Road trip!
Today I’m off to another part of America. Hitting the open road in the vehicle. I’ll be stopping in Sin City, a.k.a. Las Vegas. Actually the funny thing about that old title is that Las Vegas has been reinventing itself to be a family fun destination and scrubbing away most of the outward appearance of the sin that made it famous. Large corporations erecting casinos built for the family unit. It has worked. It’s a city transformed.
I’ve got friends who have lived their whole lives in Vegas. So I get to hear the stories of how it’s changed even in the past few years. Driving through there’s always something new to see, some new casino that has popped up since my last visit. I like Vegas, but there’s really no desire on my part to live there. Not at this point in time anyway.
Kinda like today’s song. I heard about Symphony X about 2 years ago. Someone played it for me and asked if I knew who it was. At the moment they had asked the question I thought well it could be Dream Theater. Then the music changed mid-stride and I thought maybe it was Yngwie J. Malmsteen. Then yet again the music changed and I thought maybe it was some weird concoction by Steve Vai. Oops, no it changed again to something akin to Dream Theater. And around it went. So I replied that I couldn’t really tell who it was because it was like a collage of several artists glued together.
Thus this band sounds like each influence they have, one at a time. That’s bizarre. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard such a thing before, where the band/artist has such obvious influences and they stick out like this. Regardless, the musicianship is pretty obvious from a technical standpoint. The boys can play. While the music isn’t going to hit the popular charts by any stretch of the imagination, it is interesting for the most part. At least I find it interesting because I was really into the technical shit when I was learning to play. But then if you’re a long time reader of the blog you’d know that.
I’ll have my iPod plugged into the stereo in the car. Set to random so I can bang my head then wander off to funk from one minute to the next. Enjoy!
(** Disclaimer: If Symphony X’s label decides to cast me into the Sea, I’ll have to expel the audio off the server. The post will remain to show some influences and their creations. **)