Prog Steady

The BBC Concert Orchestra - Tubular Bells (excerpts) - Mike Oldfield

For the first time in a long time, I took a month off from this bootleg buffoonery, using moving to the Oregon Coast -- into a house that sits atop a mountain, surrounded by rivers and forests and an ocean -- as an excuse to dial it down into Summer Vacation mode for a spell. Believe me, if you could see this place, you'd be ready to go offline forever too.

So now we're more or less settled in, my Soulseek ports are forwarded, and it's time to resume soundtracking the endless summer.

And what better way to unpause than a much-anticipated concert from just two weeks ago! I don't have to wait for an anniversary if it's something hot off the presses such as this little Prog-umentary, do I?

So yeah! It's BBC Proms season across the proverbial pond, with shows going from July to September as they do every summer, and as always featuring a must-see performance or three.

Perhaps the most talked-about one this year was this program they called Fanfare for the Common Man, essentially a 2 1/2 hour love letter to the once-maligned (but now, in this post-categorization era, seemingly redeemed) Progressive Rock genre.

Prog Rock. Maybe the most misunderstood, misnamed and misjudged area of all the music of our lifetimes.

I say misnamed because I find myself in full agreement with Brian Eno -- someone who ought to know -- when he says that Prog, with its gestures and structures often drawn as they are from 19th Century Classical music, isn't Progressive at all a lot of the time. And instead often faces backwards to Romantic sentiment, and not ahead to future progress unknown.

Of course there are tremendous exceptions. But you often find that the bands and artists (for example: King Crimson, Henry Cow, or more recently, Radiohead) that seem most forward-facing -- and therefore Progressive in the dictionary sense of the term -- reject the term outright, and can react with visceral derision when branded thusly in the media.

Of course these designations -- in the 21st Century, where the desktop computer contains whole recording studios that would have cost $200/hour to rent back when Prog was born at the turn of the 1960s to the 1970s -- mean less than nothing.

The creative energy that informed those times -- and led people to construct triple concept albums about blind pinball wizards and sidelong epics about the psychological disintegration of lighthouse keepers -- is just a regular, anything-goes aspect of things today, and no one bats an eye at music once deemed Not Rock And Roll Enough by the tastemaker cogniscenti the kids now call "influencers".

I've heard Rick Wakeman (who'd also know) say that Progressive Rock came about primarily as a function of the then-current hyper-evolution of recording technology, where musicians who in 1968 were dealing with, at best, four track gear found themselves twiddling dreamily at the faders of 16- and 24-track mixing desks just a couple of years later. What painter could resist going whole-hog into the redefinition of the canvas itself, you know? In the case of Prog's leading lights like Yes and ELP, some would say voyaging completely up their own, pretentious, 19th Century-aping asses, but to each his own. There's room in our world for both The Sex Pistols and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, isn't there?

Me? I'm just a lawn mower. And you can tell me by the way I've loved Progressive Rock since I was 15 years old, and a friend brought over some records one summer day that catapulted me, in 15/4 time, into the cosmic and colossal world of Prog. That day I was introduced to the irreproduceably distinctive, theatrical environments invented by Peter Gabriel-era Genesis. And to the cavernous, car-crash compositions of King Crimson, perhaps the most influential group of all time, after The Beatles, on other musicians of all stripes. And it didn't take long to get to the darkly creviced, scream-sung psychodramas of Peter Hammill's Van der Graaf Generator, or the grandeur of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, so beloved as the main theme to The Exorcist, either.

It's a genre of the music of our age that forms a substantial segment of who I am, and likely will always be a journey that never ends for me until the last crescendo of the last Mellotron chord fades away into the last, ferocious 21/8 coda. And Supper is Ready for this High Vibration to go on.

So, yes. Or Yes. Let's Promenade us up some Prog, shall we?

Various Artists

The BBC Concert Orchestra

Prog Rock: A Fanfare for the Common Man

BBC Proms

Royal Albert Hall

London, UK

7.18.2026

01 BBC introduction by Elizabeth Alker

02 Fanfare for the Common Man - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

03 Stuart Maconie announcement

04 Living In the Past - Jethro Tull

05 Out-Bloody-Rageous, pt. 1 - Soft Machine

06 Stuart Maconie announcement

07 I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) - Genesis

08 Northern Lights - Renaissance

09 Nights In White Satin - Moody Blues

10 Stuart Maconie announcement

11 Refugees - Van der Graaf Generator

12 And You and I - Yes

13 Tubular Bells pt. 1 (excerpts w. Matt Berry narration) – Mike Oldfield

14 BBC announcement

15 One White Duck - Jethro Tull (1992 recording)

16 BBC conversation with David Baddiel, pt. 1

17 BBC Radio 3 ID

18 Hocus Pocus - Focus (1970 recording)

19 BBC conversation with David Baddiel, pt. 2

20 More Fool Me - Genesis (1973 recording)

21 BBC announcement incl. Guy Garvey & Robert Ames interviews

22 Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, pt. 2 - Emerson, Lake & Palmer (BBC Concert Orchestra w/1973 Greg Lake vocals)

23 Stuart Maconie announcement

24 Sylvia - Focus/Komfo - Osibisa/Peaches en Regalia - Frank Zappa

25 21st Century Schizoid Man/I Talk to the Wind/In the Court of the Crimson King - King Crimson

26 Guy Garvey announcement

27 Entangled - Genesis

28 On Reflection - Gentle Giant

29 Stuart Maconie announcement

30 Maker of Islands - Incredible String Band

31 The Great Gig In the Sky - Pink Floyd

32 Stuart Maconie announcement

33 Crime of the Century - Supertramp

34 Stuart Maconie announcement

35 The Great Gate of Kiev - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

36 BBC closing announcement

Total time: 2:27:36

disc break goes after Track 20

The BBC Concert Orchestra

Robert Ames, conductor

with

The Staves (Jessica & Camilla Staveley-Taylor) - vocals

Guy Garvey - vocals

Jane Weaver - vocals

Gruff Rhys - vocals

Peter Hammill - vocals

Vanessa Haynes - vocals

Carl Palmer - drums

Stuart Maconie - BBC presenter

Elizabeth Alker - BBC 3 announcer

24/48 DVD Audio from an HD FLAC file posted to the BBC 3 online channel site, 

apparently only for the first 24 hours after the broadcast of the show on July 24th

spectral analysis is lossless past 22 kHz, making this equivalent to a high end preFM source

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited and remastered by EN, July 2026
965 MB FLAC/direct link

A special side shoutout to the Soulseek user @80sBoy, who helped me track down the pre-broadcast version of this thing, which apparently was posted via some sort of high-def audio player on the BBC3 site for a minute last week, as far as I can determine. Maybe it's still there? I don't think so, but I have no idea because the BBC online stuff is only available in Britain, and a VPN is such a hassle for a techno-troglodyte such as I.

I did my best to paginate separate tracks for a lot of the talking parts -- in case you wanna cut those out when you hear this thing -- but I left them intact as part of it to preserve the documentary feel of the overall presentation. I will be back in August with more crazy white people in costume (yes, those guys), but I thought I would make my return here by making this performance available, in well-manicured audio form, for anyone that was interested in what it sounded like earlier in July when the Proms went Prog.--J.

Pride the Wave: Queer of the Behearer

Matmos - Rainbow Flag

I am closing out June with one of my patented, wild and weird instant compilations, where I take a band, a theme and Sound Forge 11 and challenge myself to put together a pretty representative career overview in just under 2 hours, start to finish.

These guys met in San Francisco in the 1990s, fell in love, and over the last 30 years have established themselves as pivotal Electronic artists with a child-like style all their own.

Their music ranges from the innocent and chiming to the pounding and hammering, with lots of aleatoric and fertile territory in between.

From what I can tell they are still a couple and still make music, having just released a new record last year.

Anyway there isn't too much to say about them, except that I've kind of had a crush on the one with the glasses since they, uh, came out in the '90s. Ok, that was bad... let's just cut the chatter and spin the platter, and boogie down to Gay Pride 2026 with the music of Drew Daniel and Martin C. Schmidt, collectively known in tandem as Matmos.

Matmos

Homo-Sexual

1997-2025

01 The Soft Pink Truth - Gender Studies

02 Adam's Apple

03 Circle of Shivers

04 Coming Soon

05 Enigma Machine (for Alan Turing)

06 Fist Power

07 Flight to Sodom/Lot do Salo

08 Freak 'N' You

09 Garden of Tall Boys

10 Going to Sleep

11 I'm Fine I'm Fine

12 Latex

13 Mister Mouth

14 Nice Men In Stable Relationships

15 Public Sex (for Boyd McDonald)

16 Rainbow Flag

17 Semen Song (for James Bidgood)

18 Teen Paranormal Romance

19 The Chrome Reflects Our Image

20 Total Muscle Control

21 Virgin Unspotted

22 Warm Opening

23 Yield to Total Elation

24 You

25 …And Silver Light Popped In His Eyes

26 The Soft Pink Truth - Homo-Sexual

Total time: 2:07:53

disc break goes after Track 15

career-spanning compendium of the gay male Electronic Music duo Matmos

selected, edited & remastered for unity by EN, June 2026
729 MB FLAC/direct link

I made this rather instantaneously, by anchoring it to the theme of songs with titles related to relationship- and sex-adjacent ideas. This is pretty much every track they named with something related to those things, in more or less alphabetical order and framed by two pieces from Drew Daniel's 2000s solo project, The Soft Pink Truth.

I'll be back in July after we move to the Oregon Coast this week, where my partner and I just purchased a home from which you can see the Siuslaw River and the Pacific Ocean. But before I take this break, I'mma dedicate this to all those young lovers out there, who are sticking with their partners for the Long Game, and living the example of what committed, creative, sincerely-loving Queer relationships of all combinations can be.--J.

I Know You Got Solstice: Seismic Schifrin

Lalo Schifrin - Quiet Village (Cha-Cha-Cha)

Is it getting hot in here? The summer starts now, and isn't it about time for one of those ridiculous, manically exhaustive and meticulously remastered instant box sets from me? I hope you answered yes.

It's also International Music Day, or something. And Father's Day. So music, by one of the foundational fathers, is what we have, and a bit of it.

This guy passed away almost exactly a year ago, having just made his 93rd birthday. Since then I've been wanting to put together something awesome and special on him, worthy of the cultural impact of such a massive figure.

He's almost the archetype of that artist whose name most people don't know, but they've been listening to his music their whole lives.

Things he's written, particularly ones done for films and TV, are a part of the fabric of our musical epoch to a molecular extent.

Really, some of the most epic, beloved and influential movies of our lifetimes are in no small way still enjoying that lofty status, decades after they were made, due to the hypnotizing soundtracks he composed for them.

Cool Hand Luke, the classic Dirty Harry trilogy, Bullitt, Joe Kidd, Enter the Dragon... the list goes on.

And if those aren't iconic enough for you, have a hum -- and it better be in the original 5/4 time, or I'm having Uncle Davey Brubeck and his brass knuckles pay you a visit -- at the theme to Mission: Impossible.

I mean, I'm new to pieces of music so ingrained in the global culture of the human race that they are essentially a meme in themselves that will last forever.... is that song good?

The story goes he penned it in all of 90 seconds, too. And put it in 5/4 to make it just Morse Code accurate and metrically weird enough to last 300 lifetimes.

And you? All you gotta do to please Uncle Dave is to grab what I have here today, which oughta truly meat the bone as per what makes the music of Lalo Schifrin -- born this day in 1932 -- something cinematically seismic.

So how many pulsating film and solo Lalo bangers do I have in the chamber... how many did you count, punk? Was it just a couple? Is it 75 of them, clocking in at a phat four hours and change? Do you feel lucky? Then let's Funk.

Lalo Schifrin

Lalo Schifrin's Funk Lunchtime

1967-1985

CD1

01 Dirty Harry (main title) (1971)

02 The Osterman Weekend (theme) (1983)

03 Escape from Tomorrow (single) (1974)

04 Bolero (single 1975)

05 Candy Store Frenzy (Nunzio 1978)

06 Ring Around the Moon (Gypsies 1978)

07 King Kong (Towering Toccata 1977)

08 Chuco (Boulevard Nights 1979)

09 Water, Fire & Mines (Escape to Athena 1979)

10 Check Out Time (Mission: Impossible 1970)

11 Middle of the Night (No One Home 1979)

12 Mr. Magic (Serial 1980)

13 Magic Carousel (Rollercoaster 1977)

14 Radio Source No. 1 (Pretty Maids All In a Row 1971)

15 Quiet Village (Cha-Cha-Cha) (Black Widow 1976)

16 Chile Caliente (Boulevard Nights 1979)

17 Lunchtime (The Mean Season 1985)

CD2

18 Theme from Enter the Dragon (Enter the Dragon 1973)

19 Sanctus Benedictus (Rock Requiem 1971)

20 Mission Blues (Mission: Impossible 1969)

21 Golden Needles (main title) (1974)

22 Sudden Impact (main theme) (1983)

23 The Shadow (Mannix 1968)

24 Dona Donna (single B-side 1975)

25 Potrero Hill (Magnum Force 1973)

26 Zebra Three (Starsky & Hutch 1975)

27 Amityville Frenzy (Amityville Horror 1979)

28 Most Wanted Theme (Towering Toccata 1977)

29 Tabú (Black Widow 1976)

30 Cocktails of Fire (Sudden Impact 1983)

31 Latin Soul (single 1972)

32 Burning Bridges (Kelly's Heroes 1970)

33 Moonlight Gypsies (Gypsies 1978)

34 Day of the Animals (Towering Toccata 1977)

35 No More Lies, Girl (Dirty Harry 1971)

36 Mission: Impossible (unused main title edit) (1970) 

37 Palancio (Magnum Force 1973)

CD3

38 No One Home (No One Home 1979)

39 Baia (Black Widow 1976)

40 Dancing In the Clouds (Concorde - Airport '79) (1979)

41 Incantation (w.Dizzy Gillespie) (Free Ride 1977)

42 Roller Coaster (Towering Toccata 1977)

43 Su Lin (The Monk)/The Big Battle (Enter the Dragon 1973)

44 Hey, Nunzio! (Nunzio 1979)

45 Uncle Herbert (The Big Brawl 1980)

46 Boulevard Nights (Boulevard Nights 1979)

47 Black Widow (Black Widow 1976)

48 Midnight Woman (Towering Toccata 1977)

49 Status Symbol (The Osterman Weekend 1983)

50 Shoot the Mayor (edit) (Mission: Impossible 1970)

51 Dirty Harry (single B-side) (1972)

52 Frenesi (Black Widow 1976)

CD4

53 Magnum Force (main title) (1973)

54 Bullitt (end title) (1968)

55 Out of Town (Brubaker 1980)

56 Secret Code Synthesizer (Whole Lotta Schifrin Goin' On 1969)

57 The Pin (Murderer's Row 1967)

58 The Plot/Quiet Plot/Against the Clock (Mission: Impossible 1970)

59 Silence (Starsky & Hutch 1975)

60 Jaws (Black Widow 1976)

61 To Cast a Spell (Gypsies 1978)

62 Theme from St. Ives (1976)

63 Williams/Williams On the Run (Enter the Dragon 1973)

64 Theme from The Master Gunfighter (1975)

65 Starsky & Hutch (season 1 main theme) (1975)

66 The School Bus (Dirty Harry 1971)

67 Turn Every Stone (Mannix 1968)

68 Relations (Brubaker 1980)

69 Theme from Medical Center (single version 1971)

70 Spill the Wine (single B-side) (1971)

71 Ape Shuffle (Theme from Planet of the Apes) (single) (1974)

72 Traveling (Return from Witch Mountain 1978)

73 Introit (Rock Requiem 1971)

74 Final Prayer (conclusion) (Rock Requiem 1971)

75 Enter the Dragon (end title) (1973)

Total time: 4:10:39

compendium of Lalo Schifrin funk bangers, from all his many (mostly 1970s) film soundtracks & albums

selected, assembled, edited & remastered for unity by EN, June 2026
1.46 GB FLAC/direct link

You'll doubtlessly recognize a good few of these tracks, especially if you're me, and you've been into The Osterman Weekend since you first saw it at the 99 cent theater in 1983, when you were bad-hair-and-awkward-eyeballs-deep in the 11th grade.

I have a couple more posts of the excruciatingly tragic Death Memorial variety before we put June in the spittoon, but Lalo Schifrin's 94th birthday compels you to funk your weekend all the way into Magnum Force oblivion with a whole light-up dancefloor's worth of his most hip-twirling tunes!--J.

6.21.1932 - 6.26.2025

Bodily Harmolodics: Jamaaladeen Tacuma 70

Jamaaladeen Tacuma's Unsolved Mysteries - Klagenfurt III incl. duo vocal improv

Sorry I'm late but I'm moving to the coast soon and things are wild here.

Stress issues aside, we'll sneak this 2nd of two Bass Deity screeds under the milestone birthday wire.

This guy's been around my whole adult life since high school, it seems, yet he's just 10+ years older than me.

He first surfaced, with a style seemingly fully formed upon his advent, in the 1970s Prime Time bands of Ornette Coleman, assuming a central rhythmic role in the saxophonist iconoclast's forays into electric music he dubbed Harmolodics.

With a way of playing the bass somewhere between Larry Graham and Steve Swallow, the propulsive force of his sometimes ear-astonishing technique is matched by the melodic pathways he navigates and Earth-excavating tones he gets from a variety of custom and often striking-looking instruments.

What makes Jamaaladeen Tacuma -- born this day in 1956 and somehow only ten years my senior -- stand above so many other bass wielding people is that he can play so many notes and in such a commanding, thunderthumbed style, yet what he chooses to play always ends up 101% supportive of the music as a whole.

In lesser skilled hands, what he does would overwhelm the listener and unbalance the sound and the song. But in his, it unlocks and uncovers the beams that hold up the edifice of the composition or improvisation in which he is participating.

Ah yes, improvisation, always one of JT's greatest strengths (that's foreshadowing, folks).

Like, say for instance this 2+ hours of near-total extemporization, captured like hot lava from an erupting volcano in Austria almost 20 years ago. Don't burn yourselves, OK?

Jamaaladeen Tacuma's Unsolved Mysteries

Kärntens Haus der Architektur

Napoleonstadel 

Klagenfurt, Austria

10.1.2007

01 intro/Klagenfurt I

02 Klagenfurt II

03 Klagenfurt III incl. duo vocal improv

04 Klagenfurt IV

05 Klagenfurt V

06 Klagenfurt VI

07 Klagenfurt VII incl. Yesterdays

08 Klagenfurt VIII incl. If You Want Me to Stay & Sweet Sticky Thing

09 Jamaaladeen Tacuma outro comments

Total time: 2:04:14

disc break goes after Track 04

Jamaaladeen Tacuma - bass & vocals

Jean-Paul Bourelly - guitar & vocals

J.T. Lewis - drums & percussion

mono soundboard capture, of indeterminate origin, of the complete concert

spectral is 100% lossless, with sonic information to 20 kHz

this music was almost entirely improvised in the moment it was made

de/remuxed to spread the audio field a little wider, edited & remastered by EN, June 2026
725 MB FLAC/direct link

I went a little bonkers splitting this one apart and adjusting things very slightly, to make the lava flow over your toes just fiery enough so you can still walk when it's over.

Obviously, you gotta be on the lookout for guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly here, as he supplies the lighter fluid vibes straight outta Monterey 1967 to keep things consistently blazing, as Jamaaladeen and drummer JT Lewis locomotivate the train along the perilous tracks of the unknown realms of instantaneous invention.

I'll be back with a couple more before going coastal, but that's next week. Today we bid a topnotch ascent to septuagenarian status for Jamaaladeen Tacuma, a bass player so innovative and distinctive you can identify him from one <thump>--J.