Today I turned version 36. It was probably only the second time I celebrated a birthday away from “home” in my life (wherever home happened to be at that point in time).
Steve and I decided this was tourist day. We went downtown to see the Underground Atlanta and the World of Coca-Cola. The Underground is basically a downtown based shopping mall, which didn’t impress me all that much (reminds me of Station Square in Pittsburgh). The World of Coca-Cola was pretty much a promotion for Coca-Cola, but you had to pay $9 to see it. The best part of it was that you could sample all the various flavors of Coke products from the US and abroad. The US flavors were the typical ones (though I didn’t see C2 or Lime flavored Coke), but they did have Fanta Birch Beer – only available in central Pennsylvania (and I like drinking it when I can find it). The world flavors were non-cola and primarily fruit based flavors. Most were pretty darn good except for one very nasty tasting one from Italy. I had to get a “chaser” to get rid of the taste!
For lunch, Steve and I met up with Roamer1 (Stan Cline) who works for a major telecom company in downtown Atlanta. Stan works weekends, so he could only meet up with us for lunch. We ate Chinese at a food court just down the street. Again, nice to put a face to the voice.
Back to mid-town and see the show. The interesting thing about prog power fans is that they are VERY nice. Steve and I met up with people on the subway, at the airport, and even downtown who were attending ProgPower. Again, it goes back to the quote above – you need to have intelligence to appreciate this music. Here’s my mini-review for the five remaining bands who played that night:
Stride (USA) – A relatively new band. Started out as instrumental-only, but their new album features their new vocalist. Their music is good, but what impressed me was their inspiration. I knew that this band must be good because at the band autograph signing the say before, one of the members had a RUSH T-shirt (the Canadian band, for those who don’t know). Since Stride is new, they didn’t have a lot of original material. So to fill up their time slot, they played a cover version of the first two segments of Rush’s epic “2112”. The lead singer for Stride managed to hit many of Geddy Lee’s high notes quite well. I wound up buying Stride’s new CD.
Symphorce (Germany) – A straight melodic prog power metal band. Very good band. They just came out with their new album “Godspeed”, which I wound up buying.
Pink Cream 69 (Germany) – Technically a German band, though their lead singer is from England and their bass player is from the USA. This band is pretty much a hard-rock band, but they really put on a good show with songs that lean towards the prog power style. This was probably the most under appreciated band of the festival. I have two of their most recent albums and purchased a recently re-released third at the show.
Therion (Sweden) – There are not enough words in the English (and probably Swedish) language to describe this band!! Therion has been around for a number of years, but only in the last few years have they really hit the scene HARD! Originally a death metal band, this band is truly progressive. Imagine a metal band with opera singers as background vocalists! This band featured THREE mezzo-soprano women and two tenor men backup singers! This band had my jaw on the floor! This is their first tour of the US. If you want to see pictures of this band, they played at Jaxx nightclub in northern Virginia a couple of days before and Jaxx has pictures on their site. This is one band you must experience to understand and appreciate.
Stratovarius (Finland) – Stratovarius is either one these bands you either like a lot of hate with a passion. I personally like this band, but for their older music. They’ve been around for a number of years, with 10 years with for their present lead vocalist. They are by far the most popular of the prog power genre and the most controversial. The band had a video screen that showed their recent adventures on their current tour to South and North America. They opened with a new song “Maniac Dance” from their just released album (which I wound up purchasing, along with the maxi-single for Maniac Dance). They didn’t get on stage until about midnight and played until about 2 AM. A very good show, however they didn’t play anything from their two most recent albums prior their very recent release (Elements parts 1 & 2 were left out totally - these were probably considered their worst albums and they smartly didn’t play anything from them. It was also a turbulent time in the band – as the band almost broke up stemming from the fact the leader of the band was diagnosed as bi-polar).
