Created By: Jonathan Dysart (DJJD)
Original Creation Year: 2008
Year of Re-master: 2010
THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF A MAN
Song Listing
[Note: All YouTube songs will not be a video promo, just a means to hear the track. The video promo could affect the interpretation of the track within this concept album]
Side A
Side B
Side C
Side D
Origin of the Album
It has been mentioned in interviews with Paul McCartney that the melody of one of his greatest Beatles song “Yesterday” came to him in a dream. When awoken in the morning, he went to his piano to play out the notes from his dream. He went to producer George Martin to inquire about this tune, thinking that he heard the tune before and saying that it felt familiar to him. Martin politely said no, that the melody of “Yesterday” came from him alone. Eventually, he would write some lyrics to the melody, originally titled as “Scrambled Eggs”. But now, the Paul McCartney’s creation “Yesterday” is considered the most covered song and the most played song on the radio in modern music history.
I did not discover anything of that magnitude. I can’t even play the guitar or write music. On the other hand, the inspiration for creating what I consider one of my finest albums came in similar fashion. I have always dreamt of being a rock musician and being able to create a musical masterpiece (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or The Dark Side of the Moon). The concept of the album would be semi-autobiographical (in the same vein as Pink Floyd's The Wall). The seed of this dream was there a long time ago in the year 1987, where I was going through a personal musical renaissance as well as dealing with the death of my father. I remember trying to actually write a title song for my dream concept album. In fact, I already had a melody in my head. I don’t have the written song anymore, but it’s still fresh in my head. That song was entitled “I Just Want to Be” – a yearning to break away from the pain and isolation that I felt at the time.
Later on, I discovered that I really do not have that talent for writing songs or poetry. The advent of my DJJD CD collection gave me a means to still be creative. I could acquire various songs from various artists and compile them into a new and organic album. My goal would then incorporate these tracks with a new meaning, separate from their artist’s original intentions and meanings.
It all started out on a late winter Friday night. After coming home from the office and having a bite to eat, I was kinda bored watching TV. I decided to boot up my computer and go to the iTunes Music Store to play around or find some inspiration. Please note from the previous documents that I had already transferred all my songs from the office computer to my personal computer. I also had finished making the first versions of album covers for all of the first 26 albums, including four Retro 80’s albums. I was now at a “clean slate”, trying to get some inspiration for a new album.
Now the only song that I had bought and downloaded from the iTunes Store was “My Descent into Madness” by the Eels. The first line of the song intrigued me: “Springfield’s looking pretty dusty today”. I don’t know if the Eels were referring to Springfield Illinois (my home) or not – most likely not. Listening to that song several times that night around 10:30 PM, a burst of inspiration fell upon me. I could have been divine or not; in hindsight, I believe that it did. From there, I just started searching, previewing and buying songs that many of them I have never heard of before. The mechanics, logic, and steps on how I did create this album that night is still a blur to me. But I remember staying up all night until 4:00 AM. By sunrise, I had a completed album, including the album cover and its theme. In previous album projects, I usually created beta-versions of the album to test them out. I did not have a beta version for this album. Five hours later, after finally getting some sleep, I decided to create a lyric booklet of the album by incorporating the album cover and the album’s subtitle as well as categorizing each song with their own theme.
Except for my first album DJJD Volume 1, this album took the shortest time to create. Many of the albums before had some conceptual ideas or themes, but they did not solidify in real concepts as with DJJD Volume 27. In my option, this album has to be one of my greatest masterpieces – my personal “Sgt. Pepper” or “Dark Side of the Moon”.
Like I mentioned before, DJJD Volume 27 is the first one to have a really specific “concept”. This concept is the subtitle of this album: “The Spiritual Journey of a Man”. In the classic album “The Wall”, Pink Floyd’s leading member Roger Waters comprised this album with songs that were semi-autobiographical, yet still have general themes and concepts that many listeners could relate to. Yet Pink Floyd’s greatest album “The Dark Side of the Moon” dealt with more high and metaphysical concepts (like morality, religion, materialism, and insanity) that everyone can relate to. I tried to capture both styles of conceptualization in my album. It’s both autobiographical and metaphysical in themes.
Each song of the album expresses a type of spiritual state of a person in his or her lifetime (love, passion, hate, grief, and redemption). These spiritual states can occur vastly multiple times in a person’s lifetime. Some occur all the time, some rarely, or some not at all. These states are also non-linear and do not have to occur in the same order. These songs I tried to structure in some way like my various spiritual states in my lifetime. But I also arranged these songs melodically, so that the album can be enjoyed aesthetically.
There was no rearranging of songs in the remaster since the original design is close to perfect that I could ever do. The only remastering I had to do was enhancing the volume and contrast to David Bowie’s song “Boys Keep Swinging”. It was hard to hear this song in its original creation and had to constantly turn up the volume when hearing it. In the remaster, I don’t have to do that as much.
Concept and the Album Cover
I wanted to have an album cover that expresses my and everyone else’s life in one picture. At the time, I was concerned about having to create an album cover from scratch, like I did with DJJD Volume 5 or DJJD Volume 26. However, the picture came to me just like the inspiration of this album – in a flash.
I was searching the internet for surreal pictures, which I like more since they generate the best album covers. Look at any of the great classic 70’s albums and you’ll see the great surreal and expressionist art from them – simply beautiful. After some time in the search engine, I was at a dead end and decided to change my search to “Gothic surreal”.
After looking through a few dozen pictures, which were too Gothic (vampiristic in nature), I found this picture of a large dead tree and alongside it is the Christian cross. The ambient color is the same as it is now, with this olive oil green color to it.
I do not know what the intention of the photographer’s meaning to the picture; I could not find the artist’s website for the picture. My guess that is a dark and Gothic look at death – that someone’s body has been laid there (like a personal cemetery right near this great but dead tree).
The meaning I get from this picture is the following: The dead tree represents my spirituality – a dead spirit. I went through life starting out optimistic, full of life and felt innocent. Then as life continued, I went through many tragedies – some done to me and some self-applied. The tree also represents me in society. The tree is not crowded in a forest but is standing alone. Most of my life, I have not been a social creature, due to my pain and suffering (internal and external, truly or contrived by me). The surroundings don’t look that good itself. Yes, there are some trees here or there that look nice, but the settings (the world itself) is barren in its beauty. And then there is the cross – the only thing associated with the dead tree. It’s not broken. It’s not corrupted. It’s in a little slant, but it’s not dead. The cross is the center of the picture, like the cross, supposed to be the center of my life. This obviously represents Christ and the only redemption of this dead tree and this barren world. As a parallel to this album, most of the songs are of my (or any person’s) sinful spiritual journey, until at the very end and at the weakest point, redemption comes through God’s grace.
I still love this album, and I listen to it many times for personal therapy, reflection, and renewal. This album will always be one of my favorites for all time. I did something that I could never have dreamed of doing as a musician – which I was never to be.
The Concept Album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical.” Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing to a single overall theme or unified story. This is in contrast to the practice of an artist or group releasing an album consisting of a number of unconnected (lyrically or otherwise) songs performed by the artist.
History of the Concept Album
1950’s
Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) is considered to be the first concept album. Before the advent of rock and roll, concept albums had their original heyday in jazz of the early to mid 50's with artists such as Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, the latter of whom would record numerous concept albums for Capitol throughout the last half of the 50's such as In The Wee Small Hours, Come Fly with Me, Where Are You?, and Nice 'n' Easy. In the late fifties, Johnny Cash recorded songs for his first two concept albums, Songs of Our Soil and Ride This Train, in which were released in 1959 and 1960 respectively.
1960’s
Perhaps the first examples from rock were the albums of The Ventures. Starting from 1961's Colorful Ventures (each song had a color in the title), the group became known for issuing records throughout the 1960s whose tracks revolved around central themes, including surf music, country, outer space, TV themes, and psychedelic music. Ray Charles also issued his Modern Sounds recordings, which departed from his well-known R&B and soul style to conceptually country music records.
In 1966, several rock releases were arguably concept albums in the sense that they presented a set of thematically-linked songs - and they also instigated other rock artists to consider using the album format in a similar fashion: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds was a musical portrayal of Brian Wilson's state of mind at the time (and a major inspiration to John Lennon and Paul McCartney). Although it has a unified theme in its emotional content, the writers (Brian Wilson and Tony Asher) have said continuously that it was not necessarily intended to be a narrative. However, later in 1966, Brian Wilson began work on the Smile album, which was intended as a narrative. The album was scrapped before completion, only to be revived in the November of 2011. The Mothers of Invention's sardonic farce about rock music and America as a whole, Freak Out! by Frank Zappa and Face to Face by The Kinks, the first collection of Ray Davies's idiosyncratic character studies of ordinary people, are conceptually oriented albums. However, out of the albums above, only Pet Sounds attracted a huge commercial audience.
This all changed with The Beatles' most celebrated album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in June 1967. With Sgt. Pepper's, The Beatles wanted to create a record that could, in effect, tour for them, an idea they had already explored with the promotional film clips made over the previous years, intended to promote them in the US when they were not touring there. McCartney decided that he should create fictitious characters for each band member and record an album that would be a performance by that fictitious band. This "alter-ego group" gave the band the freedom to experiment with songs.
With the release of Sgt. Pepper, the notion of the concept album came to the forefront of the popular and critical mind, with the earlier prototypes and examples from traditional pop music and other genres sometimes forgotten. In fact, as pointed out by many critics since its original reception, Sgt. Pepper is a concept album only by some definitions of the term. There was, at some stage during the making of the album an attempt to relate the material to firstly the idea of aging, then as an obscure radio play about the life of an ex-army bandsman and his shortcomings. These concepts were lost in the final production. While debate exists over the extent to which Sgt. Pepper qualifies as a true concept album, there is no doubt that its reputation as such helped inspire other artists to produce concept albums of their own and inspired the public to anticipate them. Lennon and McCartney distanced themselves from the "concept album" tag as applied to that album.
Days of Future Passed, released the same year as Sgt. Pepper's, was fellow UK musicians The Moody Blues' first foray into the concept album. Originally presented with an opportunity to rock out Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" by their new stereophonic label, the band instead forged ahead to unify their own orchestral-based threads of a day in the life of a common man.
The Who Sell Out by The Who followed with its concept of a pirate radio broadcast. Within the record, joke commercials recorded by the band and actual jingles from recently outlawed pirate radio station Radio London were interspersed between the songs, ranging from pop songs to hard rock and psychedelic rock, culminating with a mini-opera titled "Rael.”
In October 1967, the British group Nirvana released The Story of Simon Simopath (subtitled "A Science Fiction Pantomime"), an album that tells the story of the title character. It was only a moderate commercial success. The album S.F. Sorrow (released in December 1968) by British group the Pretty Things is generally considered to be among the first creatively successful rock concept albums - in that each song is part of an overarching unified concept – the life story of the main character, Sebastian Sorrow.
Released in April 1969, was the rock opera Tommy composed by Pete Townshend and performed by The Who. This acclaimed work was presented over two discs (unusual in those days) and it took the idea of thematically based albums to a much higher appreciation by both critics and the public. It was also the first story-based concept album of the rock era (as distinct from the song-cycle style album) to enjoy commercial success. The Who went on to further explorations of the concept album format with their follow-up project Lifehouse, which was abandoned before completion, and with their 1973 rock opera Quadrophenia.
Five months after the release of Tommy, The Kinks released another concept album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (September 1969), written by Ray Davies; though considered by some a rock opera, it was originally conceived as the score for a proposed but never realized BBC television drama. It was the first of several concept albums released by the band through the first few years of the 1970's. These were: Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (1970), Muswell Hillbillies (1971), Preservation: Act 1 (1973), Preservation: Act 2 (1974), Soap Opera (1975) and Schoolboys in Disgrace (1976).
1970’s
Concept albums are considered de rigueur in the progressive rock genre of the 1970s. Pink Floyd recast itself from its 1960s guise as a psychedelic band into a commercial success with its series of concept albums, most famously with The Dark Side of the Moon (which, according to the RIAA, is the second best selling album in history) and later with the double album rock opera The Wall.
Each side of the album of The Dark Side of the Moon is a continuous piece of music. The five tracks on each side reflect various stages of human life, beginning and ending with a heartbeat, exploring the nature of the human experience, and (according to Waters) "empathy". "Speak to Me" and "Breathe" together stress the mundane and futile elements of life that accompany the ever-present threat of madness, and the importance of living one's own life—"Don't be afraid to care". By shifting the scene to an airport, the synthesizer-driven instrumental "On the Run" evokes the stress and anxiety of modern travel, in particular, Wright's fear of flying. "Time" examines the manner in which its passage can control one's life and offers a stark warning to those who remain focused on mundane aspects; it is followed by a retreat into solitude and withdrawal in "Breathe (Reprise)". The first side of the album ends with Wright and vocalist Clare Torry's soulful metaphor for death, "The Great Gig in the Sky". Opening with the sound of cash registers and loose change, the first track on side two, "Money", mocks greed and consumerism using tongue-in-cheek lyrics and cash-related sound effects (ironically, "Money" has been the most commercially successful track from the album, with several cover versions produced by other bands). "Us and Them" addresses the isolation of the depressed with the symbolism of conflict and the use of simple dichotomies to describe personal relationships. "Brain Damage" looks at a mental illness resulting from the elevation of fame and success above the needs of the self; in particular, the line "and if the band you're in starts playing different tunes" reflects the mental breakdown of former band-mate Syd Barrett. The album ends with "Eclipse", which espouses the concepts of alterity and unity, while forcing the listener to recognize the common traits shared by humanity.
Jethro Tull took the idea to the next level by making albums consisting of a single-song, first with 1972's Thick as a Brick, which was conceived as a satire of concept albums (in response to the band's previous Aqualung being called one by critics), which was followed by 1973's serious attempt at a concept album: A Passion Play.
From 1975 to 1979, a Canadian progressive power trio, Rush, released three albums containing sidelong epics, regarded by some as concept albums (though not actually concept albums by strict definition of the term; that is, none of the other songs on the album have anything to do with each other or the 20-minute sidelong epic, so there is no pervasive concept or story). The first of these was released in 1975, titled Caress of Steel. The second was their breakthrough album 2112 released the following year in 1976. Their third was released in 1978, Hemispheres.
Yes also produced concept albums during the '70s, most notably Tales from Topographic Oceans, which would become a defining album of prog rock, but its critical backlash would lead to the genre's decline in popularity and the rise of punk rock. The group's keyboardist Rick Wakeman released many concept albums on his own, most notably The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which was based on the novel by Jules Verne.
Another progressive rock act, Genesis, released the concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in 1974, a double disc that told the story of the street punk Rael. Rock musician David Bowie also made three popular concept albums; The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, about the fictional character, Ziggy Stardust and his band; Aladdin Sane; and Diamond Dogs.
In the 1970’s and 80’s, The Alan Parsons Project was a British progressive rock group which specialized entirely in concept albums: most notably Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976), I, Robot (1977), Pyramid (1978), and The Turn of a FriendlyCard (1980).
1980’s
Though the progressive rock genre was beginning to decrease in popularity, concept albums had become a medium that continued. The progressive bands that still around were still having major successes with concept albums. Styx continued to have multi-platinum albums with their 1981 release Paradise Theater (a concept album about a decaying theater in Chicago which became a metaphor for childhood and American culture) and 1983's Kilroy Was Here (a science fiction rock opera about a future where moralists imprison rockers).
In the 1980’s, the concept album became popular among heavy metal bands like Kiss, and their bombastic offering, 1981's Music from The Elder, which went on to become the group's poorest selling and charting album in their history. Queensrÿche fared better later the decade, releasing the rock opera Operation: Mindcrime in 1988, which tells a story of a young man, Nikki, awoken from a coma suddenly remembering work done as a political assassin. The comedy group Buckner & Garcia released a novelty concept album, Pac-Man Fever, which went gold and produced a hit single of the same name; all of the songs on the album pertained to popular video games of the time.
The heavy metal band King Diamond gained cult status during the 1980’s releasing mostly all concept albums. Releases such as Abigail, Them, and The Eye told elaborate sagas of horror and the supernatural.
In 1985 Kerrang! Magazine ran a cover story on Phenomena, announcing "the return of the concept album". Tom Galley had started the project, and together with his brother Mell and Metalhammer magazine founder Wilfried Rimensberger developed it into an international multi-media rock music project with contributions from a string of rock superstars, that, apart from so far a total of 5 albums, produced the Dreamrunner album and an ongoing following around the world. Phenomena's main storylines are dealing with the supernatural and unexplained, which were also turned in to scripts for a musical, rock opera stage productions, feature films and video games. Iron Maiden also released several concept albums including Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, which follows the folklore and myths of the seventh son of a seventh son having mystical powers.
1990’s
In the 1990’s prog rock had all but faded from popular music. With the advent of alternative rock, however, a number of artists still continued to use the format.
In this decade, the rock band Marilyn Manson created three rock opera concept albums, namely Antichrist Superstar (1996), Mechanical Animals (1998) and Holy Wood (2000), which formed an ambitious concept trilogy. Though each one came with individual conceptual backgrounds, they are also meant to be taken together to form a larger abstract storyline. The albums were released in reverse order thus in the larger overarching 'fourth storyline' is divulged in reverse chronological order.
In 1994, industrial metal band Nine Inch Nails released The Downward Spiral which focuses on a life going in a downward spiral. In 1996, Meat Loaf released Welcome to the Neighborhood, a concept album that tells the story of a relationship.
In 1997, the most popular concept album in the nineties was OK Computer, the third studio album by English alternative rock band Radiohead. Critics have interpreted undertones of political dissatisfaction in the music and lyrics on OK Computer, and have compared their statements to those of earlier rock bands. David Stubbs said that, where punk rock had been a rebellion against a time of deficit and poverty, OK Computer protested the "mechanistic convenience" of contemporary surplus and excess. Alex Ross said the album "pictured the onslaught of the information age and a young person's panicky embrace of it" and made the band into "the poster boys for a certain kind of knowing alienation—as Talking Heads and R.E.M. had been before."
OK Computer triggered a minor revival of progressive rock and ambitious concept albums, paving the way for prog-influenced bands such as Dungen, Mew, Mystery Jets, The Secret Machines and Pure Reason Revolution. Brandon Curtis of The Secret Machines said "Songs like 'Paranoid Android' made it OK to write music differently, to be more experimental. OK Computer was important because it reintroduced unconventional writing and song structures." However, the band has rejected any affiliation with the genre and denies having attempted to make a coherent concept album. Johnny Greenwood dismissed such claims by saying "I think one album title and one computer voice do not make a concept album. That's a bit of a red herring."
In 1999, progressive metal band Dream Theater released Metropolis Part 2: Scenes from a Memory, a story concept album. This was a specific follow-up to a song called "Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper", which was released on the band's 1992 breakthrough album, Images and Words. While "Pt. 1" introduced a story, further parts of the "Metropolis" story were unseen on that album or subsequent releases for seven years. Although the band had created a twenty-minute follow-up to Part 1 in the mid-nineties, it hadn't been released. After the band gained complete creative control from their record company, they decided to expand their follow-up of the Metropolis story into a full album: Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory. This album builds on concepts introduced in "Part 1", both lyrically and musically. Although it did not achieve the same levels of commercial success as the band's later releases, it has been hailed by many fans and critics as Dream Theater's masterpiece and the band's defining album.
The Swedish progressive extreme metal band Opeth released two concept albums in the late 90’s. In 1998 they released My Arms, Your Hearse, telling the story of a man who has died and become a ghost. Their fourth album Still Life told the story of an exiled man who has come back to his hometown to find the woman he loves.
2000's and 2010's
With the advent of the World Wide Web and other multimedia technologies, bands such as The Smashing Pumpkins (with the album Machina: The Machines of God), Coheed And Cambria (with the Amory Wars as a backing story for every one of their albums), and Nine Inch Nails (with the album Year Zero) exploited emergent cultural phenomena such as the alternate reality game to provide additional web-based content beyond that on the album itself.
In the 2000’s, the rock band 30 Seconds to Mars released two concept albums, 30 Seconds to Mars (2002) and This Is War (2009). Also in the 2000's, My Chemical Romance released three concept albums, the most popular being Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade. In 2003, The Protomen released their debut album Act 1 (The Protomen) which borrows from the story of the Megaman franchise to create a dystopian rock opera. The follow-up album entitled Act II - The Father of Death was released in 2009 and serves as a prequel to Act I by establishing the history of Dr. Light, Dr. Wily, and how the world came under the rule of Wily.
Also in the 2000’s, pop-punk outfit Green Day abandoned the pop-punk scene and turned to more alternative and progressive rock influences and produced two Grammy-winning concept albums, namely, 2004's American Idiot and 2009's 21st Century Breakdown. In 2010, American Idiot became the first punk rock opera to make it to Broadway where it has garnered two Tony Awards.
In August 2009, The Antlers released their first concept album Hospice. It tells the story of an emotionally abusive relationship, explained through the analogy of a hospice worker and terminally-ill patient. It is known for its realism, sadness, and use of expressive instrumental segments.
In September 2010, Linkin Park released A Thousand Suns. It is a 48-minute album based on nuclear warfare and human fears.
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