Unveil the Mystery (Issue no2)

Hello again fellow mysterious fans! ''Emmm, how many bands do you have??'' ..... Last week i was asking how should i describe mystery to a non-prog -top 40ish listener, now i'm wondering how to enumerate, explain and justify them to these same people without putting them asleep, because i do have a wide range of very different hard-to-describe projects, past and present! And so this week your mysteron-taurusian low end friend (myself) will briefly explain to you why the hell does he need to be involved in so many musical projects at the same time. Aside from mystery, one of them is an occasionnal gig i get with a tribute to harmonium as a substitute member, called ''premier ciel'' (Harmonium was a french canadian folk prog group from the 70's, legendary band, also popular in the english side of canada), and other projects include a Genesis tribute (''afterglow'', covering almost every era of the band, playing mainly in and around my local area (Montreal) occasionally), and a few other new cover bands i've been recently involved with, one of them as the keyboard player and the other one on the drums. I should probably call myself a freelance multi-intrumentist, but i'm affraid that would be too pretentious....still, this is the reality of a lot of musicians these days, freelance is the only option for many of us if the goal is to make more than 10-20 gigs a year. Being committed to only one band, especially one that does only its own material, and hoping to make a living with it is nearly impossible, thats how the music business is today, and so you do have to make yourself available to play with other people, and versatile enough to be able to do so, or otherwise you'll have to get a day job, (part time day job, in my case). My never ending search for new challenges is my main motivation, as well as the chance of playing with many amazing musicians. I learn a lot from all of these people, most of them have years of invaluable experience to share, and it gives me opportunities to widen up my playing styles, from folk to hard rock, in many countless kinds of venues, in every kinds of conditions, from the worst filthy clubs to the luxury of some bigger one's (not stadium's yet, soon but not now, lol), wich is a topic i wanna talk about eventually. So that is why i'll keep playing with as much different projects as possible, even if sometime's i gotta learn how to say ''no thanks'', another topic i should cover in the future! So....i'll keep my ears open and fingers warming up to as many styles as i can and keep learning with all of them, because i strongly believe you do become an overall much better musician by doing so. Currently in my headphones.... (this is something i was also asked to do in these articles) i'm currently listening to a non-prog band that i've seen recently live in an outdoor show, and been following for a year or two. They called themselves ''the besnard lakes''. Its a canadian band described as Indie rock, shoegaze, post-rock...i've never been that much into that style before but i like their vocal arrangements (beach boys inspired harmonies) with lots of big, all washed out reverb and ugly distorted guitars playing these very cool chord progressions and melodies under it, very ambient, noisy and mesmerizing, chaos and beauty united. Think of radiohead in their '' the bends / ok computer'' era. Its not everyone's cup of tea and i'm not too sure if any mystery fans would get into this to be honest but if you wanna check them out, i suggest you give a listen to ''people of the sticks'' or ''the specter'' from their latest album, ''until in excess, imperceptible ufo''. thats it for now! do or do not prog, there is no try -frank