Nektar’s upcoming double album Journey to the Other Side: Live at the Dunellen Theater thankfully proves that a prog-rocking (and quite alien!) bluebird can still cure blindness and dispense musical wisdom to hardcore Nektar fans.
Indeed, rest in peace the great players Roye Albrighton, Allan “Taff” Freeman, and drummer Ron Howden (who died shortly after this album was recorded). But Journey to the Other Side: Live at the Dunellen Theater is like visiting a great museum that boasts countless important artifacts, yet always remains open to a new exhibit.
The band here is the same one that recorded the legitimate (and quite great!) return album, The Other Side. Founding members Ron Howden, Derek “Mo” Moore, and Mick Brockett are joined by Randy Dembo, Ryche Chlanda, and Kendell Scott. That album certainly cultivated the Albrighton- and Freeman-era seeds, which in true Nektar fashion, were all over the place. Nektar was always ready to, in the words of Peter Gabriel, “all change!”
Journey to the Centre of the Eye ventures into cool psych space; Tab in the Ocean mingles blues into a prog-rock tapestry; (yikes!) Sounds Like This is recorded live in the studio, magnificent bumps and all; Remember the Future gets everything right in a Pink Floyd sort of way; then Down to Earth is a circus menagerie of clever rock music; and Recycled adds the synthesizer talents of Larry Fast. Yeah, some museums are just better than other museums.
In truth, Nektar novices should investigate those ’70s records; however, (and we aren’t mentioning Magic Is a Child), the group reformed and produced several very fine prog-rock albums like The Prodigal Son, Evolution, and Time Machine. But, so as not to be confused with a very different false (but probably still alien) bluebird, there was an album called Megalomania by a band called the New Nektar. But let’s just not go there, even though it did have a pretty cool cover.
With Journey to the Other Side, the band digs into its early catalog. There’s a 15-minute plus take on “Tab in the Ocean.” They also spend 6:29 investigating the “Dream Nebula.” Then “Recycled” gets a lengthy almost 18-minute Nektar-patented rhythmic ride. My personal favorite Sounds Like This is represented by “Cast Your Fate” (5:11), an incredible version of “A Day in the Life of a Preacher” (11:04), and “Good Day” (6:46). Thankfully, “Show Me the Way” and the funky “Fidgety Queen” are reprised from Down to Earth. Sadly, “Astro Man” and “Nelly the Elephant” don’t grace these grooves but, of course, “Remember the Future Part 1 and Part 2” get an almost 37-minute (well-deserved) reverential spin.
The Greek guy Heraclitus once said, “A man’s character is his fate.” Nektar’s rock band character is always fated to give this album’s music a forever-blessed resurrection. That’s just the way the universe rocks.
The current band, as it should, plays its new music. Journey to the Other Side: Live at the Dunellen Theater begins with an instrumental “The Light Beyond.” Then “Skywriter” and “I’m On Fire” rock with new ignition. The nine-minute plus “Drifting” absorbs the cosmos, while “Look Through Me” is a dramatically oozed tune with a prominent guitar and a lovely Pink Floyd vibe that makes old stuff new, and new stuff old. Or something like that. One complaint: The brilliant tune, “Love Is/The Other Side” wasn’t included in this set. “Oh Well,” as the great Peter Green was wont to say.
Just so you know, the Blu-Ray and download include the bonus song, “Devil’s Door & King of Twilight” and there’s “a five-camera shoot with a multi-track recording.” Sure. And as Roye Albrighton once said in the Fall 2000 edition of Progression magazine, “With Nektar, they never really knew what they were going to get.” Sure, again. But it’s the vibrant music here that matters. And Nektar, despite the loss of beautiful members and a litany of truly diverse progressive rock records, even today, through “The Wheel of Time,” still manages to create music that … Sounds Like This.
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