I heard Badger on Deep Tracks last night.<\/p>\n
Now on their second album, they were fronted by Jackie Lomax.\u00c2\u00a0 I never got Lomax in his Apple days, but this album resonated.\u00c2\u00a0 But the group had already broken up by time the record came out.<\/p>\n
But I didn’t hear anything from "White Lady" last night, rather the track was from Badger’s debut, "One Live Badger".\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, their debut was a live album.\u00c2\u00a0 And I bought it, because I was infatuated with Yes, and Badger’s Tony Kaye was in the initial incarnation of Yes.<\/p>\n
And I’m driving down Beverly Boulevard, past the suddenly shuttered Hard Rock Cafe (when did that happen), grooving to the prog-rock, and Badger segues into Porcupine Tree.<\/p>\n
Four or five years ago, when Porcupine Tree was still on Atlantic, their manager, Andy Leff, sent me a boxed set of their old stuff, cut between ’91 and ’97, entitled "Stars Die: The Delirium Years".\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s a track on that album, the very first I seem to remember, that will blow your mind, take you back to lying high on the bed in your mother’s house, listening to music, having it take you away, from all the problems, all the bullshit, to a better place.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what music does, it releases you, it makes you powerful.<\/p>\n
Now I’ve got almost 12,000 tracks in my iTunes library.\u00c2\u00a0 If I let them play out, it would take longer than a month.\u00c2\u00a0 But every once in a while, one of these tracks pops up on my iPod and surprises me.<\/p>\n
This is what happened last week in the mountains…<\/p>\n
It was like a spaceship descended from heaven, and an alien emerged with his hand open, to retrieve me, to take me to where I truly belonged.\u00c2\u00a0 And we’re flying high above Santa Monica Bay, and we’re looking out the windows of the ship, down at all the lights of the city, I’m like Richard Dreyfuss in "Close Encounters", I’m gone, and I’m happy about it!<\/p>\n
So I’m tapping my fingers on the steering wheel of my Saab on Beverly Boulevard, reliving the seventies, when prog-rock ruled, and a new to me, unknown Porcupine Tree song, has me grooving in the same way.<\/p>\n
I’m driving to KLSX, to do my high-pitched talk show, but I could just as easily follow this music to Bakersfield, to parts unknown.<\/p>\n
I’d like to tell you "Arriving Somewhere" is as good as "Radioactive Toy", the ten minute epic from "Stars Die".\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, it isn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 And I can’t find "Radioactive Toy" on the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 But I can find last night’s cut, "Arriving Somewhere".<\/p>\n
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