Deceptichum has you covered on the sci-fi and tea, so I’ll ask about the prog. That sub is one of the few things I still miss from the old site.
I’m all about ELP, Utopia, Gentle Giant, and Rush. Somehow Yes and Genesis never really hit the spot for me.
For me, RCR was one of those cases where I finally heard him talk about something I know a lot about, and he was so full of shit that I knew I couldn’t trust him on anything else. His VW beetle video from a couple years ago was so poorly researched, it was apparent not only that he was just paraphrasing Wikipedia and things people had told him, but that he hadn’t actually understood any of it himself. That and the engine building videos from his Falcon made me realize that he probably didn’t know what the hell he’s talking about with anything else, he just says it authoritatively.
Much as I love that Peanuts introduced a lot of people to Vince Guararldi, I really wish he got more credit for the rest of his career. When Bossa Nova was first coming to the US, he was right on top of it with the big names. He was on the early Latin jazz scene in the 50s in Cal Tjader’s band, and his solo album Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus (1962) came out two years before the renowned Getz/Gilberto album that defined the Bossa Nova standards. He also did some amazing work with Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete from ‘64 to ‘66. Still, I think mostly because of the cartoons, most jazz aficionados just dismiss him as pop jazz and don’t really take him seriously.
To make it worse, I found out the hard way that FH4 on Steam doesn’t have wheel support, so if I wanted to use a wheel (with full FFB support, not just a wheel pretending to be an Xbox controller), I had to re-buy on the Microsoft store.
Really, for most people, there’s not much reason to buy the new ones, except that they keep de-listing the old ones and making them impossible to buy.
Totally agree. I never really go for the advice that it’s good enough just because you tried your best, or put your heart into it, or felt like you were expressing yourself. Sometimes it still sucks. That’s not to say it’s a reason to give up, though. If anything it’s a reason to keep trying. After 30 years of playing music, I don’t think that feeling ever fully goes away, either.
Impressive list! A couple more you could add:
Eastern Intrigue by Todd Rundgren
Miracle in the Bazaar by Todd Rundgren
Teo Torriatte by Queen
Bob Moog said it rhymes with “vogue.”
Cool, thanks for mentioning that album. I hadn’t heard of him before. Definitely some Keith Emerson influence in his style.
By all means, dig deep into those instruments at your own pace.
Especially in the digital age, lots of people think of MIDI controllers or big do-it-all workstations when they think of keyboards or just think of them as instruments that imitate other instruments. But there are tons of unique, distinct sounds that only certain keyboards can make, especially among acoustic and electromechanical keyboards like the ones on Fire Fortellinger.
Getting to talk about ELP and other prog is definitely one of the things I miss from the old site.
The keyboard you’re seeing him abuse is a Hammond L-100. It’s a type of tonewheel organ, meaning it actually has a set of mechanically spinning discs inside that generate the sounds of each note. It’s a technology that dates back to the 1930s when it wasn’t economical to make tones for an entire keyboard from electronic circuits. So when you see him fiddling with the switch and making that long, dipping howl, he’s actually switching off and on the motor driving the tonewheels making them slow down and speed back up again.
The organ also incorporates a spring reverb, which is another electromechanical solution from the pre-digital world. The sound is actually driven through a set of physical springs inside the organ, and the wiggling of the springs results in a reverb-like sound in the final output. That crashing sound you hear when he’s throwing it on the ground and putting his hands in the back of it is the sound of those springs being physically knocked around and moved way outside the range of what they’d usually see from just audio signal.
That organ’s job was to get beat up every night on stage. The keyboard tech would fix it up every time and replace whatever was broken. You’ll even see where it’s been repaired and reinforced with steel plates. On the other side he had a Hammond C3, which was a much nicer tonewheel organ that didn’t get as abused.
That computer with wings at the end of Karn Evil 9? That thing is the Moog synthesizer.
Interesting. I think I’ve listened to Camel once it twice before, but never got around to Harmonium or Alan Parsons. It’s been so long since I did any musical exploration though, I’m probably due to branch out a bit. I always go on such a deep dive when I find something I like that I’ll find myself knowing everything about a few bands while still having huge blind spots in the broader picture.