Bookmarks: e-Prog members' comments
From: Ghost <>
The inaugural North East Art Rock Festival (or NEARfest)
is scheduled to take place during the weekend of June 26 and 27, 1999
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The two-day event is a celebration of the
resurgence of progressive and eclectic music in the United States and
around the world. NEARfest '99 is being championed by Robert LaDuca
and Chad Hutchinson.
Here is the list of bands performing at NEARfest '99:
Day One: Alaska, The Hand Farm, Larry Fast of Synergy,
Mastermind, IQ
Day Two: Nathan Mahl, Ice Age, Crucible, Solaris,
Spock's Beard
This will be an indoor event utilizing the beautiful Foy Concert Hall
at Moravian College in historic downtown Bethlehem. The hall is a
modern, acoustically designed venue capable of seating 428 people.
The location is ideal due to its relative proximity to many major
east coast cities. For instance Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore are all well within a three hour
drive. The City of Bethlehem is also noted for its hosting of two
very popular annual music festivals, MusikFest (early August) and the
Celtic Classic (late September).
For more information, please contact the NEARfest organizers:
Robert LaDuca, (570) 696-9974
Chad Hutchinson, (610) 797-8010
(Please call before 11:00 pm EST. Thank you!)
or visit the NEARfest website at
http://www.ghostland.com/nearfest/
The North East Art Rock Festival is a not-for-profit event.
From: Ghost <>
We are very happy to announce that NEARfest will be broadcast across
the Internet! Studio M from Wilmington, Delaware http://www.studiomlive.com
will be recording the show solely for the purposes of this exciting
online event. We are glad to be able to team up with Studio M to
bring NEARfest '99 to all of the fans of progressive rock around the
world that are not able to attend this year. Studio M is an online
concert broadcast series produced by Mobius New Media, a website
development and multimedia company, and Magpage. Studio M is a
project that provides bands playing in the DelMarVa area a new,
worldwide venue to promote their music: the Internet. Each netcast in
this series will provide a live streaming audio feed to the Internet
and is coupled with digital photos. Recently, Studio M was in
Philadelphia to record and subsequently broadcast Spock's Beard's
show at Upstairs at Nick's. In the last two weeks, over 70,000 people
have checked into Studio M. Make sure YOU click over to get a taste
of Spock's Beard live! Studio M has also broadcast shows by Grey Eyed
Glances, Peter Himmelman, The Church, Love Seed Mama Jump, Huffamoose
and others. NEARfest '99 will be broadcast in streaming RealAudio
sometime in mid-July. Stay tuned to the NEARfest website for the
latest information.
e-Prog
members' comments who attended:
From: Peter Abusamra <>
I just wanted to thank Rob&Chad for putting a great festival and
making our first progday such a hit. Mary Ann and I enjoyed meeting
so many nice people. I really would've liked to have been a fly on
the wall to hear what Solaris' flautist said to Rob! p.s.
Solaris and Nathan Mahl were my biggest surprises. I wish the boys
from Canada much success!
From: "Robertson, Scott" <>
I agree with Peter...many thanks to Rob (a self-proclaimed
Prog-tologist) and Chad for dreaming up and flawlessly executing
NEARfest. I have already put in my time off for next years event.
From: "Mark Fonda" <>
Just a short note about NEARfest. I just arrived in California for
the rest of my vacation. My ears are still ringing from being only
five rows back from the speakers for Mastermind (need to bring
earplugs next time). Many, many thanks to Rob and Chad for a
fantastic inaugural festival!!! It was good to meet fellow e-Proggers
Dirk, Roy, Pete, Britt, Lee and Adam... I also enjoyed meeting Greg
Walker, Mark Cella, John Collinge, Captain MDA (believe it or not!!)
and others. I got plenty of pictures and I will post them when I get
them back. I'll write more later, but my ranking of the groups from
the weekend were: Solaris, Spock's Beard, IQ, Nathan Mahl, Alaska,
Crucible, Mastermind, Scott McGill's Hand Farm, Ice Age. I also
enjoyed the Larry Fast presentation and I introduced myself to him
afterwards and thanked him for reissuing all his remastered Synergy
works which are treasured items in my CD collection. I only wish
everyone had name tags because I would have been able to meet so many
more familiar names that were there.
From: "Britton Brewer"<>
Kudos to Rob and Chad (and their supporting cast) for pulling off
NEARFest in high style! There were many outstanding performances (I
was particularly taken with IQ and Solaris) and the atmosphere was
most conducive to an event of this sort (stronger air conditioning
wouldn't have hurt in the concert hall, though :). I had a great time
meeting and chatting with fellow e-prog2gers (e.g., Pete Absumara,
Lee Fisher, David Kuznick) throughout the weekend. Our fearless
leader, Mark Fonda, was a gracious "host" for the duration of
festival for wayward e-prog2gers and their friends/families. Based
on my experience, I would not hesitate to return for next year's
NEARFest, which will be held at a larger venue on the campus of
Lehigh University. I hope others in attendance had as much fun as I
did.
From: Peter Abusamra <>
I believe I have to agree with Mark's listing order-mine seem to
follow suit. What I really love is to hear each band on separate
nights-with air conditioning!
From: Roy DeRousse <>
It was great meeting you too, Mark. I wish I had met more people from
this list. We really needed nametags or something like that. I pretty
much agree with your ranking, although I would flip Spock's Beard and
IQ. They were pretty close, though!
From: "Robertson, Scott" <>
I wish I had the time to make it over to the Hotel Bethlehem to meet
the other e-prog2gers at the 'fest, but unfortunately, I spent too
much of my time (and money!) visiting all of the CD vendors that were
set up. As for the show, I would have to list my preferences as
follows: IQ, Solaris, Crucible, Spock's Beard, Larry Fast's Prog
101*, Nathan Mahl, Alaska, Mastermind, Ice Age, Scott McGill's Hand
Farm. *Larry Fast's segment was pretty interesting. I just wish he
had played a little! One of my favorites moments was the preview of
the rough mix for the new Iluvatar CD. These guys are definitely one
of my favorites. I did get a chance to talk with John Jowitt of IQ. I
asked him what Subterranea is about (I figured he would get this
question all the time, but he said it was the first he was asked). He
said it is based on the story of Kaspar Hauser from the early 1800's
in Germany. If you are interested, you can check out the following
Web sites:
http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/me/notes/kaspar-hauser.html
http://www.vega.net/faq/hauser.htm
From: "Fisher, Lee" <>
As said, NEARFest was just incredible and it was cool to meet some
e-prog2gers although I wished a few more could have made it to our
meetings... Next time we'll have to have more organized meetings and
t-shirts or something... I drove up from Philly, so I was 'commuting'
to the show. The first band was Alaska, which had a good sound for
two guys although it would've been nice to hear more of the singers
voice in the mix. Especially when he came out from behind the drums
and just sang he sounded really great. Scott McGill's Hand Farm was
next. McGill is a killer guitar player, but many people said his
style is largely a Holdsworth rip-off, which is tough to argue with.
The set also seemed to get repetitive after a bit, he needs to have a
little more variety and more of his own style. Then we had Larry Fast
come out with his multimedia presentation of his view of the history
of electronic music. I had read on his web site that he was doing
this so may not have been as disappointed as some that he didn't
play, although he kept a mini-moog tantalizingly by his side, yet
refused to touch it. I found the presentation good and very
informative. If you enjoyed it you may want to check out Tony Levin's
Beyond the Bass Clef book where there are several anecdotes regarding
the PG band and Larry fast and lots of other good stuff as well. Then
we had a break and I got to meet some e-prog2 people and got a sneak
preview of the e-prog2 disk which sounds really great! We rushed
back for Mastermind, only to discover that there would be a bit of a
delay. After a long wait, but not as long as the wait Sunday was to
be, we finally got in. It was at this point there were some issues
with the seating policy. Seats had been sold general admission, but
after the first set, Chad said that people should try to keep the
same seats for the whole weekend. Of course only a few people were
actually there at the time, so when people came in the evening, some
were upset to find that 'their seats' had been taken and others were
upset to get kicked out of general admission seats. So guys next year
just sell reserved seats! Anyway, Mastermind played a great, pretty
varied and INTENSE set. I had never seen them and it really blew me
away... Of course I immediately rushed out and bought the CD after
the show, but their new stuff they played seems like it may be even
better. Then we went back in for IQ. IQ gave a great and pretty long
set. At first I was thinking "Peter Nicholls is a total freak". He
didn't smile once until like right near the end. They played
amazingly well, but again we could have used a better mix in the
vocals. I had only heard Subterranea, but I really love that album,
so the songs from that were really great. The old stuff was great as
well. I wish they had played at least one new song... Anyhow, now
I'll have to buy all the albums... It took me many listens to get
past his voice on sub, but now I really love it and think it works
very well as a unified piece of work. Not sure how that other story
fits in though... Sunday was also great, we drove back up after
getting in at 1:30am the night before and got there at like
10:30am... Rather than heading right in to catch Nathan Mahl, we (my
brother and I) strolled by the vendor area and were immediately
assaulted by the Hungarian manager for Solaris. He decided to give us
a 'crash course' in Hungarian Prog and we listened to a bunch of
great stuff. I ended up getting Martian Chronicles (had gotten
Nostradamus the day before) and East, while my brother got Rumblin'
Orchestra, the Solaris guy Istvan's solo album and went back later
for After Crying. It was all incredible stuff. We went in for the
Mahl set and it was pretty impressive. We missed Ice Age, but saw
Crucible and they were also enjoyable, although I was having trouble
staying awake at that point. During the Mahl set I kept thinking that
I would've enjoyed it more in the afternoon... Then we had dinner and
after a lot of delays, I think we finally got in to see Solaris
around 8pm... Solaris was the most amazing thing I had ever seen.
Killer flute, some 'lead' bass playing and great keyboards, were just
amazing. What's the deal with the two bass players? One played in the
beginning and end and the other played during the whole middle part.
The first one seemed a bit better although both were incredible.
After some ado, Solaris finished their set and we had to clear out so
Beard could set up. I didn't think anything could follow Solaris, but
Beard pulled it off amazingly well. Before the show, my brother was
wondering if the guys were 'animated' and would make for good photo
ops. Well they certainly were... jumping all over the place, going
into the audience. Totally amazing showmen and musicians. They played
a ton of stuff until the singer had totally blown his voice. They
came out for an encore with him on drums and the drummer singing...hehe.
It was a fantastic show... I guess my order would be: Solaris,
Spock's Beard, Mastermind, IQ, Nathan Mahl, Alaska, Crucible, Scott
McGill's Hand Farm, Ice Age. Sorry for the length, just trying to
pack in a lot of info...
From: Dirk Evans <>
Here are my NearFest pictures:
www.dirk.dra.com/dirkhome/nearfest/pics.htm I did not take any
pictures of the bands because 2 friends were working hard to take
professional pictures of the shows. Some people you will see: Mark
Fonda, Alan Mallery, me, Peter Renfro, Roy DeRousse, and many
others...
From: Gamantyo Hendrantoro <>
Ok, here we go again. To save your time finding the right links:
Nathan Mahl
Crucible
Solaris
Spock's Beard
(Ice Age .ra link has been disabled on the band's request, if I'm not
mistaken)
Replace "28" in the above with "56" for the higher rate. The setlists
for all bands are here:
http://www.nearfest.com/nearfest/nearfest99/setlists.html
Many thanks to NEARFest'99 management and studio M. Great work, guys!