No One Can Stop Us Now...

[Sam]

Ian Crichton, I dub thee the "Unknown Shredder". Ian plays guitar for the band Saga (and is the original guy, unlike the quitter singer, quitter keyboard players, and quitter drummers). I remember exactly one song by them: "On The Loose". I heard it yesterday on good ol' XM Radio. The instrumental section in the middle really rips.

Remember this?

I say that is bad-a$$. (although the bass player kind of cops out. If I had composed that part, I would've had the bass player double the runs instead of that awful keyboard.) I really dig the descending, then ascending scale runs. The rest of the song is kind of melodramatic, as was many artsy-progressive rock in the day. Like Asia, Yes, Styx, etc. While visiting the Multimedia page of their official website, I had the pleasure of hearing another bit of shred-tastic prog goodness - a song called "Corkentellis". It's all instrumental and is kind of Dream Theater-ish. Another song called "You're Not Alone", not so much. The intro, verses, and choruses all very much blow. But once again, the middle instrumental section kills.

I wonder if there are any crazy backstage party stories floating around out there. I tend to think not. I suppose I could buy the Saga Bio and find out.

Some Saga Fun-Facts:

• 19 studio albums, spanning from 1978 to 2007.
• Canadian (just like Rush and Triumph, except they had more than 3 members and they didn't write catchy songs)
• "Lead singer Michael Sadler left Saga for family reasons at the end of the 2007 tour. Rob Moratti replaced Sadler in April 2008, after an Internet talent search, spanning Europe and both Americas, failed to yield a potential lead vocalist." (via Wikipedia)
• Their official website is a sub-domain of MoonFruit.com, a website builder / website host.

Alright - I've had their website open in another tab during the writing of this blog entry and I think I might hate them.

Official Saga
Saga on Wikipedia
Saga mp3s on Amazon