I Robot

[Flint]

Serious question: are there any vocals on this album? I find that vocal parts really get in the way of me digging Alan Parsons Project as much as I'd like to.

(btw: my vote for "most chill ever" is Miles Davis - In a Silent Way)

Originally Posted by Ibram

In other words, they don't listen to music from before they were born.

I was born in 1975 and I find almost the opposite to be true, in a way. Not literally though, because I love all kinds of stuff, from every era. And new, exciting things are happening all the time. But, somehow, I like what alot of bands did before I was born, after after that they sort of fizzled out, to me.

Alot of the catchy beats being re-hashed in electronica are from this pre-Flint era, but I love to go back and play them the way they were done first, by beating on actual physical objects. Now, people are even sampling themselves, writing on machines, and then going back to the instruments and playing the stuff they built out of loops of themselves! Dudes even use Boomerang samplers to play live to loops of themselves. It's a fun time to be a drummer. People understand all these different rhythmic languages because of the saturation of percussion-heavy styles, and I can whip it all out and they know what to do with it. I can blast out these super-fusion ghost-note jamborees, and people recognize how to stick to it, they don't even realize I am copping Billy Cobham, or whatever.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Flint

Serious question: are there any vocals on this album? I find that vocal parts really get in the way of me digging Alan Parsons Project as much as I'd like to.

Most AP tracks have vocals. Some do not...Pipeline, Hawkeye, Apollo, Urbania and Where's The Walrus come to mind.

[dar512]

IIRC AA is all vocals. Pyramid has a few instrumentals; "In the Lap of the Gods" is mesmerizing. But it also is mostly vocals. I don't have a problem with the vocals. On AP albums I tend to listen to them as just another instrument.

The lyrics to Pyramania are worth a listen, though. If you have any recollection of the period when some folks thought that pyramids had "special" properties, then Pyramania is worth a couple of snorts and at least one good guffaw.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by dar512

IIRC AA is all vocals.

Pipeline is from AA.

And yes, I do remeber Pyramania...a very good friend of mine was heavy into both that and Kirilian photography at the time.

And drugs. :-)

I almost gave him a coronary from laughing one extremely bemushroomed evening; he was staring out the window of a darkened bedroom in a converted stable in Buckingham PA at a Harvest Moon, then became entranced by the shadow pattern cast by the window screen across the rough wooden panelled wall...

him: "Oh, wow!" (yes we did talk like that then)
me: "What?"
him: "The moon, man...it's coming in through the screen...wow."
me: "Oh...well...step back."

It took him a minute to get it, and about twenty minutes to get over it. :-)

He had "Tales of Mystery...." and also "Turn of a Friendly Card" (on vinyl, natch)...and played them on a Rabco turnntable (belt drive, linear tracking) though a pair of Phase Linear 700s into Epi 1000 towers. Really kick-ass system for its day.

Its day being approximately the year Flint was born. ;-)