All great stuff. However, my favorite from that scene is the one album by Quiet Sun (Phil Manzanera, , Bill MacCormick, Dave Jarrett, and Charles Hayward): Mainstream. It's got a lot of the whimsy of the Canterbury scene, but also some of the most inspired jazzy hard-driving performances I've heard. Brilliant (with the exception of the last song Rongwrong, which has really funny/bizarre lyrics but the singing leaves a lot to be desired). Manzanera, of course, left the band to go to Roxy Music, while MacCormick went to Matching Mole.
Yes Quiet Sun were very different to those we generally regard as the Canterbury Scene . However their records were fantastic, beautifully recorded and timeless
Hatfield and the North and Soft Machine are amazing. My other top favorites are probably Egg, and especially National Health. Of Queues and Cures is an amazing album.
Yup I'm a big King Crimson fan, also Gentle Giant. I have one Porcupine Tree album, forgot the name of it (released around '94 or '95) and have listened to Dream Theater a lot. I think there are certainly some interesting prog bands around today but most of them don't really stretch the boundaries in any significant way. They are good at making interesting 'sound' but that's more of an ambient approach and not much like the groundbreaking compositional work of these Canterbury bands and others.
How come it took you so long to get into this music? I can still picture us boys and girls having a good old freakout to King Crimson's Cat food/Groon at a party when we were 11 years old in 1970. In 1971 I bought Egg's first album when I was 12 - I'd put Symphony No. 2 on and just sit by the record player and shake my head to the cool sounds. You're never too young.
Very interesting history. Are you a King Crimson fan? Also, farther into the future of prog, what do you think of Porcupine Tree or Dream Theater? They are certainly more on the modern prog rock side.
I have just bought The Rotters Club and In The Land Of Grey & Pink in the last couple of weeks, both fantastic albums, how did I manage to avoid them for so long? Will check out the Soft Machine album too now, thanks for the video.
It probably wasn't technically a "village" back then either, maybe a bit less populated and less surrounding suburbia. Actually I worked for a British ex-Lloyd's of London guy in Princeton back in the 80s, and one of his associates knew Canterbury well and told me that (as of the late 80s) you could be at one end of town and see clear across to the other end of town easily (probably drive right thorugh it in less than 4 minutes).
Yes as a city Canterbury is highly Conservative, small and offers very little compared to ‘ proper ‘ cities such as Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield etc
Sorry about that.... I know that "Canterbury" music (and particularly the band Caravan - the 1971 album especially) is not exactly a match-up for Harry Potter and being "stoned". That's just my whimsical way of looking at it. Probably describing the album cover as evoking images of "Lord of the Rings" would have been more accurate, or maybe even early Harry Potter. Of course these things have nothing to do with each other, as this is one person's imagination (me).
A cathedral city with a population of more than 40,000 isn't exactly a "village". (It would have been significantly smaller in the 40s and 50s, when the core musicians of the Canterbury music scene were growing up in or around there, though.)
No, it was still the headquarters of the Anglican Church, even in the 1940s and 50s (and had been since the Reformation). Incidentally, on a clear day I can stand on Leith Hill in Surrey and see St Alban's Cathedral in Hertfordshire quite clearly; does that make London - the biggest city in Europe - a village?
I don't like to be nasty, Glen, but it really was the Harry Potter reference that did it for me. What is it about Harry Potter and Americans these days?; the latter seem to take the former for some kind of emblem of authentic England rather than a series of derivative, badly-written children's novels by a mediocre but obscenely financially over-rewarded writer. I don't really care for Tolkien either, but he's closer to the artwork on the album cover while Edward Lear is closer to its lyrics.
My top Canterbury bands are Caravan, Egg, Steve Hillage (Fish Rising), Soft Machine (first two LPs) , Gong....... I think what you're trying to describe is how bands from that era have an environmental factor in their overall sound...... Canterbury bands sounds like they do is because that area is slightly more rural than where other prog bands sprouted from..... What a smorgasbord of choice you were offered back then eh....??? And not in the scope of your talk are other great prog bands like Gentle Giant, King Crimson, Yes, Hawkwind,etc.. I am sure I could name a tonne of others...... Modern bands are just so generic and safe these days....
Nonstante lo pseudonimo, io sono Italiano. Despite to my nickname, I am Italian. You prefere Ratledge, Steward or Sinclair? Jazz approach (Rat) Melodic approach (Sin) or both (Stew)?
You have but only touched the tip…… LOL!!! After over forty years, I'm still hunting down old recordings that tie into the Canterbury family tree; and listening to modern recordings by some who are still with us. I just got a hold of the latest CD by Phil Miller's In Cahoots titled "Mind Over Matter"…. Anyway, you are spot-on in regards to all three… All three a must!!!
Marc Bolan wasn't averse to a bit of fame and fortune himself (as he eventually - and pretty conclusively - proved), but I'm fairly sure that he would have despised J. K. Rowling had he lived to cast his academically untutored but intuitively shrewd eye over her literary output.
Hey Glen -- long time, no type (check my channel; you'll know who I am, you ol' ex-roommate, you. Bhongwater is now called Three Cubed :) Totally agreed about all three albums and with the especial praise for TRC -- truly an enduring masterpiece on any level. I'd draw the links more in strictly musical terms. Pierre Moerlen of Gong said "the Canterbury sound" involved a particular approach to 9th chords and I'd generally agree. But even more fundamentaly, an approach to odd and shifting meter more enthusiastic than in mainstream prog linked it all -- from the poppier Caravan to the avant garde Soft Machine -- especially in the early-mid 70s before stagflation and the second oil crunch put the screws to the recording industry (it was far less that punk killed prog than the bad economy killed prog and then gave birth to punk). We've talked about this all before. Oh, and isn't Harry Potter anachronistic? I'd use Alice In Wonderland to evoke that sort of imagery, which was more beloved by Canterbury than JRR Tolkien. And I'd call it less strictly psychedelic (although it was that, but many bands of that era were much more "stoned" without being nearly as progressive or exploratory) than whimsical -- which is really the keynote mood in Canterbury distinguishing it from, say, the heavy seriousness of bands like ELP, Crimson and Yes. You should have recited some of the song titles :) You did mention the prophet of weirdness Daevid Allen and his importance to the scene, and I think any Canterbury historian would have to call Gong and their space-jazz odd meter jamming a cornerstone Canterbury band and extremely important influence -- including to today's jam bands. It's impossible to imagine Ozric Tentacles without Gong. Virgin Records is also an extremely important link. Richard Branson at that time was not only an idealistic hippie offering free vegan eats in his record store, but the enormous success of Mike Oldfield's theme to The Exorcist (on Tubular Bells) gave them not only a big influx of cash, but the confidence to try to run a truly alternative label. I wouldn't call Oldfield's music even a tangential part of "the Canterbury sound" even though it's solidly progrock, but I would mention a whole other arm that's often connected to Canterbury by critics and shares some genealogy, namely the avant garde / political axis around Henry Cow, a pivotal band for the future genres of RIO (Rock In Opposition) and avant prog. So my particular three Canterbury albums would be Soft Machine 4, The Rotters Club and Henry Cow's Leg-End ... Oh, and if you'd like to scope out where I've been posting a lot, come on by The Mare's Nest, the unofficial Cardiacs forum. Cardiacs are a legendary British band from the 80s through the 00's, "psychedelic" according to their leader Tim Smith, and heavily influenced by Canterbury (as well as Zappa). Their first drummer Mark Cawthra was the "insanely confident 16-year-old" who kept trying to get an audition for National Health ... We talk about all kinds of music there and some of us are hardcore Canterbury heads ... forum.cardiacs.org/index.php See you there!
Oh wow, my old Rutgers buddy and roommate... Good to hear from you after all these years! Yes my position about "what killed Prog" involved a lot of factors, including the economy, but I have always (also) maintained that Punk did not directly kill Prog, but that there was an interim period from about 74 to 76 of a "back to basics movement" typified by musicians such as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, et al. This was "back to basics" but not "back to the primitive roots" which is what Punk was all about. Punk just took the inevitable one step further. I have also always felt that what Punk was truly rebelling against was not Prog but the mid-70s slick, laid-back, overproduced "LA" sound prevalent at the time: Little River Band, Ambrosia, Orleans, Climax Blues Band, mid-period Eagles... that sort of thing.
Hey, I just lost a big personal reply I was writing since last night (that's what happens when you try to read posts before your first cup of coffee), but lemme get a response out to this, because you know I have lots of thoughts about it. There was always a "back to basics" contingent throughout the history of rock, though, and it never was a particular threat to prog (think of early Sabbath and AC / DC, Slade, Foghat, etc. at the height of prog's popularity) so I don't think those radio-friendly dudes were particularly antagonistic to prog or vice-versa (Manfried Mann's Earth Band, after all, covered The Boss's Blinded By The Light -- and left everybody believing it was a song about a feminine hygiene product :). Even at the very height of Yes and ELP's immense mid-70s popularity, prog fans were always a niche audience and prog never really competed with bands more oriented to hits. That's what FM "progressive rock radio" (later called AOR) was for, after all ... And, as you say, early punk didn't *specifically* rebel against prog as such; they were easily as pissed off at Led Zeppelin and Blue Oyster Cult as the whole contingent you mentioned, but less that they were "easy listening" than that they were -- like Zep and BOC -- *corporate*, and played robotic shows in huge arenas. (Funny also that Ambrosia started out as a prog band.) And many early punks actually liked truly radical rock -- Beefheart, Egg, Magma, Henry Cow were and still are cool to dudes like John Lydon, Richard Hell and Captain Sensible. But by the early 80s, at the time of New Wave and post punk, a consensus began brewing, fueled mostly by the British music press and driven by their hatred of Thatcher and all things not arising from the hardscrabble working class, and this consensus *did* single out prog for particularly vituperative abuse. Some of it was purely (and crassly) class-based, like hating on Genesis for coming from the Charterhouse public (private in US terms) school. Some of it was taking an argument which had been around forever, that too much focus on technical ability is detrimental to good pop music, and stretching it to absurdity (justified by silly things like Sid Vicious not knowing how to play the bass). And these things combined into something which had been around since at least when Dylan was hailed as a genius without the golden-toned voice of most successful folk singers, which all calcified into something I call the Cult of Authenticity: The idea that the more rough-hewn you were, the less basic musical competence you displayed, the closer you must be to the raw expression that must after all be at the heart of all truly compelling music. It's taking an argument that had some utility when criticizing, say, interminable guitar solos and slick, soulless fusion and driving it into the knifepoint of absurdity. Which didn't stop it from underwriting a decade's worth of music criticism in the NME and Melody Maker ... And this is exactly the bollox that Dave Stewart busted a blood vessel over in the liner notes to National Health Complete.
Oh jeez, my Harry Potter reference has now blown up beyond original intention. No, I'm not impressed with authors just because they are rich; it was used as a metaphor to draw others into this discussion who know nothing about this music, but likely know about the H.P. books and movies. And, besides, if British musicians had been doing their job over the past 3 decades, maybe Rowling would not be where she is today. We older Yanks got our Tolkien-esque stuff from bands like ELP and Genesis.
You're missing the point, Percy. I'm saying that J. K. Rowling is rich and famous and that some other people seem to be impressed by this both in her case and more generally.
You omitted the most important name that launched what we call the Canterbury Scene. Do you know what that is ? THE WILDE FLOWERS of course as they were the very foundation that splintered into Caravan and Soft Machine. Get your facts straight
All great stuff. However, my favorite from that scene is the one album by Quiet Sun (Phil Manzanera, , Bill MacCormick, Dave Jarrett, and Charles Hayward): Mainstream. It's got a lot of the whimsy of the Canterbury scene, but also some of the most inspired jazzy hard-driving performances I've heard. Brilliant (with the exception of the last song Rongwrong, which has really funny/bizarre lyrics but the singing leaves a lot to be desired). Manzanera, of course, left the band to go to Roxy Music, while MacCormick went to Matching Mole.
Yes Quiet Sun were very different to those we generally regard as the Canterbury Scene . However their records were fantastic, beautifully recorded and timeless
Hi good analysis. Soft Machine 4 is the pinnacle in my view. Kevin Ayers work you have missed out and several of his albums are the work of genius
Hatfield and the North and Soft Machine are amazing. My other top favorites are probably Egg, and especially National Health. Of Queues and Cures is an amazing album.
Yup I'm a big King Crimson fan, also Gentle Giant. I have one Porcupine Tree album, forgot the name of it (released around '94 or '95) and have listened to Dream Theater a lot. I think there are certainly some interesting prog bands around today but most of them don't really stretch the boundaries in any significant way. They are good at making interesting 'sound' but that's more of an ambient approach and not much like the groundbreaking compositional work of these Canterbury bands and others.
you may disagree, but to me, EGG is the Canterbury band. The 1st two records. Really enjoy listening to your commentary.
Amazing Video 😊 please make more of these. Love to learn about these,, Prog rock ‚‘ Genres 😊😊
How come it took you so long to get into this music?
I can still picture us boys and girls having a good old freakout to King Crimson's Cat food/Groon at a party when we were 11 years old in 1970.
In 1971 I bought Egg's first album when I was 12 - I'd put Symphony No. 2 on and just sit by the record player and shake my head to the cool sounds. You're never too young.
Agreed on The Rotters Club.....my absolute FAVOURITE album of all time!! A masterpiece gem of gems.
Very interesting history. Are you a King Crimson fan? Also, farther into the future of prog, what do you think of Porcupine Tree or Dream Theater? They are certainly more on the modern prog rock side.
We agree 100%. Also add Matching Mole, National Health, and Gong.
I totally agree on Rotter's Club.. Mindblowing, magnificent album
Glen, Canterbury is a city because it has a cathedral but yes it is quirky.
I have just bought The Rotters Club and In The Land Of Grey & Pink in the last couple of weeks, both fantastic albums, how did I manage to avoid them for so long? Will check out the Soft Machine album too now, thanks for the video.
It probably wasn't technically a "village" back then either, maybe a bit less populated and less surrounding suburbia. Actually I worked for a British ex-Lloyd's of London guy in Princeton back in the 80s, and one of his associates knew Canterbury well and told me that (as of the late 80s) you could be at one end of town and see clear across to the other end of town easily (probably drive right thorugh it in less than 4 minutes).
Yes as a city Canterbury is highly Conservative, small and offers very little compared to ‘ proper ‘ cities such as Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield etc
Sorry about that.... I know that "Canterbury" music (and particularly the band Caravan - the 1971 album especially) is not exactly a match-up for Harry Potter and being "stoned". That's just my whimsical way of looking at it. Probably describing the album cover as evoking images of "Lord of the Rings" would have been more accurate, or maybe even early Harry Potter. Of course these things have nothing to do with each other, as this is one person's imagination (me).
A cathedral city with a population of more than 40,000 isn't exactly a "village". (It would have been significantly smaller in the 40s and 50s, when the core musicians of the Canterbury music scene were growing up in or around there, though.)
No, it was still the headquarters of the Anglican Church, even in the 1940s and 50s (and had been since the Reformation).
Incidentally, on a clear day I can stand on Leith Hill in Surrey and see St Alban's Cathedral in Hertfordshire quite clearly; does that make London - the biggest city in Europe - a village?
I don't like to be nasty, Glen, but it really was the Harry Potter reference that did it for me. What is it about Harry Potter and Americans these days?; the latter seem to take the former for some kind of emblem of authentic England rather than a series of derivative, badly-written children's novels by a mediocre but obscenely financially over-rewarded writer.
I don't really care for Tolkien either, but he's closer to the artwork on the album cover while Edward Lear is closer to its lyrics.
My top Canterbury bands are Caravan, Egg, Steve Hillage (Fish Rising), Soft Machine (first two LPs) , Gong....... I think what you're trying to describe is how bands from that era have an environmental factor in their overall sound...... Canterbury bands sounds like they do is because that area is slightly more rural than where other prog bands sprouted from..... What a smorgasbord of choice you were offered back then eh....??? And not in the scope of your talk are other great prog bands like Gentle Giant, King Crimson, Yes, Hawkwind,etc.. I am sure I could name a tonne of others...... Modern bands are just so generic and safe these days....
Nonstante lo pseudonimo, io sono Italiano. Despite to my nickname, I am Italian. You prefere Ratledge, Steward or Sinclair? Jazz approach (Rat) Melodic approach (Sin) or both (Stew)?
Good calls. I would have put National Health up there aswell.
You have but only touched the tip…… LOL!!! After over forty years, I'm still hunting down old recordings that tie into the Canterbury family tree; and listening to modern recordings by some who are still with us. I just got a hold of the latest CD by Phil Miller's In Cahoots titled "Mind Over Matter"….
Anyway, you are spot-on in regards to all three… All three a must!!!
Marc Bolan wasn't averse to a bit of fame and fortune himself (as he eventually - and pretty conclusively - proved), but I'm fairly sure that he would have despised J. K. Rowling had he lived to cast his academically untutored but intuitively shrewd eye over her literary output.
Hey Glen -- long time, no type (check my channel; you'll know who I am, you ol' ex-roommate, you. Bhongwater is now called Three Cubed :) Totally agreed about all three albums and with the especial praise for TRC -- truly an enduring masterpiece on any level.
I'd draw the links more in strictly musical terms. Pierre Moerlen of Gong said "the Canterbury sound" involved a particular approach to 9th chords and I'd generally agree. But even more fundamentaly, an approach to odd and shifting meter more enthusiastic than in mainstream prog linked it all -- from the poppier Caravan to the avant garde Soft Machine -- especially in the early-mid 70s before stagflation and the second oil crunch put the screws to the recording industry (it was far less that punk killed prog than the bad economy killed prog and then gave birth to punk). We've talked about this all before.
Oh, and isn't Harry Potter anachronistic? I'd use Alice In Wonderland to evoke that sort of imagery, which was more beloved by Canterbury than JRR Tolkien. And I'd call it less strictly psychedelic (although it was that, but many bands of that era were much more "stoned" without being nearly as progressive or exploratory) than whimsical -- which is really the keynote mood in Canterbury distinguishing it from, say, the heavy seriousness of bands like ELP, Crimson and Yes. You should have recited some of the song titles :)
You did mention the prophet of weirdness Daevid Allen and his importance to the scene, and I think any Canterbury historian would have to call Gong and their space-jazz odd meter jamming a cornerstone Canterbury band and extremely important influence -- including to today's jam bands. It's impossible to imagine Ozric Tentacles without Gong.
Virgin Records is also an extremely important link. Richard Branson at that time was not only an idealistic hippie offering free vegan eats in his record store, but the enormous success of Mike Oldfield's theme to The Exorcist (on Tubular Bells) gave them not only a big influx of cash, but the confidence to try to run a truly alternative label. I wouldn't call Oldfield's music even a tangential part of "the Canterbury sound" even though it's solidly progrock, but I would mention a whole other arm that's often connected to Canterbury by critics and shares some genealogy, namely the avant garde / political axis around Henry Cow, a pivotal band for the future genres of RIO (Rock In Opposition) and avant prog.
So my particular three Canterbury albums would be Soft Machine 4, The Rotters Club and Henry Cow's Leg-End ...
Oh, and if you'd like to scope out where I've been posting a lot, come on by The Mare's Nest, the unofficial Cardiacs forum. Cardiacs are a legendary British band from the 80s through the 00's, "psychedelic" according to their leader Tim Smith, and heavily influenced by Canterbury (as well as Zappa). Their first drummer Mark Cawthra was the "insanely confident 16-year-old" who kept trying to get an audition for National Health ...
We talk about all kinds of music there and some of us are hardcore Canterbury heads ...
forum.cardiacs.org/index.php
See you there!
Oh wow, my old Rutgers buddy and roommate... Good to hear from you after all these years!
Yes my position about "what killed Prog" involved a lot of factors, including the economy, but I have always (also) maintained that Punk did not directly kill Prog, but that there was an interim period from about 74 to 76 of a "back to basics movement" typified by musicians such as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, et al. This was "back to basics" but not "back to the primitive roots" which is what Punk was all about. Punk just took the inevitable one step further.
I have also always felt that what Punk was truly rebelling against was not Prog but the mid-70s slick, laid-back, overproduced "LA" sound prevalent at the time: Little River Band, Ambrosia, Orleans, Climax Blues Band, mid-period Eagles... that sort of thing.
Hey, I just lost a big personal reply I was writing since last night (that's what happens when you try to read posts before your first cup of coffee), but lemme get a response out to this, because you know I have lots of thoughts about it.
There was always a "back to basics" contingent throughout the history of rock, though, and it never was a particular threat to prog (think of early Sabbath and AC / DC, Slade, Foghat, etc. at the height of prog's popularity) so I don't think those radio-friendly dudes were particularly antagonistic to prog or vice-versa (Manfried Mann's Earth Band, after all, covered The Boss's Blinded By The Light -- and left everybody believing it was a song about a feminine hygiene product :). Even at the very height of Yes and ELP's immense mid-70s popularity, prog fans were always a niche audience and prog never really competed with bands more oriented to hits. That's what FM "progressive rock radio" (later called AOR) was for, after all ...
And, as you say, early punk didn't *specifically* rebel against prog as such; they were easily as pissed off at Led Zeppelin and Blue Oyster Cult as the whole contingent you mentioned, but less that they were "easy listening" than that they were -- like Zep and BOC -- *corporate*, and played robotic shows in huge arenas. (Funny also that Ambrosia started out as a prog band.) And many early punks actually liked truly radical rock -- Beefheart, Egg, Magma, Henry Cow were and still are cool to dudes like John Lydon, Richard Hell and Captain Sensible.
But by the early 80s, at the time of New Wave and post punk, a consensus began brewing, fueled mostly by the British music press and driven by their hatred of Thatcher and all things not arising from the hardscrabble working class, and this consensus *did* single out prog for particularly vituperative abuse. Some of it was purely (and crassly) class-based, like hating on Genesis for coming from the Charterhouse public (private in US terms) school. Some of it was taking an argument which had been around forever, that too much focus on technical ability is detrimental to good pop music, and stretching it to absurdity (justified by silly things like Sid Vicious not knowing how to play the bass). And these things combined into something which had been around since at least when Dylan was hailed as a genius without the golden-toned voice of most successful folk singers, which all calcified into something I call the Cult of Authenticity: The idea that the more rough-hewn you were, the less basic musical competence you displayed, the closer you must be to the raw expression that must after all be at the heart of all truly compelling music.
It's taking an argument that had some utility when criticizing, say, interminable guitar solos and slick, soulless fusion and driving it into the knifepoint of absurdity. Which didn't stop it from underwriting a decade's worth of music criticism in the NME and Melody Maker ...
And this is exactly the bollox that Dave Stewart busted a blood vessel over in the liner notes to National Health Complete.
Oh jeez, my Harry Potter reference has now blown up beyond original intention. No, I'm not impressed with authors just because they are rich; it was used as a metaphor to draw others into this discussion who know nothing about this music, but likely know about the H.P. books and movies.
And, besides, if British musicians had been doing their job over the past 3 decades, maybe Rowling would not be where she is today. We older Yanks got our Tolkien-esque stuff from bands like ELP and Genesis.
You're missing the point, Percy. I'm saying that J. K. Rowling is rich and famous and that some other people seem to be impressed by this both in her case and more generally.
Hatfield & The North!
Canterbury is a CITY by the way !
Gutted all the way to the bank, Percy. But then some of us aren't deeply impressed just by by fame or money.
You omitted the most important name that launched what we call the Canterbury Scene.
Do you know what that is ?
THE WILDE FLOWERS of course as they were the very foundation that splintered into Caravan and Soft Machine.
Get your facts straight
I do mention Wilde Flowers at 9:22. Sorry, it should have been mentioned much earlier. Was 12 years ago I made this video. :)
i think he should have said tolkien instead of naff harry potter
Gothic? Stoned? Harry Potter? No! No! A million times NO!