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Progressiveness; Things go better with Keith; "It's alarming/The effect of the air..."




>Well, I think that's just a problem with labels

Lucas:

I alway endeavor to be correct when I label something. And we've got to call
this stuff something; it can't all be RnR!

>experimenting with different styles. King Crimson,

King Crimson in the 80's and beyond, yeah. Their earlier stuff dips deep
into Minstrel music (British Folk? Medieval?) and Jazz. Much like Tull.

>Well, I just can't comment on this, I don't know
>anything from devo...

I should have noted I was speaking specifically of their first album. After
that they got progressively (ha ha) more Pop.

>I think that what they were doing on the seventies was
>something new, on rock. Still rock, but different.

For me, the 70's after 1976 belonged to Punk. I was bored with Rock, even
The Who had let me down (WBN not being in the same league with Quad). I was
ready for a purge and Punk provided that. I still like the newer Punk bands
over anything else around, but unfortunately it's more than likely a one
shot...then the band vanishes.

>I think they're more of a hard rock band, no?

I would say so, but Kansas was considered Progressive at the time. I guess
it was the violin.

>That's a really tough question. Both bands have great
>musical quality and lyrics. How can we measure that?

By the effect it has on you. No song has moved me more than Sunrise, and
there's many many more. No songs stimulate my imagination and intellect (as
such) more than Townshend's. No one's music makes me get up out of the chair
faster than The Who's. No other singer can make me belt out a banchee-like
scream at the end of WGFA better than Daltrey. When I listen to other bands,
it's hard not to imagine Keith in the back, improving the songs. Every band
would have been better with Keith, even The Nelsons.
And so on. It's just hard for a song like Limelight to get you jumping
around like I'm Free does (for instance), know what I mean?

>If the deal was with The Who with a punk band, as
>O'Neal supposed, then it would be really easy to say
>who had more quality in their music, but I just don't
>see any reason to say that Rush or The Who has more
>musical quality than the other.

We can take it piece by piece...has ANY Rush album impressed you as much as
Quad or WN or Tommy, or LAL for that matter? These are essential Rock
albums, and while it's to a slightly lessor degree I'd also kick SO and MG
in there too. For a complete Rock collection, one MUST own these as surely
as they should have Sgt. Pepper's or Exile On Main Street or PJ's Ten for
that matter. I can't think of any Rush album which would fit in this
catagory.

>Jethro Tull...

Thick As A Brick, Aqualung, possibly Benefit. Lots of songs, but few albums
unfortunately.

>then Rush did. But how can we measure originality?

Ah, you shouldn't have asked me that one. Because I'm sure, I have
conviction on this, that The Who influenced Rock music more than any other
single band. Dylan comes really, really close, but The Who's music was more
original than The Beatles' (listen to some Beach Boys circa 1962-3) or The
Stones' (any number of Blues and R&B bands) for two, and then when it gets
to Cream, Zeppelin and Hendrix I need not point out the obvious influence.
You can take it from there, but as an exercise take a look at the kind of
music which was being released before and after the single My
Generation...there's a clear dividing line for which I can find no other
song responsible. It had nothing to do with sales, but more what musicians
took from it.

>different from that of Rush, which I also think is
>original, and that wasn't being done by others on
>their time.

Rush has elements of bands like ELP (albeit with guitar instead of a
keyboard) and Zeppelin, not to mention Derek And The Dominos (check out
their almost martial version of Hendrix's Little Wing).

>things that Neil Peart or Bill Bruford do and Keith
>just couldn't do.

Maybe, but I've heard no one do Moon's style at ALL and I have heard both
Bruford and Peart covered. I guess Mitch Mitchell came the closest to Keith,
right off the top of my head, but he was a LOT sloppier.

>I TOTALLY agree with you on that one!

I can't take credit; someone else wrote that. I do feel The Who have a fine
legacy, even if I think they should have a higher profile. The Kinks is the
band no one considers anymore, for no reason I can find. They get my Rodney
Dangerfield award for 2001 ("I can't get no respect.").


"Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature
            because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods."
                                         George "Bill Nye the science guy"
Bush