ProgStock 2018 - Saturday
For the first time ever, I attended all three days of ProgStock.
The Other John picked me up right around our agreed-upon time of 9:30 Saturday morning and, after fiddling with his gps for a few moments, he had us on our way to Rahway for a packed day of proggy goodness.
With no weekday rush hour traffic to contend with, we were at the venue by 10:30 and, with no tickets to pick up and a half hour to kill before the first act, we whiled away our time at the various dealer’s tables in the theater lobby, where it turned out the main dealer with his thousands of CDs for sale was a gentleman long known to the Other John, who’d been purchasing from him for years. I picked up a few more CDs for myself on top of the ones I’d snagged Friday night, and then it was time to go on in and take our seats.
I could tell the Other John (henceforth TOJ) was delighted when he saw our seats, knowing that he’d be seeing at least three acts well known to him from a killer vantage. First up on Saturday was Ryche Chlanda and Flying Dreams, whose drummer Jay Dittamo I’d actually once jammed with myself years ago during a studio session with Mark in our pre-Shadowmakers years. I’d known next to nothing about Ryche Chlanda, and came to learn that most people referred to him simply as “Rich” or “Richie.” He and his band were perfectly fine and entertaining, and just what was needed in an opening act … which is to say that his enjoyable set didn’t have me running out to the lobby afterwards to shell out for his CD the way Cell15 did when they kicked off Sunday’s lineup last year, but then I suspect Cell15 set the standard for opening acts at Progstock and it is perhaps unfair to compare the two.
TOJ and I then caught an early lunch at the chicken place where John E and I saw Michael Sadler’s son the night before. No sightings of celebrities or their kin this time around, so we finished up and headed back to the car for me to deposit my latest batch of CDs, then it was back to the theater to catch the day’s second act, Accordo dei Contrari. Coming all the way from Italy for one of their few U.S. appearances, this all-instrumental combo of guitar, sax, keys and drums (no bass, unheard for most rock bands in general and prog bands in particular) simply blew everyone away with their sheer virtuosity and musicality. Very jazzy, very rockin’, and uniquely its own thing … and damned if that keyboardist didn’t get some notes from his Fender Rhodes electric piano far nastier than anything I’d ever imagine that sweet-voiced instrument could produce.
The drizzly day didn’t keep us from walking around the neighborhood a bit between sets, so we killed some time that way before heading back to the theater for the third act. Along the way I spotted George Dobbs, singer and keyboardist for 3rdegree who’d impressed me so much during last year’s festival, and was able to spend a few moments chatting with him about music in general and some bassist named Joe who, it turned out, we’d both played gigs with at various times. I’d run into 3rdegree’s bassist Rob Pashman (an old friend of John E’s) the night before, so that was 2/5 of the band I got a chance to briefly hang with this weekend. Between that and my earlier encounter with Billy Spillane of Circuline between In Continuum’s and Michaek Sadler’s Friday night sets, I felt I was getting my networking share out of this year’s event!
Third on the bill was Tom Brislin and Friends, and I honestly didn’t know what to expect from them. All I really knew about Brislin was that he’d joined Yes on their 2001 tour as a fill-in keyboardist, and that he was also in a band of his own called Spiraling, but I wasn’t familiar with that latter project or any of Brislin’s solo material, so stylistically I had no idea what lay in store from his set. And I was kept waiting forever to find out since, in a harbinger of what was to come for the rest of the weekend, his setup took much longer than the allotted time on the schedule, and that would spill over into the rest of the day. When the audience was finally allowed in, I could see what had taken so long: both a grand piano and a electric keyboard setup, along with not one but two drum/percussion setups, one vast percussive array dominating and towering over the center stage area. When the band finally came out, they delivered perhaps the most eclectic and varied musical smorgasbord of the weekend, and the closest thing to an easy listening set that any of us would hear. Which is not to say that the man and his bandmates didn’t rock it in places, but Brislin clearly favors the melodic and sentimental over hard edges, endless noodling and bombast, revealing himself as a true songsmith and storytelling vocalist. And as an extra special treat, Michael Sadler even came out at one point and joined them for a rendition of Saga’s “Wind Him Up.” (The guitarist muffed the timing at one point, but it was still well worth seeing … and hearing.). A nice palate-cleanser between the dense and oft-frenetic jamming of Accordo dei Contrari and the day’s fourth act, Enchant.
Realizing how behind Brislin had put everything else, TOJ and I decided to grab dinner and walked down to a side street grill I’d spotted on our earlier foray. We arrived there only to find that it was closed, but that several other restaurants also occupied that street, so we chose one and went on in. After several mishaps including a malfunctioning tea dispenser and an ungodly wait time for our food to arrive, we wolfed it down, very worried we’d miss the start of the next act, to the point that I had TOJ go up and settle the bill while I was still wolfing down my burger and fries. It was a VERY good burger, so much so that I recommended the place to John E the following night, but the slow service verged on giving us indigestion.
As it turned out, we could have tarried over our rushed dinner for twice as long and not missed anything. Taking a page from Brislin’s book, Enchant kept us fans waiting outside the theater during their setup even longer than Brislin had, and thus was any hope of getting the day’s musical acts back on schedule torn to shreds. But when they finally came on, they delivered. I was familiar with only one of the songs they played during their set, but TOJ knew most of their music and really got into it. Incredible singer who could hold his own against almost any arena rock superstar you’d care to mention, and a band that rocked out to the maxxx. In spite of some intricacies and complexities here and there in the music, they actually came across as more of a straight hard rock band than a proggy one, which made them stand out from all the day’s other bands. And if their performance didn’t exactly have me rushing out into the lobby to shell out fifty bucks for their eight-disc boxed set, it will still have me giving them a closer look than I might have before.
Then came the longest wait of the night, for the act most worth waiting for. I’d been hearing of IQ for years, and had actually been hearing a number of their songs on my favorite progressive rock streaming radio station for the past half-decade or so, but for some reason they’d never stuck out to me. Upon hearing earlier this year that they’d be a headliner at ProgStock 2018, I hit up YouTube to more fully investigate their catalog. After a few listens I was ready to declare their latest album, 2014’s “The Road of Bones,” a friggin’ masterpiece. After watching a complete 2007 concert filmed in Holland, I was convinced they were one of the best bands currently plying the prog genre. And after watching their 1999 live performance of their double-disc concept album “Subterranea” in its entirety, I was kicking myself for not having gotten into these guys 20 years ago. Yes, they’re THAT good.
So, IQ was scheduled to go on at 9:00 … which we all knew wasn’t happening, given how late the two previous acts had run. We’d been hoping for something closer to 9:30 … so when it got to be 10:00 and we were all still standing out on the sidewalk waiting to be let into the venue, we were getting a little antsy. TOJ, who’d driven down from the Connecticut border for ProgStock and would have that equally long ride back home ahead of him, had already voiced his intention to skip the meet-and-greet with the band following their set, and now it looked like that would have been necessary in any event. At last we were all let in … and still the band and their techs were onstage, fiddling with equipment and running tests and doing all the last-minute fine-tuning that usually takes place behind the curtain and out of public view. TOJ was very worried that some technical issue was causing the delay and might in fact lead to the cancellation of their performance. I joked to him that hey, even if they never played a note, we could still claim in all honesty that we’d “seen” IQ, since everyone but the drummer wandered on and off stage during the wait after we were seated.
But at last - around 10:20pm - IQ was announced, and they hit the stage and delivered nearly two hours of the best prog anyone could ask for. “Darkest Hour.” “From the Outside In.” “Fading Senses.” “The Road of Bones.” “Farther Away.” “Leap of Faith.” “Frequency.” “Closer.” “Until the End.” “Failsafe.” And an encore of “Out of Nowhere” and “Widow’s Peak.” Tons of epic tunes, with most residing in the 7-10 minute range, and one topping out at around 14 minutes. The band was in top form, especially singer Peter Nicholls, who’s been on eight of their ten studio albums, and who gave us a taste of his delicious theatrics during “Road of Bones,” transforming into the white-gloved, sunglasses-wearing, self-strangling serial killer whose story the lyrics tell. With an outstanding light show and image projections to perfectly accompany their playing, I felt for the first time at ProgStock that I was seeing an actual concert, and not just one set at a festival. IQ had been one of TOJ’s “bucket list” artists, a band he’d wanted to see for years but never did due to how infrequently they play the U.S. Now he can cross that off his list, while I look forward to the next time they return to the States, hoping it won’t be too many more years, and that it will be someplace close enough for me to attend. Because as outstanding as their performance was this year, I could name twice as many songs of theirs I’d still kill to see live. So, hopefully someday … but, if it turns out this will be my one and only time catching IQ live, at least I’ll be able to say, like TOJ, that I have seen them.
Even with skipping the meet-and-greet, I didn’t get home until nearly 2:00am, and I don’t even want to think how long it took TOJ to make the rest of that drive back to his place. But, unlike him, I didn’t have the next day off to recover, for ProgStock 2018 had one day left to go, and I had to be up early the next morning to do it all over again!