The other day, my wife and I were sitting around flitting through music and I put on The Crane Wife from The Decemberists, a record I feel does not quite get its due because a lot of people felt a lot of Big Things with the first Decemberists record. Anyway, we got to one of the big proggy sections of "The Island" and my wife remarked that this sounded a lot like Yes, and to check, we put some Yes on, and let its grand tapestries unfurl all over us. "Man, don't hold back, Yes" she said as things started to go over the top. I replied, "Well, they are not called 'Maybe' or 'Perhaps.' They are called 'Yes' for a reason." And it clicked. I think I get prog rock. With all the corny justification/determination of the narrator in Memoirs of a Geisha, at that moment, I knew I was about to embark on an amazing journey.
I looked up Peter Hammill, arch-wizard of VdGG, to see if he has, as I hoped, set up a laboratory on the Moon so that he can build a death ray capable of destroying us all, but instead he has released a trillion solo albums documented on Prog Archives, a site that will take me deeper in this Middle Earth than I probably want to go.
Should I never return, tell everyone I loved them. In three movements. Preferably with a flute solo worked in somewhere.
I realize this was written over five years ago, but I hope you continued on in your VdGG/Hammill explorations!
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