One of the things that I always like to talk about is how a natural
expression of randomness will periodically produce something that appears
non-random – and in fact, if it doesn’t, then it’s not really random!

This weeks friday random 10 is a great example of this. In the past, when I’ve been in a mood for a particular kind of music, I’m done random shuffles within a playlist containing the stuff I feel like listening to. I didn’t do that this week. I let iTunes randomly pick out 10 things, and these are the first ten from the list. It
turned out to be a nice week for progressive music.

1. IQ, “Infernal Chorus”: IQ is one of the great neo-progressive bands that started off as
   a Genesis ripoff. A lot of those bands have gone on to do a two-album magnum-opus work that
   tries to be comparable to “The Lamb Lays Down on Broadway”. IQ is the only one that’s really been
   able to pull it off. “Infernal Chorus” is off of a double-album concept set by IQ called “Subterannea”,
   and in my opinion it’s as good as “Lamb”. Magnificent.
2. The Flower Kings, “The Devil’s Danceschool”: Instrumental flower kings featuring
   improv played on a trumpet piped through a distortion rig. Seriously out-there; they wander pretty far
   away from the tonic chord in this. It’s the kind of thing that only the Flower Kings could really pull off.
3. Yes, “Our Song”: Ick.
4. Porcupine Tree, “Mellotron Scratch”: Another great neo-progressive band. Porcupine Tree started
   off as a joke, and turned into one of the best serious bands out there. This is a mellow piece off of their
   “Deadwing” album.
5. The Police, “King of Pain”: a track off of an album that Sting one described as a “nasty piece of work”.
   It’s all very dark, but it’s good music.
6. Naftule’s Dream, “Emperor Red”: progressive Klezmer, with a seriously bluesy feel to it.
7. Marillion, “Paper Lies”: Brave is one of my favorite Marillion albums. Every bit of it is
   wonderful. This is a track that’s actually sort of catchy, which seems sort of incongruous considering how
   totally dark “Brave” is. But it fits in, and it’s a great song.
8. Spock’s Beard, “Skeletons at the Feast”: Another band that started off as a Genesis ripoff. They
   did try to do their own “Lamb”, called “Snow”, but unlike IQ, they didn’t pull it off so well. After that,
   their founder left, and it took them a while to find their feet again. But they did, and this album is
   terrific.
9. Genesis, “Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist”: I really didn’t plan this – it’s just
   the way the shuffle turned out. But here’s a track from “Lamb”. Not my favorite track, but every on Lamb is
   incredible.
10. Metaphor, “Battle of the Archons”: A relatively unknown neo-progressive band. Definitely not
    from the Genesis ripoff school.