BOX OF CRAYONS
What
do you get when you take about 5 keyboards 3 guitars, 3 bass guitars, and God
knows how many different percussion tools? You get a Box of Crayons album!
That’s
a rather unknown American band, that I have decided to put in this encyclopedia
mostly because of their weird line up and their effort to play something
unique.
As
you probably understood already, the keyboards is the main ingredient in this
band's music, that in some cases is
‘flirting’ with the sound of Marillion and Camel (among others). And on the top of that, the
singer's voice reminds in some parts the voice of Peter Hammill.
Hmmm
they don’t sound so unique finally eh? And they are not. They have made a mix
of many styles of the ‘70’s, they have added many percussions and many
keyboards, and they tried to make something that looked original, but they
failed.
That’s
why maybe they managed to release only one studio album (Colorblind Chameleon –
1997), that it featured no less than 17 (!) musicians. (Except the keyboards
and the percussions you can hear many other ‘unusual’ instruments as well, such
as clarinets, trumpets etc)…
It
was a band that mixed too many ingredients together and failed to make a proper
cake…
BRAINTICKET
They were formed in 1968 and although they
considered a German band they were actually rather Pan-European, having members
from Germany Belgium and Switzerland.
With the passing years it became obvious that
Brainticket was actually the personal project of the very talented Belgian
Keyboard/flute player Joel Vandroogenbroeck.
They released their first album under the name
Cottonwoolhill in 1971. An extremely experimental & psychedelic album,
followed by ‘Psychonaut’ one year later. Psychonaut was more pleasant and kind
of ethnic for its era.
On 1974 they released ‘Celestial Ocean’. The
music style of this record is more Krautrock than the previous 2 albums, filled
with heavy keyboards sounds, and a bizarre
concept-based Egyptian Mythology as the main theme.
That was the last album they recorded before
disbanding a few months later.
In the early ‘80’s they re-appeared, released
2 more albums (Adventure-1980 and Voyage-1982), before dissapearing again.
One more album was released in 2000 (Alchemic
Universe).
Latest news is that J.Vandroogenbroeck formed
the band again with a new line-up, and since 2011 they are touring together
with Nektar. On 17th of August 2011 they performed live for the very first
time in the USA, in a club in New York.
BRUFORD BILL
William Scott ‘Bill’ Bruford was born on the 17th of May 1949 in Kent
England.
He is a percussionist, composer, producer, and
a record label owner.
But above all, he is one of the best drummers
in Rock music.
He worked with great musicians and very big
bands in his career, and participated in many records as guest musician.
And he found it almost immediately. A few
months after quitting Yes he joined King Crimson, a band he was interested for a
long time. The comparison of these two bands was described very clearly by him
a few years later:
"In Yes, there was an endless debate
about should it be F natural in the bass with G sharp on top by the organ. In
King Crimson...you were just supposed to know"
With King Crimson they released some of the
most influential records in the Progressive Rock scene, before Robert Fripp
decided to disband them in 1974.
After King Crimson he worked as a session drummer and he saw his
name in the credits of many records in the 2 following years. Just to name a few: Chris Squirel (ex-Yes): Fish out of Water
(1975), Steve Howe (ex-Yes): Beginnings (1975),
Pavlov’s Dog: At the sound of the bell (1976) are some of these records.
Between 1976-1977 he joined Genesis and toured with them
for about 6 months. From this tour 2 live albums came out: ‘Seconds out’ and
‘Three sides live’. In the meantime Phil Collins was trying to adapt himself as
the new frontman of Genesis…
The same year he formed his own band named
‘Bruford’ and decided to explore more Jazz/fusion forms, leaving aside Rock for
a while.
From 1977 until 1981 he worked again as
a session drummer, until Robert Fripp decided to re-unite King Crimson . In 1981
he joined King Crimson for the second time, and together they released 3 more
records before they disbanded again in 1984.
In 1985 he was approached by ex-Led Zeppelin’s
guitarist Jimmy Page, in order to join him and Paul Rogers in the new band they
were trying to set up. After a few rehearsals B.Bruford decided that he didn’t
like the style of the band and left.
From 1985 and up, he participated in numberless
projects, recordings, live shows etc, with many different (but always top
class) musicians.
In 1990 the readers of ‘Modern Drummer’
magazine voted for him to enter into the magazine’s Hall of Fame…
Bill Buford’s discography (as a member of a
band or guest musician) must exceed 60 records in total…
In the following videos you can see him together with Genesis performing live the songs "Carpet Crawlers" and the second part of "Supper's Ready'. Best moment when Phil Collins joins him on drums and they play together...
