No Dragons Press

Episode 16: “Hunting and Gathering”

Hey, everyone! I hope you had a great weekend!

Awesome week, awesome music.

I spent pretty much the entire weekend hunkered down working on high-level business shit and listening exclusively to Gentle Giant, so today I’m feeling a little weird, but good. (And not just because of the Gentle Giant.)

Speaking of Gentle Giant. I did manage to escape for a bit yesterday, I went over to a friend’s house when he texted me that he had found something new to listen to that he thought I might be interested in.

To tell you a little bit about my friend first, he’s got the greatest record collection in the entire world. Well, probably not, but definitely in my experience outside of actual record stores. He’s literally got a music library in this house, and of particular interest to me, of course, is that a whole lot of it is progressive rock.

So, my friend is always picking up really weird finds at record stores. Sometimes he’ll recognize someone in the liner notes and just go for it sometimes he’ll be intrigued by the artwork or the studio blurb, whatever it is, maybe it’ll be awesome, maybe it’ll be terrible, but it’ll definitely be something he wouldn’t have heard if he hadn’t just picked it up.

First of all: Gently Giant is amazing.

He knows that what I am into is very specific: early- to mid-70s progressive rock, the weirder the better. I’ve already mentioned Gentle Giant, which—I’ll try to put some stuff in the show notes.

(Guys. Check out Gentle Giant:)

He knows I like really technical playing, you know, lots of crazy time signatures, I mean Yes is one of my favorite bands, so that should tell you something.

Raven: Unreleased mid-70s album

Anyway, the record he came up with was this band called Raven. It was recorded originally in 1976, but it was never released until 2013, but it’s entirely original. I guess they recorded this album and signed a record deal and then the label went bankrupt immediately.

Original 1976 progressive rock album, unreleased until 2013. Pinch me.

So we listened to it, and it was really good! Like, really talented people, crazy high vocals, a lot of technical stuff, you know, very kind of chugging guitars, you could hear a lot of 80s. Who knows what it would’ve turned into if this would’ve gotten released at the time? What what magazines would have sad about it, or reviewers?

It’s just really interesting that they never had the chance to fit into their contemporary landscape and see where that would’ve taken them, but it’s so cool that now, in 2013 they released like 500 copies. It just blew my mind that so many bands try to capture that vintage 70s sound and here we were sitting there listening to this lost treasure that almost never saw the light of day.

All your obscure unheard prog are belong to me

It made me wonder how much more there is out there from this era that I’m just obsessed with and kind of dismayed at how there’s a finite amount of it. It also made me wonder whether every writer has old, unpublished material they’ve abandoned along the way.

I mean of course everyone has the practice stuff that shouldn’t see the light of day, but I’m talking about fully fleshed-out or even completed stories, things we maybe didn’t feel were right for the time or didn’t have our shit together enough at the time to pursue.

In any case, hold onto that stuff if you have it, and take a look every now and then. Maybe there’s something in there that the world’s been waiting for.

You look like you could use some more Gentle Giant.

Have I mentioned Emily is amazing?

So! Onto the No Dragons Press front: I met with Emily last Friday to brainstorm some ideas for the artwork over on Ascraeus Press. I don’t know if you guys realize this but the picture she draws are pretty huge. She’s got them all in this giant binder and it’s always super fun to just page through them and realize—I mean, you guys, this is episode 16. That’s drunk! And like I told Emily, without her enthusiasm and her help, I really don’t think I would be doing this.

And you guys, too—I just saw another spike in the podcast stats, and that’s just so awesome to see, thank you guys so much. You know, I don’t have the greatest outreach still, but I think more importantly, I’m still seeing that people who start with episode one tend to keep going, and I’m really encouraged by that.

So really, if you’re listening to this episode 16, I’m so happy you’re still with me. thank you.

Thanks for listening, you guys. Hey, so my studio is usually pretty good at blocking out the sound—eveywhere but the roof. And even though it was the end of October, there was a freak rainstorm in Minneapolis, so that’s what you heard a little bit of toward the end. Sorry if it was super obnoxious.

Thanks, and have a great week!

No Dragons Press

Episode 15: “Righteous Anger”

Hey guys, thanks for listening.

I don’t know if you guys saw the debate, but, I have just two quick things to say.

Be good role models.

And fucking vote.

With that out of the way, please enjoy chapter fifteen, Righteous Anger.

[AND, make sure to check out Emily’s incredible illustration for chapter fifteen. She’s always incredible, but this one is truly special—I know you’ll love it, so check it out now on Weekly Illustrated Fiction at Ascraeus Press!]

No Dragons Press Episode 14: “The Fabric of the Universe”

Show Notes for Episode 14

These are the show notes from No Dragons Press: Episode Fourteen: the Fabric of the Universe. (I start reading chapter 14 around 4 minutes in, if you want to skip.)

Hey everyone, thanks for listening!

Hanging with family is awesome, challenging, and mostly awesome.

So I went to a [family] wedding this past weekend and first of all, there is nothing like a good old-fashioned wedding dance party. You know, you get cousins and aunts and uncles and everybody all together drinking old fashioneds and dressed all pretty and you know what can possibly be better than that?

I have just a ton of cousins and it’s always so much fun to connect with them as adults, these people who—we all shared so much of our childhoods with each other and watched each other grow, and there’s people we remember as kids just a few years ago who are growing up into absolute gorgeous and wonderful little adults, and welcoming new boyfriends and girlfriends and seeing how they handle our good-natured but decidedly raucous brand of getting together for a family bash…

My family’s from a really small town and I live in Minneapolis now and I don’t see them a lot. So I’m seeing a lot of these people for the first time in many months, some of them maybe a year or two years, it was just really incredible. I just I love my family. I mean, I know that some people had it pretty rough at home, and I can’t say anything about that, but I think in general a lot of it is how you choose to look at the differences that come out when we get together.

I think it’s easy as adults to kind of separate ourselves from the people we used to be, but I feel like it’s just so important to, you know, check in on where you’re from every now and then. It can be really humbling to be faced with who you used to be and how people remember you and what you used to be like, but it’s also a great way to see you how far you’ve gone and where other people gone and just touch in and remember all the things you have in common or used to have in common, and most importantly remember how special and unique your little clan is in the world.

I think that’s really the best way to get a good humanizing look at whatever we each like to call the other side in this in these turbulent political times. So often we just live in an echo chamber of media and friends and there’s a lot of self-affirming stuff going on but there’s not a lot of honest looks at the other side

I think family in all its different facets is a way to put a human face on that again and really remember that most sides of any issue just is not a good against evil thing as far as general people go, and a lot of the really deep differences the media would like to like us to think we have are sometimes just tools of people who want us all distracted and pissed off at each other.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is always right

You know, there are good people and there’s bad people, and I think we all have a tendency to seek out those things that affirm what we want to think we know rather than honestly trying to learn. I Neil deGrasse Tyson earlier had a tweet that sums this up pretty well, I’ll make sure to find that and put it in the show notes.

Well, last week saw Addie finally getting a handle on herself after the complete weirdness of what she and her friends are dealing with, and this week we see her finally stepping up a little bit, which is cool.

And I’m really excited because they’re just starting to put together a plan for what to do next, which is always fun because nothing ever goes as planned, and I’m really looking forward to getting into the heart of what’s really going on here and what’s at stake.

That’s about all I’ve got in me—I hope you enjoy Episode 14, and thanks!

Thanks for listening, you guys. Hey, and if you haven’t checked out what Emily’s been doing in a while, make sure to check out our WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED FICTION SERIES over at ascraeuspress.com/nodragons. Thanks so much for listening!