I do listen to a lot of European concert music. ”I have listened to numerous European composers. The music of Thinking Plague strikes me as characteristically modern and European, without a markedly American sound. “I do hope our music ‘rocks’, assuming you get to know it well enough!” Unsentimental nostalgia And I do hope our music ‘rocks’, assuming you get to know it well enough”, Mike exclaims. “I know what you mean, but I’m always telling people that we are actually a rock band – at least if you consider the instrumentation. Thinking Plague, though, appears to have crossed the boundary of rock music in to unknown territory. Their musical expression can be viewed as a continuation of the work of groups such as Henry Cow, rock musicians who seriously explored the implications of modernism in concert music. The rock-musicians of Thinking Plague skillfully and proficiently play a profound and complex form of contemporary concert music. During the interview, I find myself building an image of a socially conscious musician who has made a career of challenging himself.
Mike appears as keen to discuss his own music as well as the music of concert music composers or favorite bands. We immediately launch into the interview I get the impression of a sharp, inquisitive mind. Sporting a ponytail of silvery hair, Mike strikes me as two decades younger than his true age. I reached him at his home, a log cabin style house 7,300 feet of elevation in the mountains outside Denver, Colorado. My questions were answered in early November 2018 when I got a chance to chat with Mike Johnson for two hours. Who was this Mike Johnson, and how had he managed to produce seven Thinking Plague albums, many of which can easily be called works of art? Mike Johnson (Photo: Chris Emory) The economic realities of contemporary music business should work against the creation of such music, in particular in the US which lacks many of the tax-financed institutions supporting the work of European non-mainstream artists. Something in Johnson’s musical persona started to fascinate me.
The band performs Mike’s music, arrangements and lyrics. I soon discovered that the contemporary Thinking Plague serves the muse of Denver-based guitarist/composer Mike Johnson. The music is not based on riffs, nor is it driven by the individualist expression of instrumentalists or vocalists, but rather by the pen of its composer the music is complex but such complexity serves a musical purpose unlike is the case in so much of progressive rock and metal. From the first few measures, something in the band’s music spoke to me directly, and the band soon rose to that special category of favorites, inhabited by the heroes of my youth. The band Thinking Plague is an exception, as I only discovered it in 2017 when they published their latest album Hoping Against Hope. Yet, it has been a long while since anything has impacted me in the same way that King Crimson, Yes, Rush, Miles Davis or John Coltrane did when I was between fifteen and twenty years of age.
Sure, there are great albums being published all the time, some of them even by fresh faces. It’s hard to find musical heroes as an adult.
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