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The futility & cruelty of war has been an ongoing theme in the song writing of Barclay James Harvest's guitarist John Lees. There's Summer Soldier (1972) - rather amateurish sound effects at the...

I take it all back! I have been listening to The Penultimate Collection more or less on repeat since my last post on the subject - and it is worth buying. There's excerpts from his excursions into...

It is very wide ranging - which means you do get to remind yourself of what the Wombles sounded like & his jaunty theme song for a BBC light entertainment is also included. But as well there are his...

Whilst I wait for The Hunting of the Snark to arrive, I have invested in a copy of Mike Batt The Ultimate Collection. The title makes it sound like the sort of CD Tesco sold & almost put me off -...

Well, thank you!

For some reason this passed me by, but I have rectified that this morning. I listened to the whole thing this morning on You Tube - and promptly ordered it from Amazon! ...

7/10 from Uncut, with some nice comments:

' .... BBT already seem a more fruitfully collaborative affair, as proven by the dynamic, violin-decorated 'The Connection Plan', penned by drummer Nick...

And ........

...... .. if the band continues, you can support them by becoming a passenger or a patron ........ it costs £30 per annum to become a passenger and, in return, you get exclusive...

Excellent. Three people who hadn't heard of Steve Broomhead yesterday now have!

Where to begin? For pastoral prog 'Matilda Yarrow' on You Tube. For Steve's slide guitar 'World Spins Round' on...

The masterpiece from the album -

youtube.com/watch?v=krLzc3nhv_Q

New article about the album Woolly Wolstenholme made after leaving Barclay James Harvest based on memories of those who were there at the time:

http://www.woollywolstenholme.co.uk/maestoso40.htm

At first there were just two of them and they had more hair than all of Mott the Hoople put together. I haven't heard all their stuff, but they do remind me a little bit of T.Rex. White Dove is my...

For this relief, much thanks.

One day there will be an inquiry into how the government has handled the pandemic. And you can be sure it won't report before the next general election.

No need to Google it, I can tell you: it was Jim Callaghan. He came from a working class background. Now we're back with PMs who knew each other when they were at Eton.

What other ones do you rate please?

Steve Hackett, I think that's what I am looking for. Heard Please Don't Touch but don't own it. He has a rich catalogue, it's time I explored it. Thanks for all the recommendations.

I've a birthday just about to come up & I'd like to treat myself to a prog box set to enjoy on the day & later on. Trouble is I can't find anything on the lists of best box sets that I want.

I've...

Seems a very interesting producer to me. He wasn't around for long. His Wikipedia entry has some good info on how he approached producing. In some cases he had a decisive say in what went on an...

Definitely the go-to producer of the first half of the seventies. Launched Black Sabbath, re-invented Barclay James Harvest etc etc. What do we make now of the work of this producer?

Also now reviewed in Mojo. Book out towards the end of next month.

A review of Steve's Hackett's autobiography A Genesis in My Bed in the latest issue UK music magazine Uncut suggests it'll be well worth reading. Apparently, owing to his raincoat, the others called...

As a casual listener to the music of Jean-Michel Jarre (I bought Oxygene and Rendez Vous back in the day), I invested, in 2018, in Planet Jarre: 50 Years of Music. A handy summary, I thought. In...

Thanks for that. A noble thing to do.

Glad I started this discussion.

That is just lovely, thanks.

I heard what constitutes his best-known work back in the late seventies, but there's lots, lots more - too much to dip into without recommendations. So recommendations of lesser-known albums or...

Finished reading the huge Yes section in Prog last night and then picked up the satirical magazine Private Eye ................ and just couldn't stop laughing at their spoof article about the...

Like most people here, I am a big fan of Roger Dean's cover art and that should naturally lead to liking Rodney Matthews' stuff for Magnum etc but it doesn't and I can't figure out why.

Yes, amongst the forgotten seem to be Field, credited with designing the cover for Moonmadness, and Bill Dare, who was inspired by an illustration by Maxfield Parrish to produce the beautiful sleeve...

Four Roger Dean illustrations on cardboard in the latest issue of Prog was a very welcome surprise. But it got me thinking about the designers of prog sleeves who are now largely forgotten and don't...

Not only is there a Phil Collins-led return of Genesis for later this year but also a new Barclay James Harvest album from the John Lees wing. No information apart from shows to support it has so...

It's his best work since he left the Enid. Every one of the Holden/Payne collaborations are just exquisite.

'Capture Light' is one of my favourite releases from the last few years. I have listened to it many times. John Holden seeks to buttress pieces of lyrical depth in warm, gentle, often very...

Last Knight is a project based in Spain. It shares musicians with the 21st century incarnation of Mandalaband.

The successor to their triple album Talking to the Moon is now released. It's...

I've only just begun to take an interest - and its been going on for years. It's a folk-prog retelling of the story of King Arthur. Fairport Convention are all over it and Maddy Prior's there too,...

Thoughts on this? Written by Alan Simon. Does he have a prog pedigree?

Features Jon Anderson, Roger Hodgson, Justin Hayward, Fairport etc

Page of Life is their pop album, I suppose. A lot of highly melodic songs and really just very beautiful. It's the one I listen to most often.

I wasn't thinking of guest musicians but rather people who contribute to most or all of the tracks in one way or another on at least one album. But this thread throws up more complications than I...

Of course it depends on how you define 'member'. If you saw Big Big Train lined up at the end of their recent shows, you'd think there are a hell of a lot of them, but I recall reading in Prog not...

It might be even more than 34 for the Enid. Didn't they recruit an additional guitarist shortly before they dissolved back into just R J Godfrey and Jason Ducker?

You might think it's Yes, but they've got nothing on the Enid. I've lost count of the number of musicians who have worn the Enid T-Shirt. Any other nominations?

The album certainly is a return to first principles for the Enid. If those early albums are your favourites, then U will go down well with you. Not that it has anything special on it, like you find...

I also rated the Joe Payne-fronted version of The Enid: Invicta really delivered for that interpretation of the band.

U is very much a return to how The Enid defined itself in the 1970s ........

It has stirred itself again! Les Holroyd has released on Soundcloud a demo of a new song written to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It's been many years since he...

New album from The Enid now definitely, really, actually happening. It's called U.

R.J. Godfrey solo album Homily still in gestation, it seems.

There are albums that leave an indelible mark on us. For me one of those is Young Men Gone West by City Boy. I played it to death at the time. I thought there wasn't a weak track on it and several...

Here's a songwriter and singer who deserved to find more listeners. Her first album What A Beautiful Place from 1971 is regarded as a lost classic. As I understand it, the album was released just...

Yes 50 Live works a treat when you listen to it quietly in bed in that 30 minutes before you slip into the land of Morpheus. That way you won't notice any of those annoying slips in the way the...

Lol Mason has died of a heart attack at his home in Birmingham, at the age of sixty nine.

I am rather partial to the choral singing that appears in these film scores. I've only had the time to listen to excerpts so in which one of them does it feature the most?

Thanks for all the suggestions (and the correction regarding 'Now We Are Free'). I have been following up everything that has been recommended and cd purchases are imminent!

A couple of weeks ago, on 'Desert Island Discs' on Radio 4, I heard 'Now We Are Free' from the soundtrack to the movie 'Gladiator'. Somehow when I saw the movie all those years ago, this...

I'd quite like to see a cd from Prog devoted to tribute bands. I guess these bands don't have albums to promote though and so they'd not want to stump up the cash.

And before one of the wags...

I subscribe. I also subscribe to Uncut and buy pretty much every issue of Mojo at the shops. I've read as much of the 100th issue as I want - that is a small number of the reviews (the word metal...

Don't know what the latest is with The Enid but good to see a tribute to the guitar playing of Steve Stewart in the latest issue of Prog. Must be thirty years since he left the band. Don't think he...

It's rumoured that Genesis themselves were keen ................... but their van broke down on the motorway and they had to turn back. :)

Spawton said in a recent interview that it was the name of a train set he possessed as a kid and he suggested it as the name for his elder brother's new wave band. That band finished and then some...

I think Swan Hunter is their masterpiece (quite a bold thing to say given that they have released a number of truly exceptional songs). But this one, once it is finished, I just want to listen to it...

I got the album on release day and have listened to it all the way through perhaps a dozen times now. I think it's a good album but nothing on it matches BBT's finest moments, such as the...

Aren't there meant to be two albums in the pipeline - the long-promised RJ Godfrey solo album Homily and a new album under the band name? As ever with the Enid, people wil know what's happening when...

A couple of months ago Greg Spawton did an interview with the magazine produced by his old school. He talked about ....... how his brother got him into Genesis, his unfashionably long hair, his love...