So You Think You Can Prog?

Lock Nut and I were salivating for more Schon & Hammer after the No More Lies track hit heavy rotation in the Blogmaoffice (shed).  After some digging, we were surprised to see that their two albums were out of print.  Thankfully, we were able to locate the entire catalog on Amazon.com, on some format called "compact disc" for the bargain price of $375.80.

Another place was selling Here to Stay for $349.01, but we're no fools...not that Schon & Hammer wouldn't be worth it...

When we took delivery, we couldn't wait to get a listen in.  Much to our surprise, compact discs aren't compatible with tape players.  After a quick trip over to Strawberries, they confirmed that compact discs were totally the new thing.  So after shelling out another untold amount of cash on a new compact disc player, we were finally ready to feast our ears on some more Schon & Hammer magic.

That's when we heard this...

Lock Nut and I thought we must have received a broken compact disc player, so we went back to Strawberries to get our money back.  The dude there told us that it was working fine and that what was coming out of the compact disc player was actually what was recorded on the Schon & Hammer compact disc.

Still in disbelief, we headed back to the Blogmashed to listen to Untold Passion, thinking that maybe there was a mistake when they manufactured our copy of Here to Stay.

Upon hitting play, we were assaulted with this, the aptly titled "Wasting Time"...

After wasting a bunch of our time with that track, it appeared that our compact disc player was on the fritz again.  Half the songs after that were missing the vocal tracks.  After yet another trip to Strawberries and another round of back and forths, the dude at Strawberries told us that the compact disc player was actually doing what it was supposed to, and in fact, there were no vocals on a bunch of this album's tracks.

Don't get me wrong, I am still a Jan Hammer fan.  He has written some kick ass instrumental stuff, except his kick ass instrumental stuff featured cool stuff like half naked chicks and jet powered helicopters...

So if its not a manufacturing snafu and our compact disc player is actually working properly, after pulling an all night brainstorming session, best Lock Nut and I can tell is that Jan's Tandy must have caught some virus during the recording session of these two records that also happened to infect the rest of Neil Schon's solo career.

For whatever its worth, all of us here at Blogmagogroxx are pulling for you, Neal.  Hope you get well soon!