There’s been a lot of talk lately about AI-generated art. Someone inputted the lyrics to King Crimson’s prog-rock classic “In the Court of the Crimson King” into Midjourney and the results are a lot better than I expected.
Sureal, nameless abominations are the sort of area I would expect AI art to excel in. Skilled painterly depictions of human faces? Not so much.
Not that it won’t try. Beware the Loab.
So the latest list of Rock and Hall of Fame inductees has been announced, and in addition to recognizing the edgy hard-rock shredding of Joan Baez, they inducted Pearl Jam, Journey, ELO and personal favorite Yes, which I listened to a lot of in high school and college (along with Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, etc.).
In celebration, here’s “Starship Trooper” accompanied by a montage of eye candy, including some of the Roger Dean variety.
Musician Greg Lake, of Emerson, Lake and Palmer and King Crimson fame, has died.
In my youth I drove my parent’s old 8-track equipped Dodge Monaco, with The Best of Emerson Lake and Palmer one of the few 8-track albums I possessed and thus in very heavy rotation. (Among the annoyances: All but 10 seconds of “Tiger in a Spotlight” was on one track, and then a KERTHUNK for the very end.) I never saw one of their elaborate live shows, but I did had tickets for the Austin leg of the Emerson Lake and Powell tour before it was cancelled.
Here’s the obligatory Emerson, Lake and Palmer track:
Alas, there does not seem to be a full version of the original “In the Court of the Crimson King” on YouTube, or that would be here as well…
Stumbled across this cover of Genesis’s “Entangled” off Trick of the Tail by a band called Hydria while looking for something else, and liked it enough to put it up.
It’s a crunchier, almost power ballad version, which actually works quite well for the song.
I can’t decide whether Alcest is Shoegaze, Depressive Metal, or some offshoot of the RenFaire school of ProgRock (more long-forgotten French prog band Manticore than Jethro Tull). Here’s “Beings of Light,” which features a female lead singer rather the usual metal “screaming with a mouthful of gravel” that seems to have become standard in the genre, which they do on some of their other songs.
Whatever it is, it’s interesting enough to be worth a listen.
Two names that are not otherwise paired together.
Tony Banks, the keyboardist for Genesis (and, with Mike Rutherford, the only member through all the band’s lineups) is 62 today. In celebration, here’s a live version of “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”:
Director Tarantino turns 49 today, which gives me a chance to talk about his film Django Unchained, an antebellum slave revenge fantasy that looks like looks like a cross between Mandingo and, well, Kill Bill. No trailer yet, but since it’s Tarantino, we know won’t be screwed up by any of that annoying political correctness. Also, damn, look at that cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kurt Russell, Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx, James Remar (Dexter’s dad), Don Johnson (in the “Designated John Travolta Career Resurrection Role”), Sacha Baron Cohen, and Leonardo DiCaprio as the bad guy.
I fully expect it to rock.
It’s clogging up New York state, but mainly I’m posting this as an excuse to post a video of one of my favorite Peter Gabriel-era Genesis songs, “The Return of the Giant Hogweed.”
And no video, but here’s a cleaner-sounding, kick-ass live version from a BBC performance: