Prog-rock Ate My Innocence.

On the ladder of rock 'n' roll we will all argue which band is on top. We can all generally agree about 5 bands which should be in the top ten but one thing is for sure we all know which band is on the bottom.

In that mucky sticky soup of all that is unlistenably bad there is one band with their head just barely buoyant enough to stay afloat in those stormy vomitous seas of stinky, stale, rotten cheese from which the ladder of rock emerges. Clinging to the bottom rung for recognition and relevance, is one justifiably much-maligned band. That band is Yes.

If one more person asks me what prog-rock is I'm going to scream. Zappa and Pink Floyd aside, Can't we just forget?! Emerson, Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, Jethro Tull (listen to it again), Marillion, (early) Genesis, Rush. I want to cringe. Rush, oh man only the most Canadian of true rock geeks like Rush. I can't STAND rush. I like A LOT of stuff, a lot of stupid stuff but having grown up in the late seventies and eighties I can't shake the aversion to Prog-rock and especially RUSH. I don't care about the poly-rhythms (or whatEVER else) as long as that awful whining is pouring out of Giddy Lee's mouth, count me out.

That being said one of the Popiest of the Prog-rock bands blew my mind at age 7 with this song. At the age of seven I thought the Kansas had closed the book on all that is deep and meaningful. It was as if they extolled the most inner workings of the universe, How could people act as if nothing happened? How could they carry on with there lives in ignorance. Didn't they hear!? turn on your radio fools and listen... I mean REALLY listen god-damn it. '...all we are is dust in the wind. that's FUCKING ALL! and with that wicked acoustic guitar behind it all. It was a spiritual hammer eradicating all my weary and ill-conceived values.

At the tender age of seven I lie on the tear-soaked shag wall-to-wall carpeting on the 23rd floor of an apartment building amidst a urban waste, blankly staring at the stucco ceiling, in deep existential crisis, the radio playing and re-playing my loss, the years of my yet unlived life slip away before my eyes... everything is dust in the wind. What can one do? Where can I find meaning now? How can I take one more step towards that inevitable void? Who will SAVE me... I wonder if Happy Days is on.


Today's Song of the Day is "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas off their 1977 album "Point of Know Return." (Check out the cover to this one, it's CLASSIC)

Crazy Fact: Well I guess I know how the composer of the song dealt with this existential crisis, in the early 1980's Kerry Livgren became a born-again Christian.