My passion for Jazz is taking a knock lately for reasons that are to do with the dearth of meaningful playing opportunities where I live and the disconnect between the amount of time you need to spend keeping your chops together and the amount of work you get. Anyway, I have been revisiting an old friend in the form of Prog Rock and started looking at what's new out there and I am enjoying checking out stuff I have missed over recent years. Whilst there are a lot of interesting things out there to take stock of, one of the things that I am finding a little tedious is the over-reliance on Chris Squire-esque bass playing whether it is the ownership of a Rickenbacker 4001 or just the purloining of Squire's rattly, crunchy sound. One of the attractions of Prog originally was the diversity. It seems like a lot of the New Prog is arguably derivative but, whereas no-one steals from Steve Howe, Alex Lifeson, Peter Banks, Steve Hackett or Bill Bruford, Alan White, Phil Collins etc, every other bass player wants to be Chris Squire.
Is it me or am I just seeing ghosts?