I’m happy to hear any current release that prominently features prog rock flavored keys. The Hammond organ as a lead instrument has a warm place in my musical heart. Initially, I couldn’t tell whether this was an actual Hammond, the lumbering monsters that we used to have to lug around to get that percussive and …
Not being scholarly about the relative prominence of melody, harmony, rhythm and tone in music, I can only share my gut reactions to the video. My impressions, as an aging keyboard player whose tastes were forged by the circumstances of growing up as an adolescent in the ascendency of prog and classic rock, is that …
Wanting to say this video was “how I spent my summer vacation” – although it has been decades since that really applied. Spent many a summer late night working out this piece. It was a labor of love. – Steve Gans
I was having a beer with a friend of mine when I got the news of Keith Emerson’s death. There seems to have been a recent wave of rock and roll icons exiting stage left – and given all of our advancing ages – more soon to come. But hearing about the untimely demise of …
Watching this video I had two trains of thought. One was how impressive this kid is in navigating and playing his instruments, while really holding his own vocally. Some have implied that the fact that Geddy Lee sings like a 12 year old boy is one of the reasons it took Rush so long to …
Steve Gans has said “there are two kinds of music: the kind you’re introduced to as a teenager, and everything else.” Quite true. I’ve been watching musical guests on SNL for decades, from the beginning to the present, and the two most memorable for me are still performances by Elvis Costello and the Specials which …
Back in Chicago in the 1970s in my early teens my dad took my brother and I to see Oscar Peterson at the now defunct Rick’s Café Americain (one of many such named and themed Casablanca bars of the time). As a budding keyboard player, I was struck then and now, by how that guy …
Just received this lovely keyboard work from Steve Gans yesterday. I would like to call it An American in Portland, and use it as the theme, or one of the themes, of East Portland Blog. And so it shall be, says I, at least here among the electrons of East Portland Blog. But, closer to …
Kayne West’s sampling of King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man on his most recent album not withstanding, it’s generally not too hip nowadays to pay homage to the icons of early 70’s progressive rock. This brief clip is of one of my adolescent musical heroes, Keith Emerson, working out some piano parts from Emerson Lake …