Date: April 03, 2007
Time: 22:22
Place: In the court of the crimson kiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnngggggggggg
And who doesn't love pretentious 70's art rock. I think Adrian Belew spent his life trying to atone for that crap. One of my pet personal theories is that this is the way punk started. How does one respond to "In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky and they stand there" other than "gabba gabba hey". When they try that hard to sound artsy smart, jiu-jitsu suggests you go as dumb as possible.
That "in and around the lake" drivel was from the song Roundabout by a band called "Yes". To make matters worse, they had this truly annoying vocalist named Jon Andersen who threw down the ersatz Elizabethan rhymes in a high pitched chortle. To see a very close-on parody by "They Might Be Giants" go to http://www.tmbg.com/venue.html and click on the Dallas tab, wait for John Hodgeman to finish, and enjoy. Yes had a very similar song about telling the moon and the March hare that made far less sense.
Another problem was that the musicians in Yes, aside from a merely very good drummer, were some of the best of their day and they practiced really, really hard. Behind the chortling bs coming out of Andersen were intricate scales being played at a furious pace. These guys made Cream and Hendrix sound like slobs. "Heart of the Sunrise" would be the greatest instrumental track ever recorded except it wasn't an instrumental. True to form, the song stops while Andersen bleats out "Sharp .... Distance" because I suppose he felt he had to.
Again, for the garage band, this was unapproachable. You could practice all your life and never be that good. You could however, sound pretty close to the Ramones in a few weeks.
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