Open your mind Maaaannnnnnn

I have recently introduced various people to the work of Yes, Neu, King Crimson and Can....



Two of those four bands, Can and Neu, are now accepted as being cool despite sharing the same amount of facial hair and velvet loon panted leg room as the other two, in fact there could not be anymore uncool acts in history than Yes and KC in the eyes of the musical taste makers, and yet by sneakily playing people tracks blind or to people who have no knowledge of a particular period of rock history I have turned hop hop fans, wedge haired indie tykes and suspicious girlfriends onto all manner of embarrassing shit....

Try it! While doing the washing up put on The Clap by Yes, as if it was just on the radio, hum along and when your WAG/shades wearing flatmate or flute playing cat goes "Hmmmm this is nice" grab them, cuff them and yell "Ha it's by YES and I am making a citizen's unwitting prog consumption arrest" and then make them admit they only bought the Ting Tings CD because it was all over the tube on huge posters which said "Buy the Ting Tings you thoughtless dull eyed slaves of capitalism, see the bright colours, see the attractive girl and BUYYYY"

What gets my goat is that certain styles are swept under the carpet while other are venerated when lets face it how much of punk was actually good??? the Clash, The Pistols...ohh hmmm ohhh YES THAT'S IT!!

How much of grunge? Nirvana...there that's its I'm afraid...

60's Rock? Hendrix and Zappa...I also like the Loving Spoonful but I will admit that's a personal tic like scratching my ear when nervous.

Heavy metal? Sabbath and Zep.

Yeah OK so I am being a bit sweeping but cool people are always telling me how ALL prog sucks or all jazz is boring and how all dance music sounds the same and frankly that is balls.

So open you mind and don't worry about the labels, unless of course its an orange skull and cross bones on a bottle of bleach that says DEATH under it..

Maningrey