GURU: THE PP GURU's EYES SEES THE COMING REVOLUTION, THE PP GURU's EYES SEES THE GLORY OF THE WORLD!!

Although technically not studio albums per se, but an incredible stimulation of both live and studio tracks. After the demise of the YES WEST fraction of the group, Trevor Rabin left the band to focus his talents on composing film work, of which most notably can be heard today on almost every Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay film that comes out in theaters these days. Tony 'with one hand waving in the air' Kaye practically fell off the face of the earth again and was heard wanting to sue the band for unpaid royalites. By mid-1995, an announcement was made that Curry Capeman Rick Wakeman and Big Berryface Steve Howe were coming back into the fold to record a new studio album, with a series of concerts to be shot on film at the Fremont Theatre in beautiful downtown San Luis Obispo, Ca (which is where Maestro Jon A makes his home today) to focus on reprising much of the 70's material that made them beloved the whole world wide over. The project was to be christianed the Keys to Ascension and made it's way as a concert video and a series of two albums documenting the event.

Now, it was going to be the PP Guru's policy not to bother with the live stuff, but he makes an exception due to the fact that the recording process for the new material was going rather poorily (most of it being recorded in Anderson's basement, not far from the theater of where they will perform), some tof the tracks surfaced as soon as they were completed on the final side of the live set.The two tracks were titled "Be The One" and That, That Is" and they did sound if they were stingy on coming up with good title names at the time. Considering that it was almost true to form capture of their strident Going for the One/Tormato period, there was still a hint of Yes Westism in the Humankind portion of the Be the One. The eighteen minute plus That That Is a bewildering mess that has Anderson singing lyrics about crack addicts and gang violence that just doesn't jive with his usual new age/peyote pondering fragmented sentence preambles, although it could have been a stab at Chris Squire's personal problems around the time that the Talk tour was wrapping up (Believe the PP Guru, he's seen Squire in tipsy mode when he witness first hand when Squire nearly fell out of a chair at the YesFestival in Glendale as he laughed out loud like a loon).


The PP Guru assumes that not securing a major label deal is what led Rick Wakeman to make a hasty exit shortly after recording the remainder of the tracks that didn't show up until years later on Keys to Ascension Volume 2 (1997- but it was recorded in 1996) which further juxaposed the remaining documentation of the San Luis Obispo show with the finished new tracks (both volumes were released on a prog grassroots label, Purple Pyramid Records from Marina Del Rey, CA- hmm, do you think the PP Guru should change the blog name to- ? Nah, just thinking out loud).The five new studio tracks sound as if they were better prepared, and not rushed as they did on the first volume. In particular, the most interesting of the new tracks was the 18 minute Mind Drive which was cullied from jam session tapess that Chris Squire and Alan White had thrashed out with Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin/The Firm) and was originally planned for the XYZ project (anagram for ex members of Yes & Led Zeppelin) which never materialized. Ever since this album's release, die hard fans have requested this song to be performed many times over, but Anderson had ignored their pleas until nearly nine years on, he relented and had it performed for the first time on the band's thirty-fifth anniversary tour (as well as Footprints) that is now available for your viewing pleasure on the Songs for Tsongas DVD film recently releashed by Image Entertainment. Another notable song, Children of Light was co-written by Vangelis - who finally made a contribution to Yes nearly twenty-years since he was considered to Rick Wakeman's replacement on the Relayer tour!


Sadly, the PP Guru could not take advantage of this brief reunion - because he didn't know where the fuck San Luis Obispo was at the time! And even if he had known, there was no way in getting there- not even by Greyhound bus. So the PP Guru was royally fucked on missing history being made. He does own the VHS copy of the show though - but he wasn't too pleased with the production quality or the audio for that matter. Too many long dragged out shots of the theater's architecture, if you ask him. He doesn't want to see a blueprint of the goddamn venue for chrissakes - he wants to the see the band performing - that's why he shelled out twenty bucks for the video tape!!


During the years of 1995 and 1996, the PP Guru was making further adjustments to living his current years in the San Fernando Valley as comfortable and affordable as he could. The exception being that his high school friend, Joe Zullo from Parsippany New Jersey filed for divorce from his rhinoplasty addicted legal attorney wife, Carol Ruth Hamilton which left the PP Guru in a another being without shelter bine as every one favored on moving out of the condominum that we all shared. So with Joe gone, the PP Guru was made to be Carol's bitch for the duration leading to the move out. The PP Guru had to go out and do errands for her- pick up her dry-cleaning, buy cool whip for her goddamn coffee, and heat up her dinners while she pranced around the house in her Victoria Secret's undies and spring dresses that were clearly transparent enough to know when she wasn't wearing any at all while she studyed for her bar exam. Eventually all this was coming to a head, when she realized one day that she was even freaking herself on all the titilation she let the PP Guru in on and then shortly arranged to help move the PP Guru in with some Christian friends of hers that she met in a church.



The PP Guru worked at a mortage company in Woodlands Hills in addition to be purchasing manager for Rookies & Allstars in North Hollywood- he met a co-worker by the name of Nancy Walter who introduced me to a guitar player who used to work with ex-Asia bassist/vocalist John Wetton that she was dating at the time. She used to car pool the PP Guru to work everyday, even she could tell that they was something weird going on at the PP Guru's new boarding house. She warned the PP Guru that he could be living with a bunch of cultists. The PP Guru wouldn't have known where she could have gotten her first clue. Was it the huddle of a group hug to speak in the clinking of tongues? Could it have been that when the PP Guru walked in the front door from work bellowing to everyone present in the house that Satan - I'm hoooommmee , much to the disapproving looks of everyone present? Or maybe it was when one of his roommates invited the PP Guru to attend a 'Christian Bachelor Party' one weekend. The PP Guru was almost game for that, and asked him when will the stripper be arriving? His nameless roommate told him that there were going to be no strippers. The PP Guru was certainly perplexed - how the fuck were you going to have a bachelor party without any strippers? Who the fuck is going to be jumping out of the cake - — “Jesus Christ?” That little exchange was the first salvo in the PP Guru's dismissal from the premises. The breaking point came when these scumbag evangelists in training came by and stayed over without paying any rent and started a argument with the PP Guru of why he liked to watch Batman cartoons so much. He said Batman was invented by blasphemous devils who rape God's children for profits or something along those lines. The PP Guru responded by punching this vagabond diarerra scripture sprouting gutless wonder in the face and knocking off his glasses.

In addition to Batman: The Animated Series, superhero cartoon and comic book based animation was flourishing, by adding X-Men, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, W.I.L.D.cats, Cadilliac Dinosaurs, Savage Dragon, and Disney's Gargoyles to many weekday and Saturday morning line ups.

The X-Files was the PP Guru's all-time favorite television show. The PP Guru recalls with great fondness that Gillian Anderson was one smart and sassy redhead at the time. The PP Guru refused a pass from Carol Hamilton one Friday night when she called the PP Guru and begged him to have coffee with her at Starbucks'. After the X-Files is over, he told her. She then got pissed and hung up.


Rather than have the PP Guru go through another episode of homelessness and abandonment, one of the PP Guru's bosses, Obi Dan Kenobi, at Rookies & Allstars told him that since most of the children that were living at his and his wife's (Dragon Lady) house have either moved or were going to move out, how would the PP Guru like to take up a room in the house for a while until he gets back on his feet? The PP Guru happily obliged since the house was in a upper scale neighborhood of Sherman Oaks and the place was as big as a mansion. The PP Guru loved it so much that his temporary arrangement lasted for a period of over eight years! Paying as little as $ 250.00 a month to live there (hey, they were rich anyway, it wasn't as if Obi-Dan Kenobi and The Dragon Lady really needed the money).

Once settled in, The PP Guru's writing output for the Comic Buyer's Guide increased tremendously, as the experimented ecleticness of his over fifty or so letters, essays, and articles delineated from the rest of the contributors. The PP Guru tackle such controversial issues as the Northridge Earthquake,Diamond Comics fascist monopolized takeover of the direct retailing market, and even at one time, called a San Diego television news station in defense of a muckraking expose they did on Carnal Comics' publisher, Jay Allen Sanford's booth at the San Diego Comic Con (which is still archived on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund website) The PP Guru would be approached at conventions and had received fan letters and accolades from fans and professionals alike that it just wasn't a issue of Comic Buyer's Guide without a letter from the PP Guru nom de plume of Cary William-Shannon Coatney. However, some people believed that Cary William-Shannon Coatney were two different people. The PP Guru explained to people that the middle name of William-Shannon was a scottish title that he had inherited from his Grandfather on his mother's side. So the PP Guru had Cary William-Shannon Coatney assassinated and from the ashes arose just plain old Cary Coatney. But PP Guru is still shorter to write.


The PP Guru's fabulous contributions to Comics Buyer's Guide even made Harlan Ellison himself take a mild interest in the PP Guru's acerbic etchings. Sometime in 1995, the PP Guru got a call from Harlan Ellison himself thanking him for plugging his Dream Corridor comic book series from Dark Horse comics. It was that conversation with Harlan that inspired the PP Guru to take the Deposit Man script from out of the drawer and re tweak it a bit. Harlan told the PP Guru that he should quit his dayjob and try knocking on doors to peddle his work. "Get off your freakin' lazy ass and contribute something to society", he told the PP Guru The PP Guru will always be grateful to Unca' Harl for that little piece of peptalk.

The PP Guru wanted to do something really extravagant for the Comics Buyer's Guide- something that would certainly take it way over the top- he wanted to commandeer the entire Oh So? section in the weekly comic industry's newspaper for himself to talk about the time he spent his grandfather Shannon's inheritance on a nearly two month stay in London, England to interview comic shop owners on the state of Diamond's distributing practises in the UK.


He went out in June, with a pit stop in Parsippany to check on his mum and it was there that his constant ego maniac ineberiated stepfather, in a sorely need of a Reality Check Roger, who berated him on the whole idea got into another pointless blow out about not fetching him a beer when he asked him to-even though the PP Guru was just visiting. Nobody in Parsippany was really impressed that the PP Guru fancied himself as a globe trotting reconnoitering adventurer, and genealogist. That's right, the PP Guru was going to do some research into the origins of the Coatney name. Suffice to say, most of the chronicles that went into the making of the articles nearly drove the PP Guru mad as he was holed up in a Victoria Station hostel jotting down notes, escaped from a gas bomb attack on a London Underground station, and was nearly attacked by a shop owner's German Shepherd who refused to answer the PP Guru's questions or have him take pictures of his Camdentown store for the article.

The PP Guru is going to have drag that manuscript out of the mothballs someday for its' tenth anniversary. Hesitantly, Krause Publications passed on it. The PP Guru could also be seen in another publication called Comics Effect whereas he wrote more biographical essays based on some of his favortie comic books he read when he was a kid and how the world was affecting him at the time when he read them.

The studio tracks to Keys To Ascension Volumes I were recorded in San Luis Osbispo and the studio tracks to Volume II were recorded in The Office, Van Nuys, Ca by Billy Sherwood ( more on him in tomorrow's episode)

Favorite lyric: Bringing back the signs to no-man's land/Where diamonds and gold in hand/Will barter as the homeless burn/Someday will it be our turn? - Children of Light (Anderson/Howe/Squire/Vangelis/Wakeman)

Be sure to leave good footprints behind to: ~ Coat

PS Sparky gives you —

• Keys to Ascension (October 1996) UK #48; US #99
• Keys to Ascension 2 (November 1997) UK #62