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!