I like a lot of prog rock, especially the 1970s giants like Genesis and Yes, but I’m not totally up to speed on more recent bands. I scored 20/25.
A year ago, we came back from vacation to find new neighbours. They turned out to be awful – a bunch of meth addicts who’d party until dawn twice a week. Meth is nasty to have around the neighbourhood because it makes people aggressive and stay awake all night.
Their vocabulary seemingly consisted of three words, which started with C, F, and N. They also knew the word ugly, as they called me an ugly c*** over the fence. Their kids liked to murder any worms silly enough to venture away from our compost heap. Like sirens, they could sing beautifully – but there are only so many times I want to hear ‘Promiscuous’ at 2 am. Broken windows were a regular occurrence, and part of the window framing is broken from the time they tried to burgle their own house.
In a neighbouring suburb, a child was killed recently, and that household seems similarly dysfunctional. Lots of similarities – the volatility, the line of bottles on the windowsill, and being described as nightmares.
Thankfully, our neighbours moved out earlier this week. It’s life-changing – we’re no longer next door to a noisy time bomb, and I no longer spend my spare brainpower building a mythology around their mythical walrus sex slave.
Graham Fyfe is probably the only music blogger to appreciate Neil Diamond and Ariana Grande. Aphoristic Album Reviews features reviews and blog posts across a growing spectrum of popular music.
26 Comments
12/25 very frustrating. I tried to conceptualize a color with the name and if it didn’t seem like it could be describing a color I chose prog rock band. That system did not work lol. Congratulations on losing the Meth Head neighbors (I wonder what color Meth Head would be?) Your “mythology around their mythical walrus sex slave” isn’t a reference to the Kevin Smith movie/podcast is it?
I have never seen the Kevin Smith movie/podcast. Just a way of letting some frustration out.
OK, good, because once seen never forgotten and not in a good way. The kernel of an idea on the podcast turned into a movie.
18/25.
About this walrus……………… tell me more
It was just my imagination running away with me – feel like I had to sit and take their crap for a year, and couldn’t really fight back.
Wow…but a lot of those colors would be great band names! Prog or not.
SCORE
18/25
Could the police not help at all? Meth is awful…here if a house has had meth made it in..it devalues it instantly because it gets everywhere…hope your new neighbors are better…but the bar isn’t too high after that nightmare.
We had noise control helping shut them down sometimes. I don’t think the police really have time to deal with noise – just violence, threats etc.
I’m glad you are free from them now. Hopefully the new neighbors will be much better.
Hopefully they won’t blast Promiscuous at 2 am.
Pathetic score for me this week, only 17/25
Poor you and your family Graham, for having to endure such terrible neighbors for an entire year! I’m probably very naive, but wouldn’t have expected such lowlifes to live in a quiet neighborhood in New Zealand.
17 seems pretty par.
We live in a suburb that’s generally been cheaper. Everything has kind of gentrified lately, as there’s a housing shortage, so our neighbourhood is mainly young families who own their own houses, but beneficiaries need to live somewhere too.
19/25. I discovered too late that all the ones that you never heard of were paint. And even when they were bands they weren’t necessarily prog rock bands.
Yup, they had a pretty wide definition of prog.
22/25 for me at 4.09. Some lucky guesses required!
Ooh, looks like you’re in the lead so far.
OMG on the neighbors. Happy to hear that disaster is over!! And speaking of disaster…I won’t give my score. Let’s just say I did not win!!
I’m with Johnny…some things are better not printed!
Thanks for trying!
I felt like I was losing brain cells every time I heard them talk, so it’s nice they’re gone.
Ha!!
Considering that I’m a lover of prog old, new & in-between, my score of 19/25 is very disappointing. FYI, if you want to hear some of the best harmony vocals of any band, prog or otherwise, I highly recommend you check out Moon Safari (one of the clues on this list…sorry for the spoiler), a fantastic band from Sweden.
Sorry you had to deal with those neighbors for so long, but very pleased that they’ve moved on…to torment other people, of course. We had a similar situation recently, where a neighbor’s indoor/outdoor cat tormented our cat so much that it made his & our daily lives miserable. The neighbor’s attitude was, “your cat is the one with the problem, not mine.” When they moved about a year ago it was life-changing. Here’s to better neighbors in your future.
I listened to Moon Safari’s new track and it was good – sounds like they’re going to release their first album for a decade.
Glad your annoying cat neighbour has moved on.
Well that was dumb fun. 18/25. Never heard of a lot of them nor, for that matter, Dulux paint.
That’s some good intuition if you don’t know most of the bands.
BTW, just went back and read your meth story. Wow! There’s a few neighborhoods in the Greater Boston area where you might see that but it’s atypical. That said, Massachusetts just scored its biggest drug bust ever with enough fentanyl to supply everybody in our state twice over. It was in a deadbeat town called Lynn which has the dubious distinction of hosting a Stones concert/riot back in the Sixties. As to my own neighborhood it’s so quiet and uneventful that the most exciting thing in years was the guy next door who was raising chickens.
We have pet chickens, and (coincidentally) live five minutes walk from one of NZ’s biggest paint factories.
The neigbourhood I live in has been a bit rough in the past, but has gentrified as house prices have gone up. It’s now mostly young families.
Apparently there’s a drug dealer just down the same road as well. There have been a few drive-by shots at his windows. It’s weird, as it’s normally a boring suburban street. It’s normally quiet as we’re at the top of the valley, near the hills.
12/25 very frustrating. I tried to conceptualize a color with the name and if it didn’t seem like it could be describing a color I chose prog rock band. That system did not work lol. Congratulations on losing the Meth Head neighbors (I wonder what color Meth Head would be?) Your “mythology around their mythical walrus sex slave” isn’t a reference to the Kevin Smith movie/podcast is it?
I have never seen the Kevin Smith movie/podcast. Just a way of letting some frustration out.
OK, good, because once seen never forgotten and not in a good way. The kernel of an idea on the podcast turned into a movie.
18/25.
About this walrus……………… tell me more
It was just my imagination running away with me – feel like I had to sit and take their crap for a year, and couldn’t really fight back.
Wow…but a lot of those colors would be great band names! Prog or not.
SCORE
18/25
Could the police not help at all? Meth is awful…here if a house has had meth made it in..it devalues it instantly because it gets everywhere…hope your new neighbors are better…but the bar isn’t too high after that nightmare.
We had noise control helping shut them down sometimes. I don’t think the police really have time to deal with noise – just violence, threats etc.
I’m glad you are free from them now. Hopefully the new neighbors will be much better.
Hopefully they won’t blast Promiscuous at 2 am.
Pathetic score for me this week, only 17/25
Poor you and your family Graham, for having to endure such terrible neighbors for an entire year! I’m probably very naive, but wouldn’t have expected such lowlifes to live in a quiet neighborhood in New Zealand.
17 seems pretty par.
We live in a suburb that’s generally been cheaper. Everything has kind of gentrified lately, as there’s a housing shortage, so our neighbourhood is mainly young families who own their own houses, but beneficiaries need to live somewhere too.
19/25. I discovered too late that all the ones that you never heard of were paint. And even when they were bands they weren’t necessarily prog rock bands.
Yup, they had a pretty wide definition of prog.
22/25 for me at 4.09. Some lucky guesses required!
Ooh, looks like you’re in the lead so far.
OMG on the neighbors. Happy to hear that disaster is over!! And speaking of disaster…I won’t give my score. Let’s just say I did not win!!
I’m with Johnny…some things are better not printed!
Thanks for trying!
I felt like I was losing brain cells every time I heard them talk, so it’s nice they’re gone.
Ha!!
Considering that I’m a lover of prog old, new & in-between, my score of 19/25 is very disappointing. FYI, if you want to hear some of the best harmony vocals of any band, prog or otherwise, I highly recommend you check out Moon Safari (one of the clues on this list…sorry for the spoiler), a fantastic band from Sweden.
Sorry you had to deal with those neighbors for so long, but very pleased that they’ve moved on…to torment other people, of course. We had a similar situation recently, where a neighbor’s indoor/outdoor cat tormented our cat so much that it made his & our daily lives miserable. The neighbor’s attitude was, “your cat is the one with the problem, not mine.” When they moved about a year ago it was life-changing. Here’s to better neighbors in your future.
I listened to Moon Safari’s new track and it was good – sounds like they’re going to release their first album for a decade.
Glad your annoying cat neighbour has moved on.
Well that was dumb fun. 18/25. Never heard of a lot of them nor, for that matter, Dulux paint.
That’s some good intuition if you don’t know most of the bands.
BTW, just went back and read your meth story. Wow! There’s a few neighborhoods in the Greater Boston area where you might see that but it’s atypical. That said, Massachusetts just scored its biggest drug bust ever with enough fentanyl to supply everybody in our state twice over. It was in a deadbeat town called Lynn which has the dubious distinction of hosting a Stones concert/riot back in the Sixties. As to my own neighborhood it’s so quiet and uneventful that the most exciting thing in years was the guy next door who was raising chickens.
We have pet chickens, and (coincidentally) live five minutes walk from one of NZ’s biggest paint factories.
The neigbourhood I live in has been a bit rough in the past, but has gentrified as house prices have gone up. It’s now mostly young families.
Apparently there’s a drug dealer just down the same road as well. There have been a few drive-by shots at his windows. It’s weird, as it’s normally a boring suburban street. It’s normally quiet as we’re at the top of the valley, near the hills.