{"id":25,"date":"2011-04-21T11:21:55","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T11:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/?p=25"},"modified":"2014-09-27T11:26:20","modified_gmt":"2014-09-27T11:26:20","slug":"farewell-matt-laporte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/?p=25","title":{"rendered":"Farewell, Matt Laporte"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Matt
Matt LaPorte performing at the ProgPowerUKII festival in 2007<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Only just read about the death of Matt LaPorte. Absolutely terrible news.<\/p>\n

Matt was the guitar player in two of my favourite bands: Circle II Circle for their first record and he was on all of Jon Oliva’s Pain’s works.<\/p>\n

This photo was taken when I saw JOP at ProgPowerUK II in 2007. One of my favourite gigs ever, as I have mentioned before. I actually got to meet Jon Oliva (holy shit moment of my life), Kevin Rothney and Matt LaPorte. Matt loved my “Musicians for Groupies” t-shirt and I asked “You guys got any surprises in the set tonight?” to which he replied “Yeah, we’re playing like 80% of Streets.” I think I struggled to pick my jaw up from the floor until they played the set.<\/p>\n

As a guitarist, he has few equals. Along with Chris Caffery, they are the guys who can best emulate what Criss Oliva could do with his guitar. A superb musician, he also recorded with ex-Crimson Glory vocalist Midnight and he plays on a beautiful duet between Midnight and the aforementioned Mr. J. Oliva.<\/p>\n

So incredibly sad. Thoughts go out to his family and friends. Poor Jon. He’s lost so many people close to him through the years.<\/p>\n

“Now a star to light the night<\/em>
\nAnd all you left behind<\/em>
\nHas truly touched my life<\/em>
\nMy friend to you I say goodbye”<\/em><\/p>\n

— “O to G”, Jon Oliva’s Pain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only just read about the death of Matt LaPorte. Absolutely terrible news. Matt was the guitar player in two of my favourite bands: Circle II Circle for their first record and he was on all of Jon Oliva’s Pain’s works. This photo was taken when I saw JOP at ProgPowerUK II in 2007. One of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[29,30,31,32,33,34,13,35,36],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-farewell","category-music","tag-circle-ii-circle","tag-criss-oliva","tag-jon-oliva","tag-jon-olivas-pain","tag-matt-laporte","tag-music-2","tag-r-i-p","tag-savatage","tag-tso"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28,"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhyse.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}