Supper's Ready/Close to the Edge medley (Genesis & Yes cover)

This is part of my ongoing Prog Rock Ukulele Project. It turned out to be a few minutes shorter than I expected. Still, it's long enough that in the two years since I put the medley together, I've never had an opportunity to play the whole thing in front of an audience. It took six months just to find enough quiet time at home during a day to get it recorded. I hope you like it. There's a cameo appearance by Eisley Rabbit at the end.

Cool! Kudos for keeping that prog-flag flying.

This is the perfect way to kick-off the waiting period until I get to see Musical Box play here in mid-Oct.

WOW. That is madness...... completely unique and original, I think you can rest assured that no one else has done that before. It's pretty amazing.... even with the edits, it's still an inspiring display of stamina and concentration. It's interesting to see the various folks that post videos here pursue their unique vision and express their individual voices.

I can see someone seeing this as hard to take all in one sitting (but I think you can say that about most prog rock), but I think it's very well done. It's a surprisingly full arrangement and really captures the dynamic style of the original tunes. It's very ambitious and pretty mind-blowing. That's always been one of my favorite Yes tunes and it serves to remind me that Genesis isn't just that crappy pop stuff they recorded in the eighties once Peter Gabriel left the group. Growing up in the eighties, I heard a bunch of mediocre pop music from people I later learned were amazing musicians - Stevie Wonder, Stevie Winwood, Jefferson 'Starship', Genesis...... my mind was blown when, as a teenager, I got turned onto 'Foxtrot' and realized those were the same guys Phil Collins was hanging with in 1983..... thanks for reminding me again how good those early albums were.

Thanks a lot. I'm not above playing some of Genesis' pop stuff, though. I've been working on "Throwing It All Away" and "Follow You Follow Me" recently. The riffs on both are fun to play, and I've almost got the synthesizer solo on "Follow You Follow Me" down -- I'm still working on doing the octave jump, because the original covers three octaves and even with a low G I've only got two on my uke.

Earlier this year, a friend of mine was saying that we should work up a couple of Yes arrangements for two ukuleles. So far, nothing's come of it, except for a minute of video of me practicing "Long Distance Runaround":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXao1lQndzE

Have you been bold enough to attempt any Marillion or Rush?

I never listened enough to either band back in the day to know their songs well. My friend says my voice reminds her of Fish from Marillion, though. During my formative years, Geddy Lee was still singing in the screech register the Boston Globe once compared to a cat being thrown into a blast furnace, and I couldn't get into it. I play a lot of Procol Harum, I've tinkered some with Porcupine Tree, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Moody Blues, and PFM. I used to play "From the Beginning" by ELP, but I've long since forgotten it. I'd love to take a stab at "Pirates" by ELP, but I can't find sheet music for it, and there's no way I'm going to try something like that by ear.