Yesterday's cutting edge music... today!
Monday June 26, 2006
I went to Nearfest this weekend; it's an annual prog-rock festival held in Bethlehem, PA (the town that actually inspired the Billy Joel song, "Allentown"). I don't normally consider myself a great fan of prog-rock. I own a few Yes albums, a few old Genesis albums, an ELP album, etc. There's a reason why I don't own more. Anyway, I went mainly to hang out with my friends Jeff and Hunter, whom I rarely see, but as it happened, I unknowingly bought Hunter's ticket after he had to bail on the festival. So, I was there to see Jeff (and also Ken at Laser's Edge, although I see Ken somewhat regularly.) The problem with this plan is that Jeff was working at Ken's vendor table, which meant that all the people I was there to socialize with were on-duty most of the weekend. Which left me to wandering about amid a very old crowd of crusty prog-heads for most of whom music more or less peaked in 1975 or something like that. It's a funny scene, because they all sort of pride themselves on their open minds and sophisticated musical tastes, but I would bet most of them don't listen to anything which could remotely be called "progressive" today. But that's neither here nor there; far be it for me to (unduly) ridicule anyone's musical scene. I'll be the first to admit that the metal scene can be just a silly and naval-gazing as this scene, and when you consider prog-metal, a marginal splinter-genre that rarely manages to rise to the progressive level of the decades-old rock that inspired it, it's pretty clear that not many of the bands popularly heralded as "cutting edge" are any such thing.
That said, Nearfest was still astoundingly unprog. The first band on Saturday was a japanese four-piece named KBB. I got to the show late, but I caught the last half of their set from the lobby. Very boring violin rock, like an instrumental Kansas but with better musicians. Every song sounded exactly the same. Jeff insisted that it was awesome, and maybe I should have gone inside to see them actually play, but from a purely musical perspective, they were very dull. The next band was one of the few on the bill with whom I was actually familiar, the Polish quartet Riverside. Riverside were originally signed to one of Ken's labels, and at their heaviest, you might even call them metal. They sounded great, especially the singer, but one hour and fourty five minutes is too damned long! There are not many bands in the world that I want to watch for that long, and Riverside, who only have two albums under their belt, are not one of them. I was dying by the end! And to think, this was to be the musical highlight of the day! After Riverside, an acoustic guitarist named Richard Leo Johnson played a short solo set. I wanted to see him play, because I have one of his discs and I think he's an impressive player, if a boring composer. He's pretty much a Michael Hedges wannabe, if that means anything to you. Long story short, I missed him completely because Jeff and I spent too long getting food. Oh well. No big loss. The next band was FM, who could best be described as third-tier Rush clones, and we're talking about the synthpop Rush here - think "Tom Sawyer" but not good at all. This band was quite funny to me. The remaining original members were the drummer and the bassist/keyboardist/singer, and their new trio was rounded out by a strage-looking italian guy who played viola and electric mandolin, except that he appeared to have removed the doubled strings from the mandolin and ended up playing it like a tiny, bad sounding guitar. The singer was constantly talking about outer space and made a ridiculous comment that such-and-such song is what they imagined people listening to when they boarded the first ship to another planet. The whole affair had the whiff of Disney's "World of Tomorrow." They did play one song that I enjoyed, but mostly their music was just awful. I watched the whole set, though, because there was really nothing else to do. This festival takes the music very seriously, so when the bands are playing, the vendor rooms are closed entirely. I could have stood around in the lobby, but where would that have gotten me? After FM, there was a two hour break for dinner, but of course I couldn't get dinner, because all of the people I knew were working (the dinner break is also one of the occasions for shopping in the vendor rooms.) I can't even remember how I kept myself busy, except that I ended up buying more CDs than I had really planned on buying. The dinner break finally ended at 8:30, which is when the headlining band, Ozric Tentacles, was to take the stage. I'm not familiar with their work, and none of the people working for Ken seemed to care for them, so when the vendor rooms closed for the night, we bailed on the Ozrics and went to dinner. That, at least, was a lot of fun. We went to a brewpub in downtown Bethlehem and I got a pretty tasty Weinerschnitzel and a couple glasses of the brewery's tasty nut brown ale. Then I drove home, and was in bed by 1:00. Not bad, for a festival!
I should mention at this point that a day at Nearfest is a long fucking day. The first band goes on at 11:00 am and the last one ends at around 11:00 pm. Twelve hours, but only five bands! It's a gruelling ordeal, let me tell you, especially when you aren't really a lover of prog-rock. It's fun for a while to stare at the fat, bold, old men in Gentle Giant t-shirts, but even that loses its charm after six or seven hours. On Sunday, I was in for the full experience, as I actually wanted to see the first band, Guapo, from London. They were described to me as "heavy, but not like metal." Take that for what it's worth. They were, in fact, pretty heavy, reminding me a little of The Mars Volta at their darkest, minus the latin vibe and the vocals. Their hour-long set was comprised of only two songs, both of which, I'm told, were abridged from the recorded versions. Sheesh! The drummer, in particular, was excellent, but as with pretty much all the bands, I can't say that I found their music to be particularly challenging or progressive. In fact, pretty much the only truly progressive set came next, and it was a solo bass set. Michael Manring is, without question, the greatest electric bassist to have ever lived. He is so good that I don't think that anyone alive today could possibly even catch him. A lot of virtuoso players, I think, arrive at their virtuosity after years of practice and declare their travelling done. They remain great players, but they don't really get better once they reach their particular plateau of mastery. But Manring never stops getting better. He was the best bassist in the world ten years ago, and now he's ten years better. It's almost pointless trying to describe how he plays or what makes him so great, because there are no points of reference in other players. I tried to prepare Jeff for the mindfuck that is Manring, and even fully armed with the expectation that he was about to see and hear something the likes of which he had never experienced before, he was still dumbstruck by Manring's performance. His half-hour set was at least an hour too short, but if nothing else, it left us wanting more. This yearning was keenly felt when the next band, Ange, started playing. Ange, like FM, are another washed-up band from the 70s that broke up and then reformed with a minimum of original members and a progressive vision that would have sounded stale 30 years ago. Ange are a French group, and the only original member was a fat bald guy with a skullet and a white robe. The remaining members looked like the products of his 70s daliences with prog-groupies. Their music sounded like a cross between Steely Dan and Human League, only worse, if you can imagine. They made some very silly attempts at theatricality, including a stunt with a rubber bone which had to be seen to be believed. Picture a grandpa dressed like Zeus and his gypsy granddaughter fighting over a rubber bone with their mouths, and you're only halfway to being as disturbed as I was. Jeff and I made it through three, maybe four songs, before we left. We had enough time to run into town for a couple slices of pizza and a beer before Jeff needed to be back for the vending period after Ange. The next band was Niacin, a supergroup trio featuring Billy Sheehan and Dennis Chambers. Their set was surprisingly fun, and both of them really cooked. The trio was rounded out by an organ player whose name I don't recall and whose playing was largely superfluous. I enjoyed their set, but this is the kind of music that is only fun in person, where you can really marvel at the dexterity and skill of the musicians. On disc, this would probably bore me to death. And speaking of death by boredom, after Niacin I had another two hour dinner break to kill, having just eaten a couple hours ago. I ended up driving around Bethlehem, which is a surprisingly pretty town. The downtown, in particular, is especially well preserved and charming. The weather was awful, but that just made navigating the very slopy topography of the city more entertaining. I had to be back to the venue by 8:30, but not for dinner this time. I was made to understand that seeing Keith Emerson, late of ELP, was essential. He went on very late, and after a ridiculous "behind the scenes at Nearfest" slide show, and then opened with the only song I expected to recognize in his set ("Karn-Evil 9," which I'm sure you've heard. "Come inside, the show's about to start / guaranteed to blow your head apart"). As it turns out, I recognized two more ELP songs: "Tarkus" (which I know from a tribute album I got as a promo years ago) and "Lucky Man," which I never knew was ELP. I only stayed for an hour of his set, but the rest of it was pretty fucking terrible. He played some shitty blues-boogie instrumental written by his guitarist (whose similarity to Nigel Tuffnel was frightening), a cover of the worst Bob Dylan song I have ever heard ("Country Pie," which is actually about pie, I think), and some other honky-tonk bullcrap. It was really bad. He had a cool giant Moog, but he barely used it in the hour I endured, and while I could see that he's a great keyboard player, so what? The whole affair was kind of sad. Here you had a room full of people who all claimed to like challenging music, but all they really wanted to hear was an exact recreation of songs that they've been listening to on vinyl since the early 70s. What would these people think of Behold the Arctopus, or even The Mars Volta? And those are just a couple of the most innovative bands I listen to, and I readily acknowledge that my tastes are fairly conventional. I guess I wouldn't mind the stagnation on display at Nearfest if not for all the back-patting and smugness. For every guy I met like Steve from Cuneiform Records (who is really a cool and open minded lover of music), there were three guys like the toupe-wearing asswipe who made a semi-serious argument for his own special brand of fascism, which would mandate that the people only listen to prog and none of that mindless pop shit that they listen to now. For fuck's sake! Anyway, back to Keith Emerson - after "Lucky Man," both Jeff and I bailed on the show. Jeff had to stick around to help Ken and crew load out, but I had no such obligation, and I left. Again, I was home and in bed by 1:00, even after an hour and a half of driving. I guess I'm getting as old as the other guys at Nearfest, because when it came down to it, I was pretty happy to be in bed at a reasonable hour. If I ever go to Nearfest again, I'm sure my trousers will be hiked that much higher.
Posted by Matt at June 26, 2006 08:49 AM
oh come on matt. the niacin organ guy would be John Novello. He play on that one Andy Summers disc. I'm sure he is not really note worthy.
Posted by: I don't know at June 26, 2006 01:47 PM