UP3: The Ultimate Prog Podcast Project

05/01/2023

Ultimate Prog Podcast Project interviews legendary Dixie Dregs bass player ANDY WEST. Now Streaming at up3show.podbean.com or wherevery you get your podcasts (just search for up3show).

04/01/2023

The best prog band you've probably never heard of . . . OBSIDIAN! Now streaming at up3show.podbean.com, or wherever you get your podcasts!

03/07/2023

Check out the latest UP3: The Ultimate Prog Podcast Project to hear all about our last Progfest! Thanks for coming UP3!!!

02/08/2023

01/02/2023

Happy New Year from the Ultimate Prog Podcast Project! This month we decide to tack seminal prog band YES! What's your favorite YES lineup?

Listen at up3show.podbean.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.

06/02/2022

This month Lee, Tony and Craig each pick an album with a certain special-ness. Listen in to see what that special-ness is!

05/01/2022

This month we interview songwriter, singer, player, THE pattern-seeking animal: John Boegehold. NOW STREAMING.

03/07/2022

Could ELP get a record contract today? Would Keith Emerson's insurance company let him get lifted up and spun upside down (along with his piano) during a concert? Did Greg Lake even like the music??? The guys discuss these things and more at Ultimate Prog Podcast Project. Now streaming, wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for up3show!

02/01/2022

This month we take a deep dive into the career of Steven Wilson!
https://up3show.podbean.com/e/season-2-episode-6-steven-wilson/

01/13/2022

We have a new sement on the podcast featuring prog bands you've probably never heard of . . . but should! This month we're featuring Pleximents. Download Season 2 Episode 5 (Prog Adjacent Bands) and have a listen! https://up3show.podbean.com/e/season-2-episode-5-prog-adjacent-artists/

01/09/2022

I think we need to find this bootleg!

Within a year, they'd be big. Within two, they'd be huge. And within three, they'd be one of the biggest bands in the world.
But on December 30, 1968 — the quartet of British rockers preparing for their fifth-ever gig in the United States were using propane heaters to keep themselves and their equipment warm while they waited to go on as the opening act for Vanilla Fudge at a concert in a frigid college gymnasium in western Washington State.
A few serious rock fans in attendance had at least heard about the new band formed around the former guitarist from the now-defunct Yardbirds, but if those fans even knew the name of this new group, they might not have recognized it in the ads that ran in the local newspaper.
The Spokesman-Review of Spokane ran an advertisement on this day in 1968 for a concert at Gonzaga University featuring "The Vanilla Fudge, with Len Zefflin" — a concert of which a bootleg recording would later emerge that represents the first-ever live Led Zeppelin performance captured on tape.
At the end of the now widely available recording known as Gonzaga '68, Robert Plant can be heard introducing himself and his bandmates — John Paul Jones on bass, Jimmy Page on guitar and John Bonham on drums — to a smattering of applause.
But some of those who were in attendance that day remember their reaction as being stronger.
In a Spokesman-Review article published 29 years after the night in question, Bob Gallagher, a teenage record-store employee at the time, recalled the show's opening number: "Bonham came out and started drumming on 'Train Kept a-Rollin'," Gallagher said, "and everybody went, 'Holy crap.'"
"What I mostly remember is when Jimmy Page took out a violin bow and began bowing his double-neck guitar," said another concertgoer, Jeff Nadeau. "The house was universally mind-blown. It was the most stunning and awesome sound ever."
There is nothing raw or un-Led Zeppelin-like about the sound captured by an unknown Gonzaga student on a small, portable tape recorder that day. The Gonzaga '68 bootleg features the band performing tight and thrilling versions of some songs that are now considered classics but were then unknown to those in attendance.
Indeed, halfway through the set, Robert Plant introduces one number as follows: "This is off an album that comes out in about three weeks time on the Atlantic label. It's called Led Zeppelin. This is a tune called 'Dazed and Confused.'"

12/21/2021

Happy Birthday, Frank!

12/14/2021

So far, Ayreon is our most downloaded episode--check it out!

11/30/2021

One of my musical heroes, and the topic of the next up3show.

We could have courted him for an interview, but he probably would have told us to kiss his aspic.

Episode drops tomorrow!

11/08/2021

I'm infatuated lately with the guy who composed some of the music from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. This obvioiusly isn't him (the composer's name was Ray Scott, fascinating life story), but this fellow, Michael Whelan, is covering one of his compositions. Recognize any of it? https://youtu.be/LnHzfdugzuc

This is my cover of Raymond Scott's Powerhouse (1937). It's one of my favorite jazz instrumentals. I'm surprised there are so few rock or metal covers of thi...