Larry Hendry" <
jlarryh@...> writes:
(edited)
>While I have great respect for many great players, IMO
>Wakeman is virtually in a class by himself. I love the 6 wives CD.
Ditto on that! I also like Journey to the Center of the Earth and White Rock a lot. :)
Some of my other long-time faves:
Camel - sort of a Pink Floyd sound at times, but with more lyrical synth parts, mostly courtesy of Peter Bardens who (sadly) passed away last year. That really bummed me out. Add the occasional flute and sax parts.
Happy the Man - hard to describe... eccentric? Some of the best Minimoog playing I've heard is from Kit Watkins. VERY melodic/emotional playing, with great use of pitch bending in a style all his own. Lot's of Solina strings too. Incredible timing and inter-play between instruments and tasteful melody/harmony. Lots of odd meter and tempo changes. Sort of like a cross between Gentle Giant and Kansas, but more..."out there" than Kansas.
FM - Keys, bass, Electric Mandolin (with distortion!), and drums. Albums to get would be Blacknoise, Survelleince, and City of Fear. I think Blacknoise is available at amazon.com. Also a later release called Retrospective is nice and includes some videos that you can play in your PC. Cameron Hawkins was the keyboard player (I have the osc board from his Minimoog! :) and played bass as well. Hard to compare with another band...definitely progressive rock, with a slight jazz/rock fusion feel at times. Wild mandolin parts from Nash the Slash who still has his own solo career, and one or two (?) albums with Ben Mink (who went on to play with what's her name and film scores). Sci-fi oriented lyrics (think spaceships on a voyage to other planets). Sort of similar to Camel style Minimoog melodies.
Tomita - classical works done electronic style. :) Lots of Moog modular, Roland modular, Mellotron, and phasing effects. My favorite albums are Snowflakes are Dancing (Debussy), Pitcures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky), Firebird (Stravinsky), and Planets (Holst). Lots of wacky sounds at times and neat panning effects. Some people dislike Tomita's music beause of this, but on these albums I really dig those sounds. On later albums things did get too corny for me. Anyway, lots of really wild sounds that I can't figure out how he got even to this day. These mid-70's albums are my favorites to blast at 3am in total darkness with the exception of the dancing "hippy light" (a "Luminglas"!). Yes, I'm weird. ;) Tsk!
Andrew