Interesting discussion in Prog Music Soceity......

Thought it might be good to bring it here too.

With EPIC tracks there are certain sections that people love and wait for........"I get up, I get down" in CTTE for example.

Do any of you Moonies have fave sections in epic tracks?

One that springs to mind with me is in Tull's "A Passion Play". The mood changes and Ian sings "Flee the icy Lucifer, Oh he's an awful fellow................."

A great section in a great Epic.

Any more?

[Bob Lentil]

One of my favorites is the melodramatic part in 2112 where Geddy sings:

I wish that it might come to pass
Not fade like all my dreams
Just think of what my life might be
In a world like I have seen
I don’t think I can carry on
Carry on this cold and empty life

I wait for it in eager anticipation every time I listen to 2112.

[zvinki]

Good topic there Keith. The Tool fans call that a Tool-gasm.

That's the same moment in 2112 that I hold my breath as well Bob. I can't think of any others right now since my mind is so muddled except for The Great Nothing moment which happens to be a musical passage so I can't describe it very well. As I listen to the moon and they pop up I'll list them here.

1) The bit in The Remembering on Tales... leading up to Jon singing "Surely, Surely"
2) The final part of "Ritual" with Steve Howe's guitar coda and those final notes...........bliss.
3) The Apocalypse part of Suppers ready.

[Rick and Roll]

I tend to like 8-15 minute tunes that are tight and connected. Sometimes the long epics are too long. An exception is CTTE - it's fascinating all the way through.

For SB, I like "At The End Of The Day" - I get more pleasure out of that than the great zero .

Discipline's "Canto IV" is powerful and marvelous at 13 minutes. I like Epics I can be excited all the way through.

OK, now to finally answer the question...parts like the passage in "Thick" where Ian says "You put your bet on # 1 and it comes up every time". The instrumental interplay is great.

My favorite "Epic" has to be "Stardust We Are". Nowhere in that tune do I see a section that's overlong, unneeded, or bloated.

[RogorMortis]

Always look foward to:

The blow of the whistle and the exclamation "All Change" in Suppers Ready (I'm a train buff as well)

THe mass guitars from Gilmour in Pink Floyds "Meddle" towards the end

Jon Andersons rendition "They move fast the tell me....." in RSOG

and of course the main chorus in "And you and I" from CTTE.

and I can continue until the sun goes down and up again.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Hoo boy. You did ask.

I've got a number of these.

My personal favorite wait-for moments, however, rarely can be expressed in written word. They're usually musical passages (like the swell after "I get up I get down in CTTE). This is by no means exclusively the case, but tends to follow in this theme.

They include:

From The Great Nothing by Spock's Beard:
The musical passages leading up to and surrounding:

"The boy's got potential, but he's never had commercial success...."

and

"The boy has no potential, and he'll never have commercial success...."

etc. The drum work in there is impeccable and the keyboard work that surrounds it is phenomenal. My favorite part of a well engineered song from one end to the other. They have mastered the fact that the silences between the notes are as important if not more so than the notes themselves. A piece of musical engineering on the scale of the Boeing 747 or the world's great bridges: an awesome experience.

From Grendel by Marillion:

Start at one end, work your way through. A masterful work in dynamics and imagery. It starts out very darkly and gets darker as the song goes on. "Preistly heads bow in shame..." "Mother Nature's Bastard Child, shunned by leaf and stream" But my very favorite cheeck clenching moment is toward the end when Grendel declares that he's had enough of their "Ugly pale skin and their putrid green eyes", their "Pretty Pretty speeches" and "all their viscious slander". That entire segment is my favorite. It takes the rage of a much maligned monster and focuses it directly where it belongs.

I tend to start gnawing the furniture about then, and the kids know to stay out of the way, as they know they're crunchy and good with ketchup.

Another wonderfully engineered song that mixes the human voice with keyboards, percussion and strings to make an epic of, well, epic proportions.

From Mundus Incompertus by Par Lindh Project

This more classicly based chart is one of those that I'd mentioned earlier -- they don't really have any vocals from which to anchor my preferences. They also have grasped the concept that silence can be used as a musical tool. The wind-up to a dead stop right before unleashing the organ and percussionry sends a chill down my spine. This chart is filled with them. I'd give anything to be able to see it performed live. They MUST have more than one drummer as with the amount of work that's in this piece would leave one mortal human exhausted about half way in.

From The Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky

This piece, out of a very wide library of classical music, likely personifies what Progressive Rock is to me. I feel that it's a shame that someone like Par Lindh Project or perhaps a group involving Martin Orford doesn't take this one on and arrange it for a more modern ensemble. Specifically the Bercuse and the Finale, the final two movements of this wonderful suite. Starting off with a haunting bassoon feature, with visualizations of misty glades, full moons, and other stuff that tends to make the hair on the back of my head stand on end, following into a French Horn feature (that, incidentally, helped my high school orchestra win the 1982 California state orchestral championships, and about the only song that would ever put a French Horn in my hands again) that could easily be the most haunting pieces of "slowly waking up" musical imagery that's been recorded (or at least heard and/or played by me). See the beginnings of Siberian Khartu (yes, Rick, I know it's "Khatru" or whatever. I like it better this way. Deal.) on Yessongs for an example of this.

But the finale. Oh my, the finale.

There are very few songs I can actually say this about with a straight face: If your ears aren't bleeding after they're done, it's NOT LOUD ENOUGH. Designed with brass musicians in mind, this was actually my first experience with non-standard (ie non 2, 3, or 4) time signatures, and was one of the defining moments of an otherwise unmemorable high school career. During the final concert of the year, we borrowed heavily from the marching band, arming them with such extravagances as sixteen marching french horns, twelve marching euphoniums, twenty four bell-front tubas and eight contrabass bugles. The sight of a four measure bell up gave my parents enough warning to put in the earplugs. The risers we were sitting on actually recoiled two inches simply from the opening note. We had a recording made of the concert. You could actually hear someone say "Oh shit" when the horns came up.

It was fucking GREAT!

There are others, but I believe I've spewed on long enough. I heartily congratulate anyone with the fortitude to wade through it this far.

Roger -Dot- Lee, "Of all the pains in asses, he's the worst I've had the bad taste to know"

That man has a passion that I adore in people. More power to you Roger.

[Rick and Roll]

Originally posted by Roger Lee
Siberian Khartu (yes, Rick, I know it's "Khatru" or whatever. I like it better this way. Deal.)

If I was THAT concerned I'd have said Keith misspelled "society"


But I didn't. Until now.

Originally posted by Rick and Roll
If I was THAT concerned I'd have said Keith misspelled "society"


But I didn't. Until now.

Just as well or I would kick your butt into touch when I see you.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Keith Waye
That man has a passion that I adore in people. More power to you Roger.

Thank you, Keithie. This is one subject (of many, I suppose) that I get truly riled up about without spewing venom.

And life's too short to spend it all spewing venom, ya know?

And let me know if you need help with Rick. We can use him in Scrumm if necessary (just to soften him up a bit, you see).

Roger -Dot- Lee, Go All Blacks! Humiliate the Springboks! Again!

[Rick and Roll]

Originally posted by Roger Lee
And let me know if you need help with Rick. We can use him in Scrumm if necessary (just to soften him up a bit, you see).

Oh yeah! Well I'll just call my friends.....ok here I go....oh well. Going solo again.

[progdirjim(Admin)]

Originally posted by Rick and Roll

Discipline's "Canto IV" is powerful and marvelous at 13 minutes. I like Epics I can be excited all the way through.

Yeah baby. The one chord right before the first time he sings the chorus: "But how can there possibly be......no room up there for me?" Very powerful.

I'll think of an original one. Later. I'm working on debugging the php script to fix the playlist search issue. While I'm learning php. My head hurts.

[Yesspaz]

Originally posted by Keith Waye
1) The bit in The Remembering on Tales... leading up to Jon singing "Surely, Surely"

Yep.

Yes: In "Awaken" - the build up from the first "Master of..." verse to the final tonic.

Yes: In "CTTE" - the last section of the song.

Tarentel: In "For Carl Sagan" - the 6:43 mark. The song builds slowly without a statment of the main melody until that point. And then it's a long build to the crescendo at 15:45 (the whole song is a clinic in restraint). Phenomenal.

Mike Oldfield: In "Tubular Bells III, Part Two" - the climax

King Crimson: In "Lizard" - when the first big trombone riff comes in followed by a flute run.

Yes: In "Endless Dream" - the "So take your time, look round and see the most in time is where you're meant to be.
For they talk too loud and take the hope and fears from your heart.
We call this surrender slowly towards the north, and this endless dream giving ourselves everything.
We're deserving.
Gonna bring it back again.
It's the first first time telling myself everything.
It's the last last time.
Bring me back, bring me back again*
etc.
- from 10:54 to 13:40 - I wait for this part expectantly as the lay down every theme used in it earlier in the song.



* I read a musician's comments on Jon Anderson's vocal range in a NFTE article and I think this is the highest note he hits on record. I'll try to find that article and link it.

Originally posted by Yesspaz
Yes: In "Awaken" - the build up from the first "Master of..." verse to the final tonic.

Yes: In "CTTE" - the last section of the song.

Yes: In "Endless Dream" - the "So take your time, look round and see the most in time is where you're meant to be.
For they talk too loud and take the hope and fears from your heart.
We call this surrender slowly towards the north, and this endless dream giving ourselves everything.
We're deserving.
Gonna bring it back again.
It's the first first time telling myself everything.
It's the last last time.
Bring me back, bring me back again*
etc.
- from 10:54 to 13:40 - I wait for this part expectantly as the lay down every theme used in it earlier in the song.



* I read a musician's comments on Jon Anderson's vocal range in a NFTE article and I think this is the highest note he hits on record. I'll try to find that article and link it.

See! We do agree on some things Spaz.

I couldn't agree more about the Yes songs you quote.

The Ladder tour's arrangement of "Awaken" was just amazing in this bit and the powerful build up leading to the final "High Vibration go on...." vocal was sensational too. At one of the power chords there was an almighty explosion and flash of light and thousands of bits of ticker tape showered down onto the audience all lit up by the spot lights. It was a fantastic moment of aural and visual art.

Endless dream has to rank as one of the greatest Yes songs (Talk is very underrated IMHO) and in this part Jon sounds terrific. I regret so much that Yes never toured "Talk" in the UK.

[QuantumJo]

ep-ic \ ‘ep-ik\ adj [L epicus, fr. Gk epikos 2 a : extending beyond the usual or ordinary

One section of a song that I eagerly anticipate is in Steve Via’ Viv woman from Flex-Able. The only lyric is “ Just go for it “ which is followed by one of Steve’s wild guitar sounds.

[Yesspaz]

Originally posted by Keith Waye
Endless dream has to rank as one of the greatest Yes songs (Talk is very underrated IMHO) and in this part Jon sounds terrific. I regret so much that Yes never toured "Talk" in the UK.

A truly wise Brit we have here gentlemen. Talk rules.

[prythm]

When Tony Bank's mellotron choir and Mike's foot pedal bass comes in roaring during Cinema Show, especially the live renditions. Ya baby!

I cant wipe out of my mind the light show during Afterglow, after the last lyric when again Tony fills the soundscape with the Mellotron Choir, Phil runs up to the kit to join Chester, the whole front row of white lights sweep slowly across into the audience upward and upward to the sky. Wow. What a moment.

[dinosaur]

I'm with you, Keithie, on that Howe 'Ritual' blissful ending. I also like 'Endless Dream', along with many other Yes moments.
Prythm's comment brings to mind the great finish to Genesis 'The Knife' (live version).

Lately, I've been listening to Galleon's 'From Land to Ocean'.
The finale to 'Three Colours':

We took the first steps of freedom
On the friendly shore
No more War!

Then delicious crunchy guitar ensues. Wow.

[progdirjim(Admin)]

Originally posted by prythm
When Tony Bank's mellotron choir and Mike's foot pedal bass comes in roaring during Cinema Show, especially the live renditions. Ya baby!

I cant wipe out of my mind the light show during Afterglow, after the last lyric when again Tony fills the soundscape with the Mellotron Choir, Phil runs up to the kit to join Chester, the whole front row of white lights sweep slowly across into the audience upward and upward to the sky. Wow. What a moment.

"I miss you more....."

Yeah, I've seen that at least twice at the Spectrum in Philly - maybe we were at the same show oneof those years...