| Starting from my early teens, my musicalinterests
developed rapidly from glam rock acts like Slade, to the Who - whose Quadrophenia
I still value highly - and then to symphonic rock, particularly Yes (Tales!)
and Camel, and Jazz Rock. At 15, I thought I owned quite a large collection
of albums, but I was extremely impressed when I saw the collection of my
friend's brother: about 5 times as large, including virtually every LP
I had. During that time, '77, I often went to the local library where one
could also rent LP's, and there I saw an album by a group whose name I'd
remembered (how can you forget!) from going through my friends' brothers'
collection. It was "Still Life" by Van Der Graaf Generator.
The neat cover and the "Escherian" font made me
decide to try it out. Although I didn't particularly like the first song
-certainly not that odd break "Away ..."- the thing that struck me was
the singers' voice. However, only after "Still Life" started, my attention
had been fully drawn! Not only this remarkable voice, but the singing was
part of intriguing music, both simple and complex, with many changes in
tempo, sound and atmosphere, yet being a real song. By the end of "La Rossa"
I knew I'd buy the record. Side two started off nicely, but I found "My
Room" too long, too quiet and too monotonous (I don't think so now!). Yet,
this was more than balanced by the other song of side two. I bought the
album, and from the library I rented two other LP's, Godbluff and World
Record, which -though not as good as Still life- I also liked and bought.
I remember also renting one or two other (older)
VdGG albums and PH solo albums, but I did not like them at all, I guess
because these were less "symphonic" and even much further away from Yes
and Camel as in fact Still life/Godbluff/World Record already were. Slightly
later, The Quiet Zone was released and I immediately liked that one and
during 1977-78 I listened to this and Still Life quite a lot (often omitting
the first song of both side 1 and 2 of the latter!). Yet my favourite at
that time remained Tales by Yes!
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After I'd bought Vital,
which I'd found highly disappointing, my interest in PH/VdGG slowly diminished.
In 1980 I went to University in Enschede and my musical interests were
broadened (e.g. Siouxi, Sibelius, Joy Division, Kate Bush, Brel, Cohen,
Nick Drake and later Nick Cave and Foetus (only Nail!), not in the least
by the presence of a very large library run by students (lots of items
on your want list will be in this library!).
It wasn't until Sunday 8 april 1984 that I really
became a PH addict: for the first time I went to see PH perform live, in
the Royal Theatre Carre, Amsterdam. I had actually caught a flue (I'm the
one you can hear coughing quite a lot on the recording of this concert),
but I went nevertheless, because I already had the ticket in advance (I'd
payed for it, so I went; I'm Dutch!). To be short, I'd never experienced
such an intensive event, the band giving us all it's got, and then of course
this voice!! No LP/CD/ recording has ever done justice to the real
PH voice.
The week after april 8th I was sick. The next
week, I rented/taped all the VdGG/PH I could get hold of, and of course
recorded the, almost completely broadcasted, Carre show (why didn't those
guys who made the bootleg A Stranger Still track down a much better recording,
mine is qualitatively virtually similar to that of e.g. Room Temperature).
Since I ran across an ad in OOR from someone (where are you Maurice?) who
sold tapes of PH, I also started to collect tapes and other stuff and tried
to complete my vinyl collection. It took me till 1986 to track down the
last one, "The future now", in Seattle (!). Being no longer a student (with
lots of spare time) or a Ph-D student (with slowly diminishing spare time),
but "Careering" at "Shell"-laboratories in Amsterdam, I've become slightly
less a PH fanatic as a few years ago; but both "Usher" as well as "Fireships"
almost made me bit the bullet for the third time.
Rene Bos (written in 1992 for Pilgrims; some 30
gigs ago)
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