And finally, the Top 10!
10. Tangerine Dream – Force Majeure
In the field of electronic music, Germany looms large,
mainly through the work of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and while Kraftwerk
were the ones perhaps to catch the public imagination more in the UK, it’s
Tangerine Dream that appeal more to me. Their early recordings were very
atmospheric, more soundscapes than tunes, and were (as we used to say at
school) a little ‘hard to get into’. By the mid-70s they’d developed a more
rhythmic sound, while still not losing the experimental sounds of their early
days. Phaedra was probably their breakthrough album sound-wise, as the line-up
settled down to Edgar Froese, Chris Franke and Peter Bauman and the group
signed to Virgin. Their sound involved long sequenced rhythms overlayed by
various guitar, flute and organ lines. They majored on long-form tunes,
allowing themes to develop. Bauman left in 1978 but Froese and Franke continued
and in 1979 produced Force Majeure which, for me, is their most appealing
album. Three tunes, all full of variety, grandeur, melody and substance, with
the atmosphere of their earlier material but a little more approachable too.
Coming as it did in 1979, in the afterglow of Punk and the birth-throes of
electro-pop, this could be seen as a seminal album for the music that was to
dominate the charts for the next few years: instrumental (in more ways than
one), innovative and not losing its progressive edge.
9. Steely Dan – Aja
In those moments that I sometimes have for quiet
reflection and musing, I have often wondered what it must have been like, back
in 1972, to hear Steely Dan’s debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill, for the first time,
not knowing who the band were or what they were capable of musically. What did
those opening bars of ‘Do It Again’ stir within you? As a callow 11-year-old at
the time that wasn’t where I was musically: it was Slade and Sweet for me, and
by the time I got to Steely Dan a few years later the initial element of
surprise had dissipated. The music of Steely Dan as always been eclectic,
drawing from many different styles to produce the band’s own unique style: Do
It Again and Reelin’ In The Years, to give a couple of examples from that debut,
demonstrate that, with an almost Latin feel giving way to a good, solid rocker.
By the time they released Aja in 1977 – that year again! – their jazzier sound
had come to the fore, along with some quite funky vibes too. This is a very
laid-back album, an ‘end of the evening’ collection rather than for the heat of
the night, and it just oozes class and style for me. As good as Can’t Buy a
Thrill was, you can’t beat this for sheer class, and the appearance of Wayne
Shorter on the title track is a wonderful bonus. But maybe my stand-out track
is Deacon Blues, possibly the first song I heard
from the album, for its upbeat, sunny outlook – it never fails to put a smile
on my face when I hear it.
8. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
I suppose you always remember your first, and for me the
first album I bought for myself with my own money was Dark Side of the Moon.
Back in the golden days of vinyl it was such an iconic item. That stark black
sleeve with the prism; the way that the spectrum unfolded on the inner sleeve,
with the heartbeats in the green line picking up the opening sounds of the
album; the posters and stickers that came with it, both of which I still have,
though the stickers are firmly attached to my father’s demob suitcase which I
use to carry my vestments in. And then the music: simple, yet complex; mysterious,
powerful, experimental, not just from Gilmour, Waters, Wright & Mason but
also the sax of Dick Parry and the voice of Clare Torrey. A seamless continuum,
with no discernible break between the tracks, addressing large themes of time,
money, social inequality, madness and eternity. And giving us some of the most
memorable and iconic rock music of all time: Gilmour’s solos in Time &
Money, Waters’ bass riff in Money, and Clare Torrey’s improvised vocalising on
Great Gig in the Sky. And it introduced Alan Parsons to the world. This album
truly deserves its plaudits as one of the greatest albums of all time.
7. Joni Mitchell – Hejira
Canada has given some quite impressive musical gifts to
the world, chief among which must rank Rush, Neil Young and Roberta Joan (or
Joni) Mitchell. Joni came to prominence during the 1960s, when she moved to
California with her songs and was soon ‘picked up’ by David Crosby who shared
her music with as many as he could. Predominantly a folk singer at the
beginning, she brought her lush melodies, unconventional tunings and hypnotic
voice to bear on a wonderfully poetic lyrical style. After a run of 5
folk-oriented albums, Joni went through a change musically and began to embrace
a more jazzy style, and hit what many see as her purple patch with a string of
three exceptional recordings: Court & Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns
and Hejira, but it was to be Hejira that captivated me most. For some of the album
Mitchell invited Jaco Pastorius to play his distinctive bass sound, and that
may be what swung it for me, along with Mitchell’s own dreamy edge and
arrangements. These are songs that never age for me, and ones that I never tire
of, and for me she never quite reached the heights of Hejira again.
6. Supertramp – Crime of the Century
For a number of reasons, chiefly due to my Secondary
School being all male, and my being the only one from my area to attend there,
one of the places that I got the most social interaction during my early teens
was at a Youth Club run by the local Methodist Church – not the one I attended
on Sunday, but the nearest one to home. I have warm memories of the table
tennis and the tuck shop, (and the close proximity of young females!) but one
of my lasting memories of that place was the music that was available to listen
to, which was copies of Crisis, what Crisis? and Crime of the Century by Supertramp.
I’d heard Dreamer on the radio, but this was something else, something
different. There was an attractive complexity to their music – even in the
single – that repaid repeated listens. This wasn’t your basic rock ’n’ roll,
though there were elements of that: it was thoughtful, both musically and
lyrically, with a wonderful mix of Richard Davies’s keyboards, Roger Hodgson’s
guitars and John Anthony Helliwell’s saxophones building some exciting and
exhilarating music with the steady rhythm section of Bob Benberg & Dougie
Thomson. Of the two albums it was Crime that stood out for me: maybe it’s the
combination of at times quite cheery music tackling some dark themes, I’m not
sure, but it’s a collection that seems still very relevant almost 50 years on.
5. Big Big Train – English Electric: Full Power
Following on from their ‘breakthrough’ album, The
Underfall Yard, Big Big Train released an EP, ‘Far Skies Deep Time’ (longer
than many classic LPs) and then two albums under the title ‘English Electric’.
These were then combined and augmented to produce ‘English Electric: Full
Power’ in 2013 – 2 hours and 15 minutes of English Progressive rock of the
highest calibre, once again drawing on rock, folk and brass, and digging into
English industrial heritage, country life, social history and advances in
transport, as well as the usual fare of love, loss and the excitement of making
music together. The breadth of scope, both musically and lyrically, of this
album is astounding. The band take up the reins of the likes of Genesis in
bringing their narrative style of song-writing up to date, telling tales not of
Greek mythology and apocalyptic visions but of ship building on the Tyne, boy
miners, art forgery, and the record-breaking run of Mallard. They paint musical
pictures of ancient Cistercian abbeys, leafy hedgerows and of the views from
Upton Heath and St Giles’ Hill; nostalgically looking back to both
pre-industrial and industrial pasts, and the legacy of the changes that have
come as a result of the decline of traditional ways of living, both in rural
and urban settings. The band have since gone on to explore mythic and folkloric
elements, and taken us on a Grand Tour that encompassed da Vinci’s mind and the
farthest reaches of the galaxy, but these two discs, for me, stand as the
pinnacle of the band’s stunning output. Picking any particular track for
special mention is almost akin to choosing your favourite child, as from ‘Make
Some Noise’ and ‘The First Rebreather’ to ‘East Coast Racer’ and ‘Curator of
Butterflies’ and all points in between there’s hardly any let up in the sheer
excellence.
4. Steve Hackett – Spectral Mornings
Steve Hackett was brought into Genesis following the
inability of founder member Ant Philips to cope with stage fright, joining them
for their 3rd studio album, Nursery Cryme in 1971 and remaining a
key member of the band for 6 studio albums and two live albums before departing
in 1977. By the time of his departure Steve had begun his solo career,
releasing ‘Voyage of the Acolyte’ in 1975. 1978’s ‘Please Don’t Touch’ was my
first introduction to his solo material, but it was his third release,
‘Spectral Mornings’ that really brought home to me the scale and scope of his
talent. Whereas the first two albums had relied on guest musicians – Phil
Collins and Mike Rutherford on the first, and Richie Havens, Randy Crawford,
Chester Thompson, and Steve Walsh & Phil Ehart from Kansas on the second –
here he assembled a core band who had toured Please Don’t Touch with him and
who went on to make this and the subsequent album ‘Defector’ – Nick Magnus, Dik
Cadbury, John Shearer, Pete Hicks and Steve’s brother John. Here we have a
varied collection of almost pop-y prog in ‘Every Day’, a ballad in ‘The Virgin
& The Gypsy’, the George Formby-esque ‘The Ballad of the Decomposing Man’,
the ghostly and atmospheric ‘Tigermoth’, and the varied instrumental offerings
of Japanese Koto on ‘The Red Flowers of Tachai Bloom Everywhere’, rocking
guitars and booming bass pedals on ‘Clocks – The Angel of Mons’, classical
guitar and flute in ‘Lost Time in Cordoba’, and the sublime title track, so
wonderfully enhanced in 2015 by David Longdon’s lyrics and his and Christina Booth’s
voices. This album was released just as I was completing my A-Levels, and marks
a significant point in my life, but also in Steve’s career. There are so many
memorable moments in this collection, but the extended solo at the end of
opener ‘Every Day’ and the strains of the closing title track bookend this
album so well it leaves me simply knowing that I have been party to a time of
musical brilliance.
3. Yes – Going for the One
I think I knew what my Top 3 albums were going to be
before I started pulling this selection together, and I very quickly settled on
the order, though that is more or less arbitrary: any of the Top 3 albums could
have been number 1, and at times they are! But in the end, it is as it is. Yes have already featured in this list, but
for me their best album came in 1977 – a year of musical change with the advent
of punk and yet, as I have noted already, a year of some classic and lasting
albums from our beloved Progressive canon. Going for the One was as different
to Relayer as Relayer was to Tales, and as Tales was to Close to the Edge, and
saw a return to what many see as the ‘classic’ line-up of the band: Anderson,
Howe, Squire, Wakeman & White. The music is varied, from the driving rock
of the title track, the dreamy acoustic delight of Turn of the Century, the
soaring church organ and booming bass of Parallels, the jangly pop of the
surprise (for a Prog band) hit single Wondrous Stories, and the stunning symphonic
grandeur of Awaken. Lyrically the album is poetic, narrative, heart-warming and
enigmatic in equal measure, but then it is Yes, and what more would one expect!
A few years ago, I wrote this about the album: “Parallels was my early pick on
the album, mainly because I just didn't 'get' Awaken for a while. It is deep,
complex, obtuse at times; Jon Anderson's mystical lyrics do take some time to
coalesce (maybe not as long as those on Tales From Topographic Oceans) and that
may be what took my time, but eventually... oh boy! A truly symphonic piece,
with changes of tempo and texture, and all the band playing at their virtuosic
best throughout… This album has stood the test of time like few others. For me
it still has the ability to entice and thrill and delight and bewilder as it
did 40+ years ago.”
2. Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
Jazz, like Prog, is a broad field of music, with
everything from the be bop of Charlie Parker and others in the mid-40s, the
cool jazz of the 1950s, and the fusion of the 70s and beyond. Into all these
fields, and many others, stepped the genius that was Miles Davis. Miles
excelled wherever he played, and whatever he played, whether it was jazz to
dance to, jazz to be disturbed by, or jazz to chill to. He worked with giants
of the scene over his many years: Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Bill Evans,
John McLaughlin, and alongside classics of the genre such as ‘Birth of the
Cool’, ‘Milestones’, and the ground-breaking ‘Bitches Brew’, he notably gave us
what is his finest album – indeed many see it as the finest jazz album of all
time – 1959’s ‘Kind of Blue’. The sextet for this recording is Davis on
trumpet, Coltrane on tenor sax, Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley on alto sax, Bill
Evans (or Wynton Kelly on one track) on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy
Cobb on drums, and what they produce is nothing short of magical. It’s very
much what I would call a late-night sort of album – this is music to chill to,
but to do so with your mind, ears and heart wide open to experience the full
joy of this creation. Other than ‘So What’ and ‘All Blues’, which had been
performed live to audiences earlier, the album was created and recorded in the
studio, and the whole recording process was done in two days in the studio.
From the opening bars of ‘So What’, with piano and bass sparring with each
other before the bass brings the familiar riff, the six of them play so tight
and controlled, each taking their turn in the metaphorical spotlight to develop
the theme magnificently. There’s nothing brash or harsh about any of this
music, it washes over you and immerses you in its warmth and beauty. “More than
a milestone in jazz, Kind of Blue is a defining moment of twentieth century
music, one of those incredibly rare works of art that achieve equal popularity
among musicians, critics, and the public at large. The rest of us might tend to
agree with Jimmy Cobb, the drummer on the album, who commented… that it ‘must
have been made in heaven’.”
1. Genesis – Selling England by the Pound
And so, to number 1! Have you guessed what it is
yet?! As I mentioned earlier, if I had a
favourite band growing up it was Genesis, and over the course of their career
they have produced many outstanding albums, that I still return to on a regular
basis – more so from their time as a five- and four-piece than latterly as a
trio, I must confess. I’ve already included two of their catalogue in this
countdown – Foxtrot and Wind & Wuthering – but there is one album that tops
them, in fact tops them all, and that is… We Can’t Dance! Ha, fooled you – no it’s 1973’s magisterial
‘Selling England By The Pound’, to my mind still the most perfect platter ever
produced. Four years ago, I commented: “The album certainly marks a quantum leap
by the band in terms of musical invention and lyrical creativity, assisted by
the broadening of Tony Banks's musical palette with the introduction of an ARP
synthesizer alongside the Mellotron & Hammond organ. The band are still
telling stories, an enduring and endearing feature of the band's output, and
continue to exhibit an abundant virtuosity in their playing. It was the first
of their albums to break into the Top 10 in the UK, peaking at number 3, and
spawned the band's first hit single, I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe),
which was itself inspired by the cover art produced this time by Betty
Swanwick. In its sequencing, the collection alternates between long and short
songs, though whether this was a deliberate move I'm not sure, but as all the
long songs are of such high quality it is perhaps good for the listener to have
a brief respite between them.” Those short songs were: a kind-of nonsense song
over a four-note riff that (as I’ve said) gave the band their first hit single;
an almost anti-love song which gave Phil Collins his second (and first
credited) solo vocal stint; a rare instrumental piece (only the band’s second
at this point); and the outro piece, reprising the album opener. The longer
songs have remained epics of the progressive canon for the past 47 years: Dancing
with the Moonlit Knight, a song bemoaning the diminution of British
uniqueness in contemporary life as transatlantic influences begin to take hold
- perhaps prophetic in the McDonaldised, Starbucked, Disneyfied and Wal*Marted
towns and cities of today; Firth of Fifth opens with a blistering solo
piano piece from Tony Banks, who shows just what a consummate performer and
composer he is: sheer sublime beauty, yet full of energy and panache! As the
band come in it feels a little awkward musically as the momentum that has built
up seems to falter and the tempo slows. But this song is here to showcase
Banks, and after a flute passage from Gabriel we are back to keyboards, first
piano then synth, picking up themes from the opening section. This then leads
us to Steve Hackett picking up those themes and others with a soaring solo.
This is truly breath-taking symphonic music at its finest, rising to a series
of crescendi before finding resolution as the vocals return (not quite as
awkwardly as previously): it is, to my mind, the band's finest piece of work; The
Battle of Epping Forest is a great song, almost in the English music-hall
or pantomime tradition with its varied voices, pun-laden lyrics and changes in
musical style, and fits nicely alongside 'Harold The Barrel' and 'Get 'Em Out
By Friday' from their earlier canon; and Cinema Show, the last of the
long songs, begins with 12-string guitars backing the vocals, which grows
slowly as the rest of the band joins in for the chorus. There then follows an
extended instrumental passage with Gabriel providing flute and oboe motifs
before more vocal interplay between Gabriel & Collins leads us back to the
chorus. Hackett restates the vocal line on electric guitar, before an extended
synth solo from Banks builds to a crescendo.
This is, to me, one of the sublimest 53½ minutes of
progressive rock ever recorded. It's very difficult to say anything about this
album without sounding overly gushing in praise (as you may have noticed): it's
just that good! In the 47 years that have passed since its release nothing to
my mind has come close to bettering it in the field, and it continues to grow
on me with every listen.
Thanks for sticking with me (assuming
anyone has) and exploring with me what makes me tick musically. It’s been a
fascinating project putting this list together, and then trying to think why I
like this music, and why I like some more than others. There are a number of
bands and artists missing from the list, that have been important to me over my
life: Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Emerson Lake & Palmer,
Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, Be Bop Deluxe, Pat Metheney… just to name a few, but
that’s the way it is with lists like this – you always leave someone out. Music is life, and life is music, and
sharing it gives me life and hopefully enhances your lives too. Now I’d better
stop before I get too soppy or pretentious…
