Heading to TSO this afternoon

[The Dean]

I stand corrected. Beethoven and Liszt are part of the band that tours on the West Coast.

 

 

I think he wrote their Christmas songs. You know, "Making a Liszt, checking it twice..."

 

I really shouldn't post before drinking my coffee.

[Fezmid]

They are such old headbangers - "we used to play in a little band called....Sabbotage!"....

 

It's actually Savatage. They were a great band and after their first few releases focused mainly on concept albums -- Streets: A Rock Opera, Dead Winter Dead (where the song Sarajevo came from), Poets and Madmen, and Wake of Wagellan are all GREAT albums. They did TSO the year after Dead Winter Dead, and then started touring sometime after that. They've since ditched Savatage since TSO is where the money is. Hard to blame them I guess.

 

(NEWS FLASH: everything they do is a cheap rip-off of popular works from the classical and/or traditional repertoire - none of those TSO clowns have ever had an original musical thought in their lives.)

Yes, some of the songs are modified from classical music but nowhere near all of it. The members of TSO are all very musically talented.

 

You don't have to like them, but to say that there's nothing original there is a a big load of hyperbole.

[bbb]

It's actually Savatage. They were a great band and after their first few releases focused mainly on concept albums -- Streets: A Rock Opera, Dead Winter Dead (where the song Sarajevo came from), Poets and Madmen, and Wake of Wagellan are all GREAT albums. They did TSO the year after Dead Winter Dead, and then started touring sometime after that. They've since ditched Savatage since TSO is where the money is. Hard to blame them I guess.

 

 

Yes, some of the songs are modified from classical music but nowhere near all of it. The members of TSO are all very musically talented.

 

You don't have to like them, but to say that there's nothing original there is a a big load of hyperbole.

 

I agree. I thought about this while listening to TSO recently, and I'm like how could something like Old City Bar or A Star to Follow be Beethoven, etc.

 

Turns out at least half the tracks are totally original on their first album, and I would think even more on more recent ones.....And, my favorite songs are their originals it turns out:

Track listing

 

1. "An Angel Came Down" (Franz Gruber, O'Neill, Oliva) – 3:52

2. "O Come All Ye Faithful/O Holy Night" (John Francis Wade, Frederick Oakeley, John Reading, Adolphe Adam, John Sullivan Dwight, O'Neill, Kinkel) – 4:19 *

3. "A Star to Follow" (O'Neill) – 3:49

4. "First Snow" (O'Neill) – 3:53 *

5. "The Silent Nutcracker" (Kinkel, Oliva) – 2:22 *

6. "A Mad Russian's Christmas" (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Kinkel, Oliva) – 4:42 *

7. "The Prince of Peace" (Felix Mendelssohn, Charles Wesley, O'Neill) – 3:33

8. "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" (O'Neill, Kinkel, Oliva) – 3:25 *

9. "Good King Joy" (Lowell Mason, Kinkel, O'Neill) – 6:36

10. "Ornament" (O'Neill, Oliva) – 3:37

11. "The First Noel" (William B. Sandys) – 0:55 *

12. "Old City Bar" (O'Neill) – 6:18

13. "Promises to Keep" (O'Neill, Kinkel, Oliva) – 2:41

14. "This Christmas Day" (O'Neill, Oliva) – 4:20

15. "An Angel Returned" (O'Neill, Oliva) – 3:52

16. "O Holy Night" (Adam, Dwight) – 2:39 *

17. "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (Traditional) – 1:16 *