Four weeks from tonight a long-held ambition of mine will come to fruition when I and a handful of great local musicians and colleagues will take a stab at instrumental versions of several classics that will be familiar to most around these parts. King Crimson's Starless, Discipline, and an adaptation of ELP's Tarkus suite are on the program, along with a few other odds and ends. The instrumentation is stick, guitar, drums and saxophone, with the rendition of Discipline being performed by stick, drums, and two marimbas. For me (the stickist and instigator/arranger of the project) it's been a challenge in the extreme; one of my goals in setting out on this endeavor was to force myself to make the transition from being a stick owner to an actual stick player. Not sure how far along that journey I've come, but I can say the other gents in the group are totally crushing it, buying in to the concept and taking care of business in a big way. My hope is that it feels musically successful enough when all is said and done to encourage further exploration of live performance of classic progressive rock literature in my area, which is really not happening.
So - just looking for a little PE affirmation here; I know I'm nuts to try this, but dang it's been fun to work on. And as a little aside, I used my MASSIVE image editing chops to put together the logo featuring the official mascot of The Other Other Operation, which might engender a chuckle from one or two people here as well:
SpinyTarkus.jpg
Anyway, thanks for reading, and if all goes well, I may have some audio/video to share in a few weeks.
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