NEARFest Day 2

NEARFest Day 2
Zoellner Arts Center
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA
Sunday, June 24, 2007 11:00AM
Section Orchestra, Row A, Seat 33

When NEARFest is in Bethlehem, we never stay at the official band hotel. It sells out too quickly. Usually we stay at one of the cheaper motels by the highway. Last time, we stayed at a really nice place, the Hotel Bethlehem, right on Main Street. Unfortunately, it was sold out for the weekend, but we treated ourselves to a nice breakfast there on Sunday morning.

This time, we stayed at the same hotel as Linda and Jeff, but we barely saw them there. We did bump into them before we left for our fancy breakfast. Linda's first words were that we made the right decision to skip Hawkwind. She hated them! She made this "chugga chugga" guitar sound and said they sounded like a biker band all night. During the day, I polled a few people. Several hated them passionately, and a few liked them.

The first band on Sunday was Indukti from Poland. They were labeled as "melodic metal", with a distinctive mid-70s King Crimson influence. In fact, they sounded like a little bit of Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part I played over and over again. On every song. I could only stay for three songs before I had enough. They need more dynamics and more variation. And melody. The violin helped with the sound color - otherwise I would have left immediately. It was a nice day, not too hot yet, so I sat outside on the grass and read for a while.

After Indukti, I went to look for Roy. I found Tina and her friend Mark in the Indukti autograph line. We talked for a bit. Tina has been bringing her daughters to some festivals and other concerts. We joked about "The seven phases in the life of a hard-core prog fan" article in the festival program written by Rob LaDuca. Stage 2, fandom seemed to be written about me. "Your love of King Crimson is topped only by your obsession with Yes... Why do you need 55 different recordings of Roundabout?" Rob walked by, and I asked him about it. Nope, not anyone in particular, just that there are a lot of Yes fans. Roy's made it all the way to the final stage, Phase 7: Maturity.

I had high hopes for the next band. Back at my very first prog festival, I was familiar with all the big prog bands and a few local ones. My introduction to the Italian symphonic style was the legendary concert by Finisterre at ProgDay '97. (OK, legendary to an extremely small number of people, but we all remember it fondly.) Finisterre's bass player and singer Fabio Zuffanti is also a member of a number of different projects: one is one of my favorite recent albums Hostsonaten's Springsong and another is the band playing this year at Nearfest - La Maschera di Cera.

La Maschera are a full-blown Italian symph band, very influenced by the classics. Lots of analog synthesizers with a warm feeling, lots of melodies, lots of atmosphere. Not as pretty-sounding as Finisterre. They also had a singer with a great stage presence. I didn't like his voice all that much, but he sang with so much energy that I got into his performance anyway. Fabio would have been a better vocalist, but he stuck to playing bass.

I thoroughly enjoyed their performance, but a lot of people compared them to Finisterre. Someone asked if we were all jaded now - why weren't we blown away like we were in 1997? What did Finisterre have that La Maschera didn't? Was it just the newness of seeing a young band playing like this? The covers they threw in? How excited and charming the musicians were? I think Finisterre had better songs, even though La Maschera sounded great. Linda couldn't get into them because of the vocalist.

We got our time with Peter and Dan this day. The solo spotlight today was Robert Rich, an ambient musician. I have no interest in sitting in a dark theater watching ambient performed live. So we had a nice relaxed talk, just like I wanted the day before. They had a table in the same vending room as Roger Dean. Dan isn't really into this scene and wasn't a fan of Roger's, but told us "That Roger guy bought me lunch today." The two ate together during the last band. Lucky!

The next band was getting a lot of buzz. Pure Reason Revolution. They were described as Pink Floyd with Beach Boys harmonies. Sounded promising! I think they suffered from a poor mix - the vocals were low in the mix and indistinguishable. The rest of the sound, well, everything sounded bassy and no one was playing a melody line. Also, the band had recently lost a few members, so they played to some prerecorded sounds - drum machines and other samples. Maybe the vocals would have carried the melodies, if they stood out better. I left partway through. I heard later on from Jeff that they sounded very different from the albums. NEARFest had a lot of problems with sound at the larger venue in Trenton a few years back, I'm sad it's still the case in Bethlehem.

I bumped into Chris Richards and Tina's friend Mark in the upstairs lobby. Chris hated Pure Reason Revolution and lumped them in with 90's alternative rock. We all chatted for a while and Stella Vander from Magma walked by. Chris just beamed and called out "Bonjour!" and said he was looking forward to their set tonight. Stella thanked him. She looks so normal, it doesn't fit with Magma's live image.

Linda, Jeff, Roy, and I went out for dinner. I prefer small groups like this, where we can all have a single conversation with each other. They found an Italian place near the hotel. Our waiter was a hoot. Roy asked for a description of Italian Wedding soup, and the waiter struggled to say "It's like chicken noodle soup, with meatballs, but without the chicken and without the noodles." I asked what the vegetable of the day was, and he replied "I can't remember what it's called, but it's like a cake." Alright, it turned out to be a veggie quiche. The chicken noodle soup without the chicken and noodles just cracked me up. The waiter got into it too, and asked me how my cake was later on.

And then it was time for the last band, Magma. They've been around for 30 some years and are best known for recording a string of concept albums. The albums tell a scifi story about the planet Kobaia in a made-up language called Kobian. The music, while very repetitive, constantly builds in tension. The vocals are done by 4 singers and sound more like a chant. Everything is very dramatic and theatrical, even how the singers move about on stage. I never listen to their music at home, but I love seeing them live. It all sounds weird, but I get sucked in by the intensity of it. It's like opera.

The first time I saw Magma was at a club in Chicago. We stood in front of the vocalists. They were all dressed in black and wearing the Magma logo necklaces. They look so dour in publicity photos. But they all looked so middle aged and normal and happy doing these chants. An alternate universe Polyphonic Spree maybe? I liked it a lot better than I thought I would.

The next time I saw them was at NEARFest four years ago. The vocals were low in the mix. We were sitting six rows back. It lost something. But Chris is such a big Magma fan - the seats next to us were empty so I ran back and got him to join us. He still thanks us about that.

This time, I was worried about the sound. I was worried about sitting versus standing up packed at the Chicago club. And when we got back to the auditorium and saw how the stage was set up, I was worried our far left seats wouldn't give us a full view. Thankfully, Magma is a polarizing band and lots of people don't like them. There were some empty seats in the orchestra pit in front of us. We moved to the third row. I would have hated to sit so close in with everyone all weekend, but being this close to the stage and picking up the energy of the people around us really helped with Magma.

They are the real deal. Stage presence, professionalism, enthusiasm, good use of sound, dynamics, memorable music. They were captivating the whole time they were on stage. So many bands recently play with low frequencies, everything sounds bassy, and I have trouble discerning the individual sounds in the mix. It all sounds like a low rumbly mush to me. I notice even bands in the prog genre doing this. Not Magma. When the singers weren't chanting away, there was a keyboard high in the mix doing a solo or playing a melody line. I can't sing along to it and I can't dance to it, but it never lost my interest.

The first song was album-length, around 45 minutes long. We gave it a long standing ovation. I told Roy they were already my favorite band of the fest. Their second song was an unreleased song they started writing in the 70s but only recently started playing live. Those two songs were the main set. They came back out and did two encores, covering another half hour. By the end, I decided Magma was the best band of the whole weekend.

We chatted with a couple people on our way out of the theater and had breakfast with Linda the next day before driving back to Philly and catching our flight home. There weren't many traditional prog big name bands playing, polarizing headliners, and no true crowd favorite. But even though I walked out on three bands and skipped another, I was glad I came to the fest this year. It's always good to see my friends and I got to sample a lot of bands. Some were enjoyable and some were truly great.

NEARFest Day 1

NEARfest Day 1
Zoellner Arts Center
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA
Saturday, June 23, 2007 11:00AM
Section Orchestra, Row A, Seat 33
Patron seats: $240

NEARFest - the North East Art Rock Festival - is one of the most successful and professionally run progressive rock festivals in North America. It was started by my friend Rob LaDuca. He was a volunteer organizer for ProgDay one year, and he thought of all the ways he could improve the stability of a prog festival. He moved it indoors, to a more densely populated area of the country, booked better known bands, and promoted it better. There have been nine NEARFests, and all nine sold out. Some in a theater that held 2000.

That said, NEARFest is not my favorite festival, with so much going on it can be an endurance test. It scaled down a few years ago, and we stayed home for a couple years. I was now over the burnt-out factor and ready for the fest!

The bands on the first day were IZZ, Nebelnest, Bob Drake, Magenta, and Hawkwind. We were skipping Hawkwind in order to catch the Adrian Belew show in nearby Sellersville. Roger Dean, Paul Whitehead, and Annie Haslam were also there to sell artwork and chat with fans.

I needed to chat with some fans too. There are so many people I know at NEARFest, sometimes it feels like all I can do is say hi to a few people, not really build a relationship with them. Over the course of the weekend, we got to spend time with Linda, Jeff, Peter and his brother Dan, Mark from one of my Yeslists, Chris, Tina, and Krista.

We'd seen IZZ a couple of times, Roy more than me. IZZ played ProgDay on our wedding day, so they always remind me of that happy day. I like them well enough. They have two female backing vocalists who add a lot to their sound - I'd like to see them as co-leads and used more often. It gives more color to their sound. They're a traditional song based band.

During one of the breaks, we talked to Roger Dean. He had a bunch of new posters he was selling. Roy asked him to sign the live Asia CD we bought the night before. Roger confirmed that he did some additional artwork for the cover, but they made it the wrong color. He lamented about how hard it used to be to do a layout, and now "people who make coffee" can change his artwork. Roger also complemented Roy on his tshirt - the Big Electric Bear from the 2002 Bears tour. He thought it was a dog, and when I said it was a bear, he said "Even better!" He's always a good person to talk to, very polite, but very honest about what he sees.

I also talked with Annie Haslam, the former lead singer of Renaissance. I love that band and got to know Annie a bit because she lived near me and did local shows a couple times a year. She's also the friend of a friend of mine. I talked to her more like an old friend than a fan to a rock star. She hadn't seen our mutual friend in a few months, so I didn't get any news on him. I also told her how much I enjoyed all those concerts in the '90s. There was always some concert to look forward to when I lived in Philly, and hers were always great.

The next band was Nebelnest. I saw them years ago at ProgDay 99, and I didn't get into them. Same here. They're not bad, but all their pieces sound so similar, they don't keep my attention. Roy looked tired, so I
suggested we skip the rest of the set and get lunch. Roy got a chance to talk to Annie Haslam, and we both talked to Krista for a little bit.

We sat down with Peter and Dan for lunch. We had some time before Magenta was going on stage. I was thinking how nice it was to sit outside and have time to catch up with people. Damn it, I forgot about Bob Drake's set. We left quickly and made it back into the theater. Drake's spot was a "solo spotlight" that ran about a half hour. We were able to catch the last 20 minutes.

Bob Drake is a singer/songwriter/guitarist/producer. He's played with 5uu's and done some solo work that I like. His music and performance had a sense of humor. It kept me interested and entertained through unfamiliar material. His drummer was Dave Kerman, who has played at a few prog festivals. Instead of going offstage for songs without drums, he was wearing a robe and showercap, and brought out a pillow to nap when he wasn't needed. More twisted pop than "prog", but I enjoyed his set a lot.

The next band was the one that made me think "I need to go to NEARFest to see them". Magenta. I think they've played at Baja Prog and ROSfest previously and got great reviews about their live performance. We have their first two albums, and they sound great. They're another song-based symphonic band, with strong female vocals. The performance left me, I don't know, underwhelmed. Roy described it as their rhythm section getting into this groove that was hypnotic. Too much of the same sound, too little dynamics. I felt like I was watching it on TV rather than attending a live performance. Everyone else seemed to like it, so what do I know?

After Magenta, we left quickly and drove to Sellersville for the highlight of the day and the performance I was most looking forward to all weekend, the Adrian Belew Power Trio.