The PA Happy Birthday Thread

Frans Keylard joined our proggy throng in June 2006 and hung around for 8 years, and posted just the 5 times. He celebrates his 54th birthday in Kent, Washington in the glorious Home of the Brave today. Kent is part of the Seattle metropolitan area in that Pacific washed area of Yankeeland. Those of you who follow Lurgy News will no doubt be utterly relieved that this fine place wears its masks because it cares, which is undoubtedly better for the residents than not being bothered, I suppose. It is also an extraordinarily Greta-friendly town, given that its website details not just two mini-recycling events in May, but also a TeamUp2CleanUp for the town’s annual spring clean. Brooms to the ready, chaps! City of Kent | Home 

Frans used to present a prog rock podcast, namely The Rogue’s Gallery. He describes himself these days as a “recovering prog DJ”, and the podcast is no longer live, although he does maintain a SadBook page still, which you can view here https://www.facebook.com/groups/41904173340/ he also has a small collection of stuff on BandyCramp, including an album I really must buy, namely Rick Armstrong’s work fransk's collection | Bandcamp His prog radio site The Dividing Line is no longer extant, sadly, but Frans does still do some producing on the West Coast.

These days, Frans is “a data-driven marketer who relentlessly finds ways to get more customers for a product, and how to keep them. He owns real-estate at the intersection of where marketing creativity and quantitative data meet, and always seeks more effective ways to achieve revenue goals”. All this, and more, can be viewed at his LinkdEstate page Frans Keylard - Senior Director of Insights and Optimization - Reflektion | LinkedIn For those of who who are desperate to contact a digital experience agency obsessed with getting results, and why indeed would you not be, then get yourselves over to this lot quick before prog pent up demand overloads the site Digital Customer Experience Agency | R2integrated

So! We wish a very happy birthday to our dear brother! Get back to the prog experience, and ditch that customer journey baloney, sir!

Elsewhere in Proggerland, we celebrate the 36th birthday of Ozzy_Tom, a Prog Reviewer in these parts. Have a great day, Tomasz!

Also, it is SC Trotsky’s 48th birthday in Malaysia today, although he is hopefully not celebrating near any ice picks! Happy birthday, Martin! 

Today’s departed hero to be installed into our hallowed halls was a wee bairn when he registered in January 2012, staying for 11 months, but owing to his tender years was obviously far too in awe of the assembled prog masses to utter even a syllable in our den.

genesissinceseven celebrates his 23rd birthday today, which means that he was a mere 13 years old when he joined us, bless him. So, just who is Griffin Tripp, and how has he matured into a young man, from boy to yoof?

Griffin did not register an occupation when he joined, child labour having been outlawed in Americaland some decades ago, although rumour did have it that Mr Trumpalot was in favour of cracking the whip to get the ne’er do wells of modern yoofdom out to do a spot of manual work. He gave his interests as gaming, music, and history.

Our departed hero hails from Mechanicsburg in Pennsylvania, which sounds as if it should be a motor capital of the esteemed place where sucking diesel is a full time passion, not just a soundbite on a popular tv cop show (last episode tonight. Mr Laz is SO excited). Let us consider this prior to discussing our lost brother. Well, it is a borough in Cumberland County, so probably founded by lost brethren of the hairy arse variety. It was a settlement of mechanics who made and repaired Conestoga wagons back in the day. In what must be a relief to residents of this fine upstanding town, its website declares that Mechanicsburg is a “fine place to live”. Having said that, it lists more rules on criteria to have your rubbish collected by those fine chaps at Penn Waste than we have for acceptance into a sub-genre on PA https://www.mechanicsburgborough.org/ If you should be thinking of relocating, the town offers exciting opportunities to become a school crossing guard or a park security officer, although fans of Messrs Gary Glitter and Jimmy Saville need not apply.

So, just what is our lovely hero up to these days? Well, extremely satisfyingly for a post on a forum dedicated to music, he is a musician! Yep. He practices 2-3 times per week, so a wee bit of a slacker there, but is available to gig 2-3 nights per week, although anyone considering hiring Griffin will have to lend him your drums, as he seems to have misplaced his, bless Griffin Tripp - Musician in Mechanicsburg PA - BandMix.com This site not only features a rather lovely photo of our boy wonder, but also in the music section some serious Genesis tracks, so kudos here. His TweetyPie page also provides us with a clue as to his maturing development. He declares himself proudly Jewish, as opposed to the embarrassed variety, an Anti-Tankie left libertarian, which given the office of Uncle Joe Stalin over there would appear to be a contradiction in terms, and CompSci.

Now, I have no idea whatsoever what “anti-tankie” and CompSci are, not being of such tender years. Well for the first, I should have done, because a tankie is a pejorative term to describe those members of The Communist Party of Great Britain (still going, although split into about 30 factions as we speak) who defended the Soviet use of tanks to crush the popular revolt in Hungary in the 50’s - well, he did say he was into history! CompSci is, I am afraid, nothing more exciting than Computer Science, but a really good nerdy subject for an upstanding commie to be into. https://twitter.com/griffintripp1 

And, here is the biggy. Your introduction to Griffin’s music https://soundcloud.com/griffin-tripp-5009851/following I have taken a listen to his cover of Me and Sarah Jane, one of my favourite latter day Genesis tracks, and I think it is really good in a charming way, and that is not meant to be sarcastic or patronising. His voice is not the strongest (there is a nice female vocal at the end, though), but his basic musicianship is really not all that bad. Good on him, because I rather wish I wish I had the guts to do this. It usually takes me about five or six pints to get up to a microphone at the local boozer karaoke! There are piles more covers on here, so please do add to his titanic eight followers.

It is, by the way, awarded 5.5 stars on The PABT ratings system.

So! We wish a very happy birthday to our departed brother, Griffin! Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep those wagons rolling. Keep those wagons rolling, Griffin!

Easily one of my favourite subjects to date!

Elsewhere in Proggerland, no current collabs to report. Mind you, you have all had more than enough excitement for one day. 

Mitsubachi joined our symphonic throng in July 2006, and hung around on and off until 2015, and in that nine plus years only ever posted the once. Yep, a single solitary, extraordinarily lonely wee post. Given that our hero resides in the Land of the Hairy Arse, you would naturally be a little surprised that he was kept so busy up there so as to not fulfil his PA posting duties.

Marc Carlton, for it is he, is 42 years old today. In October 2008, he made his only post to inform the assembled masses the rather exciting news that his opus, “Reflex Arc”, had been re-released, and this drew a very appreciative comment from a Prog Reviewer, Mr The Rain Man http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=52628

On that post, you will find a link to his Prog Temple page, but here it is for completeness MARC CARLTON discography and reviews As you can see, he has been rather prolific over the years, although the assembled throng have not really got stuck in aside from two collabs, Mr Rain Man and the legendary Easy Living, with one other chap who also liked the music, and that is it.

Marc’s website is called The Madrigal Project, and you can eyeball it here The Madrigal Project - Marc Carlton Music Works On this, our departed brother informs us that he is influenced by some classic stars of prog and those titans of video game soundtracks, Messrs Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda, and Hitoshi Sakimoto.

As with many other musicians, Marc has his own BandCramp page, and here you can listen to, and purchase, his wares Music | Marc Carlton

So! To the music! Degrees of Freedom got a five star review from our glorious collab, Mr Dustin Hoffman, so let us take a listen. One of the tracks on this, Interlocutor, is dedicated to a certain Mr Chris Squire, and is a nice little attempt to channel the great man’s oeuvre onto this piece of work. There is an epic ten minutes plus track, the intriguingly titled Pesmerga Finds Uber, and this is where the gaming influence comes in. Pesmerga is a terrifying looking chappy from Suikoden, and Marc’s forum name is a member of a honey bee sect from another game. I haven’t posted links to these, because they are fully of buggy wuggies, and made my iPad go bonkers. This is an excellent track by the way, and would certainly appeal to any fans of that prodigy of Mr Beardy Branson living in The West Indies these days.

So! A rating! Well, I am afraid that it is not a masterpiece to the PABT critical lugholes. It is, though, pretty good, and would attract a 3.5 star rating if we had such a creature on PA, so 7 stars in the PABT hallowed halls. Good stuff, not quite enough to rattle the monetary timbers of excellence, but most certainly worthy of more attention than it has had prior to this induction post. Go on! Give it a listen!

Happy birthday sir! Make sure you wear your mask when you get in your Uber!

Elsewhere, no present collab news to report to you. 

Fil joined our aural orgasmic throng in April 2009, and hung about for only three months, and he came here with a specific purpose in mind, which we will come to shortly.

Alexander Perfilye celebrates his 40th birthday today in that den of iniquity, Moscow. Very helpfully, one of Vlad’s minions has hacked into the city’s website, and translated it all into Anglespeak, and here you can learn all about The Digital Space platform winning in a category of that tremendously exciting networking event, The Move Realty Awards, and familiarise yourself with the law there regarding taking illicit substances (hint. Don’t) The official portal of the Moscow Mayor and Moscow Government

When he joined our knobby crew, Alexander wanted to publicise to the music loving masses the work of one-man band Adaen and his sooper dooper album Dancing Metropolis Burial, although it is somewhat unclear to me if this is a reference to the usual Russian practices when dealing with those brave souls who decide to speak out against the superhero Vlad. Here is the thread, which did generate a little bit of interest amongst the faithful http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=57323 Is it any good? Well, the link on that thread expired years ago, but the band do have quite a web presence, and it has morphed into a three-piece post metal outfit. Here are our hairy heroes on SadBook ADAEN - Home | Facebook and here is their ElasticBand site Music | Adaen You can listen to the album Alexander came here to promote, and our hero played some additional guitars and bass. I am listening as I write this to Sounds of Running Trains, and pretty impressive stuff it is too. You might want to give Harvest a listen too. In fact, fill your boots with more output, because it is pretty good.

So, a call here to the heroic hairy headbangers in our Prog Metal Team. Get this lot on the site! 

Our departed brother has been pretty prolific over the years. Here is his bio Alexander Perfilyev - Moscow, Russia | about.me Any of you recording artists out there in the frozen Muscovite wastelands wanting to have your work sound better, well get on over here toute suite Alexander Perfilyev - Remote Mixing & Mastering - Moscow | SoundBetter 

Alexander has piles of entries on Discogs Alexander Perfilyev | Discography | Discogs Why don’t we take a listen to a track from 2020 Our Alexander twirled the knobs on, namely the gloriously named Sasha Mashin* with Happy Synapse 

https://youtu.be/kMeg7VJuD_I hey, groovy jazzy stuff, man! And we also get to see our dear brother in the flesh! By God, don’t tell me that you don’t get your 10 roubles worth on this thread!

So! We wish a very happy birthday to our departed brother! Don’t smoke anything naughty - Vlad will have you in choky with that ever so nice dissident on the news!

Elsewhere in Proggerland, well today is about as big as it gets in birthdayland. For we wish a very happy 52nd birthday to one of our glorious admin leaders, DamoXt7942. Keishiro really is a wonderful chap, and one of the nicest I have had the pleasure of communicating with. Happy birthday sir!

Also, Casartelli, a senior member hereabouts, celebrates his 40th birthday today in Tulipland. Happy birthday sir! 

The Switch Blade joined our starstruck throng in August 2009 and hung about for three months before realising that discussions about Brain Salad Surgery were perhaps somewhat microbial in the overall scheme of things.

Earl (Patrick) Bellinger celebrates his 31st birthday today. When he registered, he hailed from Oswego, which is a city in the Land of the Free, in New York State to be precise. However, this is not where our dear friend is celebrating his special day. These days, he stargazes in Aarhus, Denmark, a place so special that those Nutty Boys from Camden, London, wrote a song all about it. Yes! Take a look see https://youtu.be/KwIe_sjKeAY Here is this exalted and historic city’s website, where you will be extremely excited to learn all about the ambitious and strategic approach towards the Green Transition! Whatever that means, I think that Greta would, at least, be thrilled! English

Earl has a brain which makes the massed throng of most of us on PA seem pretty puny, really, for he is a Stellar Astrophysicist. He researches pulsating stars, which are a real part of the cosmos, as opposed to a celestial object getting somewhat overexcited at the sexy white dwarf next to it. Here is his website, which shows that our hero has done a great deal of research, and undertaken education all the way from Oswego to Bloomington via Brazil Earl Patrick Bellinger, Ph.D. 

He is now a SAC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stellar Astrophysics Centre in Denmark, and here is that exalted body’s site Stellar Astrophysics Centre Personally, I was most sad to read of Delphini One’s fiery end, but comforted in the knowledge that it enhanced our perception of the universe around us. Not a bad epitaph, I suppose. Here is our hero’s site at The Max Planck Institute, where he mentions his music interests, composition, and playing guitar and drums http://cs.oswego.edu/~ebelling/vitae.pdf

Our hero is still very much active on the music front, as a peek at his LastFrequencyModulator site confirms, with a fair old eclectic mix theswitchblade’s Music Profile | Last.fm There is actually a bunch of hairy headbangers in Denmark named Switchblade, but our departed brother does not appear to be part of the setup. Have a listen to them rocking anyway https://youtu.be/33I5fUjMdJY Music to headbang to whilst pulsating with the stars, methinks! Our hero has a very interesting Twittypie site, as one would expect from such an academic https://twitter.com/earlbellinger His SadderThanTheStars site also shows our brother with an axe in hand https://www.facebook.com/earlbellinger And, extremely excitingly, a little bit of further research showed us precisely what the stellar masses have been missing in terms of Earl’s recording career. Here is his Soundcloud thingy ▶ Lord Kronos by Earl Bellinger Really not that bad, actually. Clever sod!

So! We wish our Astro brother a very happy birthday! Don’t crick your neck whilst gazing tonight, sir!

Elsewhere in Proggerland, today is an extremely exciting day for collab news.

A most esteemed senior member, Rednight celebrates his 63rd birthday in Mars Vista this evening. Happy birthday, Matthew!

An extraordinarily heavy SC, NecronCommander also celebrates his special day. Kevin is 29 today, and is a part of that wonderful hairy Prog Metal Team on PA.

A very busy day on PABT. Thank the lord I have liquid hoppy refreshment to hand to get me through all this!