“Voyage 34″ by Porcupine Tree
From the 2000 album Voyage 34

I’ve missed the past couple of days here, and I’ll probably miss some more this week, as I’m going on vacation for the next few days. I wanted to find a song with “vacation” or “trip” in the title. No dice, at least not in my library (except the Camper Van Beethoven track “Payed Vacation: Greece”).

This is not exactly the kind of “trip” I’ll be going on, but to some extent, Voyage 34 fits the bill. This album is a bit of an oddity in the oddity-filled Porcupine Tree catalog: originally recorded solo in 1992-1993 by Steven Wilson, before PT was even really a band, these recordings were collected and given a proper mastering for CD release in 2000, and the suite, in whole or in part, is occasionally performed live as well.

This live version from 1999 shows us the band in a fairly early form — Chris Maitland had not yet been replaced on drums by Gavin Harrison, and the visuals are not there like today (in fact compared to what I’m used to seeing this almost looks like a soundcheck, but there’s an audience), but they’re still cool to hear live. I believe this performance was at the same prog rock festival in San Francisco that brought Magma to these shores, and it occurred just a couple of days before I saw Magma live in Chicago, as previously mentioned.

I still think that narrator sounds like Dick Clark.