Okay

(photo by Yescelt from the yesfans.com forum)

 Heaven help me, but I think I'm actually starting to dig some prog. First warning sign: Spending a couple hours on an archived GEOCITIES PROG SITE. Second warning sign: Listening to a Camel CD on headphones while my girlfriend is sleeping in the other room. I've also been crawling around the Prog Archives. Something has happened. Maybe.



         It could all a fluke, or maybe I just needed a gateway. Either way, this album Moonmadness by Camel showed up in the 2.99 bin at work last week, and I stashed it in the back just in case. A few hours on the prog sites, and I went for it.
         Forgive the simple-mindedness, but when I think prog I think of that certain pomp prog is/has been famous for. And heck knows why, that specific stupid just doesn't appeal to me.  The same way everyone still thinks of black metal's church burnings, prog, for outsiders like me, always comes back to the capes.
         Lo, Moonmadness does it for me in this major way. At the very least, a relatively major minor way. The key for me, as best I can figure, is the breezy approach Camel takes here. If you can imagine such a thing, this sounds like the kind of prog a few guys would go sit on the porch and play. You know, relative to prog itself. This is surely NOT news to prog dudes, but I've never been one, and it was a major mind blower to me. PORCH PROG. ALL HAIL. I think it's mainly in the keyboards and treated vocals, but man does this thing get MELLOW.
                                  
Camel can get buck when it's time to pull the big rock showmanship card, but this album focuses most of its attention on melody and mood. It's also full of flutes, monophonic synths, and other junk which has long appealed to me. What this means for me is that the proggy structures are something of a flourish to the music I am already getting into. With the focus more on the lush/basementy sound than progginess itself, I find myself stoking on how the progressive bent is making these songs I already like even better. And eventually I realize that I'm listening to this three dollar prog CD for the second time in a row, and I'm picking out melodic themes that run throughout the album and it all seems so clear, and I'm wondering how I ever just wrote off ALL OF PROG as being that Yes four-song double album and eventually turning into Dream Theater.


          I don't know where this prog thing goes from here, but I seriously hope it has something to do with Museo Rosenbach: