The third snippet from the new album, Progress, called We Danced. Tapping. Hedley Lamarr. John Gotmann marriage counseling. Tom Morello vs Mark Knopfler guitars. Saw. Ferraris. A Clockwork Orange. Masters Of The Universe. Sammy Hagar. Straight head rock in Prog? Tales From Topographic Oceans.

Roger CortonNow this is more like it. Some actual GUITAR PICKIN’, son!

JCHIn the immortal words of Heddy L…

RCThat’s Hedley…

JCHShit. You beat me to the punchline. Well forget that joke. I finally figured out why you’re getting more of a sense of a humor. It’s to cut me off at the pass!

RCYou finally caught on.

JCHLike I tell ya, I’m not as sharp as I used to be!

RCWell let’s try to focus on the song for once and not your failings as a man.

JCHI’ll try, ma. What do you wanna know?

RCWell, first of all, as a guitarist I just have […]

We interrupt our multi-part rant on ‘Criticism’ for the second snippet from the new album, Progress, called Take A Picture. Famous fretless bass players with two syllable names. Pino. Jaco. Jon Anderson and Olias of Sunhillow. The Roger Dean planet. Unconventional finger picking. Bach. Superbia. Catholic sin. Satan. The usual.

Roger CortonI was going to publish the other parts of our mega-chat on (cough) ‘criticism’ but this site is supposed to be about your music and not ‘Humanities 101’. So I made an executive decision to get this up. ASAP.

JCHWhat’s that old business joke about ‘asap’?

RCIt makes a sap out of you and me. Us oldsters really know how to tell a joke, eh sonny?

JCHNo doubt. Probably nobody under thirty has even heard that knee slapper. But in reaction to your ‘executive decision’, allow me to be a bit more with the youth of America. “What…ehhhhhver, dude.”

[…]

Live snippet. Cover of Yes/Chris Squire’s ‘Onward’ from Tormato. Why we hate looping. Alfalfa and learning to croon. Simple things that are hard to do. Dick Van Dyke’s Recurring Nightmare. Tempo maps. Why do classical conductors make the big, big money? Astoria, OR is great in the autumn.

Roger CortonWe have that rarest sighting in the wild. You doing a cover song.

Onward (Cover) (Snippet)

JCHWell actually one verse, but yeah. As background, I finally got round to listening to that boxed set of Yes re-masters.

RCWhich came out, what, three or four years ago now?

JCHDo you actually listen to those door stops? I get these ‘gift boxes’ for Christmas pressies and…

RCI confess. I’ve gotten a few of those. Never listened to most of them.

JCHIndeed. Who has the time or patience to listen to the fifth outtake of whatever? Anyhoo, I listened to ‘Tormato’ again and… by the way, did you know, […]

Another snippet from the new opera, The Boats (Beautiful Boy). Two churches. Two organs. Your organ says a lot about you, heh heh. Deliverance. Guy Deutscher. Language and Culture. Philip Glass as career path? Walter White and the big, big money. The Who. Tommy. The best rhythm guitar ever?

Roger CortonOne last thing about the whole opera thing. We never got round to talking about the organs last week.

Beautiful Boy (Snippet)

RCI can’t decide if it’s really sincere or just really cheesy.

JCHWell don’t sugar coat it. Cheesy you say?

RCThe organ vibrato. Some of the lyrics sound so gushy. ‘Beautiful Boy’. People don’t really talk like that.

JCHOh yes they do. I know what you mean, though. OK, so there were two big churches when I was a kid. The C of I Church of Ireland–Protestant and the RC Roman Catholic. They were both almost across the street from […]