Whilst pondering Wotan's brilliant Space Station post earlier today and what would be the best SWORD version here's some monumentally cosmic rock to help massage your synapses. Courtesy of You Tube, here's the first bit of 2112 by RUSH, Canadian rockers par excellence who straddled the Seventies rock scene like a long-haired colossus.
2112 is the story of a malconted young man living in a dystopian society a thousand years in the future run by the all-powerful Priests of Syrynx. As befits a 1970's rock concept album, the young hero chances upon a guitar thrown away by someone years ago. Music had been banned for centuries but our young 'guitarist' wants to share his miraculous find with the elder Priests and the people. The Priests have other ideas and destroy the instrument. Trapped by a tyrannical Federation and distraught with grief our hero takes his own life at the very moment an interstellar war breaks out promising the perhaps the changes he so craved. You can read more about the album's roots in objectivist philosophy on Wikepedia. I also like to think that the same space-infused world view from the late Sixties and into Seventies that gave us SWORD also gave us concept rock like 2112. Get that air-geetar out!
Have to say I have no interest in progrock, yet enjoy Spacex and the like. For me electronic music seems more relevant to SF than guitar-based rock.
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Quite right too Sean. Each to their own. I know that Prog Rock isn't everyone's cup of tea. In many ways though electronic music was born out of rock with the likes of Deep Purple and Hawkwind as they popularised the use of mellotrons, moogs and synthesizers. I suppose the culmination of these prog techno bands were Yes [whom I adore], Genesis [so so], Tangerine Dream [not bad], ELP [not keen on them at all] and Mike Oldfield [brilliant]. I suppose the mantle of electro-music next shifted to the likes of Roxy Music and especially Kraftwerk, from which the whole techno/industrial music scene sprang. It's all subjective though isn't it - Mike Oldfield's instrumental opus Tubular Bells will forever be associated with the movie Exorcist [so electro-rock meets Horror] and Marching Band playing the Thunderbirds theme will always give me goosepimples. It will be interesting to see what music will be popular in ten years - maybe those space-age sounding bleeps and pings as predicted by so many sci-fi movies and series?
ReplyDeleteREally fantastic!
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