Nearfest special on Echoes this Wednesday

Echoes is a show broadcast on various PRI stations across the country. Although they usually focus on New Age and World Music this coming Wednesday(7-13-05)they will be focusing on Nearfest and the current progressive rock scene. They will be talking to NF founders about Nearfest, band members from PFM, Le Orme, The Muffins and others and discuss the prog "rebirth." In addition to being broadcast on public radio stations Echoes is also on XM satellite radio. For more information and to find a station in your area go to www.echoes.org or www.echoes.org/stattime.html

The show with the Nearfest/prog special was delayed in my area so if you missed it tonight listen for it tomorrow(Thursday).

I heard it(obviously . )By the way what did you say in the interview? Was that you who made the comment about liking prog because of the complexity and time signiture changes?

For anyone who missed it you can download the interview on the Nearfest website(www.nearfest.com).

I'll bet your happy that they played a little snippet of ELP in there...."man alone born of stone will stamp the dust of time his hands strike the flame of his soul...."

I was glad they played the opening segment of CTTE. If ever there was a track that would throw a new age fan off balance there it is. It opens all nature sounding with birds and a stream sound then wallah...wham! There's even a section in the middle that is kind of mellow and new agey that sounds like water dripping but it's actually Wakeys keyboards.

It was a really good segment and I'm glad that some people outside of the prog "community" finally got to hear a sample of "our music"(our lives in the prog circus...lol)and realize that this kind of music never really died and that it's back eventhough you wouldn't it know it by only going by what you hear on the radio.

And you know your right. The music does make you think. It makes you think about how lame most of the other kinds of music is.  Well most rehashed and played to death pop/rock on the radio anyway.

Well it is getting better as far as women going to prog shows is concerned.  You said you didn't find it true about NF but how could you really tell which women were there because they really wanted to be and which ones were tagging along with their boyfriends/husbands? At the very first NF back in 1999 I could swear their wasn't more than 50 women there. OK there were only about 420 people there total but that's still not many. As the number of prog fans has increased so has the number of female prog fans but I would still say  that females don't make up more than 10 percent of the prog population. Trust me I wish there were more female fans into this kind of music.

threefates wrote: Yeh, it was good, but after speaking to them for over 20 minutes, its funny that the only reference they used was about the bathroom.. and the fact that I wasn't dragged there by a husband or boyfriend... Guess they were trying to get the point across that there usually aren't a lot of women at prog concerts... but I didn't find that true here.. seemed like quite a few female prog fans at this event.

Well what was the line like at the ladies room? Was it really that short? I think that's the proof but then also listen to what they are saying in there. Do they say things like "well I'm just here because my husband is into this kind of music" or do they say "wow Kenso I need to get more stuff by them."  Anyway, I think the line in the ladies room does measure how many female prog fans there are but it doesn't really measure who is there for what reason and how many of them are actually prog fans and not just tagging along with their male companions.