Prog Contest 2022: Round 1 Match 6

This time, the common element of Jethro's match-up is metal. You have a progressive metal rock opera vs. an album by a band that began as a metal band and then moved into the prog arena.

Here's the tale of the tape:

Flaming Row - Mirage - A Portrayal of Figures

Mirage is a Progressive Rock Opera in the veins of Ayreon. It's a large sci-fi concept album sporting a vast array of guest vocalists and musicians, all portraying different characters in the story. Where Flaming Row differs though, is in the wide array of musical influences it takes inspiration from. It's got prog rock, European folk music, metal, jazz piano and saxophone solo's, making for a very eclectic mix. I can see people finding it haphazard, but I find that those escapades are actually some of the highlights of the album and make for a very refreshing album with new surprises around every corner.

It's massive and bombastic, diverse and euphoric and I love it.

https://open.spotify.com/album/1GvvMDn2AZylTetivUklYq?si=RTBwOMAuTiSVJ2wUTHefKA

vs.

Il Giardino Onirico - Apofenia

Italy is considered a prog hotbed of the very highest caliber, and this one makes no exception. Album is consistent and is centered around electric guitar supported by a variety of synth and keys. It expresses all the emotions found here to the max. Here, it's romantic, there it's dark. There is a sense of tension as well, and it can be hypnotic at times. No necessarily need of vocals for doing so. When the vocals are sparsed, the instruments tightly express. Album is very melodic, and not many heavy parts to be found but heaviness is in their DNA, as shown in their previous albums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DESnpZqOndg&list=PLuS4U--ALmIFO31OkVeIZTh6s4Fum09K1

track 1 is a teaser. Please skip it (youtube).

Also available on Spotify (perhaps better sound)

I'm very excited to see how this one plays out.

Prog Contest 2022: Round 1, Match 5 Results

Well, this round was different. To be truthful, I didn't find there to be that big a difference quality-wise between these two LPs. But the vote this time wasn't close.

Here's what I had to say:

I'm ready to vote, although I'm not exactly over the moon about either of these albums.

For me, the Brand X LP is harmless, but bland. After three listens, there weren't any parts I hated, but none that I really loved either.

The Axis album, on the other hand, is an album of highs and lows for me. I liked the intro song and the "Axis goes to church" bit at the 34-minute mark. There's also something in there that reminds me vaguely of ELP's "Just Take a Pebble". On the other hand, there were parts that struck me as kind of sour.

Nevertheless, I'm going to vote for the one that had more high spots for me rather than the one that played it safer. My vote (and also probably the Diva curse) goes to Axis.

For once, the group agreed with me, and big time.

Final Result: Brand X 3 votes, Axis 15 votes.

The curse has been broken! Onward and upwards.

Post-COVID Long Island Music Situation

OK, a couple of things here. First off, I realize that post-COVID is probably a ridiculously optimistic way to put it.  There are rumblings of a new omicron variant and rising COVID numbers in Europe right now, and you know that it, and a number of other mutations, are going to make their way over here at some point.

But unless these strains are particularly deadly, I don't think you're going to see any large-scale resumption of the lockdowns. Most people are pretty much done with this whole pandemic thing, and if the powers that be try to close things down again - well, let's just say I'm amazed (and maybe a little disappointed) that a number of them didn't wind up hanging from lampposts the last time.

Secondly, I'm not even going to pretend that I have my finger on the pulse of real local music scene anymore. I'm pleased to see that 89 North here in Patchogue has reopened and resumed shows. But as to which local bars, coffee shops, etc. that were friendly to live music might be shut down for good, listing them is a task that's far beyond me.

So I'm going to stick to two categories - the places that national music acts play on Long Island, and the playhouses for Long Island musical theater.

As far as national acts go, the biggest loss to COVID as far as I can see is the Boulton Center in Bay Shore. They're not officially dead, mind you. However, a notice on their website states that they remain closed due to the pandemic, and that the financial hardship they endured during the last two years prevents them from operating at this time.

This is really unfortunate, as I've made it clear in the past that this was always one of my favorite places to see solo artists, small national acts, etc. It probably didn't help them that shortly before the pandemic, Michelle Rizzo, who did a lot of their booking, moved over to the Patchogue Theater. But from the sounds of it, this is mostly about finances, not booking ability. I hope we'll see them back someday. They are missed.

On the bright side, we've actually added one new (and large) national concert venue, The UBS Arena in Elmont. New home of the New York Islanders hockey team, this place just opened during the last year. There are some quirks to deal with - for example, the Long Island Railroad doesn't run from there in both directions (or at least it didn't when they opened). My brother, an Islanders season ticket holder who lives in Brooklyn, was a little surprised to learn that while taking the railroad there was no problem, getting home was a different story, as westbound trains didn't stop there - in order to get home, he had to take a train further east and then grab a train going back the other way. You can't make this stuff up.

Regardless, the UBS Arena currently has a musical schedule between now and October that includes The Eagles, John Mayer, the New Kids on the Block, Roger Waters, Twenty One Pilots, My Chemical Romance, The Who, Iron Maiden and Keith Urban. How is the sound? I have no idea, but maybe I'll find out when The Who roll in this October.

I don't know what this means for the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale - right now, they are open but mostly have minor sporting events on their schedule. So we'll see if they resume as much of a music power.

The two outdoor theaters seem to still be operating, but one of them only barely. The Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh (otherwise know as the Nikon Theater at Jones Beach) has a full schedule set for this summer, and seems to be back at the height of their powers. On the other hand, the Long Island Community Hospital Amphitheater (at Bald Hill in Farmingville) is running a very light schedule this summer. But they've always been a bit spotty anyway - they were just starting to up their game a little before the pandemic hit. And one other outdoor event, The Great South Bay Music Festival at Shorefront Park in Patchogue is back in full swing this year on the weekend of July 15, with bands that include Grouplove, The Manchester Orchestra and Bayside.

Other familiar indoor concert venues that are running full or partial schedules for the rest of 2022 include The Paramount in Huntington, The Patchogue Theater, NYCB Theater in Westbury (otherwise known as the Westbury Music Fair), The Space in Westbury (although their schedule seems pretty limited), The Suffolk Theater in Riverhead, The Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, My Father's Place in wherever the hell they're operating out of now (it might be more than one venue, I'm a little confused about it) and The Landmark in Port Washington.

Amazingly, most of the Island's musical theater venues seem to have stayed open, although they haven't all posted their fall schedules yet. This includes the three equity theaters, The Gateway Playhouse in Bellport, the John Engemann Theater in Northport and the Argyle Theater in Babylon. It also includes the CM Playhouse in Oakdale, the Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts in Smithtown, The Cultural Arts Playhouse in Syosset, and Theatre Three in Port Jefferson. The Broadhollow Theater has become the Studio Theater. They maintain the Bayway Arts Center in East Islip, and now have the Manes Studio Theatre in Lindenhurst as well. The Merrick Theatre and Center for the Arts is still running in some manner as well. In a few weeks, when they've all released their Fall Schedules for 2022/23, maybe I'll do a post about it.

Also, both the Tilles Center in Brookville on the campus of CW Post and the Staller Center at Stony Brook University are back to running what look like nearly full schedules of music, dance, theater, etc., and I'm sure as time goes on and we (hopefully) get further and further away from COVID, we'll see their schedules get fuller and fuller. The same goes for the Kupferberg Center for the Arts on the grounds of Queens College in Flushing.

Anyway, for those of you out there on Long Island who are looking to resume a little bit of a fuller music schedule, I hope this was helpful. You can start perusing the websites of the various venues I've listed and see what appeals to you. 

I'll be back soon, folks.

Prog Contest 2022: Round 1 Match 5

 And now for something completely different. This time out, our friend Jethro has pitted a 1979 progressive jazz rock fusion band (featuring Phil Collins, of all people) against a Greek progressive jazz rock fusion album from 1973.

Here are the deets. (Is that how you use that word?)

Brand X - Product

Brand X may be familiar to you along with member Phil Collins, you may have heard of him from his very Prog laden band Genesis, but it seems as though this album is not as familiar as others in the Brand X cannon. This is the first Brand X album that I have heard, so all others are compared to them. When researching the band I found that this is thought of as a more main stream outing for the band. It may be becasue of the vocal tracks and shorter songs. I never thought about it that way. The vocal songs are kinda of breaks for the very proggy stuf in between. Side 2 or the second half of the album is just very special. Please give this many listens as it is a grower. Enjoyyour truly Wham

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ua97cKVWeI&list=PLw-aBPPes4XUHFwNDwoQkCsxR7KF8wx5Y

vs.

Axis - Axis

Axis formed in 1970 and served as a backing band for Demis Roussos (Aphrodite's Child). Four years after the seize of power by the junta regime they had to move to France, where they recorded their three albums. Their eponymous album finds them with a different line-up. They play experimental and dark prog incorporating elements of avant-jazz, symphonic prog, and Canterbury. You'll notice how harsh and rhythm-oriented some segments are. The album, released only in Canada and France, is the absolute unit of obscure progressive rock, and one of the most inspiring releases of the Greek scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp4LQr8cAaE

All of this talk of jazz fusion makes me a little nervous, but let's see how it shakes out, shall we?

Prog Contest 2022: Round 1, Match 4 Results

Jeez, it's like a recurring nightmare - I keep voting for albums, and they keep losing thrilling come-from-behind matches.

Here's the way I saw it:

After three listens a piece, neither of these albums completely hits my sweet spot. Having said that, my vote is for Supersister.

I liked the Circus album early on, but they kind of lost me when they hit the long instrumental spot in the middle, especially the part where the flutes get all sour.

Supersister also had a spot like this, but they had a lot more parts that were melodic, interesting (to me) and up my alley.

Again, my vote is for Supersister. (Which probably curses them, as my picks are 0-3 so far this year. Sorry about that, guys.)

Yep, the curse of the cat people continues. As of late as this morning, Supersister was clinging to a 9-8 lead. Sadly, when the last two votes came in, they were both for Circus.

Final Result: Circus 10 votes, Supersister 9 votes.

Sigh.

The 80s Cruise: Concert Clips

I have no idea who Rob C is, but he's a freaking animal. He posted a 69-video playlist from this cruise, and the videos are high quality. So if you want to watch along and see some of the highlights of the cruise, follow the link below.

Offhand, the only bands I can think of that he missed were John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, Dramarama, Jack Russell's Great White, Jessie's Girl and the Dueling Piano guys Brian Wilk and Brad Heron.

So thank you Rob C, you absolute god, you!

Enjoy!

Link to playlist: 80's Cruise 2022

The 80's Cruise: The Road Home and Wrap Up

Disembarkation wasn't bad. Denise and I ate breakfast in the Main Dining Room (where much like room service, they forgot some of our food. It was good otherwise, though.)

We found the place for wheelchair disembarkation and were wheeled off of the ship, only to find that the Orlando area was under a tornado warning, with heavy winds.

Our Cruise Port bus took us back to the airport, where we got the hotel shuttle to pick us up. We made it to the hotel early, but were happily given an early check-in.

We tried to lay down for a nap, but once again, Denise's back started spasming. (The mattress wasn't very firm. This matched our experience at this same hotel a week earlier, where the mattress in a completely different room was likewise very mushy.)

We spent a quiet day and night there. During the day, we learned that the combination of the winds in Florida and bad weather in much of the rest of the country was wreaking havoc at the airport. Most of the flights out of Orlando were either facing long delays or being out-and-out cancelled. We had actually booked a flight the day after our disembarkation by accident, but it turned out to be a lucky accident. In all likelihood, we wouldn't have made it home on Saturday anyway.

Because of her back, Denise had to sleep that night propped up in a chair. I felt bad for her, although surprisingly, she said that she slept better than she'd thought she would.

When we got to the airport the next day for our 5PM flight, it was still a zoo, with more cancellations, people sitting (and sleeping) on the airport floor, etc. We were very fortunate, as our flight back to New York was one of the only ones that was neither cancelled nor delayed.

The flight back was OK, and I didn't have problems with my ears on the landing this time.

When we arrived at JFK, we found it was likewise a mess there, with cancelled flights and stranded travelers everywhere. (When we got home, we saw a video from the cruise vloggers Ben and David, who were stranded in New York because their flight back to the UK had been cancelled.)

We had a little bit of an issue with the van going back to the parking lot where our car was. The van driver was on the nasty side, and the step up to get into it was so high that Denise had trouble getting into it because of her back. I had to physically give her a boost, or I think we'd still be at JFK.

We picked up our car and then headed home.

So here are my thoughts:

A. The Trip Itself:

The trip was pretty complicated, with too many moving parts for people of our age and health levels. Finding the independent parking lot, making it to JFK for our flight, staying in the hotel in Orlando for the night before embarking on the ship (and then doing the whole thing in reverse a week later) was anxiety-producing and physically exhausting. It's now Wednesday night, and I'm only just now starting to feel like myself. (And Denise is seeing a chiropractor and probably will be for the foreseeable future. But at least she's been able to sleep on the mattress in our bedroom.)

The good news is that for our next cruise in May, we're sailing out of Cape Liberty in Bayonne, so all of that flight stuff will be eliminated from the picture (and the cruise itself should be a more traditional and laid back one). 

If we ever do retire to Florida, or even live there part-time like we've been talking about (I'd like to get a place near Vero Beach), it will make cruising from any of the Florida ports a hundred times simpler.

The bad news is that next year's 80's Cruise, which we're already registered on, will be sailing from Los Angeles, which will be a longer flight and an even more stressful trip. I'm going to have to think about if there are any ways to streamline it a little.

B. The Ship:

This was only my second time on a Royal Caribbean ship, and the first time was on the tiny Empress of the Seas, an older ship that Royal Caribbean bought from another cruise line rather than one they designed themselves. 

Looking back, I think I was overly critical of Mariner of the Seas in my daily blogs. There were certain things I took for granted that in retrospect make me feel more fond of it than I did for much of the week that I was on it. So let me run through both the positives and negatives.

Positives

1. The size of the ship. I hadn't thought about it much while I was on it, but as a mid-size ship, Mariner was more comfortable to me than one of the larger, newer, mega-ships would have been. Even walking to the Royal Theater, which was about as far from our cabin as we regularly walked, wasn't too bad, and the Main Dining Room, Studio B and Ellington's Night Club were all right off of the nearest elevator.

2. The cabin. I spent a lot of the time in our cabin, and for the most part, it suited me really well. It had a comfortable couch that I worked from every day, a comfortable bed, and a nice balcony which I unfortunately didn't get to use as much as I'd have liked to. (This was because for the first half of the trip, on the way to St. Maarten, the water was choppy and the weather was windy, and for the second half, when the weather was nicer, we had unfortunately turned around so the sun was directly on the balcony all day. And as you know, I don't do sun.) But the cabin was pretty good, even...

3. The bathroom. Yes, it was tiny, but for a non-handicapped room, it was laid out nicely. The toilet wasn't too low and the shower was rounded, so I fit in there reasonably comfortably.

4. Most of the crew. They were very polite, and I hope I didn't make it seem as if I had any problems with our cabin steward Daniel. We were at cross purposes a lot, but that wasn't his fault - he was trying to do his job and was very pleasant and professional about it.

5. Studio B and Ellington's Night Club. Studio B was a comfortable place to see a show, and I'd love to see one of their regular ice skating shows there. As for Ellington's, the room was wonderful, and I suspect mostly empty during the day most days. Next year, if Navigator has a similar space, I'll probably be making more use of it, especially as next year we'll have a smaller cabin without a couch to work from (although there will be a soft chair).

6. The Internet. I had good internet all week, better than I had expected. It took a little while to send out the emails with my completed work sometimes, but all in all, it gave me everything I needed.

Negatives

I've already told you about most of them.

1. The Royal Theater. Ridiculously uncomfortable for the larger traveler. Do better, Royal.

2. The food. As I said, it was hit and miss. The Main Dining Room wasn't bad. I ate seven dinners there plus one lunch and a breakfast. Of the seven dinners, five of them were pretty good, one (the chicken cordon bleu) was lousy, and one (the beef stroganoff) was mediocre. The lunch was good, and so was the breakfast, except for that little matter of them forgetting a bunch of our breakfast order. The Windjammer food I saw (and ate) was consistently uninspiring, the food at the Cafe Promenade was nothing great (except for the pizza, which I had once), and the Room Service food was inconsistent in quality and disorganized, as they kept forgetting items we'd ordered.

3. The crew. I felt like they were sometimes confused, e.g., for the muster drill. And that's not even talking about the one or two who were a little rude. I think a lot of the confusion came from the fact that this wasn't their typical cruise. This one (and the one before it, ECP's Star Trek Cruise) were charter cruises, sailing with full capacities (which these ships haven't had for a couple of years), entirely different entertainment, etc. And unlike a regular cruise, where you sit at the same table in the Main Dining Room and have the same wait staff every night, on this cruise, you sat somewhere different and had different waiters every time.

4. The design of the ship. Like I said earlier, I prefer the design of the Carnival ships I've sailed on, gaudy though they can sometimes be. Maybe it's just because I sailed on Carnival first. I don't think so, though.

5. Electrical Outlets. This is a small one, but as an older ship, there were only two usable outlets in our cabin. So basically Denise got one and I got one, and I had to juggle recharging my phone, recharging my laptop and plugging in my music player.

C: ECP

I've got to give them high marks. They put together a solid lineup of entertainment, and I'm not just talking about the entertainment at night. There were things going on all afternoon featuring members of the various bands, even though I was too busy with work to take advantage of many of them. There were also '80s DJ's and silent dance parties at night that I likewise didn't choose to take advantage of. But there was more than enough entertainment to be had from early morning through late at night.

So that about wraps it up. As I said, we're scheduled to sail on the 2023 80's Cruise next March. Will it happen? Who can say? It's a scary world out there, and even now when it seems like the COVID virus is finally becoming manageable, there are other things going on. It's hard for me to believe that if Putin (or somebody else) drops a nuke somewhere, we'll be sailing the Pacific Ocean a year from now watching a bunch of guys with flower pots on their heads singing "Whip It." So we'll see.

This cruise was kind of my re-entering the world party, and while I don't intend to be out there like I used to, I'll have some things once in awhile to write to you about. I bought myself a ticket to see Colin Hay on April 1 at The Patchogue Theater, and at some point in June, I notice that Head Over Heels, the Go-Go's musical, is playing at the Gateway Playhouse, so I'll probably see that as well.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed coming along with us (in spirit) on this trip of ours. In spite of all my griping, I'm glad I went. (And I know that in spite of Denise's back issues right now, she wouldn't have missed it for the world.)

So stay safe out there, and I'll write something for you soon.