Such capricious meanderings aside, Fields also happens to be the name of a somewhat splendid little progressive rock group from 1971, whose short-lived tenure was equalled only by a lack of creativity when coming up with a title for their one and only album.

A minor-league supergroup of sorts, Fields put ex-Rare Bird organist Graham Field; ex-King Crimson drummer Andy McCulloch; and vocalist and guitarist Alan Barry together in the same studio for the first and final time.

The resultant album, Fields, may hold no real surprises for the seasoned prog vet, but it is, nonetheless, an excellent and highly accomplished listen.

The cover depicts a bird of prey pinning an unfortunate rabbit to the ground, one presumes, with the intention of tearing it to bits for supper. Nature is red in tooth and claw, as they say. This rustic scene points to much of the subject matter throughout the album, which sports an environmentally aware lean on occasion. There’s a feeling of things lost and the dawning of an unwelcome new era, none more so than on Fields undoubted highlight, ‘Not So Good’.

Incorporating a reworking of the opening bars of Hubert Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’ throughout, ‘Not So Good’ protests the sacrifice of a simpler way of life in the pursuit of “progress”. Progressive rock protesting “progress”, not as ironic as it might sound. After all, prog may have committed the occasional atrocity during the seventies, but it never destroyed great swathes of countryside with ugly tarmac and cold, imposing concrete.

Like I said, ‘Not So Good’, for me, is the highlight of Fields, a gentle piano melody lulling the listener along before the drums, guitars and organs kick in. And this album is by and large an organ-led work, which is none too surprising when you consider it was very much Graham Field’s piece. As he states in Sid Smith’s edifying liner notes, “Some things you do, you’re not so keen on but I love this album. To me, it’s Rare Bird III.”

Elsewhere, the album maintains a high standard, with the medieval flavoured ‘Three Minstrels’, the organ and Mellotron histrionics of the opener, ‘A Friend of Mine’, and the opulence of ‘A Place to Lay My Head’ particularly worthy of mention.

The musical blend that this three-man unit have cooked up works an absolute treat and it’s a pity that political infighting at CBS meant the withdrawal of financial backing, resulting in this being the lone studio excursion for the outfit. Parts of a follow-up album were recorded but without the money to complete it, Fields unfortunately split, leaving the likes of you and I to wonder what could’ve been.

Fields by Fields is reissued by Esoteric and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Fields

Airing: Saturday 4th September 2010. 10am (Repeated Friday 1oth September. 10pm)

Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson, two of the keyboard giants of the classic progressive rock era, have recorded a rare interview together for Planet Rock Radio.

Planet Rock presenter and former Yes keyboardist, Rick Wakeman, interviewed Keith Emerson of The Nice and ELP at the Planet Rock studio on Wednesday 25^th August 2010.

Recorded exclusively for Rick’s Saturday morning show, Keith tells the story of the time he performed for the British Royal family and the extraordinary lengths to which they went when testing the cannons for the 1972 ELP tour. Plus Rick reveals the reason why Yes vocalist, Jon Anderson, decided to build a tepee in his dressing room!

This exclusive chat will air on Planet Rock, Saturday 4^th September 2010, in Rick Wakeman’s Show from 10am – 1pm.

The Rick Wakeman radio show broadcasts exclusively on Planet Rock every Saturday 10am – 1pm UK Time.

Planet Rock broadcasts on Digital Radio, Sky 0110, Virgin Media 924, Freesat 730. Online: www.planetrock.com and on the iPhone.

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Wakeman Vs Emerson (press release)

Wait though. This Day Will Never Happen Again is, in fact, the name of the new album from veterans of the late 1980′s UK neo-psychedelic boom, The Chemistry Set. Those in command of a memory unaddled by booze and other such substances may well remember that The Chemistry Set were the band I singled out for particular praise in Head Full of Snow’s review of the A Phase We’re Going Through compilation album.

Their epically atmospheric version of Del Shannon’s psychedelic sojourn ‘Silver Birch’ was the best track on the album and one that gets many a hard-earned repeat play on the HFoS sound system. If you managed to get a hold of A Phase We’re Going Through via fair means or foul, you’ll be pleased to know that ‘Silver Birch’ makes an appearance on This Day Will Never Happen Again, this time minus the phasing, in all its original glory.

Both versions are exceptional and modern classics as far as HFoS is concerned. Indeed, the best track here as well. But that’s not said lightly, considering some of the stiff competition this album has to offer.

Right from the drum roll that kicks off the opener ‘El Retorno’, The Chemistry Set manages to capture the psychedelic vibe of the bands doing the rounds in the mid to late 1960s. Whereas some bands recording today, who claim to be psychedelic, can only produce a pale imitation of the music prevalent during the latter half of that fabled decade – which is no bad thing, by the way, as music progresses and diversifies with each passing year – The Chemistry Set sound like the real deal.

Exceptionally popular in Spain, their bag is a West Coast US garage/psych sound epitomised by the likes of Clear Light, 13^th Floor Elevators, Electric Prunes and many more; lovingly delivered by three (paisley) shirty blokes from London.

I could reel off the titles of individual tracks, but would ‘She’s Taking Me Down’ mean anything different from ‘Look to the Sky’, without hearing said pieces? All that needs saying from me is that This Day Will Never Happen Again is a cracking album and one that gets the royal “Bob on” thumbs up from the HFoS camp.

A cover of The Rolling Stones’ jailhouse release, ‘We Love You’, is the lysergic cherry on a very tasty, acid drizzled cake.

This day will never happen again? Thank Fripp for that. But so long as The Chemistry Set are recording, there’s the chance of a couple more worth living through.

This Day Will Never Happen Again by The Chemistry Set is released on the French label Dead Bees and available in the UK from September.

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The Chemistry Set – This Day Will Never Happen Again

Released in 1970, this fascinating strain of electric folk is as bucolic as a winter’s afternoon stroll along the Yorkshire Dales. Such is its rustic charm that it very nearly slips into the pewter tankard and horse brass territory of traditional acoustic folk, which, if you’re partial to the occasional spot of “hey-nonny-nonny” (ahem) is no bad thing.

Husband and wife team, Bob and Carole Pegg take the helm, crafting an album that’s occasionally jolly, occasionally dark, sometimes sombre and in the case of the title-track, downright sinister.

This beguiling brew is bookended by the pastoral tones of a tin whistle, setting the scene from the off, as Mr Fox begins with the furiously jaunty ‘Join Us In Our Game’, a number that draws us in with a promise of merriment and possibly the quaffing of real ale from Toby Jugs kept hung above the bar. But it’s a short-lived one, as the much darker ‘The Hanged Man’ sets out the stall for some of the eerier offerings to be found here on.

Halfway in, ‘Mr. Trills Song’ reignites the high-spirits of the opener, with perhaps one of the most jovial songs ever to have tickled the eardrums of yours truly. Decked out in the chunkiest of Arran sweaters, Mr. Trill and his song would be laughed out of court in these modern, some might say shittier, times. But hey, in 1970 – and even today in certain, “tighter”, communities – you could easily get away with this sort of thing without so much as raising an eyebrow. ‘The Ballad of Neddy Dick’ follows, musically in a similar vein, although with the revelry in short supply; it being based on the life of a real Dalesman farmer who died in the late 1920s.

But it’s the final brace of songs on Mr Fox that really bring the storytelling element, which this band accomplishes so vividly, to the fore.

‘Leaving the Dales’ is as bleak as it is evocative, being a mournful lament to the breakdown of communities, as those at its heart are forced to leave in search of work. A sentiment that still resonates today, particularly in the wake of the vindictive acts of wanton state-sponsored vandalism, committed in the name of efficiency during the 1980s.

The final song, ‘Mr. Fox’, is an altogether different beast. Impelled by a spectral fusion of melodeon and fiddle, and later the grinding bass of Barry Lyons, it’s the sinister tale of a philandering and psychotic ne’er-do-well living in a dark house in the middle of a wood. The gruesome subject matter puts it firmly in the realms of Comus, and is an excellent scoop of acid folk; the Jimmy Jewel in a glittering crown.

The vocal styles of the Pegg team fit the subject matter perfectly and the incorporation of a wide variety of instruments provides a rich tapestry against which their stories unfold.

If folk music in any of its forms is your bag, you can’t go far wrong with Mr Fox.

Mr Fox, by Mr Fox, is reissued by Sanctuary Records as part of a two album anthology (also including follow-up The Gipsy) entitled Join Us In Our Game. As always, it’s available from Amazon.co.uk

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Mr Fox – debut album

Never fear, all is well, and what better way to return than with the final release from what, for many, will be the sorely missed Bracken Records. The label ran by Andy Bracken, one half of the team behind Fruits de Mer Records – and, incidentally, a very erudite interviewee, as witnessed here and here – is calling it a day.

What better way for the label to go out than to enlist the aid of FdM favourites Cranium Pie (their version of ‘Madman Running Through the Fields‘ is a particular highlight in the Fruits de Mer canon), whose blend of psychedelic progginess keeps the flag flying in 2010 and beyond.

Hailing from the city of Bath, the West Country home to cider-crunchers and the birthplace of the words “ablution” and “gullible”, Cranium Pie sport a sound that, if such a thing was possible, might easily raise the dead from the apathy to which they’ve become accustomed. With the sleeves of their wizard gowns caught firmly in the car door of 1970, the band capture the spirit of the post-psychedelic/proto-prog era with the two songs that make up this limited edition 7″ final offering.

‘Rememberrr’ is awash with intergalactic extrapolations and sounds invoked from the ether, driven on by superior keyboard noodling and occasional bursts of acid-rock guitar, torn from the fingers of Cranium Pie axeman Dano Herro. Occasionally reminiscent of Dark Side of the Moon, it’s safe to say that ‘Rememberrr’ provides a fitting farewell to the Bracken label, without slipping into the needless tedium of the aforementioned Floydian slip.

But wait. There’s more. As I said, there are two tracks on this short but sweet, shining jewel in the often overwhelming slurry that is rather disparagingly referred to, by me if nobody else, as “modern music”.

‘Mothership’ has a title pulled directly from the ethos of many a 70′s prog excursion and mixes meditative passages with gradually building explosions of grinding space rock. Its six minutes represent an otherworldly ecstasy rarely seen in the asinine age of X-Factor, BGT and N-fucking-Dubz.

With the likes of Circulus, The Chemistry Set, Vibravoid and a few more choice bands plying their trade in 2010, long may Cranium Pie reign. As for Bracken Records, may they rest in peace.

Bracken Records website

Cranium Pie website

Cranium Pie MySpace page

The 7″ limited edition vinyl (300 only) that marks the swansong of Bracken Records, is available to buy right here.

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Cranium Pie – Rememberrr/ Mothership

Probably not, as the fact of the matter is Hatfield and the North sprang from the same Canterbury scene that nurtured The Soft’s own growth, and if that wasn’t enough Hatfield and the North (the album), also features a guest spot from Robert Wyatt, whose offbeat vocals and drumming were so memorable on those early Soft Machine albums.

But to continue equating Hatfield and the North to The Soft Machine is as predictable an opening gambit as likening Flash to Yes, or, heaven forbid, writing an entire review that does little else… ahem. So I won’t.

Instead, it’s worth taking a look at the pedigree of the band, whose members were made up of assorted faces from the Canterbury psychedelic and prog alumni. There was Caravan’s Richard Sinclair on bass and vocals; Matching Mole’s Phil Miller on guitars; sometime Gong associate and future National Health member, Pip Pyle on drums; and last, but not least, the ubiquitous keyboard noodle Dave Stewart, who had been a member of Egg and Khan, and would go on to play with Gong as well as forming National Health. Also present is Spirogyra’s Barbara Gaskin, providing backing vocals as one third of The Northettes.

There was always a certain jazz influence present in the groups that formed either as a direct result or in the wake of The Wilde Flowers, the band whose rotation of members is regarded as the nucleus of the Canterbury scene. This could be heard to a certain extent on early Soft Machine (moreso on later albums, once they’d done away with vocals and straddled the satanic mount of jazz-fusion), later Caravan, and bubbling away at all Canterbury stops in between.

Hatfield and the North is no exception to this rule.

Now then, if you read this poor excuse for a website with unhealthy regularity, there’s the outside chance you’ll already know where I stand when it comes to the four letter word that is “jazz”. Many a day or three has been lost to jazz-induced comas, brought on by unwittingly tuning into Radio 3 at exactly the wrong time. As such, jazz CDs get short shrift at HFoS towers. Short shrift and a quick re-pressing beneath the rear wheels of the wife’s runabout.

Even so, the aforementioned early Soft Machine, Caravan and certain other subscribers to the “Canterbury sound”, don’t provoke such a hostile response, for the simple reason that the “jazziness” is only one element fermenting in their progressive brew. Hatfield and the North also keep the lid on the music form that dare not speak its name, and as such this debut (one of only two albums the band recorded) hasn’t been resigned to the HFoS scrapheap, where those unloved and unwanted CDs are cast without so much as a farewell or their bus fare home.

That said, Hatfield and the North has a bloody good crack at trying the patience in parts. It follows the same format as The Soft Machine debut with the songs, though individually titled, blending into one overall, eclectic piece, spanning each side of the recording. Despite the number of ideas evident throughout, there’s a tendency for meandering and aimless self-indulgence, which can grate, particularly when coupled with the somewhat subdued arrangements and vocal deliveries, reminiscent of some of the more languorous offerings from Caravan. I blame the jazz contingent.

Still, if you can get around that, there might just be enough here to keep the unwary listener entertained. It’s certainly not completely unlistenable guff, and as I said before, it still enjoys the occasional run-out on the HFoS sound system. There’s also an all-pervading sense that lyrically Hatfield and the North are serving up good old-fashioned English filth. Of course, there’s nothing to back this up, only an overwhelming suspicion that innuendo is imminent throughout. Now it would be rude to grumble at that.

So there you are, accomplished without mentioning The Soft Machine once… What? Oh. Nevermind then, perhaps next time.

Hatfield and the North is reissued with bonus tracks and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Hatfield and the North – debut album

Recorded for the now OOP Fruits de Mer Vol. Seven, Cranium Pie take the psychedelic-pop oddness of the original and turns up the insanity factor.

The result is a haywire, acid-charged headfuck that throws in a horizon-scorching guitar, backwards vocals and a hauntingly astral, vocoder chorus.

Nice.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3YyU0UGbkw

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Cranium Pie -- Madman Running Through the Fields

In the absence of such a beast, we have Caravan’s If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You, the underwhelming 1970 follow-up to their sparkling self-titled debut.

Once again it’s one of those prickly matters that splits the prog-listening community in two, with one side of the divide saying If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You is an exceptional album, populated by wonderfully melodic and intricately formed, career-defining songs. Then there’s me on the other side, who says it isn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You has its moments; it just lacks something that was present throughout the whole of Caravan. I wouldn’t say that it’s a decent song that’s absent, as both the bouncy title-track and ‘And I Wish I Were Stoned/Don’t Worry’ are great examples of Caravan’s understated and offbeat sound. It’s just that after these openers it all gets a bit samey, a tad tarnished, and a little bit lacklustre.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not listening right. If indeed there is a correct way of listening to something. After all, it’s only vibrations on the air hitting the eardrum in a manner that either causes pleasure or considerable displeasure… Or something like that. I’m not an Otolaryngologist, and if the truth be told I’ve no idea how the human ear works.

But dubious science aside, I can only assume that I am listening correctly and If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You simply fails to cut my musical mustard. Perhaps I’ve spent too long in Canterbury the past week or so, with The Soft Machine, Caravan and Hatfield and the North all making an appearance here (or about to), and I’m all jazz-influenced out. Maybe. Perhaps. Who cares?

Caravan was always the soft centre in the progressive selection box, relying on fruity humour and double entendre to supplement their considerable musical talent as opposed to chopsy guitar thumping. This is the beginning of that particular sound, completely different to their debut, and from which future albums would flower. As this would lead to In the Land of Grey and Pink and For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night, the shroud of the unremarkable that swathes this second release from the Caravan camp can be forgiven. Dave Sinclair’s organ noodling is as strong as ever and vocalist/guitarist Pye Hastings’ brother, Jimmy, once again provides some wonderfully pastoral melodies on the flute.

With the other component parts also ticking along nicely and Hastings’ wispy vocals present and correct, it’s a shame that the album doesn’t do it overall.

Nevertheless, we’re in a celebratory mood having reached that much coveted 202 milestone, so to leave proceedings on a positive note, If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You may have its faults, but it’s better than Waterloo Lily.

If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You by Caravan is reissued on the Decca label and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Caravan – If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You

Unfortunately – for me, anyways – the latter day Soft Machine albums fall largely into the unholy bracket that is jazz-fusion. Man alive! Jazz, and all its derivatives, one of the few musical genres with the potency to send us at HFoS Towers into a prolonged sleep, one from which we’re often too afraid to stir, for fear it might still be playing. Very often it is; such is the nature of a beast notorious for getting permanently stuck in the neutral gear of tedium.

Nevertheless, the talk was a hugely entertaining one, as are all of Mister Smith’s podcasts (as well as a great source for some obscure musical finds) and can be heard right here. Don’t forget to subscribe.

Talk of The Soft Machine’s later releases inspired me to dust off the band’s first two albums for a well deserved airing. This was before the unsavoury jazz-element had taken a grip and the debut album, called The Soft Machine but later known as Volume One, is, for me, the best thing these onetime pioneers of the British underground put out.

For a start, Volume One features the original members (minus Gong’s Daevid Allen), Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge and Kevin Ayers. For a band that, by the time of their final studio release – 1981′s much maligned The Land of Cockayne – had changed its membership 100%, this has to be the essential line-up. And that has nothing to do with Head Full of Snow being unapologetic fans of Kevin Ayers’ early solo releases.

In 1968, The Soft Machine were delivering an eclectic form of avant-garde, psychedelic progressive rock, straight to the lugholes of a swinging London, populated by the fortunate few who didn’t have to work for a living. Unlike The Pink Floyd, perhaps their biggest rivals for the underground crown, they completely bypassed the mainstream, but it’s hard not to be impressed by Volume One’s hectic brilliance.

Not a brilliance that will find a cure for cancer, but one that ensures it sounds just as innovatively opulent today as it did 42 years ago.

Truth be told, nobody’s ever going to accuse Robert Wyatt of being the best singer in the world – although his version of Elvis Costello’s ‘Shipbuilding‘ from 1982, with its lyrics concerning the return of shipbuilding to communities vandalised by a heartless Tory government (sound familiar?) to aid in the upkeep of their vote-winning Falklands War, is one of the more powerfully moving attacks on Thatcher from that cursed decade – but his voice is memorably enchanting throughout, as is his off-the-wall drumming.

‘Hope For Happiness’ is possibly one of the most invigorating openings to an album a drunk man could hear, with its multitracked vocals coming at you from every angle; but when the entire record slips into the musical landslide of this first song, you know you’re tentatively stepping on sound sonic territory. Well, if you’re me you do.

Everything about Volume One is right and even if you choose not to listen to the bizarrely whimsical lyrics, Mike Ratledge’s fluid fingering of a keyboard is rarely bettered. He might’ve come across as a bit of a miserable bastard, but the magic he weaves on the organ is indisputable.

Po-faced keyboardists aside, we cannot recommend this album enough. And if that doesn’t tempt the tentative, well there’s always Kevin Ayers’ dulcet tones, featured on ‘Why Are We Sleeping’ and, if you get hold of the right reissue, the 7″ B-side, ‘Feelin, Reelin, Squealin’. God bless.

Volume One by The Soft Machine is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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The Soft Machine – Volume One

It’s enough to turn a man to drink but fear not, for although there are occasions when Cockerham’s voice does sail dangerously close to the tuneless whine often heard emanating from the vicinity of the ISB’s Robin Williamson, he manages to keep it together, ensuring a listening experience that isn’t likely to leave you reaching for the bleach as a pre-bedtime nightcap.

Spirogyra also featured Barbara Gaskin on vocals, Steve Borrill on bass guitar and providing a particular lynchpin to the band’s progressive/acid folk rock sound, Julian Cusack on violin and keyboards. Whereas The Incredible String Band sounded like a particularly inept bunch of world musicians falling down a particularly steep flight of stairs, Spirogyra can play their instruments as well as hold the note they’ve just committed themselves to singing. Particularly effective is the aforementioned Cusack’s omnipresent violin, which is menacing, sinister and eerily evocative in turns.

Barbara Gaskin’s voice hits the musical spot throughout, following in the fine tradition of such ethereally toned sirens as Judy Dyble and Jacqui McShee, while acting as the perfect foil to the urgency of Cockerham’s vocal style.

St. Radigunds is lyrical storytelling at its best, seeded in the opening track, ‘The Future Won’t Be Long’, with its tale of death at home and abroad during World War II, and culminating in the epic closer ‘The Duke of Beaufoot’.

Throughout the album there are moments of whimsy, strangeness, the fantastical and Olde English romanticism, tempered by an undercurrent of left-wing political protest. A tick against each box of the “good list”, so far as HFoS is concerned. There’s even room for what sounds like Michael Palin doing a Pythonesque northerner on ‘The Future Won’t Be Long’ – though it evidently isn’t. The Repertoire reissue also offers the jaunty anti-war rant and single ‘Dangerous Dave’ as a bonus.

As with the best folk music – prog, acid, or otherwise – a listen to St. Radigunds renders a swirling mist of lilting melodies and haunting vocal arrangements, bringing to life a world that exists slightly parallel to our own, but grounded in the same harsh realities.

Don’t let any comparisons with the sonic ear-buggery of The Incredible String Band sway your judgement. Spirogyra’s strain of aromatic folk music will neither frighten the Hamster nor strip the paint from the walls.

St. Radigunds by Spirogyra is reissued by Repertoire and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Spirogyra – St. Radigunds

However, Schicke Führs Fröhling’s 1976 album Symphonic Pictures, takes a decent swing at curing me of this irrational phobia. Not that it succeeds completely but I’m a little less anti-blah blah as a result.

In fact, if the truth really be told, I actually tell a lie at the beginning of this review when I say “truth be told”, as my aversion to instrumental albums isn’t strictly wholesale. For instance, I’m a sucker for Spaghetti Western soundtracks, as also the actual films, and could quite happily listen to a spot of Bacalov, Brunai, Ortolani, Morricone, et al, without fear of winding up face down in my bowl of soup.

It’s to the credit of the three German symphonic progsters gathered here, that they made this debut album sound like the soundtrack to an imaginary movie, while achieving a sound that belied their slim membership.

Now it must be said that my objection to solely instrumental albums is absolutely to do with the fact I like a story. Similarly, anything sung in a dialect other than the queen’s own English also leaves me cold. After all, what’s the point of a story if you no comprende the lingo?

Schicke Führs Fröhling differ in that, for me, they manage to keep Symphonic Pictures interesting and well above the boredom threshold for the duration of its 36 minutes.

The musicianship is faultless, with each member playing a wide variety of instruments, and in the case of Führs and Fröhling, a Mellotron each. Heinz Fröhling was also the man who overcame the band’s lack of resident bassist by splicing together a guitar and a Rickenbacker bass and playing this hybrid bastard child of all that’s musical in the studio and on the stage.

Electronic noises fuse seamlessly with symphonic extravagance throughout, ably fired along by the breathless rock drumming of Eduard Schicke. This is what gives Symphonic Pictures the edge over other instrumental prog albums. It remains diverse, painting dramatic, multi-hued soundscapes that work equally well as individual tracks as the album does an epic whole.

Pointless mentioning titles here, so instead we’ll move swiftly onto the bonus disc which comes with the 2010 Reactive reissue.

Recorded live in Papenburg, Germany 1975, the seven tracks successfully capture what would become the band’s complex, yet melodic sound. There are versions of three of the pieces from Symphonic Pictures, including an epically extended 28 minute take of that album’s closer, ‘Pictures’. The disarmingly well-mannered audience (a mainstay of a certain type of “high-brow” 1970′s prog) clap politely at the end of each song and I echo their sentiment, although the occasional unruly element getting marginally overzealous would assure us at home that they were playing to more than three old duffers in cloth caps and a whippet.

All in all, Symphonic Pictures proves to be a pleasant surprise. Whereas I’d expected tediously narrow brushstrokes of grey, I got something a little more polychromatic, painted Rolf Harris-style with a bloody great broom head. If you like your progressive rock German and instrumental, then this is one picture worth hanging on your wall… Oh dear, a creaky metaphor too far? I’ll get my coat.

Symphonic Pictures by Schicke Führs Fröhling is reissued by Reactive and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Schicke Führs Fröhling – Symphonic Pictures

That’s right; it’s a roll call of doctors. More importantly, it’s a roll call of evil doctors. Yes, doctors who deal in evil as opposed to good. Some coveted world domination, others the forced conception of a supposed master race. Some just wanted a world free of old age pensioners.

But there’s a new Doc in town. At least, in 1971 there was, although nobody seemed to notice Dr. Z’s bid for global supremacy, a failure underlined by the fact Three Parts to My Soul allegedly sold less than 100 copies.

But Dr. Z didn’t have sharks with “frickin’ laser beams” at their disposal. Nor did they have a nuclear reactor submerged in water. They didn’t even have a bottle of diamorphine and a rusty syringe. No. Dr. Z’s weapon of choice was progressive rock.

Some might say that a twenty minute drum solo or an extended freak-out on a Mini Moog would be more than enough to beat an unsuspecting world into submission, but they’re just philistines! How dare they!

In Richard Morton Jack’s essential tome, Galactic Ramble, Giles Hamilton says of Three Parts to My Soul, and I quote, “It largely consists of voice and piano, with obscure occult lyrical leanings… though there’s little here for prog or psych fans.”

A little harsh, one thinks.

Less than 100 sales may not have been enough to hold sway with the United Nations, or even secure a volcanic hideaway in the Pacific, but it ensured that Dr. Z had an album that would go on to be one of the most obscure released by the progressive Vertigo label during the seventies. It’s also evidence of a grave misjudgement by the prog audience of yesteryear and, of course, Giles Hamilton today.

Grave indeed; and the grave is often where Three Parts to My Soul seems to be emanating from. Swansea professor, Keith Keyes, wrote, produced, played keyboards and provided the menacing vocals. Such abstruse lyrics and preternatural delivery isn’t what one expects from the teaching fraternity, but hey, this was the 1970s and if you had long hair and a bong the size of a hydroelectric power station, then anything went. Despite it seemingly being all about young mister Keyes, he was aided and abetted by two other academic types. Rob Watson on a subdued bass and Bob Watkins on drum and percussion, providing the tribal beat present throughout.

It’s all pretty sinister stuff, like early Black Sabbath without the guitar riffs and overt campness. As I’ve said here before, ‘Evil Woman’s Manly Child‘ is the best track by far and the rest of the album fails to live up to it, but that don’t make it no good.

Whatever dastardly intentions Dr. Z had in mind for our children and womenfolk, it didn’t stop them from knocking out a reasonably atmospheric prog tune into the bargain. The title track, ‘Spiritus, Manes Et Umbra’, is nearly as strong as the aforementioned ‘Evil Woman…’ and running at 12 minutes even has time to slot in some extended drum and keyboard duelling, though this threatens to poke a tentative toe across the threshold of tedium before being yanked back into the body of the song for a rousing crescendo.

I could say pretty much the same about the other four tracks. All good stuff as far as I’m concerned, with titles such as ‘Burn in Anger’, ‘Summer for the Rose’ and ‘In a Tooken of Despair’. No idea what any of it means but I’m sure it’s all very deep and intellectually sound. This was a university boffin, after all.

The CD version I have offers two bonus tracks. The A and B-side of a Keith Keyes single released prior to Dr. Z’s inception. Being brief jaunts into the upper rings of psychedelic pop, they’re as different in sound to the rest of the album as it’s possible to get. Nevertheless, the sound quality of these two tracks is a marked improvement to that of Three Parts to My Soul, which is a little on the muddy side to say the least. A proper digitally remastered reissue is what’s called for methinks.

As for Dr. Z (that’s pronounced Zed, for any American readers), who needs to rule the world when there’s a rare prog album like this, just aching to be listened to?

Three Parts to My Soul by Dr. Z is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Dr. Z – Three Parts to My Soul

Allow me to present it to you in all its splendour:

The genesis of Brainticket was a collective of Belgian, German and Swiss musicians, headed by multi-instrumentalist Joel – wait for it – Vandroogenbroeck, who pedalled a strain of experimental Krautrock, for the delectation of anybody willing to listen.

There, worth the wait, wasn’t it?

Brainticket’s second album Psychonaut, released in 1972 and recorded by a completely different line-up to that of their debut Cottonwoodhill (Vandroogenbroeck aside), eschewed the overt electronic experimentation of the first album for a more grounded (something of a misnomer perhaps) psychedelic approach. So what we have is an album of psychedelic progressive rock that looks back three or so years and borrows heavily from the sound that was prevalent then. No bad thing, at all.

The nationalities of the artists enlisted to record Psychonaut are unbeknownst to me (Vandroogenbroeck aside), nor do their names give anything away. There’s Jane Free on lead vocals and assorted percussion; Rolf Hug on vocals, guitars and Sam Gopal’s very own weapon of choice, the tabla; Martin Sacher on bass and flute; the wonderfully named Barney Palm on drums, percussion and “strange sounds”; Carole Muriel on spoken bits and “ooohh….ooohhs”; and plain old Peter(!), apparently the Witch Doctor providing good vibes!!!

Then, of course, there’s the Belgian himself, Vandroogenbroeck playing basically anything that came to hand and providing all the arrangements. Such is the life of a creative dynamo and multi-instrumentalist.

But nationality matters not, for all lyrics are written and sung in English, meaning even a committed xenoglossophobic (look it up) such as myself can enjoy. And believe me, there’s plenty here to enjoy… Well, six tracks anyway. But it’s not the quantity, my friend, but the quality that matters.

Psychonaut is resplendent in late sixties vibes and seventies prog sensibilities. It’s a quite often dark collection that though lumped in the Krautrock stable, doesn’t boast the overt electronic strangeness of that particular musical genre.

‘Radagacuca’, which begins at the beginning, is a dreamily ethereal number, laced with otherworldly flutes and sitars, which explodes into a cacophony of spectral cries and Hammond organ exuberance in its final minute. Like Arthur Brown gatecrashing the recording of Pentangle’s Basket of Light.

The standout, however, has to be the progressive sixties throwback ‘Like a Place in the Sun’, the chorus of which evokes the spirit of Grace Slick heralding in a new dawn from a makeshift stage somewhere in Golden Gate Park. Contrast this with the spoken word verses, which languish on a far darker level – somewhere between the acid trip turning bad and the heroin flooding the veins of the once beautiful flower children of Haight-Ashbury – and you have the uneasy alliance of light and shade that ‘Like a Place in the Sun’ represents.

One could go on, but time permits and all that, plus I don’t think my spellchecker could handle too many more uses of the name Vandroogenbroeck. Suffice to say this review has not only broken the mould with its opening gambit: that now legendary line, which will be talked about for years to come; but it has also broken all known records for the number of times Vandroogenbroeck has appeared on a single webpage.

As for Brainticket’s Psychonaut. Well, do you really need me to reiterate what a fine album this is? Is that wonderful album cover alone not enough to convince you? … No? Well, it is indeed a fine album, fit for the collection of anybody partial to the occasional helping of psych/prog wonder mix. One that comes with a liberal dusting of continental oddness for good measure.

Psychonaut by Brainticket is reissued on Reactive and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Brainticket – Psychonaut

That environment was Notting Hill’s Ladbroke Grove. The epicentre of the British underground during the late sixties and early seventies, where the hair was long, the drugs were frequent and the music was raw. It was a spiritual homeland to such renowned barnets as Arthur Brown, the Deviants, Stray, Peter Bardens and, of course, perhaps the hairiest of them all, the Edgar Broughton Band.

Remaining true to the Ladbroke Grove ethic of too much hair and bruising jams, HighTide’s debut album, Sea Shanties, was released in 1969 and inhabits a place somewhere between the heavy rock of early Sabbath and good old-fashioned, salt of the earth, guitar-led prog.

Except it isn’t just guitar, for what’s that also leading the charge, weaving its lucid magic throughout the mix? Why it’s none other than the weapon of choice of toff and gypsy alike, the humble violin.

In Simon House – a classically trained virtuoso of the fiddle, who’d go on to join Hawkwind in a prime example of Ladbroke Grove incestry – High Tide had an extra ingredient that added a folkish dimension to their sound.

Yes, we have the crunching guitar, the grumpy bass and the powerhouse drumming, so why not throw in a man punishing a fiddle as though he’s just discovered it rogering his wife? Why not, indeed.

So what have we got here? Well there’s the six tracks from the original 1969 release and a further five bonuses augmenting the recent Esoteric CD reissue. Easily the pick of a more than generous crop is the vocally challenged (instrumental) ‘Death Warmed Up’. Riding on a psychedelic riptide of intense sound, its violin fuelled undercurrents threaten to take hold and drag you down for the full extent of its nine minutes. If you manage to keep your head above the waterline for the duration of this lysergic voyage, then there’s plenty more from this hirsute band of bluff old coves to keep the sirens at bay and rocky outcrops on the horizon.

Poorly formed seafaring metaphors aside, Sea Shanties truly is one of the heavier examples of early prog, weightier than a hulk languishing in St. Katherine’s Dock. Oh- there I go again…

Which goes to show that all this pretentious twaddle I spout on regular occasion is a load of bollocks really, when all I’m trying to say is Sea Shanties is a reet good listen. The singing may be a little flat in places; the occasional bum note may be entertained upon the quayside; but such minor insubordinations are easily forgiven when they add to the frazzled approach to music making demonstrated throughout.

Rumour has it that the creative mastermind behind High Tide, one Tony Hill, is authorised to marry couples when on the high seas, but seeing as I just made that up, there’s more than a passing chance it’s completely untrue. What is fact, and completely non-sea-related, is that this is another sterling reissue from the Esoteric team – who, incidentally, seem to be getting a mention every week now – with a cracking set of bonus tracks and, of course, the obligatory booklet.

I could go on, but even a land-lubbing, blinkered old soak such as myself knows when I’ve said too much. Loose lips sink ships, and all that.

As far as jolly Jack Tars go, this rum cluster of Scurvy Knaves is well worth climbing on board and weighing anchor with.

Now then, Squire Trelawny, let’s turn this vessel around and head for home.

Sea Shanties by High Tide is reissued by Esoteric and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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High Tide – Sea Shanties

Bone idle stereotyping aside, maybe the answer is three portly blokes banging out their very own brand of psychedelia and prog? If this be the case then we’re on the same wavelength. Welcome to the club.

Yes, Aphrodite’s Child features a pre-Chariots of Fire Vangelis, flexing his musically inventive muscles on keyboards and whatever else comes to hand, and Demis Roussos in the days before he took to wearing a glittery dress and became a global superstar. There’s also some bloke called Loukas Sideras on drums, but he must’ve drawn the short straw when it came to divvy up the post-Aphrodite success.

Their 1968 debut, End of the World, is a splendid piece of often eerie psychedelia, which hints at the progressive road down which they’d soon be travelling.

The title track immediately lets you know what they’re all about. Expect lightly accented (though completely English) vocals, delivered in a near-operatic warble by Roussos. Expect psychedelic effects to be heavily interwoven throughout, giving it an altogether eerier edge. And expect a very faint, but slightly disconcerting, feel of 1970′s Eurovision.

‘Mister Thomas’ is the Aphrodite’s Child take on the very English sub-genre of baroque Toytown-psych, and a fine one at that. If it wasn’t for the Eurovision accent it could easily pass for a lost recording from the likes of the Idle Race or Tomorrow.

‘Rain and Tears’, the band’s biggest success, becoming a hit in a host of countries across Europe, is a bit of a sappy ballad, but one that’s lifted by the Vangelis sonic arrangement, which excuses the insipid lyrics and hoists what could’ve been a painful listen out of the murky trough of mundanity.

And so it goes on. Some great, some good, and a wee bit of the not so good psychedelic rock, which taken as a whole is more than the doctor ordered. There’s a certain darkness entwined along the seam of End of the World, as demonstrated on songs such as the aforementioned title-track, ‘The Grass is no Green’ and the histrionically enhanced, near-terrifying ‘Day of the Fool’, which, incidentally, features the bizarre couplet “… she knows what’s up in my mind, she smells like a tree …”

Very much so. It’s more common than you think. But enough of that. From top to tail End of the World is good stuff. Slightly off-kilter, creepy psychedelic rock, with a hint of the continental thrown in for good measure.

The 2010 reissue of End of the World offers two bonus tracks, the single ‘Plastics Nevermore’ and its B-side ‘The Other People’.

End of the World by Aphrodite’s Child is reissued by Esoteric and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Aphrodite’s Child – End of the World

Like Samson, the hair maketh the man, bestowing its bearer with superhuman powers and the ability to extract the most vindictive of riffs from a Fender Strat, while simultaneously protecting them from the ravages of hard drugs, hard booze and even harder women.

It’s widely known that Edgar Broughton used his barnet to avert the destruction of California, when nuclear rockets were fired into the San Andreas Fault by a rogue businessman. That Mick Farren managed to stop the nefarious actions of an alien emperor, determined to obliterate the earth through a series of seemingly natural disasters. And who can forget certain members of The Pink Fairies foiling a fearsome foursome who’d dehydrated and kidnapped members of the United World Organisation’s Security Council?

Happy days. And you’ll be pleased to hear that the aforementioned left-leaning, heroes of hirsute hedonism are all represented on Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78, along with a roll call of similarly tuned hairy heathens. All of whom inhabited this enclave of the English counterculture back when it was acceptable for “the fuzz” to unleash their truncheons upon anybody merely suspected of growing their hair in public.

A glance at those assembled herein is enough to flood the sensory receptors with the pungent scent of hashish and the herbal aroma of gently smouldering sweat. Hawkwind, Quintessence, Arthur Brown, The Deviants, Stray, The Pretty Things and Peter Bardens are all present and correct, unleashing an arsenal of psychedelic and progressive rock upon those that mean to do the world harm. But there are also some fine excursions from lesser known acts.

‘Children of the Sun’ is a suitably energetic spaced out romp, courtesy of Misunderstood, as is ‘Man in the Moon’ by The Village. With the sun and the moon accommodated for what else is there?

Worthy of mention is The Action’s ‘A Saying for Today’, Skin Alley’s ‘Bad Words, Evil People’ and, former Pretty Things and Pink Fairies drummer, Twink’s ‘Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box’.

Add to this the acid-infused growl from the darkness that is Sam Gopal’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and Mighty Baby’s ‘House Without Windows’, and the fact you’re onto a good thing goes without saying. High Tide’s ‘Death Warmed Up’ and Robert Calvert’s ‘Ejection’ shakes hands on the deal without even having to mention what line of excellence the Broughtons, Hawkwind or Quintessence have to offer.

With 32 tracks of the psychedelic, the progressive and the proto-punk, Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78 is a compilation well worth paying on the door for. There may be one or two duds peppered along the way (for example, Tomorrow’s ‘Revolution’ will always be ruined for me by the embarrassing intro), but one can only assume that the artists in question had had the shears taken to their barnets prior to entering the studio, thus draining them of their far-out abilities. But for the vast majority of Cries From the Midnight Circus the hair has triumphed, ensuring this world remains a safer place to live. Thank you, collective hairies*, how can we ever repay you?

*Not to be confused with the Special Branch underground infiltrators, dubbed “the hairies”

Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78 is released as a two disc box-set by Sanctuary, and is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78

I failed to grow up, but I was there in the early eighties. Alfie Shepherd wasn’t, but it didn’t stop him writing a concept album based on Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 children’s novel, The Wind in the Willows. Ah, the innocent aspirations of the psychedelic age, when nobody would bat an eyelid if such a record were released.

Except it didn’t get released; not in 1969, as intended, anyway. You see, young Alfred wrote the piece for Angel Pavement, the psych-pop band with whom he played lead guitar. He recorded the whole thing in a home studio as a set of demos to play to the rest of the band. However, due to various unavoidable circumstances, what was meant to be, wasn’t to be, and the band split in 1970 leaving Alfie alone with his demos and his memories.

Until 2008 that is, when the good people at psychedelic archive and reassembly label, Wooden Hill/Tenth Planet, took it upon themselves to collect together the Wind in the Willows songs, along with a handful of others recorded around the same time, and unleash them upon those in the know (I may be being presumptuous, but I doubt the public at large have heard of the Wooden Hill label).

If fey whimsy delivered at an unusually high pitch is not your bag, look away now, but not before I advise you not to buy this album. Right. Have they gone? If there’s any stragglers still here, failing to heed my warning, then let it be known that I did try and tell thee.

So, if you can stomach such untoward daintiness, or even actively participate in it, then Alfie Shepherd’s psychedelic pop project could well be right up your woodland path.

It’s a shame that The Wind in the Willows was never fully realised, as despite its agreeability, there’s no getting past the fact that this is a just a collection of demos. A proper recording studio, some orchestral overdubs and a bloke on drums could’ve done wonders with the material on offer here. Not that it would’ve sold a bean, but who needs money when you have a little bit of peace and a little bit of love to tide you over?

It’s all inoffensively pleasant stuff that picks out events from its source material and adapts them to pretty much the same wispy template throughout, one exception being the bluesy ‘Bargin’.

The ten bonus tracks, all except ‘The Swallow’s Song’, are unconnected to The Wind in the Willows but remain in a similar vein, although a little more lyrically downbeat in places, such as on ‘Sandy’s Song’ and ‘Sad Statue’.

At the end of the day, if your thing is ultra-rare, toytown psychedelic pop that won’t frighten the horses then Alfie Shepherd’s The Wind in the Willows is well worth a listen. If you can get beyond the lo-fi demo quality (which in all honesty, isn’t that bad), and the untoward feyness then give it a go.

Wind in the Willows take me home.

Alfie Shepherd’s The Wind in the Willows is issued on Wooden Hill and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Alfie Shepherd – The Wind in the Willows

That can be the only the reason they saw fit to put out albums as though they were playing at a festival. And you could do worse than getting stoned yourself prior to listening to this. I didn’t and still enjoyed it. Imagine what it would be like having smoked half a kilo of Dutchman’s fancy, or even tripping on an acid-soaked Yellow Pages.

Heavy, man. REAL heavy.

Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology is a two disc affair, collecting together the lion’s share of these fabulous furry freak brothers’ Decca output, recorded between 1969 and 1971. I say lion’s share as there’s no inclusion of the tracks from debut album Clark-Hutchinson, which Decca refused to release on the grounds that the track ‘Make You’ was obscene. But that’s a very different sounding album and not really missed when you tot up what we’ve got here.

1969′s A=MH² – Check. 1970′s Retribution – Check. 1971′s Gestalt – Check. It’s all here, all present and correct and in the appropriate order.

Disc 1 takes the five tracks from A=MH² and also slips in the first two tracks from Retribution at the end, presumably for purposes of space.

Extensive instrumental workouts are the order of the day in the first instance, solely delivered by the two named players, Andy Clark and Mick Hutchinson. They were multi-instrumentalists and veterans of the underground scene, having played with, among others, psychedelic tabla abuser, Sam Gopal.

The opening track, the ten minute ‘Improvisation on a Modal Scale’, features a horrendously catchy hook and lays the foundations for what’s to come, in its implementation of all manner of instrumentation and heavy misuse of a guitar. Only the Eastern-influenced ‘Improvisation on an Indian Scale’ can match it for intensity, hitting the 13 minute mark and leaving you to wonder who snuffed out the joss-sticks.

For Retribution, here spread over the two discs, they kept to the five song format but hauled in a band to help out along the way. When you’re bassist’s name is Amazing Steven Amazing, you know things are going to be good. This time around they also included lyrics, which are howled in a manner that suggests somebody was stood on vocalist Andy Clark’s foot.

But this is music designed to be belted from a stage in the general direction of an audience made up of wild hair and joints the size of a Danvers carrot. ‘Free to be Stoned’ backs this assertion up and, despite the jazzy glitch of ‘After Hours’, things continue in pretty much the same vein, finishing with the Arthur Brown-esque ‘Death, the Lover’, which pummels the listener into a lysergic submission with its vocal refrain repeated over in a manner guaranteed to leave small children disturbed for the next twenty years of their lives.

Gestalt, Clark-Hutchinson’s final album is a less in your face offering (though ‘Poison’ begs to differ), but one that remains tuned to the late sixties/early seventies festival crowd. The songs are shorter but they continue the acid rock, freak out feel with the definite scent of something a little stronger than herbal tea leaking from the speakers throughout.

As said somewhere at the start of this review, what seems like a short lifetime ago, you don’t need to be hairy, a hippy, or sat in a field smoking the contents of granny’s window box to enjoy Free to be Stoned. I did say that, didn’t I?

Of course, if you’re any of the above, it may well enhance your enjoyment.

If you’re a connoisseur of the Great British underground, a place inhabited by a sterling assortment of hairies such as Arthur Brown, the Edgar Broughton Band, Mighty Baby, Quintessence, Sam Gopal and the ubiquitous Hawkwind, then this will be right up your street. Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology gets the seal of approval and is another strong release from the label that’s putting all others to shame with its prog and psychedelic reisssues, the mighty Esoteric Recordings.

Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology by Clark-Hutchinson is a two disc set, available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Clark-Hutchinson – Free to be Stoned

Some might think the latter title unfair. I certainly would, as this double CD makes no claims to being the last word in progressive rock compilations, or even one for the seasoned prog aficionado. In fact, I wish I’d never typed it now, but my delete key’s playing up so I can’t ryub ti tout…

Wondrous Stories – An Exercise in Prog Rock Predictability would be completely unfair, however. Unfair and wrong. As even though the artists included on here are fairly typical, some of the song choices aren’t.

Take for instance the Yes track, ‘Wondrous Stories’. One has to wonder whether it was picked simply to give the compilation a punchy title. Granted, they’re not going to put twenty minutes of ‘Close to the Edge’ on here, but surely they could’ve found something better from the glory days of Fragile or The Yes Album, more representative of the band’s space-prog sound. Of course, licensing issues may also have played a part here, but let’s gloss over that factor, as it threatens to ruin my entire argument.

Aphrodite’s Child is another case in point. If we’re going with safe bets, surely ‘Magic Mirror’ or ‘Rain and Tears’ would’ve been the expected choice, but here we have the excellent ‘The Four Horsemen’, taken from their third album, the biblically epic 666. A brave choice and one we should salute the compiler for. As also with the inclusion of Collosseum’s ‘The Kettle’, Gong’s ‘Perfect Mystery’, and the occasional less prominent act, such as Kansas and Mountain.

What we shouldn’t be saluting the compiler for is the digging up of Rush’s godawful ‘The Spirit of Radio’ and Marillion’s ‘Kayleigh’. I have to admit I’ve not listened to any Marillion, but would the radio-friendly toss that is ‘Kayleigh’ – a song I unfortunately remember from its original release and soft-focus MOR video – really be how Fish and co. would want themselves introduced to the prog tentative/curious audience that this compilation seems to be aimed at? A word of advice, if you find yourself listening to the aforementioned ‘Kayleigh’ and feel the urge to hold your lighter aloft whilst swaying, why not empty the fluid over yourself and strike a match. It’ll be a good deal less painful in the long run.

Which brings us to business as usual, pretty much everything else on here, which ticks the predictability box for both artist and track, even if the running order seems to have been arranged by someone in a desperate hurry to be elsewhere. As this is only a review copy, the finished arrangement may be subject to change, but Marillion’s ‘Kayleigh’, followed by Procol Harum’s ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’, followed by Renaissance’s ‘Northern Lights’, followed by the The Moody Blues ‘Nights in White Satin’, is as disorientating as that last sentence.

Expect to hear Jethro Tull’s ‘Living in the Past’, Supertramp’s ‘Crime of the Century’, Hawkwind’s ‘Silver Machine’ and Rick Wakeman’s ‘Catherine of Aragorn’. Atomic Rooster’s ‘Tomorrow Night’, Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’, the Edgar Winter Group’s ‘Frankenstein’ and Peter Gabriel’s ‘Solsbury Hill’ are also here, rubbing the shoulders of inevitability with the aforementioned Moody and Harum tracks.

All good stuff, if as familiar as a drunken weekend in Blackpool. Which is exactly what Wondrous Stories aims for. It’s not meant for the weathered prog vet; those that can name, off the top of their head, every band Bill Bruford has ever been in, or listen to a Jade Warrior album without slipping into a coma. At least, I hope it’s not. Universal’s excellent Time Machine – A Vertigo Retrospective is a much better bet for that.

Instead, Wondrous Stories – 33 Artists That Shaped the Prog Rock Era is a nice and easy jump-off point for anybody whose dander has been tickled by the recent revival of 70′s prog and is looking for a base station from which to delve a little deeper. FFS it even has a specially commissioned Roger Dean cover.

Wondrous Stories – 33 Artists That Shaped the Prog Rock Era is released by a Universal Music and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Wondrous Stories – 33 Artists That Shaped the Prog Rock Era

Google “Brain Salad Surgery review” (Brain Salad Surgery being the fourth studio album by prog behemoths Emerson, Lake and Palmer) and you’ll probably find 20,000 or so more reviews of the 1973 album, better written and more entertaining than this one; such is its status as a cornerstone of prog rock.

I’ve not tried it out for myself, so I can’t absolutely be sure this is right, but I think I’m pretty safe in assuming that there are one or two others out there who’ve had the same idea as me. With an album this big, it would be rude not to.

Therefore I have laid out a blueprint of how those reviews probably read, one which can be followed by anybody else further down the line who might wish to join the Brain Salad Surgery Review Club™. Pay on the door, please.

• Mention the cover. More importantly, mention that the cover was designed by H.R. Giger. For extra show-off points say how H.R. Giger is the artist that designed the Alien for Ridley Scott’s 1979 film of the same name and its subsequent sequels.

• Inform the curious that Brain Salad Surgery is considered by many to be ELP’s crowning glory. A summit to which there was no return.

• Don’t forget that the original lyrics for Brain Salad Surgery were penned by Greg Lake and former King Crimson collaborator Peter Sinfield. We say “original lyrics”, as the first track is in fact a souped up adaptation of Hubert Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’, using the familiar words taken from William Blakes’ preface to his Milton a Poem.

• For a more thorough rundown of the album it might be worth bearing the following in mind: ‘Jerusalem’ isn’t the only track not to have stemmed from the band’s own fair hand. ‘Tocatta’ is a reinterpretation of the fourth movement of Alberto Ginastera’s 1^st Piano Concerto, arranged by keyboard wunderkind Keith Emerson and boasting some fine effects throughout.

• ‘Still… You Turn Me On’ is almost a lighter in the air moment, saved once again by Emerson’s masterly keyboard wizardry. Use as many superlatives as you like to describe Keith Emerson’s adeptness at tickling the ivories, as they’ll help to divert the attention from the otherwise sogginess of this rather bland ballad.

• If you’re based in England then you’ll probably know what we mean when we say ‘Benny the Bouncer’ sounds like a knees up at an East End battle cruiser. Suggest that the listener may wish to sport a trilby while enjoying this bawdy respite from the otherwise prog seriousness.

• Which will bring you nicely to ‘Karn Evil 9′. Now pay attention, there’s a fair bit to take in here. ‘Karn Evil 9′ is a thirty minute progressive piece separated into three movements, or “impressions” as they are referred to here. You might wish to point out that two vocal sections sandwich an instrumental section, but the three parts have no real connection to one another and could easily have been divided into different songs. ‘Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression’ is also, somewhat confusingly, divided into two parts. For a spot of light relief, you may wish to point out at this juncture that “you could never accuse Emerson, Lake and Palmer of being pretentious.” It’s completely up to you and the mood you’re trying to convey in your own review. This would also be a good time to mention that ‘ Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, Pt. 2′ is possibly one of ELP’s most famous recordings, alongside ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’. It’s also worth noting that despite its length and the rambling mid-section, ‘Karn Evil 9′ maintains the interest throughout, thanks once again to the lightning fingers of Keith Emerson.

• Let the reader know that it’s with ‘Karn Evil 9′ that the original album finishes, but dependent on which CD reissue they listen to, there could well be bonus tracks. Namely ‘Brain Salad Surgery’, ‘When the Apple Blossoms Bloom in the Wind’, and ‘Excerpts From Brain Salad Surgery Flexi Disc’. The latter is possibly the most pointless bonus ever, in that it’s six minutes of snippets from the album you have just listened to.

• Feel free to pepper your review with the following facts: Keith Emerson was keyboardist with The Nice; Greg Lake was singer and bassist with King Crimson; Carl Palmer played drums with The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Atomic Rooster. The album title was taken from a line in the Dr. John song ‘Right Time, Wrong Place’, with brain salad surgery being a slang term for oral sex, hence the gloryhole sleeve. Brain Salad Surgery was released on the band’s own label, Manticore Records. The album spent 18 weeks in the UK charts, peaking at number 2 on 5^th January 1974.

• Finish off the review by adding your opinion of the album. This could be: “I like it a lot”; “It’s okay, a bit too up its own arse for my liking”; or “Would whoever finds the 45 minutes of my life I spent listening to this, kindly hand them in at reception. I’d like them back.” Take your pick.

Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake and Palmer is reissued by Sanctuary and available from Amazon.co.uk

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The Brain Salad Surgery Review Club