On musical influences: Roy Wood, one of the Greats (and Supertramp too)
Another important question (besides the "what's
in it for you" one, regarding Open Source) is the "what
are your biggest musical influences" one. I guess it is somewhat
more common to ask this question from actual musicians, so I have not
had a chance to answer this question in detail so far.
But never
fear: I now choose to partially and pre-emptively answer this question,
here and now.
Since the full list of notable influences would get rather long, so we
can start by filtering out most of irrelevant ear sore.
Sample query
like this will get us started:
SELECT * FROM all_available WHERE time_period BETWEEN late-60s and mid-70s AND genre in (pop, rock)
That is pretty broad and will still give us lots of irrelevant crap (and perhaps filter couple of big ones, like GnR and AC/DC -- notable if not fatal loss). But it does reduce the range a bit, and within this scope, here are 2 recent delightful discoveries (and purchases) of mine:
- Roy Wood's (see here too) first (and best?) solo album: Boulder
- Crisis? What crisis? by Supertramp
Both Roy & Supertramp have been my favorites for quite a while: Roy originally due to being the genius behind The Move (and also big part of ELO's first one; Jeff's one of the Greats too). And Supertramp is such a show-off group of technical perfectionists that "Breakfast in America" (their most widely-known and sold album) CD is pretty much worn off by now too.
Regarding Boulder: it is sad that its release was delayed by so much that its sales were much weaker: had it been released in -69, it might have been in top-10, at least in UK. But by -73, soundscape had change quite a bit and I suspect sales were tepid. But the record itself is a delightful and goofy venture: totally enjoyable even now. And it is strange how a song like "Miss Clarke and the Computer" sounds less dated than most similar takes from early 80s (including ELO's "Time" -- great record, rather contrived lyrics tho, but I guess that is trademark ELO too -- but I digress). I don't know if Boulder is actually my all-time favorite by Roy: that might actually be from The Move, their first or last album. Singles like "Omnibus", "Wild Tiger Woman", "Fire Brigade", "Brontosaurus", "No Time" are off the hook, and list just goes on and on. But Boulder is a very good album at any rate, even if not a hit collection.
And then "the Crisis" (hey, maybe they were referring to Mike Oldfield's Crises? Nah, that wasn't quite yet released -- yet another very good record there, released a few years afer this one). Well: it only took 2 listenings to find out that I really like the record. As of yet, I still slightly prefer "the Breakfast". But that might change. First 5 songs are very close to perfect, in their own class of very polished rock, including surprisingly good lyrics. They really might be the only contemporary group to be considered similar to Steely Dan (not surprisingly, I like Dans too -- albeit only having their 2-CD collection).
Anyhoo: thought I'd share this. More to come, over time. Groove on!
