Any Crack The Sky fans here?

[psilocyberguy]

Followed John & Co since Day 1, they are from my backyard. The first iteration of this band was the sharpest all around, IMHO.

Let me say first, every time I had the luxury of talking with them (which was at every show attended), was nice. The band had a great family following (the band’s family, that is), nicest people on the planet, for sure. The band guys are all very cool cats and they enjoyed talking about music stuff and answered every question, especially the off-the-wall time signatures. I always felt they secretly hated 4/4, LOL. I tried every trick in the book to be their FOH guy but never got the opportunity.

“Something’s wrong with the Moon, my friends.”

In fairness, my interest waned after White Music and awakened again for From the Greenhouse and then fell right off the table. To me, the song writing and consequently the band, made an unexpected left turn and I never caught up. As much as I appreciated those early efforts, the original fire petered out. Sorry this is a generic paragraph however, none of you want to read one of my 4 page screeds of why I feel this way.

Didn’t know they were planning a release, thank you for the scoop. I will give this a listen (and prolly buy it no matter what, like I did for most of their material anyway) and as usual, have unreasonable levels of expectation. They’ve been a solid sector of my music milieu for 45 years give or take. Fingers crossed.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

^^ I pretty much feel the same as you, but stopped after Safety in Numbers. The new track sounds like somewhat of a return to form. I'm very much intrigued by it!

[Gravedigger]

Safety Redux was an interesting sort of fallure. I like some of it, but prefer very much the original, which has never been released on CD in its complete form (the 2-on-1 with Animal Notes misses one track).

Which track is missing?

[Iluvatar]

Yeah, CTS were becoming quite active, especially after 1998's Cut.
Personally I don't think John Palumbo and co. never have beaten their first 3 albums, but I've got plenty I enjoy, like From The Greenhouse, Dog City and The Sale, while I've got a dear relation with Photoflamingo.
Safety Redux was an interesting sort of fallure. I like some of it, but prefer very much the original, which has never been released on CD in its complete form (the 2-on-1 with Animal Notes misses one track).

Here's a list of mostly all of their albums (at least the ones I have):

Crack The Sky (1975)
Animal Notes (1976)
WBAB-FM Radio Broadcast - Live (1976)
Safety In Numbers (1978)
Live Sky (1978)
White Music (1980)
Photoflamingo (1981)
The End (1983)
World In Motion 1 (1983)
Raw (1987)
From The Greenhouse (1989)
Dog City (1990)
Cut (1998)
Live : Recher Theatre 06.19.99 (2000)
Ghost (2001)
Dogs From Japan (2003)
Alive And Kickin’ Ass (2006)
Safety In Numbers : 21st Century Redux (2007)
The Sale (2007)
Machine (2010)
Ostrich (2012)
The Beauty Of Nothing (2015)
Ice (2015)
Living In Reverse (2018)
Crackology (2020)
Tribes (2021)

Compilation: The Best Of The Rest (And Then Some) (1999)

DVD: All Access (2009) - Yes, Palumbo thinks it's strange CTS are considered progressive rock; from his point of view I can understand it, but when you consider prog as a style where everything's possible, I'd say: prog on!

Thank you sir!
Copied the albums down – thanks!

Repaying the gift:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Ubk0NqzyY



(oh btw? The live DVD was called “All Access”. And yeh, Joe said “And they call us PROG”)
Frankly? I ain’t got no issue with that. They weren’t prog or Jazz Fusion – they were mixin’ it up.
There are too many bands that are branded as Prog. It’s a real dang gone shame. Makes me sad…
“
Tom Stephenson (10 bucks say the picture won’t cut & paste in – the hell with it!)
190 subscribers
"Is that....Prog?" “

Safety in Numbers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMFBnNsbato



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG7VzhTueKQ






Imho? Crack deserves to be called Prog as much as Magma does. Which is? Not at all! My Imho…






“Something is wrong from the moon”
“Rise up children. Wise up!!”

Peace...

[interbellum]

Safety Redux was an interesting sort of fallure. I like some of it, but prefer very much the original, which has never been released on CD in its complete form (the 2-on-1 with Animal Notes misses one track).

Which track is missing?

Well, it's not a 10-minutes song, so it could have easily fitted on the 2-on-1 (which clocks at 73'42"). It's Prelude To Safety In Numbers, the closing track from side 1, clocking 1'15".... It's a instrumental that is typical for more or less concept-albums, featuring the theme of the title-track.

[Iluvatar]

That's disappointing to hear that the 2-in-1 set is missing "Prelude". Crud! I loved "Prelude". Well, at least I got most of the other songs back. Mebbe some day, there will be a re-issue of early CTS.

Heck! It's happened before! Do you know how many years it took to get Rare Earth's double Live album re-released? Try about 23 years. (Celebrate/Hey Big Brother)

[interbellum]

That's disappointing to hear that the 2-in-1 set is missing "Prelude". Crud! I loved "Prelude". Well, at least I got most of the other songs back. Mebbe some day, there will be a re-issue of early CTS.

The debut-album and White Music were re-released by the original label, Lifesong and probably still available through http://www.americanoriginalscds.com/lifesong.htm

Re: Prelude - Strange the track also was missing on Redux, while there were tracks on that one that weren't on the original.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Palumbo looks ill in recent videos. He barely plays guitar at all. Is there something wrong with him? He apparently still writes most of their music, although the other players, principally Witkowski, flesh it out and prog it up.

[Iluvatar]

The debut-album and White Music were re-released by the original label, Lifesong and probably still available through http://www.americanoriginalscds.com/lifesong.htm

Re: Prelude - Strange the track also was missing on Redux, while there were tracks on that one that weren't on the original.

I have completed listening to the 2-on-1 of CTS. So good to hear these gentlemen again! Much better than Redux. Thanks interbellum for the pointers. Want to get 3 more + the live DVD in July/August. Thanks for your help.

Is CTS tight or what? I flipped when I heard this again the other night (I had forgotten it!)

CTS: Flashlight:


Here is another guy that reminds me of CTS (and vice versa):

Is this tight?
Jeff Beck: Led Boots, w/ Jan Hammer (from Mahavishnu):
(do you know that when he went solo, his 1st genre was funk?!!!!!)
JB Live:
(the drummer may be playing a double bass drum like Portnoy?)


Some history: (and paying back the favor)
(Remember, Nils Lofgren hailed out of Silver Spring, MD)
Nils: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPt8HiElI2k
(watched him do a flip on a trampoline @ Hammerjacks, but he was young then! He did gymnastics when he was young. The album is only so-so.)

Later. Last post is due out momentarily. (If they let me - I won't be taking prisoners - neither will they. Tant pis...)

[miamiscot]

Enjoying the new album way more than The Beauty Of Nothing or Living In Reverse.

"You call me lib-tard/I call you Walmart." Lyric of the year? I think not. Still a solid record.

[Firth]

Palumbo looks ill in recent videos. He barely plays guitar at all. Is there something wrong with him? He apparently still writes most of their music, although the other players, principally Witkowski, flesh it out and prog it up.

I saw a virtual CTS show this year and I was surprised at how well he looked and sounded. A local station 100.7 the Bay in Bmore played the fourth album Photoflamingo which was the first with Carey Ziegler on bass. Carey has his own cover band (Expensive Hobby) that used to cover CTS excellently, but put the songs aside for another local cover band (Dave DeMarco’s) to play since Dave plays bass for CTS shows which are frequently here in the Bmore area.

[interbellum]

The new album Tribes has been in the player a couple of times now. It's a typical CtS-album, which means: lots of twin-guitars, sharp lyrics (Palumbo wrote the lyrics in 2019, but although the situation in the US changed they are still topical, because he doesn't really choose sides), functional keyboards and a great rhythm-duo. Especially former Oblivion Sun-bassist Dave DeMarco impressed me with his solistic playing. The production is very good (not too loud this time). There's a new version of the title-track of Palumbo's solo-album Blowing Up Detroit, while the fresh lovers in Boom Boom "would listen all day to "comfortably numb"....

B.t.w. in July the band will release a new compilation-album, this time with songs CtS considers to be "forgotten" or overlooked a bit by the fans. It seems a download only: https://crackthesky.com/937-2/

The album was eventually released on CD too, though just in a simple cardboard sleeve.
https://crackthesky.com/new-album-be...racks-out-now/
https://www.discogs.com/release/1962...een-The-Cracks