By Ann Brody

Yes indeed, it is the time again when autumn comes to rest in her garden and Half Past Four is getting more excited for the October 29th show with Orco Muto. The title of our night is “Clean Up on Aisle 666” how satirical, right? That’s because the show is going to take place at a venue called The Supermarket in the groovy neighbourhood of Kensington Market. The spooktastic night will feature a double galore of horror movie music decomposers; Orco Muto and ourselves-Half Past Four. In 2006 Half Past Four scored for the horror comedy “The Mad” while Maurizio Guarini from Orco Muto and member of Goblin has composed music for the movie Suspiria (1978).

The theme of the night is “fiendishly progressive horror cabaret.” You are probably curious to know what the hell that might mean…good, I like it that you are a curious cat. Because we are known to range in so many musical styles and genres we often cannot come to a proper decision of what to call our style of music. Yes its progressive rock, but what is progressive rock? ELP gave us the best known definition "It is music that does progress." Thank you Keith for clearing it up. Anyways, we decided to quit this ballyhoo and call ourselves “Progressive Cabaret.” Maybe in ten years this will actually become a broad musical genre but for now I would like to be the first to define this fresh and atypical music genre. “It is music that sounds like cabaret and it progresses,” I’m glad you understand. Perhaps the easiest way to really come to digest this is by coming down and lending us your ears. But beware! Curiosity killed the cat…Muaha!

Because the date of the show is close to Samhain, we will be expecting our audiences to appear in tasty costumes, and by tasty I mean please, put on something wild and original for after all, you can only do this once a year without being the town fool so just relax and have fun walking around as a Rubik's cube. No..? C’mon! I myself will be wearing the limited edition lederhosens which you will get to see in our upcoming video for the song Rabbit. Okay, perhaps that might have not inspired you but how about we make a deal!? If you come dressed as a hot dog you are automatically drawn into a costume contest where the prize features a signed HPF CD and T-shirt.

Speaking of Halloween costumes, this reminds of a time back when Black Sabbath was playing a concert on Halloween and hosting a costume contest. Who ever had the best costume would win the exclusive prize of hanging out and touring with the band. Turns out the fellow who won came dressed up as “sweet leaf.” This green thing made of Styrofoam in shape of a marijuana leaf also had huge blocks of dried ice strapped on the costume to imitate smoke. If you are feeling perplexed of what to come as you can always refer to your favourite band or song, like in the example of our most dedicated fan and good friend of mine Dasha. She came dressed up as a rabbit in essence of our album and song. Speaking of fans and friends, I have been seeing many familiar faces at recent shows such as the Alan Holdsworth Trio on Saturday. What makes it even more hilarious is that some of these fan friends have already met one another! It’s only a matter of time before our evil plan works! Watch out for the Half Past Four army :)

My very good friend Finbar-one of our biggest fans, known for having outstanding reputation of attending every Half Past Four show at one point, ironically met our other fan Edi. Edi has helped the band in getting some great CD reviews. The two met at the Porcupine Tree concert that was earlier this week and Edi wore his HPF T-shirt (probably hoping that at one point Steven Wilson would land his eyes on it.) Noticing the all seeing clock on the front of the shirt, Finbar went insane and the two started chatting. Sometimes this makes me reflect on how small the progressive rock scene is in Toronto but on the other hand, maybe it’s sometimes a good thing since word of mouth gets spread more efficiently. Getting back to the Alan Holdsworth Trio show, I was in the very front of the stage with Alan Holdsworth standing three metres away from my face. It’s only human beings like Alan who give me Goosebumps when seeing live. These are the men that must be remembered and honoured for their heroic efforts and contributions towards human existence (forgive me for sounding like Ayn Rand.) Believe me it is very difficult to get me all wound up over celebrities. I couldn’t give a Grade A rat’s arse if Paris Hilton was bed bunking with me. I love Alan but I think what intrigued me even more than his presence was his drummer Gary Husband. Yes Gary Husband is my new drum god. If you have not heard of him, go and Youtube him NOW! His story must be heard! The guy played a drum solo in every other song and to top it off with a cherry he also did the sweetest thirty minute drum solo! This yet again brings me to ponder on why these deserving men do not get the full credit they deserve. Gary Husband is no doubt as good as any of the three drum gods (Dave Weckl, Vinnie Colauita, Steve Gadd). On second thought, this is the right moral conduct of the universe. It grants you what you deserve and in Gary Husband’s case he got his piece of the cake alright by playing with Mr. Holdsworth, now that’s what I call success which beats fame any day.  In my opinion, success is more important than fame. Of course every Progressive rock musician dreams of fame but what makes the progressive musician so exclusive is that not many agree on sacrificing the integrity of their art and commiting the biggest sin ever!!! Breaking the biggest prog commandment “Thou shall not go mainstream”. There is no more awesome human being to back me up on this opinion other than my all time favourite drummer and personal role model Mr. Bill Bruford!

Bruford on success: Success implies to having something interesting to contribute, like Roach and Parker, and having that contribution acknowledged by your peers. Having them run with that idea, take it some place. Success meant being listened to, making a difference, it meant leaving your patch different to the way you found it.
Or as John Fordman put it, “I wanted to belong to a unique community, in which ideas are freely shared; fashion, fame, and wealth are secondary; dogma is suspect and tolerance prized; and life is vividly and humorously-in the present.

This Brufordian quote from Bill Bruford’s autobiography (which I recommend you get your hands on for all of you BB fanatics) expresses Half Past Four’s philosophy. Our objective, you see, is to leave our “patch” different to the way we found it…or something along those lines :)
Our intention is to acquire success, to be appreciated by the audiences in the “unique community” but don’t get me wrong, we still want to be appreciated by people who are into other stuff too besides progressive rock.

Yesterday we had a show at the Black Swan. Every so often Wilton Said hosts a Nuance show - a night featuring progressive rock bands. We love coming down to play there because that is where we find our “unique community.” It was very rewarding to see fans show up in Half Past Four shirts, thank you very much. The show went great except for the part when the blinding projector made me almost jab a drumstick in my eye. Good thing yours truly does not have epilepsy…that would have been very Spinal Tap.