Mike Visaggio and Kinetic Element: News

We played our final show with our founding member bassist Matt Harris Satuday in Charlottesville. It was very emotional for everyone. Matt does not want to leave us but has oppotunity in his "real" career that he feels he can't pass up. We wish him well. Bass auditions will begin as soon as we get a candidate. Meanwhile Michael Murray and I will be starting rehearsals for the balance of Powered by Light in July. Thanks everyone for your patience at support. Mike V.

Last night at Jaxx opening for Circa:


Words cannot describe what a wonderland it was at Jaxx for me, Matt and Michael. Matt walked in and immediately met Alan White and Billy Sherwood and was jawboning with them. We got set up and had a decent soundcheck in front of Circa's gear. I got to give Alan a Kinetic Element press kit which he graciously accepted saying he was looking forward to hearing us. Odin's Court was there early too, and their leader Matt was also a great guy and we had no problems at all working with them to get on and offstage.

We had a set that was not one of our best but the intimate crowd of about 40 gave us a warm reception and a number of them were right in front of the stage taking pics. I got blinded by a couple of flashes while trying to switch sounds and hit the wrong button! Matt's bass pickups started frazzing and he had to switch basses after the second song. But the applause seemed genuine and after two pieces, "The Ascent" and "Blues Variation" it was sustained. We went over our 45 minutes by about six minutes but it was cool. It seemed the audience was enjoying our set.

In between us and Odin's Court I got to meet Billy Sherwood and he was such a great gentleman, as well as Jimmy Haun who patiently explained that no, he wasn't with ABWH years ago which I had though he was. They posed for so many pictures with many fans and I was blessed to have my photo taken with them both. It seems Billy also was eager to hear Kinetic Element. You can imagine how encouraged I was to hear that he really liked us.

Odin's Court did a very good set although I thought their sound was a bit muddy. They are all excellent players and both their guitarists did mind blowing lead passages throughout the set. But I was distracted because I found out that we were selling a ton (well OK, we sold 10 LOL!)of CD's of Starship Universe and I was being asked for autographs by people who were plainly serious collectors of prog stuff and were beseiged by requests for the Powered By Light Suite EP which we have at present only in a homeburned edition, but we had almost all of them leave with either fans or with Circa. Meanwile my wife Eugenia got all the Circa guys' autographs and wound up being kissed on the cheek by Billy Sherwood. She was a bit dazed LOL!

Circa then did a wonderful two-and-a-half-hour show of their new CD and the very long Yes music instrumental through-the-years arrangement. Tony Kaye, who hadn't been in the music hall all night, showed that he can play all the Wakeman parts and all the Moraz parts and is a more versatile player than I remembered. This guy is the one who turned my idea of how to play the Hammond inside out in 1971 with The Yes Album and Time and a Word. After their set I was privileged to have a good ten-minute chat with him onstage while he was starting to break down his gear, after introducing myself as the keyboardist of Kinetic Element. He didn't think Circa: had played well. What?!?! We talked about Yes, what happened after The Yes Album (he said he'd decided to retire, which didn't last long), music, the role of the organ, being on the road, and then he told me in is wonderful British accent, "I really liked your band." That made my night. I gave him copies of Starship Universe and The Powered by Light Suite which he seemed happy to receive.

Let me mention that for me the highlight of Circa:'s set was their encore, performing (with vocals) "The More We Live / Let Go" from Yes' Union album. This is one of my all time favorite Yes songs and I was emotionally floored by how well they did it, with backing vocals on a harmonizing synth by Billy's brother Mike who was their second keyboardist.

I don't really know what to make of what happened next. We were leaving the club and ran into an old friend of my wife Eugenia who was running the door. He told us that all the members of Circa were standing outside in the lobby while we were playing listening to us. Somebody in the band asked who we were and when he told them that person said, "Oh yes, we've heard of them." He told us that we made a big impression on them. I honestly don't know what that may mean and I'm taking his word for it. So perhaps we accomplished more than we imagined we would.

I want to thank GarryG who introduced himself after the show, for coming so far. Jason from DC-Soar was there too. My lifelong friend Billy Dee from New York came down again to see us. This fall we will be putting out the Suite plus another 36 minutes of music. And let me say Thank You to God who has brought me so much farther into music, the creative process and the wonderful world of prog rock than I ever thought I would see in my life.

Michael, Matt and I look forward to seeing some of you over the next two weeks. God bless us every one.
Mike V.
www.kineticelement.com
www.myspace.com/kineticelement

Three new pieces are up at www.myspace.com/kineticelement, please have a listen!
Mike V.

Kinetic Element has been offered the opening band slot for the show on May 2 at Jaxx in the DC area headining prog rock supergroup Circa. The four members of Circa are all past and current musicians for the greatest progressive rock band ever, Yes. They are, Jimmy Haun on guitar, Tony Kaye on keyboards, Billy Sherwood on bass and Alan White on drums. We are so psyched for this opportunity. If you are near DC please come! (Just tell them you're there for us LOL!) We will be debuting another new piece as we now have half a CD of new material, and will also be playing the essential "Starship Universe" stuff. You gotta come for this. Please see our other prog showcase info for the Orion Studios gig on May 10, where we will be supporting Rare Blend.

Merry Christmas people, and God bless you all.
Just a little note to tell you that we hit One Way Studio in Amelia VA this past Saturday to start work recording the new stuff. We hope to have something for you by spring 2008.

Just got word we were selected to be among 300 acts (out of 1700 plus considered) to perform at Pop Montreal in October! We are jazzed, juiced and jasmined. Details as they become available.

Just wanted to talk a little about our firts real progressive rock show this past Saturday nite at 10 West in Galloway NJ.
Thanks Eternal Essence for the opportunity to play a prog rock show in front of prog rock fans. All you guys truly rock and I was proud to be associated with you. I hope things will work out for a home-and-home gig in Richmond.
I ALSO want to send out a special thank you to Billy Hamill of www.TheRadiantFlow.com and founder of the Yahoo Cprog board, who made the two hour drive down to Galloway NJ to see me and my band Kinetic Element perform. I wish there had been someone to video the show because it was one of the best shows we have done and the audience, mostly young people and their folks who were there to see the other two bands Eternal Essence and Athem, gave us a rousing reception of approval after every one of our pieces including the sound check. We took a photo of Billy and the band and I think there will be some photos taken by the Eternal Essence people and Michael Murray's wife Charlene posted soon. If there are good ones I'll post a link.
All my frantic work online resulted in three people coming to see us. But they were three good ones: Billy Hamill, Mr. S the Prog Crypt Keeper and Deominic Tibbrine of www.progradio.org who informed me that Starship Universe will go into heavy rotation on his station. The other bands, both very young, showed a lot of promise and it was great to see kids as young as 16 demonstrating musical virtuosity and taste beyond their years. I return now to the daunting task of finding more shows for us beyond the Watermelon Festival on August 12 here in Richmond. Please let us know if you want us to come to your area.

Dear friends and family,
The interview with Silent Planet Radio is done and is up on their website for the week of 6/10/07.
It was all of you who took the trouble to vote for Old Mikey that made this possible.

If you go to www.silentplanetradio.com, you will hear the first half of the interview, with my music as backdrop and playing in between the Q and A, right on their website. However to hear the entire hour, you will have to go to one of the linked radio stations (right hand column on the page) and see when the programs are going to be on, and tune in then by clicking on their links. Each listed station takes either "Silent Planet Radio" or "Audities of Perelandra" at certain days and times, and if you make a note when you can listen to one of them, you can hear the whole thing.

In addition, they have a contest, where (get a load of this LOL!) if you answer three questions about the interview and send the answers in to Silent Planet, they will put the correct entries into a box and draw out a winner of one of my CD's autographed by me. To show my appreciation I will also give the winner one of my band Kinetic Element's new T-shirts.

Folks, I cannot thank you enough for helping me promote this CD to radio stations as far away as New Zealand. What it will mean is anyone's guess. But you're helping me to chip away at the stone.

Much love to you all.
Mike Visaggio

Well Mike's fans stuffed SIlent Planet Promotions' ballot box (Thanks everyone!) and Mike has been granted the interactive interview which will air on Silent Planet's affiliated stations. Watch for details.

Silent Planet Promotions (www.silentplanetpromotions.com) has picked up "Starship Universe" for radio promotion, and Nighmare Records (run by Lance King of Avian fame)has taken it on for distribution. New reveiws have come in, mostly positive. The hot one is at http://www.glory-daze.com/readarticle.php?article_id=2065, where a British reveiwer has given it a good analysis.

A number of Internet radio stations, such as www.auralmoon.com, www.silentplanetradio.com and www.progpalaceradio.com have added Starship Universe. Much to Mike's amazement, the add by Silent Planet, which is a show also heard on college radio stations across the country, has led to Starship Universe's climb to the NUMBER ONE position on the college radio chart, as detailed by New Music Weekly Online. http://www.newmusicweekly.com/chart.php?chart=College
Mike, Michael and Matt are hoping this leads to some college shows. STAY TUNED.

MV & KE invaded Washington for our world premier show. Well here's how the gig went in DC: The other two bands cancelled.
Since we had the place to ourselves we got to set up properly without rushing and did a proper sound check. The "crowd" consisted of ten friends of bassist Matt Harris, my lifelong friend from NYC who came down on Amtrak, Greg and April Stafford from www.ProgPalaceRadio.com and a few stragglers from the street. Everyone was impressed. "In the Nazarene Church" literally brought everyone to their feet.The band was (if I do say so myself) SMOKIN'. The only glitches were that my headset mic fell off and my Roland synth went haywire on one song. But Matt and Michael made me proud, and for a night without pay it was well worth the trip as we got our feet wet for the first time and found out we really are pretty good and will get better if we can just get some more gigs.

Hoping to see you sometime soon. Merrry Christmas!
Mike V.

Drummer Michael Murray, who played on "Starship Universe" on three of the tracts, and bassist Matt Harris, both Richmonders, have joined Mike to FINALLY form the trio. The band will be called Mike Visaggio and Kinetic Element, a name coined by Murray. They are rehearsing a one-hour show performing the music on the CD, and are looking at covers of UK, Jimi Hendrix and Genesis. New original pieces are also being attempted. Now they have to find some venues....any suggestions?

Well it looks like hiring a radio publicist may have been money well spent.
Adam Harrington of Whisperin' and Hollerin' gave Mike a real nice review. He even likes the vocals! So now they know about Starship Universe in Old Blighty, Her Majesty's realm, Union Jack Land, etc.

Well it just wasn't to be. After discovering on Sept. 12 that back on Aug. 21 he had been invited to play at the gala festival in beautiful Montreal, Mike stepped up his efforts to find a bassist and drummer to make the trip. Festival director Dan Seligman encouranged Mike to come on up and play with prerecorded backing tracks but that's not the visual that Mike wanted to present. Drummer Michael Murray decided during the past week to become a permanent member of the band and to do Montreal, but although two talented bassists were auditioned this past weekend, neither could arrange on short notice to go along for the (long) ride. Mike sadly cancelled the gig. However let's celebrate a bit, as it appears the band will take shape after all. Both bassists made "In The Nazarene Church" SMOKE at the auditions and both want to join. The act, to be given a name shortly, is not far from appearing in public. God is good.

Mike Parker truly understands the idea behind Starship Universe. His review is very encouraging. www.buddyhollywood.com

Dave Taylor from up near Siberia (That's Alaska) tells it like it is. His website, www.spiritualprog.com, is another great prog resource.

DJ Mary Campbell has played "The Synchronized Life" on her Saturday night show on www.thedividingline.com, an internet prog station that delivers GREAT music all the time. Mike worships at her feet for her sweet promotion. One of her chat room friends, Gene Godfrey, has a show called CLASSIC FM which airs on FM radio WBCZ in New Jersey, and Gene has played the same tune on his Friday night show. Gene's show http://www.angelfire.com/music2/classicfm/ takes you back to the late '60s style free form rock shows that aired on WNEW-FM in New York when FM was cool. Mike thanks both these wonderful music lovers for playing "Starship Universe."

Mr. Artur Chachlowski of MLWZ (Polish appreviation for "a small lexicon of the great bands") has favored Mike with a 17-minute segment on the show of 5/31/2006. The site is at www.mlwz.pl/ and the show can be downloaded. Artur played "In The Nazarene Church" and "Blues Variation" while talking about old Mikey in Polish for awhile. Check out this site as there is a TON of great prog on it.

That Myspace can sure turn up some great friends. www.ProgNaut.com likes the CD too.