http://kevingilbert.com
http://www.myspace.com/kevingilbertfan <-- Zeppelin fans may really dig his interpretation of LZ's "Kashmir" there (it was supposed to be on that 90's tribute disc "Encomium" but the label decided to leave it off for some reason).
http://myspace.com/toymatinee

http://www.hammerslug.com/gilbert/ <- Peter Gabriel-era GENESIS fan? His band performed nearly the entire LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY in 1994. The Video is available to d/l there. He was supposed to audition for Genesis the week after he died.

Today, November 20th, 2007 would have been his 41st Birthday. The man highly responsible for Sheryl Crow's career and writing most of the material on her Grammy winning record "Tuesday Night Music Club" (nearly the same name of HIS band BEFORE she ever was his gf and was asked to join).

He has 2 absolute classic releases in the debut and only release from Power-Pop group "Toy Matinee" and his magnum opus in which he performed EVERYTHING including all the production, mixing and mastering on 2000's Rock Opera "The Shaming of the True." Which in many ways was an adaptation to much of his experience trying to make it in the music business.

An album he of course never was around to see released officially, since he died in May of 1996.

So, the question is, why doesn't anyone discuss this guy? Lack of ever hearing his music? (not Crow's solo album)

If you haven't ,you very easily could be missing out. The same could be said about Jeff Buckley not too long ago.

I've never really heard of Kevin Gilbert

But you mentioned Jeff Buckley who I like.

um..as my favorite alltime musician..this is quite intriguing to read about (even tho I imagine I've heard mostly all of this stuff via the trading list..an official release I am still totally looking fwd to).

from the Lawnmower and Garden list (via the Last Plane Out list)

>
> Hello all! It's been a while since I de-listed, but I'm back! It
> looks like we've got some "new" members around here!
>
> I asked to rejoin tonight because some news was shared with me that I
> know you'll all want to know about. I'm just going to paste it in
> below, and hope you don't all have heart attacks or anything. :0
>
> "I have been helping get some Kevin Gilbert stuff to see the light of
> day and I am happy to be able to announce these:
>
> The 2-CD "singer/songwriter" set that has been in the works is
> nearing release. Hopefully being released in time for the Holiday
> season. I need to go through the final tracklisting to try to round-
> up the credits of musicians who contributed in the writing/recording
> process. Kevin left little to no notes on a lot of this material.
> Doing the best possible to get this out before the end of 2008.
>
> Also,"The Shaming Of The True" is remastered and re-released on CD as
> of this writing. The cool new thing (especially for audiophiles) is
> the 2-LP version of this release. That's right. Looking at a very
> early 2009 for "The Shaming Of The True" on vinyl with a beautiful
> 12" x 12" book, all the artwork in frame-ready prints, and much more!
>
> Jon Rubin (manager, executor of Kevin's estate) is very eager to have
> these out and he wanted me to pass all this information out to you
> all.
>
> There will also be some other items of interest that look to be
> released in early 2009. More on those later.

Today would have been his 42nd Birthday. Happy Kevin Gilbert-day. Playing his work today, kind of feels like a precursor for when these come out in the not too distant future...

2 new albums and a live cd/dvd

as maybe the only fan around here, I'm overjoyed. Maybe it'll take some new released work to finally have some other sombies to catch-on to this man's talent.

http://popplusone.com/kgnuts.html



Nuts

# The World Just Gets Smaller
# While Heroes Cry
# Until I Get Her Back
# When Strangers Part
# Finally Over You
# Circling Winds
# Shannon Elizabeth
# A Tired Old Man
# Childhood's End
# Joy Town (Acoustic Version)
# Kashmir (Studio Version)



http://popplusone.com/kgbolts.html

# Waking The Sun
# Jenny Ledge (Acoustic Version)
# Something Nice For My Dog
# Souvenir
# God's Been Tapping My Phone
# Goodness Gracious (Acoustic)
# The Best Of Everything
# Blank Page
# Taxi Ride
# Lonely Road
# Finale



Welcome To Joytown: Thud Live at Troubadour

http://tinyurl.com/m7b7lf

* Waking The Sun
* Joy Town
* Goodness Gracious
* Shrug (Because Of You)
* Waiting
* Tea For One
* Miss Broadway
* The Tears Of Audrey
* When You Give Your Love To Me
* The Ballad Of Jenny Ledge
* Kashmir
* Smash
* Song For A Dead Friend (CD only)

Bonus Video Material

* Song For A Dead Friend - Kevin Solo - Live at Club Largo 1994
* This Warm Night Giraffe, Rare Footage
* Because Of You Giraffe, Rare Footage
* 1995 Interview with Kevin at Lawnmower and Garden Supply Studio - 32 minutes

$30 + shipping Buy Now!
A limited, numbered edition DVD/CD combo with cover designed by Grammy winner Hugh Brown. The DVD contains a 3 camera video of the entire live performance, freshly mastered sound, and over 30 minutes of extras including an extensive interview of Kevin and rare live footage. The re-mastered CD includes previously unreleased versions of "Tears of Audrey" and "Smash."

This is the SOMB, not Progarchives. I don't think you should be surprised that a relatively unknown (and long dead) prog musician is not getting much attention here.

Back in the 90s he seemed awfully tame to be called 'prog'...still does, but I've mellowed, will try to take a listen. What's heaviest?

Paul Gilbert--he's prog.

http://www.studiogruno.com/guilty/
FUCK.

NUTS and BOLTS are being streamed right now in their entirety tonight on the link above to that show.





Jeff Buckley was prog. David Bowie is/was prog. Jellyfish were prog. Faith No More were prog.

go down the fucking list.

and frankly, he WAS HARDLY JUST "Prog" ..he was a POP and a musical genius. I don't care what anyone else fucking says or thinks. MORE PEOPLE CAN AND SHOULD DIG HIS MUSIC. And it's HARDLY TOO LATE to do so.

got mine as they went on sale early last week.

More people around here should read the liner notes to understand why Kevin Gilbert's music is so significant.

It has been twelve-odd years since Kevin Gilbert's untimely death at the tender age of twenty-nine. Those of us who knew and loved him best still miss him a lot and think about him all the time.- and when we think about him (I think I speak for most of us) we think: "Damn, I wish Kev could drop back in for a day, so he could whup out a few of his casually brilliant, hilarious musical comments on our current state of affairs, and also that we might have the opportunity to dummy-slap the tar out of him for depriving the rest of our lives of his peerless talent and exquisite company."

It's hard to say what direction Kevin might have gone in as a songwriter in the last decade. His evolution always happened in leaps, fits and spurts. His personal, professional and creative selves were always wadded up in the same sock drawer - damp, tangled and bleeding colors all over each other. He was already profoundly jaded by Hollywood: his eventual compromise with those Powers That Be would surely have been painful - either for him, for them, or for us. He was already so ferociously appalled by American life that it is hard to imagine him lasting even the first four years of the Bush administration without either moving to Amsterdam or stripping down to a red, white and blue vinyl G-string and immolating himself on the White House lawn. But then again, he never really cared much about what happened in Washington. He had enough political difficulties in his own job. It was a juggling act; he was a showman, in the Bob Fosse sense of the word ("All That Jazz" was, incidentally one of his favorite films), always walking that razor-sharp, piano-wire line between the razzle-dazzle of 'entertaining,' and digging deep, telling the truth, and revealing himself. He encountered the most opposition from his professional world when he felt he was being most courageous: exposing parts of himself that even he didn't particularly want to see hanging around his own living room... let alone singing. He had a profound sense of justice, a nearly pathological need to be honest about tendencies most people would protect themselves by concealing, and a burning sense that he was, in a way, speaking up for underdogs everywhere - he had nearly boundless compassion for people victimized by their own demons.

That was the paradoxical power of Kevin's songs: they are funny, catchy, sometimes too sweet, occasionally too maudlin, always virtuosic, always excruciatingly truthful journalistic dispatches by a reporter at war with himself.

Like Mendelssohn or Jell-O tequila shooters, Kev was always a strong acquired taste...but in a proper mood of submission and indulgence, you might be deeply surprised by what you'd find in your ear.

This collection shows off many facets of the 18-sided die that was Kevin - the twee, sentimental prog-rock troubadour; the emotionally stark naked guy, standing in the dark night of the soul without shoes, shame or raincoat; the caring brother who wrote "Shannon Elizabeth" for his newborn niece; the petulant jerk lashing out a poison pen letter to his ex disguised as a love song to his dog, and most of all: the disappointed, embittered poet who nonetheless tried to redeem his own life, and yours, through piercingly beautiful music...and often succeeded.

What becomes really obvious listening to these tracks is that Kevin Gilbert, as existentially depressing, romantically bereft, and morally liminal as he could be, was a totally blinding, white-hot genius. History may have its share of talented songwriters, and some may have been more well-known or more widely appreciated, but none, really, were any better than Kevin. He truly was, ladies and gentleman, an artist at the apex of human ability in his chosen medium - and those don't come around every day. It's the kind of genius that you're a little more awestruck by each passing year, because even in the midst of certain tangy synthesizer sounds endemic to the year he wrote them, you realize that fundamentally, Kevin's songs are as potent today as they were ten years ago. They're real art: they're timeless.

Of course, what was really interesting about Kevin Gilbert - what Kevin found most interesting, anyway - was his love-life, and the trials he suffered, bedding numerous beautiful women - blondes, primarily - during his short reign on earth (it must be remembered that he began his professional life while still a teen, touring as a keyboardist for rock legend Eddie Money.)What I can tell you from personal experience is that ten inches is a conservative estimate...(to be continued in liner notes of "Bolts.")

Cintra Wilson, 2009

...like I was saying, to pick up where I left off in the previous liner-notes for "Nuts," ten inches is a conservative estimate of how thick Kevin Gilbert's little black book was, and the angsty feelings resulting from these romantic entanglements certainly weren't his alone, but we can safely say he wrote better songs about them than any of his girlfriends.

Anyway, in the legendary graphic novel "Transmetropolitan" by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson, there is a religious movement in which one voluntarily discards the earthly body and "downloads" one's entire consciousness into a cloud of nanobots, and becomes a vapor-state known as a "foglet." the star of the series, future journalist Spider Jerusalem, rhetorically asks:

"If a guy has a prosthetic leg, is he still still human?... How about if he had two artificial legs? Artificial arms? A plastic heart? Carbon fibre bones? Artificial neurons? Where do you stop being human?"

You don't is the conclusion these drawings draw; a foglet is the ultimate, sentient, "postbiological man."

"You could download a mind out of its - let's face it - eminently crappy, badly designed human body and into a seriously useful and functionally immortal artificial form,"

said Spider Jerusalem.

Which leads me to further discussion of the Kevin Gilbert codex.

It's not the wit and sophistication of Kevin's lyrics. It's not the torturously thoughtful production values. It's not even his virtuosic musicianship or that sailing voice - it's the fact that twelve years after his death with a pair of headphones, he still is urgently, throbbingly real, ridiculous, vindictive, whiny, sarcastic, stunningly smart and painfully earnest all at the same time. He is still so beautiful, infuriating and immediate you still want to reach out and hug him and/or cry uncontrollably and/or hurl your coffee mug at him. His ability to press any number of out emotional buttons, for good or ill, is as strong now as it ever was when he was a living, breathing tortured genius-cum-lover-cum-brother-cum-collaborator-cum-friend.

Whatever form Kevin's soul is currently inhabiting in the space-time continuum, it is a safe bet that he still can't find his car keys; it is also safe to say that some eternal part of him is still waiting to feel that enough other people ultimately got him... that his music resounded, was understood, was loved, as listened to, and was necessary.

The songs in this collection have an impact more forceful than Kevin or anyone else ever gave him enough credit for. If you had the good fortune to know Kevin Gilbert while he slouched around earth, you were lucky, especially if you had a piano for him to fool around with. If you didn't know Kev, you're probably better off - he could be a really infectious downer sometimes, especially after he finished your bourbon; and it was inevitable that he'd say something unbelievably rude to several of your guests. But then again, that special charmlessness was half of his enduring charm.

If you still want to meet Kevin Mathew Gilbert - the "Canvas Mattress" himself (his infant brother somehow couldn't pronounce his name any other way) - you have the opportunity to meet Kevin now. He's like a Transmetropolitan foglet. He's still all in there. All of him. Right inside the music. he spared no molecule of himself to make it, and this is why these discs make him immortal. They were, very consciously, imbued by Kevin with the sum total of his own soul.

Cintra Wilson, 2009

who knows what level of success this guy could have reached if he had just rubbed one out the normal way.