Pink Beatles in A Purple Zeppelin (Arjen Anthony Lucassen, 2012)

Progressive rock is always seen by mainstream rockers as a deeply serious and even morn genre, but I think that proggers have more fun instead. Arjen Anthony Lucassen, the Dutch multi-instrumentalist behind Ayreon project, shares my opinion and this song proves it. "Pink Beatles in A Purple Zeppelin" is a musical divertissement taken from the album  "Lost in The New Real", one of the few CDs Arjen released as a soloist. First of all, this catchy melody is an excuse to pay the author's respect to his (and our) rock heroes, but there's more than this, as the lyrics deal with an interesting subject (and a real nightmare for many composers): the lack of new musical ideas. Poor Lucassen sings:

Every song's been sung before,
Every note's been played,
Every chord's been strung before,
And every melody's been made.

 

Even the album cover was pure fun!

So, what can a musician do by now? Well, prog rock found the only answer to this: if everything has been done, we can still mix up those patterns, melt down those styles. In Arjen's own words:

I just think of what I like
Any blend will do.
They reproduced what's in my mind
But it feels like something new.

That's exactly what proggers do: they merge different worlds and make something that really sounds new. And... they have fun, of course!