Baja Prog 2000 Page

The fourth edition of the annual Progressive Rock Festival Baja Prog to be held from March 1 thru March 4 of the year 2000 in Mexicali, Mexico, is proud to announce the official program. Here is a detailed list of events for each day:
Wednesday March 1, 2000:
Opening of Festival (place to be announced)
- Brief appearance by members of CAST (Mexico) http://www.1russ.com/cast.htm
- An unconfirmed band (to be announced)
Thursday March 2, 2000:
"Caf?Literario", 2PM - An unconfirmed band (to be announced)
"Teatro del Estado", 7PM, us$12 - NEXUS (Argentina)
- ECLAT (France) http://www.alpes-net.fr/~simpsons/eclat_bioGB.html
- THE FLOWER KINGS (Sweden) http://www.users.wineasy.se/flowerkings/etta.html
Friday March 3, 2000:
"Caf?Literario", 2PM - An unconfirmed band (to be announced)
"Teatro del Estado", 7PM, us$12 - DRAMA (France) http://www.musearecords.com/Bands/dram.html
- ISILDURS BANE (Sweden) http://www.isildursbane.se/
- PALLAS (United Kingdom) http://www.pallas-uk.com/images/bodypage.html
Saturday March 4, 2000:
"Teatro del Estado", 2PM, us$12 - FIVE FIFTEEN (Finland) http://www.novision.fi/fivefifteen/
- HALLOWEEN (France) http://www.musearecords.com/Bands/halloween.html
- JADIS (United Kingdom) http://www.dprp.vuurwerk.nl/bands/jadis/news.html
- AFTER CRYING (Hungary) http://w3.datanet.hu/aftercry/engsite.html
Closing of Festival afterwards (place to be announced)
For more information regarding Baja Prog, you can check the following web page: http://www.1russ.com
Progressively,
Members of CAST and the Consolidated Collaboration
lunanegr@sjr.podernet.com.mx

Reflections from Baja Prog 2000
From: Steve McAdams <>
This was my third Baja Prog, and the festival just keeps getting better and better. The attendance seemed to much higher than I past years, maybe due to the fact that this year the festival seemed to have sponsors, Mexicali Brewing Company and Ford. I did not get a chance to see every band but here are my reflections on the ones I did see: Eclat. A French band that was very good mostly instrumental in not entirely instrumental. Great band, high energy, I thought they were great. Nexus. Powerful band from Argentina, very guitar driven. Two words can sum up Nexus: Mariela Gonzalez! Female vocalist who was stunning. I was sitting with my wife and even she said WOW! Very gothic in appearance and great voice, Very captivating young lady. Equinox. Saw them a couple of years ago at Baja Prog and liked them more then. Did not care for the new Female vocalist, but the band was good. Halloween. Great! Very dark musical compositions, but highly energetic. Singer is wonderful, and has a great stage presence. Ten Jinn. Very good band, not typical progressive rock, but great stuff. They seem to be a Baja Prog every year, and I hope they continue to be invited. Five Fifteen. Stole the show, in my opinion. Great band from Finland. Led by a guy who looked like Robert Plant painted gold! What a surprise these guys were, just nuts!. I loved them. I think most people really enjoyed Five Fifteen, I asked John Wetton if he could live up the this band and he just kind of laughed and said they would be much better. I asked if he enjoyed the performance and he said he loved it. Very rock and roll with shades of Deep Purple, Led Zep, and Hawkwind (performing with a former member of Hawkwind). Isilduris Bane. Hated them. Most people LOVED them, just not for me. Very dark, and moody, very Swedish. Pallas. Great! It was great to see such Neo-Prog greats. They were fantastic, although the lead singer reminded me too much of Michael J Fox. Jadis. Great highlight for me, one of my favorite bands from England. Gary Chandler has a very relaxed stage presence, and the music was great. After Crying. Hated them last year, even walked out and went home during their performance. This year I really wanted to try to get into them. They were fantastic, wow, I must have really developed my musical taste this past year. Very orchestrated band. Each musician played 2 or 3 instruments, even the guy on the sound board played flute. I thought the vocals were kind of weak, but the songs were tight and the band was great. John Wetton Band. At first John seemed like he was just going through the motions, you know, hashing out the old songs to get a pay check, then about 3-4 songs in he really seemed to enjoy performing. His set started out with the KC classic Red, it was nice to here this song performed. By the end of the set John really seemed like a different person, although he did not come back on stage at the end of the festival when all performers were recognized. The rest of the set contained songs from his career with most of the bands he's played in. Once again Alfonso from Cast did a wonderful job organizing this festival. The time between bands was minimal compared to other festivals I have attended. The turn out was great especially Saturday night, it seemed like a lot of people from Mexicalli attended. Meeting the bands is always a lot of fun and all the music vendors there like Greg Walker make it a total experience not to be missed. I would love to here any opinions from others who attended.

From: Luna Negra, S.C. <>
Well yes, I was there and I'd like to add something: > Nexus. Powerful band from Argentina, very guitar driven. Two words can sum up Nexus: Mariela Gonzalez! Female vocalist who was stunning. I was sitting with my wife and even she said WOW! Very gothic in appearance and great voice, Very captivating young lady. Definitely, "Detr? del Umbral", their CD is one of the best I heard in 1999. Amazing show. > Equinox. Saw them a couple of years ago at Baja Prog and liked them more then. Did not care for the new Female vocalist, but the band was good. This time, Equinox sounded completely different. They are more keyboard oriented instead of guitar oriented as they were in 1998. The singer (Dalys Toru?) is a very young singer and she needs to develop her voice. Nice, but nothing new under the sun. > Halloween. Great! Very dark musical compositions, but highly energetic. Singer is wonderful, and has a great stage presence. Unfortunatelly, the LAST concert with GeGe LeCoc. As far as I know, she left the band few weeks ago but she decided to came to Mexico just for this show. > Five Fifteen. Stole the show, in my opinion. Very rock and roll with shades of Deep Purple, Led Zep, and Hawkwind (performing with a former member of Hawkwind). A kind of Gong performing Led Zeppelin. Howkwind's Nic Turner joined for two tunes ("SIlver Machine", was a treat). > Isilduris Bane. Hated them. Most people LOVED them, just not for me. Very dark, and moody, very Swedish. WOW! They are really the kind of music I like. More on the side of "contemporary music" but very competent. > Pallas. Great! It was great to see such Neo-Prog greats. They were about to play "Arrive Alive" with some lirycs in Spanish for the encore but no one asked for more (?). > Jadis. Great highlight for me, one of my favorite bands from England. Gary Chandler has a very relaxed stage presence, and the music was great. Just one word: GREAT!!!> > After Crying. Hated them last year, even walked out and went home during their performance. From my point of view, the best of Baja prog! > John Wetton Band. Well, Mr. Wetton himself.

From: clint collins <> Subject: Another opinion of Bajaprog I was at Bajaprog for all four days. I'm suprised nobody has mentioned Tryo. They are a three piece band from Chile who played guitar, bass, cello, xylophone and drums. They were absolutely phenomenal. Another standout was Nexus who had kind of a Keith Emerson meets Jon Lord thing going on with the keyboards and a super sexy, charismatic female vocalist. Just dynamite. I found Eclat to be kind of boring. There was too much guitar soloing which is fun for awhile, but when every song just becomes a vehicle to hear more solos my mind starts to wander. Halloween had a wonderful lead singer and were very dynamic though at times the music seemed to become pretty unfocused. Ten Jinn was great, they have vastly improved from their first album and show tons of potential to keep getting better. I thought Isildurs Bane was fantastic. Solid, thinking man's progressive music. The high points were the phenomenal After Crying and a solid perfomance by John Wetton. He was much better than the last time I saw him at progfest L.A. I didn't personally care for Nexus, Jadis, Pallas or Five Fifteen. They were all too neo for my tastes and sounded more like something you could hear on regular radio. The thing that impressed me most about the entire progfest experience was how everybody seemed to make an extra effort to be friendly and cooperative despite the numerous language barriers. And, there was no separation between the audience and the band members. The various groups hung around the lobby before and after performances and were totally accessible and friendly. The only downer was the constant construction going on at the hotel which woke us up at 7:00 a.m. every single morning. I think I made Greg Walker at least $500 richer with all of the wonderful Cd's he had for sale. Alfonso Vidales and the other members of Cast deserve a lot of credit for putting on one hell of a classy show.

Cross-Post from the Prog&Other list:
From: The Progmeister <>
Well, since I wasn't seeing too many reviews of Bajaprog on rmp I wrote up this short overview (all imo of course!):
It was another FANTASTIC year in Mexicali, Alfonso and the boys did a great job organizing the event once again. This was perhaps the best festival I've been to as far as the like/dislike ratio of the bands. I arrived Thursday afternoon, too late for Kromilech from Mexico City, but I was told they were very good. After checking in to the hotel and some great Italian food at a nearby restaurant (go figure), we headed off for the Teatro del Estado.
First up was Eclat from France. They have a modern sound, mostly instrumental, with some fusion touches. Their music is very pleasant and makes a lot of right moves. The guitarist has a real presence. Real nice guys too, we talked with the drummer later on a variety of subjects. Second up was Nexus from Argentina. Powerful, bombastic prog featuring a keyboard player who looked quite a bit like Emerson and a very alluring female vocalist. Their music had a lot of power and finesse. Last up that night was Halloween. This time they debuted about 7 new tunes which they will be recording this summer for their new album. Very interesting stuff, their new material explores new directions. Of course another bass player and new guitarist joined their ranks. Geraldine was bright and bubbly as always. A great first evening.
We decided to skip Ten Jinn since we'd seen them before, and head into California to check out the most wondrous of sites, the Sonny Bono bird sanctuary. Well, not really but that's another story. Friday's show started off with Five Fifteen from Finland. They were a very tight and professional band playing hardrock/psych with some progressive overtones. Frankly, they injected some real FUN and life into the proceedings, and I thought they were terrific. The lead vocalist/guitarist/standup comedian looks like Robert Plant and was all over the place. They had a terrific female vocalist who harmonized and traded off as well. These guys were a pleasant surprise. Second that night was Isildurs Bane from Sweden, and were one of the highlights of the fest. Moody and dynamic instrumental prog featuring a mallet player, they're set just flew by. I could have listened to them for a couple more hours. The last band that night was Pallas from Scotland. I already was familiar with "The Sentinel" and enjoy that album quite a bit, but I wasn't sure how the new material would be. Surpisingly, I liked it a lot. While they are on the more commercial end of prog, their songs and musicianship made the right moves for me. They all looked like they were enjoying their recent resurgence.
On the final day the bands Equinox and Tryo did an encore performance before the main shows started. Equinox has a new lineup since their first album, only the keyboard and bass player remain from that era. Their set started out kinda rough, but after a few songs they got going pretty good. I've heard several people comment they don't care for the singer's voice. It didn't bother me, and they have some pretty cool instrumental sections. I guess I like listening to and supporting new bands, so I enjoyed their set for the most part. When Tryo started to play, the small caf?area which becoming too crowded. They are a three piece from Chile, and started off with a few pieces that sounded like KC mixed with some Ozrics. Then they did an acoustic set with acoustic guitar, cello, and marimba. It was too noisy to get a proper listening, and with the room being overpacked I was feeling claustrophobic, so I took off. The main show that day started out with Jadis, one of the longer existing neo-prog bands from Britain. Their music is centered around singing guitar, happy chords and longer floating pieces. Their set was good, and I enjoy their first album very much, but their stuff can all sound the same after a while. Martin Orford and Steve Christy were then up for a second set, because they also play in John Wetton's band. His set as Progfest 97 was a disappointment with all the Asia tunes plus the attitude he had, so I wasn't expecting much here. However, I was overall quite pleased with his set. Only two Asia tunes this time, he mostly concentrated on some KC, UK, and a couple solo tunes. Plus he let the band members play some solo tunes. To finish out the fest was After Crying who blew the roof of the place last year. They were back in fine form, and performed some of the same songs as well as some different ones. Again, steller musicianship and a great way to end the proceedings.
Well, not quite. We headed for Alfonso's house for the party. It cost $10 this time but was well worth it for the unlimited drinks and food there. The turnout this year was even better than last year, they might have to look for a bigger venue (if there is one). Lots of great deals at the dealer table, like Musea and Rock Symphony selling things for $12. It was also a great time meeting many people that I've met before or corresponded with. Now I just have to wait the 3+ months for Nearfest!