The Purple Pinup Guru Platform

When purple things are pulsating on your mind, I'm the one whose clock you want to clean. Aiding is Sparky, the Astral Plane Zen Pup Dog from his mountain stronghold on the Northernmost Island of the Happy Ninja Island chain, this blog will also act as a journal to my wacky antics at an entertainment company and the progress of my self published comic book, The Deposit Man which only appears when I damn well feel like it. Real Soon Now.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

THE PP GURU PICKS A PAIR OF BRAND NEW PROG CLASSICS...

Pinch the PP Guru - for he must be dreaming. What are the PP Guru odds that both of the PP Guru's favorite two bands in the would be releasing both their newest efforts - ON THE SAME DAY?

April 24th is also the birthday of the PP Guru's very first high school sweetheart, Linda Diane Freeman - unfortunely, the PP Guru never graduated to a second or third high school sweetheart- so we won't get into that today. It's not as she would really give a shit anyway. Let's not allow the PP Guru to stray off coarse. He is here today to talk about new progressive rock albums. The first of which is...

The 14th studio effort from Marillion - Somewhere Else is released today on their very owned label - Impact Records. Word going around is that this newest effort is practically critic proof the fabulous Cinco de Marillo boys had proved that records companies and label don't mean nada shit when it comes to establishing a loyal and dedicated fan base on the internet that they are nearly willing to scarf down big enormous breakfast plates of kippers and shit in their lemming loyalty if that were to be the cost of recording a new album. Fan bases and street teams are what keeps this band a going way long after your Energizer batteries are inserted in your grandmother's snatch if it were still to keep her pacemaker running so that it can be sold off on Ebay- so in other record buying layman's terms, it means that no budget is astronomical when the fans themselves fork over the cash to help finance the recording of 2001's Anaroknophobia and 2004's double disc entre of Marbles. Then all of a sudden, critics started to like them again.

So the pending result of the fan base reaction to Somewhere Else - an album this time not financed by fan club means is sort of leanings towards to appeasing the critics - without overtly being sounding too commerical. A new single, See it Like A Baby was released a month or two prior, and sadly the sales or the reviews have not been favorable. But as the PP Guru has said in previous entries- Don't knock it until you try it. From what the PP Guru has heard from a weekend concert broadcasted last Saturday on the BBC Radio 2 with DJ Bob Harras - the PP Guru is quite fond of the new material from what he's heard of the two new tracks performed The Last Century of Man and the title one. Mssrs Steve Rothery ( guitars ) Pete Trewavas ( bass ) Mark Kelly ( keyboards ), Ian Mosley ( drums ) and Steve Hogarth or H as he likes to be called (vocals ) are ready now to embrace the world as Marillion Light.

Ah, so what? The PP Guru has been a loyal avid listener since the band's conception in the early eighties - he's isn't going to give up on them now.

The other new release that has the PP Guru famished for anything he can get his hands on that comes with the label Porcupine Tree ... is the ninth studio release from the ever incredible expanding mindfucking brain of Steven Wilson and company called ...Fear of a Blank Planet.

Fear of a Blank Planet, their official first for Atlantic Records, (past two releases, In Absentia and Deadwing had been for indie sublabel Lava Records) as according to fans and critics alike -could be looked upon as a musical manifesto into the scary, scary place our world is becoming with the advert of violent video games, hair triggered violent outbursts, the rampage of premarital sex, and the addiction to myspace or youtube. It could be looked upon as the soundtrack for all mananical social misfits the entire world wide over. If that crazy Korean kid had just took a chill pill and sat down with a few spins of this patter - maybe the -philosophical and endearing lyrics of coming to terms with abandonment and the anti-social climb into madness would have quelled his bloodythirsty rants. The PP Guru can nearly relate with this deterioration of our youth culture spread across six tracks.

A week before it's US release ( but on the day of the UK release) the band had come to the rationalization that they had to pull their promo video of the controversial title track off of their website and their myspace page because of it's depiction of violent youth shooting up schools and blowing up cars. On the plus side, they are heavyweight guest stars of prog rock yore including Rush's Alex Lifeson on the nearly 18 minute track Anesthetize along with the legendary master of guitarscape atomospheres and the maestro of King Crimson, Robert Fripp on Way Out of Here.

Both are very highly PP Guru recommended- even though they're not in his peyote stained fingers as of yet.

But the PP Guru is leaving the blog airwaves to rectify that situation right now.

PP Guru