Spock's Beard Discography thread

[Fritzinger]

I never liked the separation of songs into parts and actually put them all into one song. Except for A Flash Before My Eyes which for me is more like a mini concept album within Octane. But especially As Far As The Mind is pretty well structured in my opinion and works well as a longtrack. I do that with lots of songs. In The Presence Of Enemies, Six Degrees, Spirit/Eden/Desire (Talk Talk), the three Endless Enigma parts (ELP), In The Dead Of Night (UK), Endless Dream (Yes), The Whirlwind (TA), ? (Neal Morse), some of the suites in the first Chicago albums.... I listen to them in one sitting 100% of the times anyway and my USB stick in my car always leaves half a second of silence between songs which is already annoying with concept albums, but even worse with long songs separated into several tracks.

I think Day For Night is underrated. It's more poppy than the three albums before, but there are some great songs. I like Gibberish way better than Mouth Of Madness. Crack The Big Sky combines groove and with epic structures. Distance is just beautiful period. Can't Get It Wrong and Skin are cool popsongs. Gypsy is one of the best SB songs ever in the 6-8 min department. Healing Colours is the weakest Morse longtrack by SB in my opinion. Mommy Comes Back is just a little cringy. But the two My Shoes songs are beautiful and epic.

[DoctorAction]

Love DFN. Could be my favourite

Lay It Down from Healing Colours is one of the most beautiful things ever recorded, imo.

[RoeDent]

https://progreport.com/pattern-seeking-animals-announces-debut-album-featuring-members-of-spocks-beard/

Ted Leonard, Dave Meros, Jimmy Keegan and John Boegehold have formed a new band/project called Pattern-Seeking Animals. Self-titled album coming July 5th.

[ProfessorPeart]

https://progreport.com/pattern-seeking-animals-announces-debut-album-featuring-members-of-spocks-beard/

Ted Leonard, Dave Meros, Jimmy Keegan and John Boegehold have formed a new band/project called Pattern-Seeking Animals. Self-titled album coming July 5th.

Bring it on!

As for the single track discussion, this is where the Join Tracks function in iTunes comes in handy. I routinely join tracks when ripping my CD's to digital. That's one of the advantages to still being a physical media guy. In terms of Spock's, A Flash Before My Eyes is the only one that is separated. I originally merged it but eventually realized that it worked better with them separated as they really are standalone tracks linked as part of a larger story.

[KevShmev]

The way I see it, just because something is a single piece of music doesn't mean the entirety is a single song, so breaking it up to where the individual songs are indexed separately makes the most sense.

And I agree about Lay It Down...definitely a gorgeous song!! 

[Orbert]

For me it depends on how I will listen to it.  I tend to listen to albums straight through anyway, so if it's all one track or not usually doesn't matter.  But if I like it enough to add it to a playlist, and there's a chance that I might shuffle that playlist, then the tracks need to joined.

[KevShmev]

That is the advantage of owning the physical CD; you can combine them all when ripping the CD.

You can combine them all if you have just the mp3's using Audacity, but there are sometimes issues with there being little blips at the exact spot where the tracks are combined. There are meticulous ways around that, but it can be excruciating trying to get it just right.

[Orbert]

Yep, been there, done that with Audacity.  I rarely use the iTunes ripper.  I hate pretty much everything about the iTunes interface, including the fact that they change it all the time, but since my iPod is still my main source of mobile tunes, it's a necessary evil.

I think I knew about the option to join tracks while ripping, but had forgotten.  A positive experience with that might be what finally makes me hate iTunes a bit less.

[RoeDent]

Was finally able to find an affordable copy of Spock's Beard's self-titled album, which I've duly ordered. After 7 years, I'll finally have all 13 Beard albums.

[Mladen]

Congrats! Share a photo if you don't mind. 

[The Letter M]

Was finally able to find an affordable copy of Spock's Beard's self-titled album, which I've duly ordered. After 7 years, I'll finally have all 13 Beard albums.

Awesome, very nice to hear! It's a good album IMO, though it could have been greater had they trimmed it down a bit and left a few tracks as "Bonus Tracks", a la Octane (though in Octane's case, some of the bonus tracks are REALLY good).

Also, I had learned that tracking down an affordable copy of SB9 was tough, but taking SEVEN years to get one? Yikes. At least you have it now! Just don't hold out hope to get an affordable copy of the Japanese pressing (which comes with a bonus disc including some demos and two new instrumentals)...that one took me awhile to get.

-Marc.

[RoeDent]

Was finally able to find an affordable copy of Spock's Beard's self-titled album, which I've duly ordered. After 7 years, I'll finally have all 13 Beard albums.

Awesome, very nice to hear! It's a good album IMO, though it could have been greater had they trimmed it down a bit and left a few tracks as "Bonus Tracks", a la Octane (though in Octane's case, some of the bonus tracks are REALLY good).

Also, I had learned that tracking down an affordable copy of SB9 was tough, but taking SEVEN years to get one? Yikes. At least you have it now! Just don't hold out hope to get an affordable copy of the Japanese pressing (which comes with a bonus disc including some demos and two new instrumentals)...that one took me awhile to get.

-Marc.

Well I hope it gets here. It's a second-hand copy, but I'm absolutely taking what I can get now. It's baffling how hard this album is to get. Were they on a different label for this one?

[The Letter M]

Was finally able to find an affordable copy of Spock's Beard's self-titled album, which I've duly ordered. After 7 years, I'll finally have all 13 Beard albums.

Awesome, very nice to hear! It's a good album IMO, though it could have been greater had they trimmed it down a bit and left a few tracks as "Bonus Tracks", a la Octane (though in Octane's case, some of the bonus tracks are REALLY good).

Also, I had learned that tracking down an affordable copy of SB9 was tough, but taking SEVEN years to get one? Yikes. At least you have it now! Just don't hold out hope to get an affordable copy of the Japanese pressing (which comes with a bonus disc including some demos and two new instrumentals)...that one took me awhile to get.

-Marc.

Well I hope it gets here. It's a second-hand copy, but I'm absolutely taking what I can get now. It's baffling how hard this album is to get. Were they on a different label for this one?

Nope, just looking at my copy, it's got InsideOut all over the slipcover and the jewel case insert, so definitely on the same label as their then-previous 2 albums. The only albums they've released not on a major label, as far as I know, are X and BNADS, with the former having been crowdfunded. I'm really not sure why it's hard to find, but I found a couple on eBay currently, at least one with the slipcover as well.

-Marc.

[ytserush]

Was finally able to find an affordable copy of Spock's Beard's self-titled album, which I've duly ordered. After 7 years, I'll finally have all 13 Beard albums.

Awesome, very nice to hear! It's a good album IMO, though it could have been greater had they trimmed it down a bit and left a few tracks as "Bonus Tracks", a la Octane (though in Octane's case, some of the bonus tracks are REALLY good).

Also, I had learned that tracking down an affordable copy of SB9 was tough, but taking SEVEN years to get one? Yikes. At least you have it now! Just don't hold out hope to get an affordable copy of the Japanese pressing (which comes with a bonus disc including some demos and two new instrumentals)...that one took me awhile to get.

-Marc.

Well I hope it gets here. It's a second-hand copy, but I'm absolutely taking what I can get now. It's baffling how hard this album is to get. Were they on a different label for this one?

Nope, just looking at my copy, it's got InsideOut all over the slipcover and the jewel case insert, so definitely on the same label as their then-previous 2 albums. The only albums they've released not on a major label, as far as I know, are X and BNADS, with the former having been crowdfunded. I'm really not sure why it's hard to find, but I found a couple on eBay currently, at least one with the slipcover as well.

-Marc.

I think that's my favorite Nick Era album.

[RoeDent]

The album arrived this morning!

As I said, SB9 arriving means I now own all 13 Spock's Beard albums, a process that's taken me 7 years. Not that I've spent that entire time looking for the albums. I've bought them when I wanted to, or in this case, when I was able to. The order I bought them:

Mar 2013 - Beware of Darkness
June 2013 - BNADS
June 2013 - X
Mar 2014 - Snow
Oct 2014 - The Light
Jul 2015 - The Kindness of Strangers
Aug 2015 - The Oblivion Particle
Oct 2015 - V
May 2018 - Noise Floor
June 2018 - Octane
Aug 2018 - Feel Euphoria
Apr 2019 - Day for Night
Jan 2020 - Spock's Beard

[RoeDent]

Just getting near the end of SB9 now. 'Tis very good! Obviously it'll take more listens to digest it fully, but I really enjoyed it. On A Perfect Day is an absolute classic. Certain elements of With Your Kiss put a smile on my face. Hereafter is beautiful.

[DTA]

Just getting near the end of SB9 now. 'Tis very good! Obviously it'll take more listens to digest it fully, but I really enjoyed it. On A Perfect Day is an absolute classic. Certain elements of With Your Kiss put a smile on my face. Hereafter is beautiful.

SB9 is such a mixed bag for me. Like you, I think On a Perfect Day is brilliant and With Your Kiss is a really great song. Skeletons At The Feast is also a really cool instrumental (especially the Flower King sounding section around 2 minutes in) and Rearranged is a good closing song. But the rest is really underwhelming. This album really burnt me out on the "epic" format they used on the two previous NDV albums with each part being a different track and made me wish for a long song with more cohesion. Luckily they really fixed that problem with X with both epics on there. The rest of the songs are pretty meh with Is This Love being the best of the bunch simply due to being the most direct. Hereafter is so painfully boring that I can't believe they actually chose to include it.

[RoeDent]

I found Hereafter to be a nice peaceful interlude of calm, personally.

[KevShmev]

The self-titled album is probably the one Spock's album I don't know extremely well from start to finish, simply because about half of it was so blah that it had a very short shelf life for me, and nothing changed in that regard when I revisited it years later.  On a Perfect Day and With Your Kiss are major keepers, and Skeletons at the Feast is quite good as well, but the rest I have little to no use for.

[The Letter M]

I found Hereafter to be a nice peaceful interlude of calm, personally.

Nice to see I'm not the only one who enjoys that song. It works as a nice prelude to the four-part epic that follows it.

It's a fairly good middle-of-the-road SB album for me. I think because it was the band's first new album for me after I became a fan (in late 2005, not long after Octane had come out, I believe), I had built up a lot of excitement for it, so I remember most of the album fondly, but upon repeated listens in recent years, some of the material drags on for me. There's just a lot of slow or mid-tempo songs in the middle of the album, and it sort of drags the whole thing down for me, and despite "Hereafter" being a slow piano-driven ballad, I really do enjoy it, but some of the songs before it are just a slog.

-Marc.

[Fritzinger]

SB9 was the first SB I owned. I remember, I bought it in an FYE in Cape Coral, Florida when I was 13/14. I instantly fell in love with On A Perfect Day (and with it, with NDV's voice) and I consider it one of the band's best songs, of all the phases.

I agree that there are some songs on there that could have been left off. But probably everyone of us would choose different ones. I like Hereafter for example. And I have to cut some slack for All That's Left. With that nostalgic character and the slow 6/4, it's one of SB's most beautiful ballads in my opinion.

I personally would have been fine if Is This Love, Sometimes They Stay, The Slow Crash and Whenever You Stand would have been left off the album. The album still would have been around an hour long.

[Kwyjibo]

And I have to cut some slack for All That's Left. With that nostalgic character and the slow 6/4, it's one of SB's most beautiful ballads in my opinion.

All That's Left is such a beast of a ballad, great song that is often overlooked.

[RoeDent]

I really enjoyed The Slow Crash Landing Man, especially the closing guitar solo. I think my least favourite atm (not that I outright hate it) is Sometimes They Stay... Not sure Alan Morse is a particularly good lead singer.

[Mladen]

On a perfect day is a masterpiece, and I can enjoy the following four songs to an extent, but the rest is their blandest material. The first five songs could have made a solid EP.

[Fritzinger]

Of the ones I mentioned I could live without on the album, Sometimes They Stay is still my favourite. Sure, Alan is not a great singer, but I think his vocals are very smooth and "cool" in a bluesy, "just wearing my sunglasses and not giving a fuck"-kinda way.

Man, I wish insideout would re-release Feel Eurphoria, Octane and SB9 on vinyl. They are not the band's greatest albums, but I started listening to the band with these 3, plus SB was my first real contact with a progband after I got to know DT.

[KevShmev]

Alan Morse is fine to do the occasional line in a song as the lead, like in Thoughts or Open the Gates Part 2, but he should never be the lead vocalist for an entire song.  Moth of Many Flames, one of the bonus tracks from Feel Euphoria, is empirical evidence of that.

[Fritzinger]

Agreed, Moth Of Many Flames is a song that never should have been released and those vocals suck.

But you have to admit that his vocals sound a lot better on Sometimes They Stay than on Moth Of Many Flames. I actually think they probably fit the song better than if NDV would have sung it (although, of course, we'll never know for sure). And I'm saying that as a huge NDV fan!

[KevShmev]

Agreed, Moth Of Many Flames is a song that never should have been released and those vocals suck.

But you have to admit that his vocals sound a lot better on Sometimes They Stay than on Moth Of Many Flames. I actually think they probably fit the song better than if NDV would have sung it (although, of course, we'll never know for sure). And I'm saying that as a huge NDV fan!

I admit nothing. 

[DTA]

Agreed, Moth Of Many Flames is a song that never should have been released and those vocals suck.

But you have to admit that his vocals sound a lot better on Sometimes They Stay than on Moth Of Many Flames. I actually think they probably fit the song better than if NDV would have sung it (although, of course, we'll never know for sure). And I'm saying that as a huge NDV fan!

Sometimes They Stay... is actually pretty great. I always forget it exists, but it's far from the low-point on SB9.

[KevShmev]

I have long thought that Lay It Down was the best part of The Healing Colors of Sounds suite, and I probably still think that, by My Shoes is really giving it a run for its money lately.  I love that last minute with the piano and drums.  The atmosphere and vibe there is just incredible.

[HOF]

The guitar solo on My Shoes (Revisited) gets a vote from me for greatest guitar solo of all time. Not saying it is the greatest, but it’s up there with the best of them in my book. I’ve listened to a lot of guitar solos in my life, and it moves me like few others.

[KevShmev]

The guitar solo on My Shoes (Revisited) gets a vote from me for greatest guitar solo of all time. Not saying it is the greatest, but it’s up there with the best of them in my book. I’ve listened to a lot of guitar solos in my life, and it moves me like few others.

I never really think of that one when I think of Alan Morse's solos, but that's a good one.  Flow, She Is Everything and Solitary Soul are always the ones I think of first.

[HOF]

Yeah, Solitary Soul has a similar feel (as does the more abbreviated solo on The Good Don’t Last). Morse has a number of epic solos that could be mentioned though for sure.

[RoeDent]

My favourite AM guitar solo is Waiting For Me. She Is Everything and Ghosts of Autumn are also magnificent. He's definitely up there among my favourite prog guitarists.

[Mladen]

Yep, I also think She is everything has an amazing solos. There are plenty of great ones, but usually the outro to Flow comes to my mind first.