The Prog Collective is what you\u2019d get if Alan Parsons had ADHD.<\/p>\n
An eternally rotating superaggregate of prog musicians, voices, and producers, the only constant is Yes and Asia member Billy Sherwood. Past that, it\u2019s often a roll on the dice as to who and what you get on a given Collective CD.<\/p>\n
Their latest work, Songs We Were Taught<\/i>, is a tribute to progressive, folk, and pop songs from the 1970s, and it\u2019s\u2026 interesting. It has highs and lows, and in a lot of ways it\u2019s an ambitious work with some serious flaws.<\/p>\n
The production and engineering is impeccable. Whatever else we can say about it, the sound is perfect; the songs have to rise or fall on their own merits. In that vein, we shall divide the tracks into the Weird, the Bad, and the Good. (I like ending on a positive note.)<\/p>\n
The Weird:<\/b> \u201cSummer Breeze\u201d featuring Steve Morse of Deep Purple and Roine Stolt of the Flower Kings. This is, at its heart, a simple, gentle, beautiful song\u2026 but Morse and Stolt manage to blow it up like a Macy\u2019s day balloon. It\u2019s much, much too overdubbed, overlaid, and overproduced. One should not have to hunt for a melody in a song like this. I confess to also be boggled by Jon Davison (Yes) and Geoff Downes\u2019 (Asia, The Buggles, Yes) take on \u201cSounds Of Silence.\u201d Simon and Garfunkel in waltz time. Yeah. Moving on.<\/p>\n
The Bad:<\/b> Holy shades of James Taylor, Sonja Kristina (Curved Air) is bad<\/u> on \u201cFire And Rain.\u201d Martin Barre (Jethro Tull) does what he can, but Kristina\u2019s voice not only has a fork in it, but an entire eight-piece cutlery set. It\u2019s like listening to Dame Judi Dench sing Slayer.<\/p>\n
And \u201cThe Weight,\u201d with Rod Argent (Argent, The Zombies) and Jeff \u201cSkunk\u201d Baxter (Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers), is best left on the cutting room floor as well. It\u2019s another \u201cSummer Breeze,\u201d but worse; too many fripperies, too weak a vocal.<\/p>\n
The Good<\/b>: Sherwood and David Sancious (E Street Band) knock Al Stewart\u2019s \u201cYear Of The Cat\u201d out of the park, managing to say something new on a song that\u2019s been put under the microscope for years. David Clayton-Thomas (Blood, Sweat, and Tears) and Steven Hillage (Gong) spin a mysterious, blistering take on \u201cHouse Of The Rising Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Best of all (and possibly should be in a new category, \u201cWeird\/Good\u201d)\u2014Candace Night (Blackmore\u2019s Night) and Dweezil Zappa on Carole King\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s Too Late.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, I said that.<\/p>\n
Yes, it works.<\/p>\n
No, I\u2019m not sure how.<\/p>\n
Yes, I have<\/u> taken my medication.<\/p>\n
At any rate\u2026<\/p>\n
Does Songs We Were Taught<\/i> work? Enh. Sort of yes, sort of no. There are good tracks, there are bad tracks, there are tracks that properly played could cause permanent twitching. In the end, I can\u2019t recommend it as more than something to cherry-pick a few songs from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":34661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9221],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-46516","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-prog-collective","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46516"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}