The Doorway Night of The Prog Special

Welcome to this special edition of the blog. I really hope that you can listen to the Doorway on 103 The Eye or the podcast of the show as you read this.

The radio show is aired at 2100 UK time on 103 The Eye on Saturday 6th August. You can listen here:https://internetradiouk.com/eye-melton/?fbclid=IwAR1_IV8HxRFLOPzVf3QLlLkqkWZmwYMDr6zc_V1m4sOr6LN6wYunqj_QPLM

Night of the Prog is special.

We go every year because we love the location. This photo is taken from the terrace bar of the venue. We go because we love the music, as you’ll discover during the show. We go to be with people from all over the World who share the same feelings.

As I said, it’s special!

Firstly huge thanks to Russ Hamer who took most of these beautiful photographs. I’ve added a few of my own to fill some gaps.

This week’s show starts with a tribute to Richard Wright to celebtrate his birthday.

The first track from NOTP comes from Pure Reason Revolution. Actually, its two tracks, taken from their brilliant 2006 release The Dark Third. Chloë Alper was replaced on stage by Annicke Shireen. Here they are in action:

One of the real highlights of the entire festival was seeing Voyager IV performing the whole of their reworking of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Its a fantastic album, released in 2019, over 50 years after ELP’s classic live album and a century after Ravel’s orchestration of the original piano pieces.

Voyager IV are 4 virtuoso musicians:

Sunday was without doubt the best of the 3 days and the next band followed Voyager IV on stage.

Wired Ways were a real revelation, playing a hugely entertaining set of psychedelic prog/pop which included a song about a ticket inspector on a train called Ticket Tally Man! I’m going to play ‘When the Doors Are Closed‘ which has just been released as a single from the forthcoming self titled debut album.

Colloseum gave us a powerful set of blues and R&B. Was it prog? Not really, but who cares when the performance is this good! The band’s history goes back to the early 1970s. The track in this weeks’s show is a lovely piece of blues taken fom the new album, Restoration.

The opening band on Sunday were Infringement. Another really class act from Norway. (I really must do a Norway Special soon!!)

After a somewhat nervous start the band gave a a dramatic performance of their last album, Alienism. They also win the prize for the most entertaining band introduction (ever!)

Back to Friday night now and the solid set played by The Pineapple Thief. Featuring singer, songwriter and guitarist, Bruce Soord and the legendary drummer Gavin Harrison.

I’m closing the show this week with a track from one of the best live bands you will ever see, Lazuli. They just get better and better. They played ‘Le fantastique envol de Dieter Böhm’ from start to fnish. Lazuli were the only band (apart from the headliners)given an encore. This always the entire band playing the marimba. Click this link to see just how good it is! https://youtu.be/RzqavBltdBI

And there it is! That’s all I can fit into an hour so I hope you’ve enjoyed the music and the images and a little insight into why NOTP has such a special place in the hearts of so many people.

My thanks again to Russ Hamer for letting me use his fabulous images.