Prog & Roll's Last Radio Show of 2012

Hello everybody!
Last night we had the last radio show of 2012. My opinion is that it was a great one!
Many people joined us, everyone was in very good mood (so it seemed at least), we had some crazy moments and we all laughed a lot, and in general we spend 2 very enjoyable hours together.
Also, last night was the second part of Prog & Roll's Top-10 making, and it went really well.
So now I have gathered the points for all the songs that our audience voted through the year, and tomorrow I will post here the Top-10. :)
I want to thank everyone that logged in last night and helped us with the whole project we had prepared.
We will try on the New Year to make our shows even more interesting and fun! That's a promise!
And here is the playlst from last night's broadcast:

DREAM THEATER: Hell's Kitchen - IQ: You Never Will - QUEEN: Innuendo (Best Voted) - GALAHAD: Empires Never Last - TRAFFIC: Glad (Best Voted) - BLACK WIDOW: Accident - JOURNEY: Of a Lifetime (Best Voted) - LED ZEPPELIN: Thank You - GENESIS: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Best Voted) - PETER HAMMILL: Airport - TOOL: 10.000 Days (Best Voted) - RIVERSIDE: Conceiving You - RUSH: The Necromancer (Best Voted) - B.Ö.C: Last Days of May - RENAISSANCE: Song of Scheherazade (Best Voted) - THE MOODY BLUES: For my Lady - MERCURY REV: Holes (Best Voted) - ANNIE HASLAM: Glıter & Dust - DEAD CAN DANCE: The Host of Seraphim (Best Voted).

GFreedom's Juke Box No. 26

Hello folks!
Another Saturday is here, and now I will post the last Juke Box of 2012.
Not that it matters much of course... :P
Anyway, this last week I was rather busy while I was dealing many things, but there is always time to listen to some good music.
And these songs are the best I've listened:

Dead Can Dance: The Host of Seraphim
(The Serpent's Egg) - 1988
Annie Haslam: Still Life (Still Life) - 1985
The Moody Blues: For my Lady (Seventh Sojourn) - 1972
Porcupine Tree: Anesthetize (Fear of a Blank Planet) - 2007
The Rolling Stones: Wild Horses (Sticky Fingers) - 1971

Prog & Roll's 2nd Special Radio Show

Hello everybody!
As I mentioned on an earlier post, we have decided to make the last 2 Radio shows of the year kind of special. On the one before Christmas we included many funny songs, and we did the first part of the procedure I have mentioned before, in order to make our own Top-10 for the year 2012.
On next Sunday 30-12-2012, we will make the second part. This radio show will be more serious one though. And that's because we have to play many of the songs that our audience has voted in previous shows. After this last show of the year, we will gather all the songs, check the ranking they gained, and on the following days we will announce Prog & Roll's Top-10.
For that reason on the first 1-2 days of 2013 I will make a post here about that.
But in order to do that in a nice way, we will need your help!
So, if you don't have anything better to do on Sunday night, we will be very happy to have you there as a part of our company, and help us with the making of this Top-10.
You can listen to our show on this Sunday between 20.00 - 22.00 GMT (22.00 - 24.00 Greek Time), if you click here: http://www.justincaseradio.com/
Thank you all in advance! :)

'Progressive Music Lovers' community on Google+

Hello there!
Recently I discovered Google+. I know I'm a bit late, but there is not so much free time...
Anyway, I spend a few hours trying to figure out how this thing works, and finally I decided to make a community in order to gather there some people that are interested in Progressive music.
Soooo.... if any of you is using Google+, and is interested to join our small (so far) community, search for "The Progressive Music Lovers".
I hope you will like what you'll see there, and you will join us in order to share our music ideas, tastes etc...
Hope to see you there soon! :)

Merry Christmas!

                                MERRY CHRISTMAS FOLKS!

I Wish to all of you a very nice Christmas with your families and your beloved ones!
Have a great seasons holidays full of love happiness and health!
As for me, I have some guests from Greece, and we are spending these very nice days together. 
For your enjoyment here is a video from the famous cartoon series Southpark.
In this video the School teacher Mr.Garrison sings about all these other religions that  don't celebrate Christmas. (And he's obviously having a big problem with that!) :P
It's a funny song, and I hope you'll like it.
Merry Christmas!

    

Prog & Roll Special Christmas Show: The playlist

Hello everybody!

Last night as you have read already, was the first of the two special Radio shows we have planned.

The main idea was to be happy, funny, and enjoyable. Well, I can say we did it!

Our audience seemed to have enjoyed the show, and we were having lots of fun at some points on the chatbox. But the main ‘event’ was the attempt to make Prog & Roll’s  Top-10 for the year 2012.

Last night was the first part. The second part will be on our next show on Sunday 30/12/2012.

As I have mentioned before, on every radio show we ask from our audience to vote the best song of the evening according to their tastes. We have gathered all these songs, we collected the most famous, and in these 2 last shows of the year we have the final stage. To select the best 10!

In the time we were playing these “best voted” songs we asked from our audience to grade each song on a scale of 1-10. Then we did the math, got the average number.

In the following playlist you’ll see which were these best voted songs, (we have many more for the next show of course), and in the end of both radio shows we will announce Prog & Roll’s Top-10!

And here is last night’s playlist:

Jingle Bells / J.LENNON: Happy Christmas (War is Over) / LOVE SCULPTURE: Farandole / QUEEN: Brighton Rock (Best Voted ) / SOUTHPARK: Merry F… Christmas / NEKTAR: King of Twillight (Best Voted) / STRAWBS: I Turned my face to the Wind / ARENA: Enemy Without / GENESIS: Firth of Fifth (Best Voted) / SOUTHPARK: Oh Holy Night / JEFFERSON AIRPLANE: Rejoice / JETHRO TULL: A Christmas Song / MARILLION: Script for a Jester’s Tear (Best Voted) / MANFRED MANN’S EARTH BAND: Solar Fire / CAMEL: Nimrodel (Best Voted) / TRANSATLANTIC: We All Need Some Light / DAVID GILMOUR: Love on the Air /  SOUTHPARK: Christmas in Hell / MAGIC PIE: Headlines / CHRIS DE BURGH: Crusader (Best Voted) / FLAIRCK: Walk Upon Dreams / 12 Days of Progmas.

Spotlights on: AINUR. A Progressive Rock Orchestra

              
   As you know already in this blog there is a series of posts called 'The Progressive Rock Encyclopedia'. There I usually write about the bigger and most known bands of Progressive Rock.
But there are some bands not so famous, and in my opinion deserve more popularity.
So I present these bands separate in these series of posts. (Although these series are not only for Progressive Rock bands).
Here I will write about the Italian band AINUR.
Ainur is a band consisting of 18 members, and that's why has the title 'A Progressive Rock Orchestra'.
They got their inspiration (and their name) from J.R.R Tolkien's fantastic world, Middle Earth.
To be exact, from the book 'Silmarillion', Tolkien's most ambitious piece of work, where he tries to create a whole new universe, with new Gods, new races, new languages, new fantastic lands etc...
The main idea was to try and transfer into music all these long or short stories that are described in the 'Silmarillion'.
So far they have released 3 very good records: 'From Ancient Times' (2007), 'Children of Hurin' (2008), and 'Lay of Leithian' (2009).

They are considered to be a 'Symphonic Progressive' band, although their music defers on each song, having many influences from Medieval music, Italian traditional rhythms, Celtic melodies, and of course Rock. All these music styles are mixed together in such a way, that we can say that their songs easily could be used as soundtack for any Epic Fantasy movie.
As for their instruments, you can understand the variety that an 18 member- band- offers.
From the classic Rock instruments like Guitars drums bass etc, up to the classical Violin Flutes Cello Harps Horns etc...
As for the singers... Well, they are a lot! Male and female singers, that varies from Barytones to Sopranos.
I believe that Ainur is a really interesting band (or orchestra), that every fan of Tolkien or Progressive Rock (or both), should listen to, mostly because they try to present something different.
I have put 2 videos on this post for you. On the first one you can see a presentation of the band, and on the second you can listen to the song 'The Fall of Gondolin'.
Hope you will like them.
Enjoy! :)

                                       

                                                     

GFreedom's Juke Box No. 25

Hello everybody, and have a nice weekend!
It's been sometime that I haven't post anything on the Juke Box series.
That happened due to my absence, but now I'm back for good! :)
This last week I've listened to lots of music, many different things and styles, so my Top-5 will be a bit mixed up.
Without further delay I give you my best 5 songs for this last week:

Jefferson Airplane: Rejoice (After Bathing at Baxter's) - 1967
Chris De Burgh: Crusader (Crusader) - 1979
O.S.T Southpark: Merry F... Christmas (Southpark Bigger, Longer and Uncut) - 1999
Madrugada: Higher (Industrial Silence) - 1999
Neil Young: Down by the River (Everybody knows this is Nowhere) - 1969

Prog & Roll Christmas Special!

Hello everybody! :)
I just want to inform you that on this Sunday 23/12 we will have our Special Christmas show on Just in Case Radio. It will be a very interesting show I believe, with many great songs, weird songs, and funny songs. We are preparing something different for this night, that's why it would be great if many of you could join our nice and friendly company. And why? Because on this Sunday and the next one (30/12), altogether we will choose Prog & Roll's Top-10 for 2012.
You will have to vote for the best songs from our shows throughout this year.
And how will this happen? As many of our listeners knows already, at the end of every show you vote for the best song you've heard that night. We have collected all your votes, and we have made a list with the 20 most popular songs from all our shows so far. And now it is the time for the final draft!
On the last 2 shows of 2012 we will play these songs (among many others of course), and you will have to mark these songs with a point scale from 1 to10. Then we will do the proper calculations, and we will announce Prog & Roll's Top - 10 songs for 2012.
Well, I hope you understood the whole project. If not, we will explain it again at the time of the show.
So don't forget: On Sunday 23rd, at 20.00GMT (22.00 Greek time) you can listen to our radio show here: http://www.justincaseradio.com/
I hope to see you there.
Thank you in advance! :)

The End of the world? HA!

Well, I hope I will be able to finish this post before the world will be destroyed! :P
There had been many theories about the world destruction through the ages, but this one must be one of the most silly ones in my opinion.
I'm not gonna sit down and spend time explaining why, cause we all can die any moment now!
So, there is gonna be none alive to read it! :P
(Except the ones that are already gathered in these 2 tinny villages in France and Turkey).
And I'm not sure if any of them is reading my blog!
Without further delay, here is a song for you my friends.
Specially dedicated on today's world destruction... :)

          

THE HOBBIT: An Unexpected Journey...

As I wrote in my previous post I have spend the last days in Athens.
One of the things I had in mind to do was to go and watch The Hobbit on the cinemas.
Despite my not very positive point of view, there was no way of missing it!
A couple of months ago I wrote a post named "Concerning Hobbit", and I wrote about my surprise when I learned that P. Jackson decided to make 3 movies on that book.
Anyway, without expecting anything that would amaze me I went to see it. The 3D version of course.
And here is my opinion:
Peter Jackson did some very impressive work (as usual), and the fans of fantasy & action movies will love it! I'm not sure about the fans of Tolkien's books though. What we saw was an action movie based on Middle Earth. As for the book; well, we saw some parts of it.
The whole first movie is about 2 hours and 50 minutes, and the parts that are taken from the book are not over an hour! Which means that almost over an hour and a half is P. Jackson's stuff.
That in some cases is good, (the first part of the movie for example), but many others are totally unnecessary. This first movie ends when the fellowship sees the Lonely Mountains from a distance.
In the book that means that very few things are happening so far. But in the movie...
They kill hundreds of Orcs, Goblins, and every other walking creature. To be honest, that thing bothered me a lot. I agree on adding a few things for the sake of the movie, but this time they took it too far! When I went out of the cinema I was very disappointed, but after thinking about it for sometime I realised that I knew it from the start.
It's not a bad movie, it is a very good one actually, but it's not The Hobbit! (The one that Tolkien wrote). It is another version of it, with too many special effects, too much action, and the result is surely very impressive!
For the ones that haven't watched it yet, I suggest that you do, but have these things in mind...
And here is the trailer from this first movie...

                                                     

One Week in Athens..

Hello everybody!
As you noticed I haven't posted anything in the last two weeks.
That's because I did a fast trip to my hometown, Athens Greece.
I had many things to deal with, many friends to visit, and in general to blow some steam.
These days passed very fast, and I wasn't able to see all those I wanted to.
Well, next time maybe.
I want to say that I was very happy to see all those friendly faces that I've missed, and I apologize to those I wasn't able to see. I want to thank all of you that helped me in any way you could, and I promise to see you again as soon as possible!
As for the blog, it will slowly slowly return to its normal rhythm.
Starting from today, I will start posting again the usual stuff.
Thanks again, and see you soon!

TV Series: SHERLOCK

                                      SHERLOCK (Seasons 1 & 2)

This series is a BBC production and that is something that- speaking for myself - adds  an extra plus on every TV Series. (Or movies).

To be honest, I never thought that I would sit down and watch this. And why? Only because of the length of the episodes. Imagine that every episode could easily be a stand-alone movie. Watching this, is like watching many movies of Sherlock Holmes one after the other. But finally I found the courage to give it a try.

  Season 1 consists of 3+1 episodes, and each one of them is almost 1.5 hours long. Ouch! (The ‘+1’ is the pilot but it is the same story as the first episode so I wouldnt recommend watching it). The set up is very modern, and that is a very odd feeling. But only for the start. Once you get used to it, it is very enjoyable actually. Forget what you have seen or read so far. This Sherlock is a very modern one, that solves crimes in today’s London. And the big success of these series is exactly that: They managed to mingle the modern life with the story without losing the essence of the original. An that -I think- is a very difficult thing to do.

Season 1 starts with how Sherlock met Dr.Watson, (who just came back from the war in Afganistan), and how they are starting to work together. The 1st season consists of 3 episodes, and every one has a different story and a different plot. As I said before, is like 3 different movies. This will change on season 2 though. Because in the episodes of Season 2, except for the main story on each episode, there is one extra story that lies behind as a sequence. This is a very interesting twist, and gives more suspense to the series.

The 2 main characters here are being portrayed perfectly  by Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock Holmes) and Martin Freeman (Dr.John Watson), and they manage to excell these two characters from a new perspective.  

Another interesting point is the humour that has been used, but in very good doses. Not too much, not too few. It just makes the series more enjoyable to watch, without making them silly.

   Closing this, I have to say that if you are the kind of person who enjoys good mystery crime-solving movies, and you don’t have any problem with the long episodes, then this series is made for you! As for the ones who got a problem with the length of the episodes, I suggest to give it a try. I did it as well, and I surely enjoyed it! 

Here you can watch one of the trailers available...

                             

                                                 

Last Night's Radio Show...

Hello all! :)
As I wrote a couple of days ago, last night we had one more 'Prog & Roll' Radio show. This time we had a special tribute to the songs that were inspired from the work of J.R.R Tolkien.
To be honest, I really enjoyed last nights show. There were enough people online, the chatbox had a lot of fun at some points, and in general I believe it was a very nice radio show.
As for the songs and the things we did and said, I hope that people had some good time. It seemed like it though. :)
I want to thank you all for joining us last night, and together we spend 2 beautiful hours. :)
Here is the playlist from last night:

 1st HOUR: HAGGARD: Hijo de la Luna / VIA OBSCURA: Traum / INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE: Pulse / MARS VOLTA: Widow / PORCUPINE TREE: Shesmovedon / ARENA: Never ending nights / ASIA MINOR: Boundless / CRESSIDA: Summer weekend of a Lifetime / P.HAMMILL: Happy  / FISH: The Company / TREES: Soldiers Three / JETHRO TULL: Songs from the wood / STEELEYE SPAN: Alison Gross 
2nd HOUR: TRIBUTE TO J.R.R. TOLKIEN: Intro with Tolkien  reading the poem Namarie / NIGHTWISH: Elvenpath / AINUR: The Fall of Gondolin / MOSTLY AUTUMN: Helm’s Deep / BROCELIANDE: Galadriel’s Lament / BLIND GUARDIAN: Thorn / ANYONE’S DAUGHTER: Moria / GENESIS: Stagnation / TRADER HORNE: 3 Rings for Elven Kings / AN. LENNOX: Into the West.

THE PROGRESSIVE ROCK ENCYCLOPEDIA: C Part.2

                                                CAN

‘Can’ are probably one of the most known bands of the music idiom called ‘Krautrock’.

The beginning of this bizarre band can be traced back in 1968,when Irmin Schmidt returned  to Germany (Cologne) after a trip in New York. There he had spend some time with many avant-garde musicians, and there it was that the idea of a German avant-garde band came to his mind.

Upon his return he formed a band with the music teacher Holger Czukay and the American composer/flautist David Johnson. Soon a couple more members were added, and ‘Inner Space’  were all set. (That was their first name). Later they changed the band’s name to ‘The Can’, and finally just ‘Can’. At this very early point David Johnson quits the band and he’s been replaced by the American vocalist/sculptor Malcolm Mooney. During the whole 1968 they were recording many songs while they tried to find a record company. It will be 1969 when they will finally be able to release their first record with the name ‘Monster Movie’.

After the release, Malcolm Mooney quits the band and returns to USA due to the advice of his psychiatrist, that it would be very good for his mental health to get away from the chaotic music and environment of Can… His replacement will be the Japanese hippie/traveller Kenji ‘Damo’ Suzuki, which they found buskin on the sidewalk outside a cafe in Munich.

With this line-up they released ‘Soundtracks’ (1970), which was actually a compilation of  music made for films. But in the next few years Can will reach their top in creativity as a band.

First with the double record ‘Tago Mago’ (1971) but mostly with the famous ‘Ege Bamyasi’ (1972). From this last record 2 singles came out that climbed on the German Top-40 singles charts. ‘Vitamin C’ and ‘Spoon’. The next year they released the more ambient-style ‘Future Days’ (1973), and after this album Suzuki quits the band,he got married with his German girlfriend, and he becomes a Jehovah’s Witness.

   From this point and on, Can changed their music to a more ambient style and mostly instrumental.

They released a few more records before they split up in 1979. Since then, every few years some of the members are gathering, performing a few concerts only to split up again. Their mere record at this period was released in 1989 under the name ‘Rite Time’.

In the following video you can listen to the song "Vitamin C"