Letter from america
I discovered your magazine when I was travelling last Christmas. I immediately ordered a subscription. I love that you cover both older bands and new ones.
I’m a 62-year-old retired male living in southern California. I have been a fan of rock music ever since I saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan when I was eight. My first prog album was Sgt. Pepper. My first prog concert was ELP.
When I saw The Story Of Prog Metal on the cover of issue 89, I said to myself, “They better mention Fates Warning. They practically invented the genre.”
Of course, they were one of the featured bands in the article, which I enjoyed immensely. Two bands who I think should be added are King’s X and Monster Magnet. King’s X might be considered more prog than metal. Gretchen Goes To Nebraska and Faith, Hope, Love are classics. Monster Magnet might be more metal than prog, but they add a lot of different textures and sounds with their guitars. I also think Dave Wyndorf is one of the more creative lyricists. Dopes To Infinity and Powertrip are both great albums and kind of proggy.
One list I would like to see you do is the top 10 composers. Not necessarily the lyrics, but the music. Someone who writes 90 per cent of their band’s music or writes for more than one project. People like Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Tuomas Holopainen (Nightwish), Arjen Lucassen (Aeryon), and Tobias Sammet (Edguy, Avantasia). But the guy I would put at the top would be Jim Matheos. Not only does he write all the music for Fates Warning, but also OSI and his instrumental solo work. His ambient sounds project Tuesday The
Sky is instrumental prog at its finest. As a composer, Jim takes a different approach to every release as every album sounds different to any others. Fates Warning’s latest, 2016 release Theory Of Flight might be his best ever.
One more thing. In the 70s I was into fusion music and I would like to tell you about two of the best concerts I’ve seen. One show I saw was Jean-Luc Ponty when he had Daryl Stuermer (Genesis, Phil Collins) and Allan Holdsworth (UK at the time) on guitar. All they did was stand there and play, and it was one of the most mesmerising shows I’ve seen.
Another was Harvey Mandel (Canned Heat) and Larry Coryell. Mandel was playing Jeff Beck-style instrumental fusion with a band. Coryell then came out by himself with an acoustic guitar and just played and improvised.
Mandell and his band returned for a rousing jam session before Coryell did another acoustic set. He topped off the evening by picking up the electric guitar again and just jammed on it for 15 minutes. This was about 40 years ago and I still recall a lot of this show – that’s how good it was.
I later saw Mandell again a couple of years later as part of John Mayall’s band. I always thought that John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers were the one of the first jam bands. I always thought there was a fine line between prog and jam bands. I have a DVD where Warren Haynes is jamming with
Coheed And Cambria!
Sorry for such a long letter. If I said everything about music that I wanted to, you would need a whole issue for it!