Dave Porter – Are You out There?
If you can’t afford to fit a nice fireplace into your apartment and sit there for hours on end watching the wood burning, then you’re best off buying yourself a really good record player and start getting hypnotised by the spinning vinyl plates instead. It’ll not only enrich your life, but save you a colossal amount of money that you’d otherwise spend on hypno-therapy instead.
However, if vinyl records are outside of your purchasing power, perhaps you need to cleverly strategise a way to have your imagination fully stimulated. In that case, I can’t stress enough how much well-recorded, carefully-designed concept albums can help in this regard. And, of course, if you’ve already tried this route and have had enough of early 70s British prog bands, you might need something as new as Dave Porter’s efforts.
I’ve got the feeling that Dave Porter’s “Are You out There?” and the accompanying space opera can serve as the modern equivalent to late-night radio shows about alien invasions. It’ll thrill you, make you ask questions, and, most importantly, will keep that mean, old world and its dumb ideas for a while. Fortunately, Porter has invested time, finances and energy in creating a sound that approximates the intimacy of the aforementioned, classic records. And, luckily, you’ve got all the time in the world when it comes to matters such as this.
The James Henry Morgan Gang – Don’t Forget To Breathe
It’s a pretty simple agreement, but nobody seems to mind. Whether you enter a concert hall, a club, or a stadium with a tiny stage parked in the middle of the field, the arrangement is always the same. You pay your ticket and start forgetting about the real world for some time. Meanwhile, the people on the stage are tasked with leading a kind of ceremony of illusions.
Some will call it escapism, and that’s precisely what it is. But why shouldn’t reality be dodged once in a while? And why can’t the people on the stage be more than just complainers, reminding you that the politicians are bad, the streets are dirty, and the environment is being destroyed? Some illusions and words of encouragement are always needed, as the James Henry Morgan Gang manage to remind us.
The world’s just a show, and we do our best to perform. Still, sometimes it makes sense to walk off stage and to be the one watching it all unfold with a smile on your face. The earnest roots rock of The James Henry Morgan Gang’s “Don’t Forget To Breathe” is the tender pat on the back that you need. In fact, the band’s music as a whole is an invitation to give yourself up to the healing powers of soulful blues-rock music. If The James Henry Morgan Gang is right, the world will carry on whether you hum along to a great tune or not. Which one is it going to be?
