The Underground Railroad
Before my dtr had to read The Fountainhead in high school, I never met a single human who'd read any Ayn Rand -- or would talk about it, anyway -- but apparently there's a cult of some sort ("Objectivism") that embraces and will wax all rhapsodic at the drop of a hat over her philosophy of capitalism and selfishness. Go fig.
I've never spoken to him about it, but if any muso I know is an Ayn Rand-ite, it's Kurt Rongey. The extremely classically-trained (TCU, Royal College of Music, Keele University) keyboardist-vocalist for prog-rock diehards the Underground Railroad, Rongey once released a concept album about the Soviet Union, That Was Propaganda (now downloadable for pay, along with his earlier solo opus Book In Hand, from Mindawn).
On Underground Railroad's new CD, The Origin of Consciousness, lyrics on three of the tracks were inspired by the ideas of Julian Jaynes, the Princeton University psychologist whose book The Origin of Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind posits that human consciousness as we know it is a development of the last coupla millennia, prior to which human volition, planning, and initiative were all directed by the voices of hallucinatory gods. In fact, on the album's lead-off track "Julian Ur," there's actually a fairly lengthy sound sample from a Jaynes lecture, which will give those with an interest in such things an opportunity to hear the great man himself speak, but kinda distracts from the music, which is a pity.
Anyway, it's all proof positive (as if any more were needed) that Kurt Rongey's got a big brain under that raffishly askew fedora he affects, and he knows how to use it. The years since the last time he and guitarist Bill Pohl took the Railroad down the tracks (that'd be for Y2K's debut on shiny silver disc, Through and Through) have seen a partial rehabilitation of prog, the genre that dare not speak its name. Perhaps that's not enough to make Rongey, Pohl and crew the Next Big Thing, but maybe it'll spark the curiosity of newbies who got their coats pulled to the idea that longer songs and more complex structures could be cool from their Mars Volta CDs.
Besides Rongey's conceptual acumen, there's a lot to take in on The Origin of Consciousness: his tumbling hand-over-hand piano, Pohl's interval-leaping gtr inventions that bubble up like underground streams, Matt Hembree's pointillistic basslines (I've actually seen the Drunken Monkey/Bindle/Goodwin vet _reading parts_ on UR gigs), and John Livingston's effortlessly shifting time signatures (which he plays with the apparent detachment of a man waiting for a bus). "Love is a Vagabond King" finds tendon-torturing axeman Pohl in an expansively lyrical mode, while "The Canal at Sunset" is a nice bit of programmatic music that's been a highlight of their lately-infrequent live sets. The album's tour de force is "Creeper," lyrically a sequel to its predecessor's "The Doorman" and musically a showcase for all of the Railroad's strengths.
It's an achievement even Howard Roark could probably appreciate.
I've never spoken to him about it, but if any muso I know is an Ayn Rand-ite, it's Kurt Rongey. The extremely classically-trained (TCU, Royal College of Music, Keele University) keyboardist-vocalist for prog-rock diehards the Underground Railroad, Rongey once released a concept album about the Soviet Union, That Was Propaganda (now downloadable for pay, along with his earlier solo opus Book In Hand, from Mindawn).
On Underground Railroad's new CD, The Origin of Consciousness, lyrics on three of the tracks were inspired by the ideas of Julian Jaynes, the Princeton University psychologist whose book The Origin of Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind posits that human consciousness as we know it is a development of the last coupla millennia, prior to which human volition, planning, and initiative were all directed by the voices of hallucinatory gods. In fact, on the album's lead-off track "Julian Ur," there's actually a fairly lengthy sound sample from a Jaynes lecture, which will give those with an interest in such things an opportunity to hear the great man himself speak, but kinda distracts from the music, which is a pity.
Anyway, it's all proof positive (as if any more were needed) that Kurt Rongey's got a big brain under that raffishly askew fedora he affects, and he knows how to use it. The years since the last time he and guitarist Bill Pohl took the Railroad down the tracks (that'd be for Y2K's debut on shiny silver disc, Through and Through) have seen a partial rehabilitation of prog, the genre that dare not speak its name. Perhaps that's not enough to make Rongey, Pohl and crew the Next Big Thing, but maybe it'll spark the curiosity of newbies who got their coats pulled to the idea that longer songs and more complex structures could be cool from their Mars Volta CDs.
Besides Rongey's conceptual acumen, there's a lot to take in on The Origin of Consciousness: his tumbling hand-over-hand piano, Pohl's interval-leaping gtr inventions that bubble up like underground streams, Matt Hembree's pointillistic basslines (I've actually seen the Drunken Monkey/Bindle/Goodwin vet _reading parts_ on UR gigs), and John Livingston's effortlessly shifting time signatures (which he plays with the apparent detachment of a man waiting for a bus). "Love is a Vagabond King" finds tendon-torturing axeman Pohl in an expansively lyrical mode, while "The Canal at Sunset" is a nice bit of programmatic music that's been a highlight of their lately-infrequent live sets. The album's tour de force is "Creeper," lyrically a sequel to its predecessor's "The Doorman" and musically a showcase for all of the Railroad's strengths.
It's an achievement even Howard Roark could probably appreciate.
posted by stashdauber at 8:13 AM
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