So before we went on vacation in MX last week, I finished watching all of Bruce Lee‘s movies and a couple related documentaries. Not having seen any of BL’s movies despite being a fan of Jet Li and Jackie Chan and other martial-arts movies for quite some time is kind of like being a Star Trek fan and never having watched the original series – Blasphemy!

There are some earlier (fictional) shows out there with BL in them (not as the main star though) – namely the 60s TV series The Green Hornet (he is Kato, the ass-kicking sidekick); and Longstreet (BL plays a martial-arts guru teaching the main character).

And then here are the four full, original Bruce Lee movies out there where he is the central star:

Fists of Fury (The Big Boss) – This was the first of his 3 HK movies – this has a bit of wire work in it (even BL cannot just ‘jump’ over a 12-ft metal fence) but pretty good stuff. What I like is the way the boss of the ice factory tries to co-op people and if they don’t comply, whammo! But no other spoilers – check it out!

Fist of Fury – (remade more recently with Jet Li as Fist of Legend) – where the main character returns to his wushu martial arts school after the master is mysteriously killed, and vengance ensues! The Jet Li remake is a bit more polished and has a bit more plot and character development, but both movies are equally good.

The Way of the Dragon – a man comes to help a Chinese restaurant in Rome, Italy from the mob trying to take it over. This is the one where BL ultimately fights Chuck Norris (in all his TX-hairy-chest-homoerotic glory). I was very surprised at the start of this to see it was set in Italy – definitely a different feel to it for that reason alone. Also, there are a number of comedic touches throughout this movie that aren’t in the earlier two. They aren’t on the level of say Jackie Chan slapstick-style comedy, but prove that BL has some range as an actor, he’s not *just* about serious ass-kicking. 🙂

And finally, Enter the Dragon. This is the big ‘Hollywood movie’ that sadly came out only a few days after BL passed away and helped cement him as an international and permanent star – this was his first big movie in the USA and elsewhere, compared to his already huge stardom in Asia based on the earlier HK movies. The movie is in many ways like a James Bond movie (without the flashy gadgets or Q branch), with BL being an investigator sent to a mysterious island run by an enigmatic martial-arts ‘lord’ suspected of many criminal enterprises. John Saxon is good as BL’s co-star, and there are many great fight scenes, including a young Jackie Chan getting his neck broken by BL as he infiltrates the underground complex but then sets off a bunch of alarms and has to fight his way out.

The movie BL was working on when he got the call from Hollywood regarding Enter the Dragon was to be called Game of Death. He had filmed many of the penultimate fight scenes in it (incl. some former students as his opponents and/or henchmen, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) but with his passing the movie was never completed. Later some film execs took the footage and hacked it into a ‘movie’ with archival footage and other lame attempts at using doubles, etc. with a completely different plot than BL intended. However, all the original footage and a detailed plot discussion of the original script can be seen at the end of the Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey documentary – definitely worth checking out. And you will obviously see where QT/Uma Thurman got the idea for her yellow suit in Kill Bill.

BL is even more amazing (IMHO) when you think about the following:

a) he was only 32(!) when he passed away;
b) for such a huge, huge star he only has a handful of movies and/or onscreen appearances;
c) he not only broke barriers in Hollywood but in society generally against racism and cultural understanding. To this day he serves as a huge inspiration for anyone/everyone who knows about him. Some of the documentaries touch on this (e.g. How Bruce Lee Changed the World) point specifically.

Finally, there is the ‘lost interview‘ available on VHS (I got it and the other movies from the best store on the planet, Scarecrow of course). This is a traveling interview show with some obscure Canadian(?) host who talked to BL for about 40 mins. about his career, experiences in show business and his various philosophies. The interviewer himself is pretty average, but it’s interesting to simply see BL just talk about his life and career and a bit about society too. And you can definitely tell he’s a child of the 60’s – he says ‘man’ in about every other sentence – it would have been so interesting to see how his career and life might have gone had he lived.

I’ll leave you with one of the quotes from the interview: “Be like water, my friend.” You will have to watch either the interview tape or the documentary mentioned above to get more on that one 🙂

candybowl

it’s that time of year again – The 4th NW Pinball and Gameroom Show is upon us, bigger and badder than ever!

link here. Hope to see you there!

candybowl

Watched Enter the Dragon again the other night. And now of course have to finally get around to watching Bruce Lee’s other 3 movies. But enjoyed this one again – my fave scene is when he jumps on Oharra and (I think, they don’t show it) snaps his neck? The expression on his face – slowed down for effect – is priceless! And BL is the guy who made random screams and yowls during fighting the gold standard (and spoofed many thousands of times since of course).

Enter the Dragon is a pretty decent movie on balance – I like John Saxon (seen him in several 70’s flicks apart from here, and he’s even in the first Nightmare in Elm Street if you can believe that) and the other actors are decent. There is more than a bit of the ‘James Bond villain’ aspect to the bad guy Han (especially given having his own remote island where he traffics in opium and drugged women, and holds Shaolin martial-arts tournaments?) which of course adds to the intrigue. Finally, the pacing is pretty effective – they never really get mired down in ‘too much plot, not enough action’ – the movie seeks to entertain, and not take itself TOO seriously (not as slapstick as Jackie Chan’s later movies though, either).

I also watched How Bruce Lee Changed The World tonight. I would call this a ‘faux’ documentary – some interesting factoids but is no Ken Burns movie by any means. While it doesn’t trace BL’s life in too much detail, and has some good interviews with his wife – it kind of uses some semi-lame people in too much screen time IMHO. I like LL Cool J well enough, but I really don’t give a crap about how BL made LL a bigger star and influenced him. There were a few other minor actors in there the same way – yet they gave fairly short shrift to Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen and others who might have had FAR more interesting things to say about BL and his legacy (in China, in HK and elsewhere).

They really tried to show a far-reaching influence of BL across fitness, activities like UFC and BodyBuilding (the former is not a sport, guys – it’s just people cruelly beating each other up!); music (RZA from Wu-Tang Clan) and of course movies and martial-arts pictures in particular. It is pretty amazing to see the influence BL has had after all these years (given only 4 movies?!), and like they said, it’s definitely not going away. But even as shown in this somewhat cursory way – BL was far more than just a martial-arts guy and movie star on the rise – he attained icon status (sadly) just about the time he passed away, and it’s also crazy to think he was only 32 (!) at the time. I will definitely have to visit his grave here in Seattle sometime this summer and pay my respects. What an interesting and complex guy – it is sad he died so young.

On to the other movies!

candybowl

So finally was able to watch my library copy of Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. This is a documentary of the Rush story, from early-70’s beginnings to present (2010). It also has some bonus stuff on the second DVD, deleted scenes, and some rare concert footage from VERY early on (the original three playing at Toronto high schools, which at the time were the ‘tour’ given the band wasn’t 21 so not in bars).

All in all, this is a good show, and has a nice mix of fandom (e.g. other musicians talking about why Rush mattered to them or to music generally), musical history of the band (album histories and capturing a bit of events at each one) and sporadic concert footage spread throughout. While I could have done without Gene Simmons (is that guy in EVERY rock documentary these days or what?) his comments are actually restrained and kind of funny, and Geddy Lee also gives KISS their due in terms of how much they helped Rush early on.

One thing that is also noticeable is how nerdy a band they really are. They even joke about how early on, their fans were nearly all men. Then later on, still nearly all men. Only in more recent years have they seemed to gain female fans of any amount – which is good, but I doubt it had much effect on their musical direction or appeal – still way nerdy compared to most bands. They really don’t sing much, if at all, about the usual rock ‘topics’ – sex and drugs – something that got them a lot of crap from UFO while on tour in the UK/Europe (funny anecdotes from Geddy on that).

It’s also interesting to note how Alex/Geddy were the founders and have the history together all the way back to grade school, whereas despite Neil Peart having now been in the band around 40 years, he is still (jokingly) called ‘the new guy’, because he was the second (and only since) drummer. The sequences with him are somewhat different than the other two – he’s definitely a different breed of cat, much quieter – nice guy, but definitely more intense and a bit ‘brooding’ vs. the other two.

I knew that Neil’s daughter had passed away in a bad car accident while they were on tour many years ago, but didn’t know that his wife had passed on not long after too. What a terrible, sad experience – they relate how they thought it was the end of the band – they really didn’t do anything for almost 5 years before Neil came around and wanted to get things rolling again. I’m glad he came through it, but it sounds like it took a long, long time.

I think a couple additional things might have improved this film a bit, though. For one, I would have liked a closer look at their composition process – how do they sit down and come up with stuff, what does it look like? They talk about this a bit but not in real detail, more high-level.

Second, I know that Geddy and Alex write the music for the most part, and Neil writes the lyrics in many cases. How does his writing process work? He is a voracious reader, and it’s obvious his lyrics come from all that reading – but how was he ‘inspired’, etc.? While he’s a pretty private guy, at least a minimal conversation about it would have been pretty cool.

Also, some anecdotes about specific songs might have been neat – you can see a few in the liner notes on some albums (e.g. Red Barchetta is based on a sci-fi story, etc.) but say, where other songs come from? Some are obvious (LimeLight, Subdivisions, etc.) but others?

At any rate, it’s always interesting to see what the band guys are really like – are they ‘normal’ people, self-absorbed jerks, wankers, or? Rush are definitely the former, and have largely maintained cool heads throughout their long career – cheers to them!

candybowl

There were two concerts (among others I didn’t know about) in Seattle last night: ‘The Chameleons Vox’ (meaning the singer/songwriter Mark Burgess from the ’80s alternative group The Chameleons) and The Cult (likely no explanation required – they lasted beyond the 80s even though they also started back then). On the one hand, TCV was only $10 – The Cult was $30+ (which is more than ‘current’ bands like Ozomatli and others charge these days, making it a hard sell) – we opted for TCV – The Cult just seemed way overpriced for its potential rock value (and if that’s not a lame way to describe even lamer 40-something concert decisionmaking, I don’t know what is :)).

There were three opening bands, we missed the first and the other two were largely forgettable (sorry guys). I give Romance (last opener before TCV) an A for effort and they were definitely good musicians, but not super-distinctive otherwise.

Then, on to TCV. They started with the song ‘Swamp Thing’ – the band was playing several measures of the song intro before Mark Burgess (the main original member/singer) came onstage in a ‘grand entrance’ – Uh….yeah. They powered through several more songs – all played well – but the show got progressively weirder for me the longer it went on. We left before they were done, near the end of the set (I would presume they played a few more songs, maybe an encore, not sure). Some impressions:

1) When MB came out on the stage – the first thing I thought was ‘here’s young Ozzy’ (meaning Ozzy Osbourne). For some reason he just struck me as a younger version of Ozz – maybe the face? Not sure. When he talked a bit between songs, he SOUNDS like Ozzy’s normal speaking accent, although I’m not sure if they are from similar locations in England. He is also sporting a Moe Howard hairdo – not the most complimentary? Finally, I couldn’t help also thinking of many Mike Myers parody characters as he danced around during many of the songs – sorry Mark.

2) There was too much ‘unbalance’ for me between most of the band (20-somethings) and MB’s obvious age. It was like a father playing music with his kids or something? When we saw X, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Queensryche, Living Colour, Madness, etc. over the past several years – whether or not they reach the heights of their glory days (some do, some really do, some are slipping) they all look older – but they also all look ‘correct’, because the band are all the same age. This show just seemed weird to have an older guy playing with such a younger band. I wish he had been the bassist like before, that might have avoided it a bit, but oh well. The band was very good, as far as playing – definitely no issues there.

3) Could there be any MORE delay pedal/voice effects? On albums, fine – I listened again to a few Chameleons songs on the bus this am going to work and yes, delay effects are all over the place – but live, it just seemed to wash everything into mud – and it was distracting (at best, annoying at worst) as regards the voice? It really served to date the music quite a bit for me, unfortunately. Throwing in a few Beatles and Clash verses mid-song on at least a couple occasions didn’t help either – cheese!

4) A positive – Mark B’s voice sounds largely fine. He’s no Boy George, Rob Halford or Bono, but for his historical range he largely achieved it. He was a bit quieter on a couple songs he would have likely belted out years ago, but whatevs. And you don’t need the delay effect to sound good – just be yourself….

5) Another positive – MB was putting himself out there. He was definitely not phoning it in. That counts for a lot, especially when you consider The Cult playing across town in not much bigger a club at 3x the price, and the comparative obscurity of The Chameleons even back in the 80s(?) – MB’s not getting rich on this tour most obviously, but cared to put on a good show, and he seemed to be having a good time.

6) A weird thing – in one of the songs (can’t remember the name) there is a long guitar mellow ‘exit’ at the end – which this time around was modified by actual drums in it, unlike on the album – but MB took the opportunity to head offstage while the band played for several minutes without him. When he came back, it *seemed* (can’t say for sure) if he had taken an 80s ‘coke break’ in the back – he was sniffing it up a bit. Weird, and I could be imagining things, but my buddies noticed it too. There goes the profits on the tour if so….doh!

7) Finally, after the first several songs I just kept increasingly thinking – ‘you can never go back’. I hope the tour works out well for him and the band, and The Croc was pretty full, definitely as full as seeing Manooghi Hi there a month or two ago. But the songs really sounded dated and lacked oomph for me. It seemed like every time they were cranking it up to really ‘rock’ – the sound would kind of smooth out at the top end and they would proceed – kind of like a ’70s Caddy trying to punch it up a hill and then gliding along without incident once there.

By way of comparison, when we saw X at The Showbox last year – they really *rocked* and were one of the tightest bands in recent memory, despite their age. And the fact that all their songs (being a punk band) are only about 2.5 min. long, so they have to play a LOT of them to fill an average show-length set – no ‘coasting’ allowed there, to be sure.

Here is another review of the show, from Glen Boyd – he obviously saw a much different show than I did. I’m glad he enjoyed it – but I really don’t think TCV were ever in danger of tearing the roof off at any point. Now…..had the mighty Fishbone made a surprise appearance….hmm…. 🙂

If you were there, feel free to comment/agree/disagree/etc. I guess the show left me with mixed feelings, but I don’t regret going (despite being all but asleep in my cube today for lack of sleep).

candybowl

Astute (or extremely activity-challenged) readers will remember I watched 1973’s Westworld again back in July. This evening I saw its later (and lamer) sequel, Futureworld, circa 1976.

So – before I ‘review’ this movie I’m just going to say – I’m not worried about any of you going to rent it (turns out even the Mecca of Movies only had it on VHS) so all plot points (as may exist – and there aren’t many) will be spoiled herein.

So – basically fast forward several years from the events in Westworld – Delos has been rebuilt, bigger and better than ever. Now they have Roman World, Medieval World, Spa World and FutureWorld – no more WestWorld – although they visit its remains in this movie. Given the tragedy of before, Delos needs better PR to encourage people to come back, so they enlist a TV reporter (Blythe Danner) and the newspaper reporter who broke the story the first time around (Peter Fonda). But prior to heading out to Delos, Peter Fonda gets a clue from an informant (who is killed just before PF meets him to discuss the scoop) that something is still very ‘wrong’ at Delos this time around, too.

So they go there, and far too much time is taken up showing all the high-tech stuff, people walking here, people walking there, and there are two bit-characters (a Russian General + wife, and a famous Japanese person, probably a politician) who get some minor screen time. Very little of this advances the plot, save some (seemingly) random sequences showing people very interested in computer recordings and simulations of the main four characters.

It develops that Delos is making (effectively – they don’t name it directly) clones of world leaders and politicians because they don’t trust humans to keep from blowing themselves up. The visitors come to Delos, and the clones are sent out into the world to replace them, under Delos’ control. The movie never says if the robots hatched this plot on their own (one of the major Delos characters, Duffy, turns out to be one) or if they have mad-scientist backers (it is never revealed whether Dr. Schneider is human, robot, or something else) working with them.

At any rate, PF and BD find a (still-human) mechanic named Harry who helps them discover the truth, and then there is more running around with guns until the end, where they both escape Delos and (presumably) tell the world. Yul Brynner is wasted in a weird dream sequence with BD as a fantasy lover – I’m sure I was impressed by this back in 1976 (as a nine-year old) but it’s pretty silly now.

So….without dwelling on what the movie does wrong (mostly far too much tedium in advancing the meager plot) – i’d rather mention a few things that could have made it MUCH more interesting by contrast.

1) Futureworld never explains how the robots figured out how humans always want to destroy themselves (and thus hatched a plot to stop it and save themselves from our stupidity). By way of comparison, the recent BSG remake trickled this info out over the entire length of the series – of course to keep you coming back until the end, but partially because it kept you guessing and interested and inventing your own ideas about where the plot was going, then to watch it and confirm (or see where they went instead).

It might have been very interesting to see the ‘between’ story explained in more detail with more motives and the ‘how’. FW talks about the ‘700 series’ robots as being far more advanced than those in the prior movie/robot generation, but it’s only a few lines of spoken dialog at best and nothing beyond that.

2) Just like in the previous movie, the big ‘seller’ behind the concept of Delos is ‘sex with robots’ – but at $1200/day – would that really do it? And I would think more stuff (even Disneyland has Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Haunted Mansion) than just the Middle Ages or Roman times would be required to get people there (the lack of showers and actual cooking comes to mind, but I digress :)). Westworld itself might have had some attraction, I agree – but even in 1976 I’d think more would be needed (and Disney had both POTC and THM back THEN, too).

3) It would have been interesting also to see robots who didn’t ‘agree’ with the crazy clone strategy to take over the world, and if they helped PF and BD succeed to blow the story open. Here, BSG did this in various ways and various characters – creating a mosaic of character motives (if done well) can really serve to spice things up, no?

4) finally – what if Delos had actually ‘won’? What if they largely succeeded and THEN a reporter came back say, 20-30 years in the future and found out what had happened? And here comes the broken record, because now that I think of it (literally) BSG did this too – in a way – with the whole idea of Cylons being all-but human in appearance, etc. But they limited its scope by keeping it a limited number of models – in FW’s case, it might have been *many* world leaders over time – what if the clones ushered in a time of peace and world achievement, and then we found out we had all been tricked for 20-30 years? What then? I can’t help thinking of Kent Brockman saying “And I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords” with the paper sign on the wall behind him – too funny.

Anyway, if you find the book of this movie on a seedy bookshelf somewhere, and you are killing time on the beach, read it. Otherwise, just rent BSG and get the same thing only done far, far better. They should have quit while they were ahead with Westworld.

candybowl

(Re)watched the ancient sci-fi classic WestWorld late last night. It was shorter than I remember (in other words gets to the killing spree/chase scenes/etc. faster than I remembered), but definitely some classic performances in there, most notably Yul Brynner in the title role as The Gunslinger.

Since this is an old movie, even for me (in 1973, I was 6) let’s recap – a very expensive ($1,000/day), exotic resort (Delos) opens up in a distant desert (they never say where, but looks like the American Southwest), where there are three distinct ‘worlds’ people can visit – Roman World, Medieval World, and West(ern) World – each is tailored to fulfull guest fantasies based on advanced robots to cater to their every whim, within the theme of each ‘world’. In an early part of the film, an announcer talks about enjoying the ‘relaxed morality of earlier Roman times’ (meaning guilt-free sex with lifelike robots, let’s be clear here 🙂 ) And this is consistent with the other ‘worlds’ – the main two characters (james Brolin and Richard Benjamin) visit WestWorld (and at least one brothel therein). Then, things subtly start to go wrong, and mayhem ensues in a variety of ways.

So, this is a pioneering and influential sci-fi film in many ways. It is very well made for its time, obviously a bigger budget than some of its contemporaries (yeah, Omega Man, i’m talking to you). The decor, sets and computers/effects are spartan, but still look decent, and unlike many sci-fi movies, don’t get in the way of the plot. Not on the level of the earlier 2001: A Space Odyssey – but almost NO movies (sci-fi or otherwise) compare to that one even now.

WW has to be considered one of the first ‘relentless, unyielding stalking killer’ movies – Yul Brynner’s Gunslinger – used to great effect many times later in countless horror movies but also every Terminator movie ever made, elements of The Matrix movies, etc. Even Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men is reminiscent of this theme (and also very scary). In WW, this may be considered more remarkable because The Gunslinger stalks Richard Benjamin throughout the day – never at night – so his power over the intended victim grows not through cheap special effects or misdirection, but ultimately on the strong, almost silent performance of Yul Brynner (who hardly has more than maybe 3-4 sentences of dialog in the whole movie).

WW’s story also builds one of the earliest ‘no matter how perfect our technology gets, it will get us in the end’ themes – and does it about as subtly as the 16-ton weight from the classic Monty Python sketch. But the early ’70s was definitely a time of ‘man is doomed’ themed-sci-fi movies (Soylent Green, the earlier Omega Man, Silent Running, etc.) so not really surprising in hindsight.

Another thing that struck me this time around has to be the interaction between the resort guests and the robots who serve them. At one point after a barroom shootout, James Brolin remarks about ‘the beauty of the place is you never know if it’s real’ (or words to that effect). The guests feel free to just shoot the place up, start bar brawls, have sword battles (in effect act like a pillaging pirate – no Pirate World? :)) etc. – and let someone else pick up the pieces. I guess at $1,000/day, i’d expect the same – but it’s interesting how easily they just slot into it and tear it up with no consequences (well, that was the Delos sales pitch anyway). Given that the director/screenwriter was Michael Crichton – author of this theme many times over (The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, etc.) again, not a big surprise.

Stepping back (to a soapbox) it’s also interesting here is that despite continually warning us of the dangers of technology and how we overreach ourselves far too often in his books and films – MC was one of the biggest global warming deniers on the planet, right up there with Big Oil and James Inhofe! Like Mel Gibson of recent past, MC shows that many times in Hollywood – appearances can be VERY deceiving. Was he having fun at our expense on either side of the issue? I’ll have to look around to see if anyone ever asked him that question – he’s dead now (2008) so we may never know. End soapbox.

All symbolism and soapboxes aside – WestWorld is still an entertaining movie despite being now almost 40 years old. Yul Brynner makes the movie for me – without him, i don’t think WW would have been near as effective – his Gunslinger really is a Hollywood icon, sci-fi or otherwise.

candybowl

Well, it’s over for another year. And it was a big success (again). Not only did we have more games on the video side – we had several more vendors on the pinball side, a great series of seminars, and seemingly lots more word of mouth (definitely more social media and related online promotion/podcasts/etc. too).

Here’s some of the results – take a gander!

Video from the show floor;

Additional video walk-thru’s during the show;

Review from the ‘Seattlest‘ blog;

The Stranger’s SLOG review;

Seattle Weekly slideshow;

Seattle Times article;

Seattle Times show video;

Online photo galleries: here and here;

Dave Okert’s SMAC photo gallery (mostly video side of show);

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The 3rd annual NW Pinball Show is next weekend, June 11-13, in the NW corner of The Seattle Center in Seattle, WA (by Key Arena). All machines and seminars are included with paid daily admission. All-weekend passes are available too.

Schedule and Seminars/Speakers;

Online Ticket sales available through Monday, June 7;

Recent Podcast about the show on The Mixtape;

Bottom Line? Come on out and PLAY.

candybowl

Given the ending years’ of Genesis’ pop-based output, many people may not know their early sound was WAY different, with several more auteurs in the group (Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel most notably). One of the great (albeit probably copyright un-friendly) things about YouTube is the persistence of five bazillion music videos of all types and stripes. So of late I’ve been checking out a few ancient (early 70s) Genesis videos up there, specifically The Knife, Dancing with the Moonlit Knight, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (not long after this, Peter G. left the band, a couple albums later SH did, and Genesis morphed into a pop-outfit not long after that).

Historically I was really into Yes and King Crimson, two progressive rock peers of Genesis at the time – although both of them stayed ‘progressive’ arguably far longer. Each has a pretty different sound, although all of them (and others such as ELP) pushed the boundaries of what a rock song could be, including the scope, ambition and in some cases, pretentiousness of the music in the end – ELP ‘enjoyed’ probably the most slagging on this point during the punk era, pretty bad. But what’s interesting is to listen to other so-called ‘modern’ progressive bands since – I have been checking out Transatlantic on YouTube also – I like it, but I’m not sure if it ‘progresses’ beyond the 70s stuff – it almost sounds like they are largely paying homage to it in most cases, instead of trying to stretch the boundaries? As if I can tell anyway! 🙂 With Transatlantic specifically, the keyboards sound a lot like ELP or the big hammond organs of the time, if not played near as crazily or akin to classical music as the likes of Keith Emerson.

This music is definitely an acquired taste in many cases, but I’m definitely on the way to listening to more early Genesis to start – I already had nearly all the Peter G. stuff and/or Yes/King Crimson, so this will be a cool (old) new band to explore…..

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