SamSungDay 51 (Fear Of A Blank Planet) +
52 (In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3)
For the final Sam Sung Day, I wanted to have a crack at something different. If you’ve seen me perform live, or watched heaps of these videos, you’ll note my favour of chords, varying rhythm and dynamics; these two numbers called for a little more effort in the guitar and memory departments - and by George, I nearly got the bastards!
Porcupine Tree entered my world at the hands of Brain Masterer R.D. and they have served their purpose over and over again. I’ve only really ever gotten into their 2002 and 2007 records but so much so that we used to que up one song at parties and treat it as a call to arms. ‘Trains’ used to play for a couple of minutes, giving the dudes enough time to realise it was on and then assemble to try our hands at the clapping polyrhythms in the last third of the song. I’m sure, totally smashed, we nailed this - every time.
‘Fear Of A Blank Planet’ I first performed in a band called ‘Space Panther’ before the 2000s reached its teen years and then in a pre-Nerfherder set duo with Celestial Matthew (circa 2017). It’s been on my hit list to get it somewhere close to where I’m happy to perform it live and it’s just about there. ‘Fear Of A Blank Planet’ is one of the more complicated songs I try in the privacy of my music room walls and always enjoy - but then choke-in-the-fingers in front of people. It’s been great to practice the headspace to get around that. It’s a great song, as Wilson’s stuff tends to be GREAT. I’m still yet to find a way to structure ‘Trains’ in a way to do it on my onesies that makes sense!
The final SamSung really flexed my noggin! Coheed and Cambria were a band that I could frisbee out the window when this album was first played to me… I was in a mood (for about 4 years). Seemingly most of the non-heavy music-lover world had a certain opinion they used to announce to us from moving vehicles or at school. For whatever reason, we were inclined to take that data and make sure that it didn’t reflect us; in other words, on several occasions we scared some folk who had called us “Emo” and be damned if I was sitting in a car listening to something that sounded like the stuff that I didn’t really know what it sounded like because I wouldn’t listen to it as it fitted the time and elemental mold of ‘the enemy’.
Since being sat down by Dodgy Brother Datsyuk and regaled with the tales that take place over their albums I quickly changed my mind. I’m sure the cloudy rooms and beyond wall cacophony that used to contain Coheed helped warm me up to it also. ‘In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3’ challenged my playing from the second riff when I started learning it around 8 years ago. For the SamSung finale, I thought I’d try to get down those illusive riffs and spit it out. Someone who helped me with this Coheed sing-song is my Brother, Mr. Christian Broome, who taught me a new tuning he uses to play one of my songs that just makes some of those pointy vocal parts a bit smoother. I hope I can keep practicing it for my own amusement and then one day just do it willy-nilly. It’s such an enjoyable song - and what a tale! You need a fan of their comic series to sit with you and tell you the narrative of these albums, or read them, it’s a whole other experience!
Having seen both of these bands live, I can assure you they are worth getting into! If you’re a fan of either or both of these artists, I hope you enjoy the “grandpa's guitars” versions. These two tunes have been in the works longer than most in my catalogue (probably only second to the odd System tune or the ever forbidden ‘Stairway To Heaven’) and it was a bloody hurdle to get them down; hell, finishing this year of Sungdays has been a hurdle or two too! I think the trick to playing “tricky” stuff has been slowly learning to release the white-knuckle-way that I do things. I haven’t nailed this method by any means but I can feel it getting easier to perform under the mantra: “strictness is for practice; not giving a flying feck is for playing the game”. It feels good to be done, to have ticked these boxes and I very much appreciate those of you who have given your time to checking it all out.
Thank you.
xXx
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#cover #porcupinetree #coheedandcambria