Round 1 Rome Bracket: Dream Theater v. Caravan

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: I'd vote for Celine Dionne before DT. Sorry guys, but I can't stand them.

This.

Caravan

getting late Roger.

let me touch on one thing. I'll check the meat of your post tomorrow.

It isn't a matter of validity or veneration. Nor of consensus.  I sure as hell haven't made any grand statements that it was.  Simply my own humble opinion as a listener. However it is a common critique of the band I have often read, and through several tortured attempts to 'get' this band.. I completely agree with.

Simple matter as that really.


Edited by micky - December 11 2014 at 23:06

hahha.  I love my wife Roger and find NO faults with her.

I don't sleep with Keith, nor Greg, and haven't had a chance to seduce Carl yet (I missed my chance damnit) hahah.  I like ELP but I wouldn't say I love them. I love Wilie Nelson, the Airplane and the Allmans.  ELP is definitely more a fun band for me to listen to, and even more fun to defend their tattered reputation for they were .. really.. simply the most important and influential prog group of the 1970's. Today just a victim of changing tastes and being the biggest target.. and the easiest target for their excesses. Musically and otherwise.

Seriously though. ELP's faults are well known and acknowledged.  Showboating does not mean a band is.. well.. not a band. If ELP was a guitar fronted band people would have likely gone apesh*t over it.  Face it.. people would rather listen to guitarsts showing off than keyboardists.  Rock is full of showboating.  It definitely isn't found only in prog.  However again that isn't really the point.

What the comment critique of DT is.. and one that definitely does not apply to ELP.. is that their music sounds like 5 instrumentalists doing their own thing and to hell with the music. Sorry, anyone who really thinks that about ELP knows jack sh*t IMO and gets files in the every a****le has an opinion category. Not surprisingly. With the easy target that ELP is.. that is one of the few things NOT mentioned as a common criticism of ELP.  Most are the typical parroting criticisms that have gained a life of the their own 'Love beach' sucks...  Persian carpets.. totting orchestras on the road, too serious, too pretentious...yadda yadda yadda. However if you note though, very little of ELP's criticism is musically based. Any fool can tell that was a band that killed it, with albums still beloved 40 years later (ummm.. let's talk about DT in 40 years and see who remembers them) Say what you will about ELP... they wrote some extremely good music, catchy songs, and functioned well for a good number of years as a band.  Somehow harnessing all those talents... and those egos for about 5 years longer than likely anyone really figured they would have.

Or, it may be that you feel it doesn't stick because you love ELP and those albums work for you.   Let's just take a band of extremely talented musicians with almost zero showboating - Gentle Giant.  That's a BAND - members performing their respective roles to put together great songs.  Some listeners may not like the very STYLE of Gentle Giant's music but without solos of any great length, a criticism that they were only showing off would hardly stand.  I selected Gentle Giant because the common disdainful argument against Genesis and Floyd is their musicians simply weren't talented enough to show off.  That can hardly be said of GG, unless in some alternative universe it is possible to play several instruments without much musical talent.

My comment about the 3 drummers was tongue in cheek, but I couldn't help but revisit Spinal Tap with the amplifier that goes up to 11.  "But my band is better because it has three drummers."  "But our drummer is really good.  Maybe even better than your three".  "Umm.  Three is better than one." 

Or something along those lines. 

I've not heard KC's 3 drummer line-up but I imagine that they do sound really good, so I was just joshing you a bit on that.

In regards to Ruins, I've heard a handful of songs, but not enough to be an expert on them, nor the song that you are referring to. 

What do you need 3 separate drummers for when you have a drummer that can play as much as 3 drummers?   


If adding classical to rock music was genuinely innovative aka ELP, why is adding classical music to heavy metal music not genuinely innovative?

One might say that ELP are a past itch.  Or passe itch if you prefer.  Dream Theater did for metal what the classic bands did for rock.  I suppose that they took 21st Century Schizoid Man and ran with it whilst every other band in between left that alone.  Otherwise I'm not sure what makes them pastiche.  Metal bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden may have been heading in that direction but DT was pretty much the first to take it there or at least to find its way to the public audience.

For the record, I am not an ELP hater.  I like ELP quite a bit, as a matter of fact.  I'm just comparing them to Dream Theater as into the criticisms that are thrown at both bands.

Rednight wrote: rushfan4 wrote: Heck. They don't even have a band name.  They are named after three individuals.  That doesn't sound like a real band to me.  It sounds like a law firm  And "Rush" sounds like an untimely bout of diarrhea.