Cain!

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bjsp123
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Cain!

Post by bjsp123 »

I'm not sure if anyone remembers 'Cain!' -- it was a project at CH back in the 70s led by John Mason (prog rocker and, I think, teacher at some point) in which much of the school performed a sprawling prog rock epic about Cain.

It was weird. It featured a song about vegetables.

Anyway, it made a deep impression on me and I've finally found one of the privately-issued vinyl records and ripped it to mp3 (badly -- record crackle and all). I know nothing at all about the whereabouts of anyone involved in making the original work. I was wondering if anyone else is interested in the music -- whether I can/should post the files on youtube or something?
loringa
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Re: Cain!

Post by loringa »

I remember it well; it was truly awful and there are various mentions in other posts.

You are spot on about it being weird and some absolutely terrible dirges: 'We can build a tower, we can build it high ...'
ColA25
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Re: Cain!

Post by ColA25 »

Yes, I remember it too. I think I still have the LP at home somewhere, and I recall that I even took some of the photos on the album cover. Craig Pruess and Visitor 2035 were the musicians. http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5935. One track is already on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEAyS79WHjA


It must have been one of the first school plays performed in the then new theatre.


There was a John Mason on the staff, I think a languages teacher in Thornton (?) but I would not have identified him as a prog rocker, I thought his interests were classical and played acoustic guitar. But he doesn't seem to me to be the same person that played in the show.
Phil Naylor
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bjsp123
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Re: Cain!

Post by bjsp123 »

loringa wrote: Sat Mar 12, 2022 6:14 pm I remember it well; it was truly awful and there are various mentions in other posts.

You are spot on about it being weird and some absolutely terrible dirges: 'We can build a tower, we can build it high ...'
Well, I don't know about _truly_ awful. It had some interesting strangeness. It wasn't 100% bad.

Ok, fine, it was 100% bad.

But it was bad in an odd way and it's part of our shared heritage. I'll put it all on Youtube if and when I get round to it (i.e. probably not for a very long time, unless someone asks).
bjsp123
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Re: Cain!

Post by bjsp123 »

ColA25 wrote: Sun Mar 13, 2022 5:42 pm Yes, I remember it too. I think I still have the LP at home somewhere, and I recall that I even took some of the photos on the album cover. Craig Pruess and Visitor 2035 were the musicians. http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5935. One track is already on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEAyS79WHjA


It must have been one of the first school plays performed in the then new theatre.


There was a John Mason on the staff, I think a languages teacher in Thornton (?) but I would not have identified him as a prog rocker, I thought his interests were classical and played acoustic guitar. But he doesn't seem to me to be the same person that played in the show.
Oh wow, you were _there_!

Thanks for the youtube links. When I visited the Cain! song, YouTube helpfully suggested an entire album by Visitor 2035. I looked at the track listing and saw that it had a song on it called 'At the Gates of Consciousness', so I closed the tab.

Still a place in my heart for Cain! though.
Straz
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Re: Cain!

Post by Straz »

See my comment below...
Last edited by Straz on Wed Mar 16, 2022 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Paul Strange
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Straz
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Re: Cain!

Post by Straz »

bjsp123 wrote: Sat Mar 12, 2022 12:21 pm I'm not sure if anyone remembers 'Cain!' -- it was a project at CH back in the 70s led by John Mason (prog rocker and, I think, teacher at some point) in which much of the school performed a sprawling prog rock epic about Cain.

by ColA25 » Sun Mar 13, 2022 6:42 pm

There was a John Mason on the staff, I think a languages teacher in Thornton (?) but I would not have identified him as a prog rocker, I thought his interests were classical and played acoustic guitar. But he doesn't seem to me to be the same person that played in the show.
We've been here before, a few years back.
I'd like to state categorically - and hopefully for the last time - that John Mason (CH teacher, mid-1970s) and John Mason (keyboardist with Irish prog rock group Fruupp) are NOT one and the same.
They are completely different people, albeit with the same name.
Unfortunately a website - Discogs - links John Mason (keyboardist with Fruupp for their fourth album 'Modern Masquerades') with Visitor 2035 and the Cain! project.
I personally knew John Mason of Fruupp, who sadly died in 2015. He didn't have any connection with CH, he wasn't a language teacher and he wasn't linked to Visitor 2035 and the Cain! project.
Hope the above is helpful and will clear up matters once and for all.
Paul Strange
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JamesF35
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Re: Cain!

Post by JamesF35 »

I remember Cain. It was definitely my era and DNP got very excited about it. I probably did the lighting for it but I can't quite recall that. I did own a copy of the lp record album though.

My first job after school was working as a tecnician in the Electrics dept. at the Young Vic. The Artistic Director at the time was an up and coming chap named Michael Bogdanof who later went on to greater fame including as artistic director of the National Theatre. Anyway we were preparing for one of his new productions in which a particular music sound effect track was required which Bodger (as we called him) simply described as needing to be a bit 'way out'. My boss, who had worked for Bodger for some years and knew him as being quite demanding, had tried out a couple of tracks on him which were swiftly dismissed. I said that I might have something and the next day took my Cain album to the theatre . After selecting what we thought was the most suitable track, we played it to Bodger. He listened thoughtfully to it and then asked if we could record it with an overlay of the same track with a one second delay. I did that for him and played it again. His eyes lit up and he proclaimed that it would be perfect and just what he wanted. I must say it did sound better with the delayed overlay than the original version. We never worried about PRS and just went ahead and used it (as one often did in the 1970s). So, the Cain soundtrack made it to the London stage albeit unknowingly to the composers and not in a way that they might have recognised.
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