the past year is getting a group together to do SNL costuming at Dragon Con. I didn’t make that happen for the 2014 convention, unfortunately. But at the convention I saw a girl cosplaying as Pat. She looked really great, too. I told her my idea about getting a group together and she said that she’d been thinking about the same thing. I was running an errand at the time and didn’t have my phone on me so I couldn’t get her contact info. Inswing back by a couple of minutes later but she wasn’t still there.  Anyway, I grabbed my phone and created a Facebook group so that I could add her to it just in case I ran into her again (which I didn’t). Continue reading →

Doctor Who: Tales From Trenzalore

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I’m currently reading this collection of Doctor Who short stories and am really enjoying it so far. These four stories take place during the centuries that the Doctor is on Trenzalore fighting off a universe of aggressors all trying to get at him. What’s nice about these stories, though, is that each of them features a monster from the Classic era of the show (two of which would be known by the modern audience, two that have not made appearances in the new series): the Ice Warriors, the Autons, the Krynoid and the Mara. Continue reading →