This Strange Engine

Yesterday I took my 1999 and 2000 tax information over to a tax preparer. It's the first time I've ever done this, but I decided I wanted someone to look over my 1999 return and to have someone who can provide me with advice about my taxes, especially since I do have stock options and might buy a home.

Recommended by one of my cow-orkers, the woman I met with turned out to be really nice, knowledgeable, and helpful. My taxes this year are pretty simple, but she told me that due to my 1999 taxes it was possible I could owe a penalty if I didn't have enough money withheld this past year. But better than that, it appears that due to confusion over how to report my sale of Epic stock in 1999, I might have overpaid those taxes by a considerable amount, and might be eligible to file an amendment and get a substantial amount of money back! How great would that be?

So now I need to go gather some more information so she can complete my 2000 return and evaluate my 1999 return, but at this point my tax situation looks not just fine, but downright rosy. Go figure!

This has certainly sold me on the value of having a professional look over my taxes. You can't beat consulting with someone who knows what they're doing.

Back in college and graduate school I used to buy a lot of compact discs. A few years ago I started listening to jazz music and bought a whole bunch more. But since I moved to California my buying has flagged, despite there being many excellent used CD stores in the area.

The reason, essentially, is that it's become harder to find new music that really grabs me. Jazz is never going to be as significant for me as it is for my friend John. My interest in folk music is pretty limited (mostly Celtic, and mostly not fiddle-based). I'm a rock fan at heart, and rock mostly left me behind in the 1980s when it became dance-pop and alternative rock. There isn't much rock from the 80s that I like, and in the 90s I noodled between mainstream rock and the alternative of the day. But other than Sonia Dada I didn't really uncover any artists who rocked my world.

I recently finished reading Flying Colours: The Jethro Tull Reference Manual, and this motivated me to start listening to all my Jethro Tull CDs (and I have almost all of 'em!). It's been delightful rediscovering these old classics. I have a new appreciation for their albums Stand Up (1969), Aqualung (1971) and Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll, Too Young to Die! (1976). The third in particular is a quirky little flawed gem which I think has been almost completely overlooked even by fans. And Aqualung has really grown on me now that I've realized that although the song writing isn't the best, Martin Barre's guitar and Clive Bunker's drumming are really the stars of the show.

And last week I came across a copy of To Cry You a Song: A Collection of Tull Tales (1996), which is a tribute album by the other three original members of Tull (bluesy guitarist Mick Abrahams, bassist Glenn Cornick and Bunker), plus contributions from Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake and Palmer), John Wetton (of King Crimson, U.K. and Asia), Roy Harper, Charlie Musselwhite, and a few more recent progressive groups I'd never heard of: Magellan, Tempest and Wolfstone.

This actually turned out to be a terrific album. Harper's folky rendition of "Up The 'Pool" is charming. Emerson sits in with keyboards substituting for flute on "Living in the Past", Magellan does a faithful but still interesting cover of "Aqualung", and best of all, a California prog-rocker named Robert Berry does a fantastic cover of one of my favorite Tull tracks, "Minstrel in the Gallery". It alone is worth picking up the album for.

So maybe the answer to my musical quandary is to do like the song says and live in the past?

Nah.

I also picked up a recent release from Marillion, This Strange Engine (1997). Now, Marillion was a fantastic group in the 80s when they were fronted by a guy named Fish, and their album Clutching at Straws is one of my favorites. Then Fish left, and their new singer, Steve Hogarth, was okay, but the song writing took a dive. Their next album, Season's End, was okay, but leaned too far in a cheesy pop direction. And their next few albums were worse. I'd pretty much given up on them after the terminally mediocre Afraid of Sunlight.

But I picked up This Strange Engine used, and it soon grew on me. It helps that it kicks off with a fantastic track in "Man of a Thousand Faces", with acoustic guitar and piano driving the first half, and a swelling vocal chant in the second half. A really powerful song.

But the rest of the album, while not at that level, is also quite good. "Estonia" is a complex but more gentle tune, while "An Accidental Man" is a straight-ahead rocker that's quite effective itself. The lengthy title track closes the album and it a bit more scattered but has several good hooks.

What I like about this album is that the band has finally gotten back to focusing on melodies rather than the seemingly-endless muddle of (say) Brave. The musicians in Marillion have always had a tendency to go out into the musical wilderness and seemed to need someone to rein them in on occasion. Additionally Hogarth's voice seems much better integrated into the band's overall sound then on previous efforts. It's not a great album, but it is recent and different and I enjoyed it a lot. Now I want to hear the two albums they've released since this one; not bad for a group I'd virtually given up on, eh?

As a result of this, I've realized that there is actually an active progressive rock genre in rock music that I want to investigate. For instance, I want to check out the aforementioned Tempest, Magellan and Wolfstone, although I'm not quite sure where to start with any of them. (Any suggestions?) I'm also interested in listening to more by Jadis, whom I discovered through Aural Moon, but they seem not to be widely available in the US.

Today, though, I did go pick up an album by a group named Dream Theater, Scenes From a Memory. It turns out that they're part of a genre called "progressive metal", which seems to mean that they display the hard guitar chops of a metal band but the more intricate arrangements of a progressive group. I've only given the album one listen so far, and I wasn't bowled over, but perhaps it will grow on me. I would prefer more balance between the guitar and the other instruments, though. Additionally, I've read that their earlier album, Images and Words, may be more accessible.

So that seems to be where I am as far as listening to music right now. It's been a few years since I've been actually excited about any music I've bought, so this is a really good feeling just at the moment.