Kinda Give, Take Yours

To make up for lost time, here's 4 tracks: 2 selected and 2 random.

Take a Pebble

An early example of the progressive era's blending of classical and popular music. What begins as a simple ballad turns into extended sections of instrumental music with more complicated arrangement. Much of this (as with much of Emerson, Lake & Palmer) is a showcase for Keith Emerson's piano playing. Equally as interesting though is his companion's use of their traditional rock instrumentation of bass and drums. Palmer in particular has very little traditional rock space here but nonetheless presents a percussion part that fits both idioms extremely well.


Yours Is No Disgrace

This is the first song I on the first CD I owned, The Yes Album. This album marked Steve Howe's first appearance on a Yes recording, although it was his second album cover with the band, since Peter Banks left Yes before the photo shoot for Time and a Word. It was also one of my earliest exposures to progressive rock, in that I'd never really been exposed to extended arrangements and classical influence in rock music. It's also easy to claim that this song would hold a special place for me even beyond nostalgia. Chris Squire's bass playing stands out to me in particular with his melodic lines as does Bill Bruford's drums.


Kinda I Want To

I walked into my dorm room in college one day to hear my roommate listening to something. My immediate reaction was, "why are you listening to a guy and a computer?" He answered, "This isn't a computer; it's a band called Nine Inch Nails." To settle the argument we had to go to the liner notes which of course, read "Nine Inch Nails is Trent Reznor" and "All programming by Trent Reznor". I can appreciate some of Nine Inch Nails industrial sound, but the recorded music sounds so still and lifeless to me, dominated as it is by programmed synthesizers. It must be said that at least this track does not sit entirely still, but rather progresses and builds in intensity. I'm told the touring band is a different beast owing at least to the fact that it is a full band of musicians, but as yet I've not had any exposure to NIN's live music.


Give It All

I have to confess to cheating a bit today. I've leaned heavily toward progressive rock so far and the first two tracks that popped up on the iPod were King Crimson and Pete Sinfield, followed by a recording of a Number Station. Skipping past those brought me to Rise Against, which is an example of "nice find" for me. I heard this particular track in the game Rock Band and picked up the CD on a whim when I found it for $5. A more poppish hardcore punk band influenced by the likes of Black Flag and Minor Threat, among others. More polished and with vocal harmony, that influence may be less obvious in their more well known albums, like this one. It served as a nice introduction to punk for me, since I'd never really paid much attention to the genre.