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The Alan Parsons Project
Alternative Press - Editorial Intern on 6/4/09 @ 2:55 PM - altpress.comYEARS OF DECENT EXISTENCE: 1975-1979
BEST RECORDS: Tales Of Mystery And Imagination (1975), I Robot (1977), Pyramid (1978), Eve (1979)
WORST RECORDS: The Turn Of A Friendly Card (1980), Eye In The Sky (1982), Vulture Culture (1985), Stereotomy (1985), Gaudi (1987)
GO DOWNLOAD: "(The System Of) Dr. Tarr And Professor Feather," "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You," "I Robot," "Sirius," "Don't Ask Me"
FILE UNDERr: When Proggy Met Soggy
SIMILAR-SOUNDING DINOSAURS: Supertramp, Asia, Ambrosia
THE MUSIC: Alan Parsons was an in-demand engineer who worked on some key recordings (the Beatles, Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon). But like Phil Spector taught us, studying room acoustics and shooting B-movie actresses in your foyer isn't as sexy as making your own music. So in 1975, Parsons teamed up with singer/songwriter/management dude Eric Woolfson and wrote a bunch of songs focused around the works of classic macabre writer Edgar Allan Poe. The duo enlisted a bevy of session musicians and bigtime singers to realize their middle-of-the-road progressive rock, and the Alan Parsons Project were born. The partnership (and communal Rolodex) lasted for 15 years, yielding a series of concept albums based on everything from sci-fi books to gambling to surveillance to submerging European models in bathtubs filled with blood drained from kittens and puppies. Actually, I threw that last one in there to see if you were paying attention, because I stopped caring about these dudes when they started to make pop for housewives in 1980. In 1990, Parsons and Woolfson dissolved their working relationship, but Parsons carried on as a solo artist, dropping "Project" from his name, exploring trends in electronica and actually playing live.
WHAT THEY SAY: ""The Project was designed primarily as a forum for a revolving collection of vocalists and session players to interpret and perform Parson and Woolfson's conceptually linked, lushly synthesized music."-Allmusic
WHAT I SAY:Parsons' career trajectory from progressive rock to middle-of-the-road pop was inevitable. (Phil Collins was unavailable for comment at presstime.)
WHY YOUR (GRAND)PARENTS LIKE HIM: Like I've said in this column before, prog-rock fans have always been an enabling bunch. (Translation: "Well, I've got all his other records, so I might as well get this one.")
CURRENT WHEREABOUTS:Parsons hangs with his fam in Santa Barbara, California, where he's an internationally recognized expert in 5.1 surround-sound recording. Don't worry: For all of the sports teams who run out of their locker rooms to his track "Sirius," Parsons still remains in our hearts, if not our minds. -Jason Pettigrew
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