Wakeman's Tale
Why would you make a musical tribute to an artist who is already well known and established? Call it appreciation and admiration for amazing achievements or simply inspiration. A combination of all these.
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Rick Wakeman was born in 1949 and is best known for being the keyboardist of the prog group Yes. He trained to become a classical keyboard player but he quit to go into popular music. Before joining Yes he was a session player who even played on Space Oddity of David Bowie and was a member of another famous prog group called The Strawbs.
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Soon he joined Yes which would happen an amazing five times in different line ups and next to that he would release numerous solo albums.
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The Long Tall J tribute starts with a guitar part that you could call 'Bagpipes on Guitar'. After some percussion fills and a short tune this deep prog piece is on it's way with a keyboard based part with a guitar line that would be typical for the Dutch prog band Kayak. Next we enter a piece where we hear a sound that is reminiscent of Genesis and the early Moody Blues: the mellotron. This piece builds up to a piece in 6/8 time signature based on a church organ sound with various guitar arrangements on top.
The final part in 7/8 time signature features Ievgenii Moiseienko from Kyiv, Ukraine who builds up his piano solo to an astonishing crescendo before his last notes fade away and lay the project to rest. Inspiration for this was taken from the opening part as well as from jazz and prog in general.