Travelling at the speed of prog

[JimD]

Hello

Do you ever do the same journey to the same music?  

It's very easy to fall into this habit in a car with a tape player or a single CD player if you don't change your discs often (and if you really like a band/LP then this is not hard to do).  In this regard prog does present some interesting journeys because the longer lengths of songs allow you to get a decent bit of travelling in.

As an example, back in 2007 I had to go regularly to the hospital every other night or so to visit my ailing Dad (now departed).  On a good night the song Deadwing by Porcupine Tree was just the right amount of time to get from my house to the hospital and I used to quite like "lining up" things like traffic light junctions and bits of the song.  Equally if it had got to the bit about "closed circuit tv" and I was still at a particular junction I'd know I was not going to make it in time for the end of the song.  All a bit silly, but you notice these things after a bit.

Of course any other type of music can do this and long mixes of lots of short songs and so on count just as much as single long songs. I used to rehearse with Small Machine out in Bucks and if I started my journey with my "Roch!" CD compilation the first song would be "Killed By Death" by Motorhead and that would always get me to the first significant roundabout on the journey if the traffic was good/wind was blowing in the right direction etc.

In fact you don't even have to be in a car.  I used to have a gym workout that went great to Milliontown and it would be great to be on the treadmill to Hyperventilate, then weights and so on and finishing up with the title track on the recumbent bike.

Okay, this all seems a bit flimsy now as a proposition, but it can't be just me, so if anyone knows what I am talking about at all and wants to offer up some examples from their journeys/record collections/lives, prog or otherwise...then feel free!

[E.S.]

Speaking of things lining up... I can't remember what song or artist it was, but on one of my usual trips to the city, the train was a bit late. Before the announcer, there's always this loud "dong" or "beep" or "ka-swoooosh!" or whatever it is where you are in this world. In my case, it hit perfectly on a big ending chord, on time, in key, and made me jump, I thought it was the music evolving on my iPod, rewriting itself by magic.

Or maybe that's what actually happened.

[El_Mayonnaise]

Christmas 2010, I took up a job at Royal mail....

Final 15 or so minutes would always go to The Dividing Line so I could get out there smiling and bouncing around the (particularly) large warehouse that was (amongst other things) where I (sometimes) sorted (unsorted) the letters.

Used to have a bit of a run to "A nightmare to remember" by Dream Theater as it seemed to fit a nice pace of jogging and walking.

But I gave that up because it was too much hard work.

The running was ok though  :mrgreen:

[Pedro]

I tend to stuff a new prog CD in the car stereo and let it loop for several days, so the commute to work tends to feature the same music but seldom starting at the same point.
When I was last obsessed with exercise at the works gym, I found a couple of albums worked well for me; Magenta's "Metamorphosis" and Arena's "Pepper's Ghost"...the latter playing straight to my ego by accompanying the end of my workout with the words; "the king is dead, so worship me!"  :lol:

[danofmayz]

On my way to the gym I seem to always listen to Subsignal or Sieges Even. Other than that, I find when I'm doing anything manic, Tori Amos is an artist that always comes up.

It's strange how listening habits get formed just from having to do something else.

[MikeEvs]

Redemption - The Fullness of Time IV: Transcendence – 7:59 the last song on their The Fullness of Time album is just the right length to get me from the Bus stop to my house on my way home from work

[Pedro]

LOL Didn't that dog-awful Bruce Willis movie "Hudson Hawk" feature the protagonist tackling time-limited tasks by picking a song of the same length? Hmm....that's the only thing I can remember about that film.  

[ich_bin_besser]

Wait, did you take "Hudson Hawk" seriously? Silly, but quite funny. Love it when movies don't take themselves seriously.

 

[Pedro]

Wait, did you take "Hudson Hawk" seriously? Silly, but quite funny. Love it when movies don't take themselves seriously.
 

No, I know it was intended to be ludicrous and not taking itself too seriously...but it just wasn't done well enough to pull it off in my opinion. This was an out-and-out lemon of a film.

I tend to agree with Wikipedia :-

The film received very negative critical reviews and was overall a box office bomb (Budget $65M - Box Office just $17M). James Brundage of AMC filmcritic said the film was "so implausible and so over the top that it lets inconsistency roll off like water on a duck's back." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said of the film, "A movie this unspeakably awful can make an audience a little crazy. You want to throw things, yell at the actors, beg them to stop." It was also subjected to extensive criticism at Agony Booth in its mega recap. It received three Razzie Awards for Worst Director, Worst Screenplay and Worst Picture with additional nominations for Worst Actor (Bruce Willis), Worst Supporting Actor (Richard E. Grant) and Worst Supporting Actress (Sandra Bernhard). In his autobiography, With Nails, Richard E. Grant diarises the production of the film in detail, noting the ad-hoc nature of the production and extensive rewriting and replotting during the actual filming. Willis went on to become one of the leading box-office stars of the 1990s, but has not made any further forays into scriptwriting.

[Mikey]

Journey to work only used to take about 4 minutes so it used to take a while to hear the whole album. On days when I walked I used to find tracks with a decent marching tempo, the man staggering home from the pub isn't drunk, he's trying walk in time to a prog track. I keep meaning to put together a playlist for walking but never get round to it.

Working on the rental property I only have Arena's 7th up there, which is pretty good for smashing up fireplaces and ancient cupboards.

[JimD]

Did a few miles this weekend in my car.  The live version of Milliontown, (intros and applause included) got me from roughly Oxford to roughly Banbury on the A34/M40 on Friday night, and from the A650 junction of the M1 down to the M18 junction on Sunday night.  

Passing Meadowhall in the southbound peloton-des-voitures with all the riffs and licks flying about the speakers made it all seem quite space-age and busy.

The answer may already be in these pages somewhere too, but it did remind me of something I always wondered about.  I assume it is Dec who says "Thankyousomuch!" at the very end, and then the phrase repeats again in a slightly lo-fi manner.  Is this him coming through in a long-delay on a mic on the live stage?  The amount of time reminds me of old-style 3-3/4" reel to reel print-through but it can't be that, shurely?

[Pedro]

My guess is it's either JM or Jem copying Dec's high voice...but there are people here who were there that might be able to remember(?).

[L33VEY]

I can't remember that, but I do remember that back in the 70s, my dad, who used to do a lot of driving round the south of England, used to know exactly the point on the M4 when Uncle Rick's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, should go on.  The final applause would start just he then pulled into the drive at home.

Many years later I found that the same trick worked for me if I put Journey on just after having contributed to the tolls booth outside the Dartford Tunnel..    8-)

[JimD]

...but I do remember that back in the 70s, my dad, who used to do a lot of driving round the south of England, used to know exactly the point on the M4 when Uncle Rick's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, should go on. The final applause would start just he then pulled into the drive at home.

Many years later I found that the same trick worked for me if I put Journey on just after having contributed to the tolls booth outside the Dartford Tunnel..

*That* is exactly what I'm talkin' about      

[JimD]

My guess is it's either JM or Jem copying Dec's high voice...but there are people here who were there that might be able to remember(?).

I hadn't thought of that - anyone else familiar with that bit at the end of the song?