Tiles/Matthew Parmenter - October 24, 2008

I was fortunate enough to see Tiles and Matthew Parmenter play at a local bar called The Ritz last Friday.  It was a really good show.  Unfortunately, it was a pretty small crowd.  Matthew Parmenter, from Discipline, played a 30 - 45 minute acoustic guitar set.  He really is a fantastic theatrical singer.  He played a few solo songs and a few Discipline songs.  Sadly there were only 6 or 7 of us there to see him.  I did get a chance to talk with him for 10 or 15 minutes before the Tiles performance and I bought him a beer.  He was a real nice guy.  The bass player from Discipline, Mathew Kennedy, was there too so I got to speak to him some too.  I was telling Mathew Kennedy about Prog Archives and that I was a prog fan.  He started talking about Magma.  Thankfully, I have seen that name mentioned once or twice within the archives, although admittedly I am not too familiar with them.  He was telling me that him and Matthew Parmenter had gone to see Peter Hammill a couple of weeks ago when he played at the Magic Bag.  While we were talking about VDGG, Matthew Parmenter walked up.  He was immediately interested in a conversation involving Peter Hammill and VDGG. He is a huge fan of Peter Hammill and has much admiration for him as an artist.  It was really a pretty cool occurrence to have a Prog Archives type conversation in real life and even cooler that I was carrying it on with guys who are included on Prog Archives as artists. 

 

The second band was called The Pilz.  They had about 20 people that came out to see them so the crowd was a little bigger for them.  They have a female singer who goes by the name Tammy Catastrophe.  Not prog. More hard rock mixed with a little grunge and a little punk.  Possibly not a band that will appeal to much to prog fans, but you can check them out here http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=271818353 if you'd like.  The bass player had some pretty good chops.

 

Tiles came on at about 11:30 and played until just before 1:00.  Some of the Pilz fans and band members stuck around and a few other people showed up to see Tiles.  Including a guy who could definitely be a buddy of Teo, as he was wearing a Dream Theater t-shirt.  They played some similar songs from when I saw them earlier in the year at the Magic Bag, but they switched up by switching up some of the songs that they played.  Checkerboards was quite awesome.  They played songs from each of their albums.  Chris Herin is a fabulous guitarist, Jeff Whittle is a spectacular bass player, and Mark Evans is an excellent drummer.  Vocalist Paul Rarick definitely has a voice for heavy metal/hard rock, at times reminding me of James LaBrie.  In between songs, Jeff Whittle would solo on his bass while Chris Herin was changing out guitars.  These little solos were quite spectacular.  I'd definitely be excited to get a bootleg copy of this performance.  Although probably highly unlikely.  I took a couple of pictures this time, and will post them later.  I didn't take as many as with the Record Time or Magic Bag shows.  However, they had a photographer taking photos, and there was another fan taking photos who posted them on his MySpace page.  If there is any interest I can probably track them down and post links.

 

Tiles is playing another show in the Cleveland area next month, and I highly recommend going if you happen to be in the area.  There is another recent thread with more info regarding this gig.