Back in January, I tried to make some plans about future musical explorations. Of course, I had no idea that the whole world was going to go to hell in a hand basket in March, so like a lot of people, I got more than a little thrown off by the COVID.
But I feel like I have a little bit of a better idea now what the upcoming months will look like, even if that look will be somewhat chaotic. And I've begun to crystallize plans for some of the musical explorations I spoke about back in January.
Live concerts look like they're mostly off the table for a while. And maybe that's a good thing, because I was spending way too much money on concert tickets anyway. I can't believe how much I've been able to catch up on my credit cards, etc., without my shelling out a couple of hundred bucks for concert tickets every month.
Of course, one of my primary concerns will still be to keep up with new music. I enjoy doing my Best Of lists every year, and to do them, I have to stay somewhat current with listening to new stuff. I try to mix up my genres a little, but let's face it, I have my prejudices. So as far as the new stuff goes, I'm mostly checking out various forms of rock and/or folk, especially alternative rock, progressive rock and electronic rock, along with some pop and singer/songwriter stuff.
But one of the goals I set for myself back in January was to explore more progressive rock and metal stuff that I hadn't been previously all that familiar with. And while there are certainly bands from other genres of music whose back catalogs I want to explore (like Screaming Orphans and Cut Copy), I've kind of zeroed in on ten artists/bands I really want to focus on. Because let's face it, as much as I love the artists I've been writing about in the My Favorite Artists series, I've been listening to most of them for so long that I really need to leave many of them alone for a while so I can come back to them with fresh ears.
So here, in no particular order, are ten artists I plan to target over the next nine months or so. Some are older bands I've neglected more than I should. Others are newer (although all ten have been around long enough to have created impressive bodies of work.) I've listened to each of them enough to know I like them a lot, but for each, there is still plenty of their discography that I haven't heard yet.
1. Nightwish
This probably won't be a surprise to you, since I named their LP Endless Forms Most Beautiful my Album of the Decade for the 2010's. But this Finnish symphonic metal band continues to intrigue me. There's a lot I like about their latest effort Human. : Nature. (in spite of its stupid name). And their 2011 offering Imaginaerum is also scrumptious.
One of the most interesting things about these guys is that they've had three different lead singers over their 24-year career. So it will be fun comparing the styles and contributions of each. So far, Nightwish is by far my favorite epic metal band.
2. Mostly Autumn
This British band is one of those artists I never would have discovered without the recommendations of some of my prog rock friends on the Sputnik Music web site. They are really making modern progressive rock the way it should be, with sounds that remind me of everyone from Pink Floyd to Jethro Tull to Blackmore's Night. This is another band that has had two different lead vocalists over the years. So far, my favorite LP of theirs has been 2017's Sight of Day, but I'm looking forward to working my way back to some of their older stuff.
3. Strawbs
These guys are one of the quintessential British folk prog bands of all time. I've certainly made myself familiar with a lot of this band's classic 1970s material, but they have such an extensive discography that there's way too much of it I've never listened to. Now is the time to start catching up.
4. Renaissance
See # 3 above. Their back catalog isn't as huge as Strawbs', because they took a long hiatus from 1983 until 2001. But I've always loved Annie Haslam's exquisite voice, and seeing them live twice in the last three or four years has whet my appetite to complete my experience with this great band's music.
5. Virgin Steele
I'll be honest - this band's mostly-metal style, and David DeFeis's high-pitched hard rock vocals are a little out of the wheelhouse of my usual musical taste. But their complex music, "barbaric romantic" themes and propensity for creating heavy metal operas with deep (and classical mythological) story lines are certainly attractive to me. And like Dream Theater, whose discography I completed sometime last year, they get extra points for their Long Island origins.
6. Hawkwind
I don't know how I missed these guys for so many years, but I'm embarrassed to say I never listened to a Hawkwind album prior to 2018. My only excuse is that as far as I can tell, these British progressive space rockers got almost no airplay in the U.S. in their heyday, especially in comparison to contemporaries like Pink Floyd, The Who, etc. But I plan to make up for lost time now. I can already tell you that Warrior on the Edge of Time (1975) and Quark, Strangeness and Charm (1977) are all-time classics, and Hall of the Mountain Grill (1974) didn't suck either. And they've continued making albums for all these years - they even have a new one (as The Hawkwind Symphony Orchestra) coming out in a few weeks. Ridiculous.
7. Radiohead
No, Radiohead isn't exactly prog rock. But thanks to the complexity of their music, they do share certain characteristics with it. For years I just couldn't get interested in these guys. I think some of it was I was just annoyed at the pretentiousness with which they refused to play "Creep" for all those years. As someone who worked as a telephone teen crisis counselor during the '90s. I can't tell you how many kids used to call me who deeply identified with that song, and I never liked the way the band kind of shit all over it (and by extension, the kids who loved it) because they thought they were above it. It probably didn't help that I had a hard time getting into Thom Yorke's piercing vocals. But when I listened to A Moon Shaped Pool in 2016, I finally got it. And now, I kind of hear them as the Pink Floyd of the 1990s and early 2000s.
8. The Flaming Lips
Likewise, this is another band who certainly can't be classified as classic progressive rock. But again, their psychedelic and experimental leanings hearken back to various aspects of Pink Floyd. Much like Radiohead, I was initially put off by the strange vocal stylings of their singer Wayne Coyne. I bought Transmission from the Satellite Heart back in 1993, but my strongest memory of them back in that period was of Beavis and Butt-Head making fun of them. ("I know a guy/with orange hair/And he sucks!") I definitely got into them a bit more with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002). But it wasn't until the somewhat maligned Oczy Mlody (2017) and its magical unicorns (the ones with the purple eyes, not the green eyes) that I really started to appreciate them. Now I want more.
9. Ayreon
This is more of a musical project (by Dutch musician Arjen Anthony Lucassen) than a band, but whatever. I listened to 2017's The Source, and while I liked it OK, I wasn't blown away by it. As I've delved deeper in their discography, however, I've found myself deeply impressed, particularly by 2008's 01011001 and 2013's The Theory of Everything. This is another epic, operatic rock project. And their latest album even features narration by Doctor Who's Tom Baker. Jelly Babies, anyone?
10. Epica
This is yet another female-fronted symphonic metal band. I have to admit, I haven't yet experienced any of their seven (to date) LPs. But I do have their latest three EPs, including this year's excellent The Quantum Enigma B-Sides, and their lead singer Simone Simmons has also done a number of terrific guest appearances on the various Ayreon albums. So I feel I'm in pretty safe hands here.
So that's what I've got planned for the months ahead. How about you?
