So this is it, the Mother of All Prog Box Sets, the one that will send the snarling punks scurrying to buy mellotrons and shimmering wizard robes. The bare details:  7 remastered CDs, 6 DVDs, and a book. Skipping the forgettable Genesis debut album From Genesis to Revelation, this box chronicles the Peter Gabriel years, and the Peter Gabriel albums:  Trespass, Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, and the 2-disc The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and adds a seventh disc of previously unreleased rarities and outtakes. It presents five video hours of the band in 2007 Boring Old Fart Mode, sitting around the studio and chewing the fat about the grand, weird days. And it features more than three fabulous hours of concert footage from the early ‘70s, the days when Gabriel wore winged bat headgear, was frequently engulfed in a wart-covered amorphous blob costume, and could occasionally be found on stage with mixed fruit on his head. The fact that these comic and nightmare visions could be seen on The Midnight Special, an early ‘70s music revue that usually featured the likes of Helen Reddy and Tony Orlando and Dawn, is all the more delightful.

It's gotta be the shimmering robes. Once again the Prog wing (Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Genesis, Jethro Tull, and if we're feeling rationally self-interested, Rush) has been snubbed by the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.

Granted, Rick Wakeman (the keyboard player for Yes pictured here) is the poster child for Modern Elfwear, not for the snarling adolescent rebellion for which rock 'n roll is known and loved. And yes, it's hard to imagine Galadriel and the Hellcats. But still ... those bands made a lot of great albums and played a lot of great shows. No, really. And it's high time for a critical reassessment of the music.

I’m a guy who likes idiosyncratic - some would say bad - singing. Tom Waits and Bob Dylan are my heroes. But even I have my limits. These three indie bands push me to the  brink. None of the albums are horrid, and all of them have their moments of inspired creativity. But oh, those voices.

 

Several news sources are reporting that novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace hanged himself Friday night. Pardon me while I bang my head into a nearby computer monitor.

In the taxonomy of local watering holes, Yuppie Fern Barn probably anchors the genteel, tame end of the scale, while Roadhouse probably stands menacingly at the other end. Campus Dive, my own choice for the best place to catch live music, is probably just to the genteel side of Roadhouse.

As a general rule, outtakes are outtakes for a good reason. They're not as good as the tracks that make it to the officially released albums. But let's make an exception for the greatest songwriter of the past 50 years, shall we? As an obsessive collector of "rare" Dylan for more than 30 years now, I can assure you that Dylan has discarded more than his share of masterpieces in the studio, and that some (but far from all; the man is nothing if not maddeningly inconsistent) of his live performances are truly legendary. I have dozens and dozens of cassette tapes that were reverently compiled and assiduously traded among the faithful, and if some of this was overkill (do we really need to hear a 45-second intro to "Like a Rolling Stone" that was interrupted by Dylan's coughing?), some of the ones that got away are mind-bogglingly great.

I can hardly stand to look at the man. There is, of course, the sculpted mane. There is the button casually left unbuttoned, and the chest hair. It is all enough to make me want to throw a banana cream pie in his face, or zap him with a cattle prod.

What are the odds that a former member of a band called Gandalf and the Motorpickle, and whose first solo album is called Ask the Unicorn, would release an album that approaches musical masterpiece status? I know, I wouldn’t make that bet either. But it’s happened. And you can chalk it up to the pervasive hippie influence of Vashti Bunyan. Ever since Vashti's "discovery," thirty years after the fact, small indie labels have been scouring the vaults to uncover the first generation of freak folk artists. Enter Ed Askew, who fits the bill perfectly.

Three new(ish) roots albums of note …

 

Watermelon Slim and the Workers - No Paid Holidays

 

Bill Homans’ (AKA Watermelon Slim’s) first record was a 1973 protest album. Recently back from a grunts-eye view of Vietnam, he used a tin can shard as a pick and his Zippo lighter as a slide, and laid down a series of bitter, acerbic ruminations on the horror and the folly of that memorable war. In the meantime he’s passed his days as a truck driver, forklift operator, sawmiller, firewood salesman, collection agent, funeral parlor director, small-time criminal, watermelon farmer, college graduate times three, and member of Mensa. And, oh yeah, one hell of a slide guitar player and blues singer.