I used to love them. Saw them at the LSE. And at Farx in Potters Bar.

Yes during the long hot summer of '76?

PRESS RELEASE

Tip top mighty prog rock behemoth combo Accropode proudly unveil their eagerly anticipated long playing recording ‘Chess Informant' on the Music for Pleasure label.

Two years in the making, the record opens with the coruscating ‘Shovel Test Pit', a damning indictment of man's relentless march into the future while trampling over his history and traditions. The album takes in the live favourite ‘Gregor Eisenhorn'. Losing none of its noodlesome intricacy in its new studio construction, the song is a tribute to the fictional Inquisitor who has featured in the sci-fantasy game of the same name and the trilogy of novels by Dan Abnett.

‘The Aurora Programme' is a heart felt plea for Europe to reach beyond the stars and look for life in the far reaches of the universe. Moogs and modern electronic instrumentation pioneered by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop are intertwined with good old fashioned loud six string guitars to draw the listener in to an other worldly experience.

Illustrating their topicality and attentiveness to modern mores, ‘Aspire Technologies Inc' passes comment on the voracious consumerism that the band feel is enveloping life today. Effectively utilizing unusual instruments such as a glockenspiel and harmonic generator, Accropode reach out to the listener, creating a symphonic haze of aural beatitude.

Side two opens with ‘Hose's Langur', a timely reminder that man's quest for progress can have serious repercussions for the natural species of nations. It can be seen as companion piece to ‘Aspire Technologies Inc'.

Adding the almost musical hall humour of ‘Malden Evening News', to their ever expanding repertoire, the band explore new territory while remaining true to their inner essence as a no holds barred, pedal to the floor rock band that are not afraid to experiment and push their listeners that bit further in the quest for the ultimate aural experience.

Closing with the twenty five minute epic rock blow out ‘Azerbaijan International University', the LP is breathtaking in its scope, ambition and variety. Destined to become a classic of modern rock, the recording finds the inventive troupe at the very top of their game. They have created a world of sounds, a world that you will want to visit again and again and again.

Full track listing:

Side 1
1. Shovel Test Pit
2. Political Suicide
3. Gravure Idol
4. Gregor Eisenhorn
5. Aurora Programme
6. Aspire Technologies Inc

Side 2
1. Hose's Langur
2. 20th Century Masters
3. Malden Evening News
4. Look and Tremble
5. Yellow-throated Euphonia
6. Azerbaijan International University

‘Chess Informant' is released on 12th March through Music for Pleasure.

"More Heep, Quo, Sabs, Purps, Xaviers, Accropode, Zep, Rooster..."

Band: Souris River Telecommunications

Album: Equestrian at the 1988 Summer Olympics

Side One:
1. Cross-Niger transition forests
2. Munster (European Parliament constituency)
3. The Light Brigade (The Outer Limits)
4. Punk-O-Rama Vol. 2
5. Congo DR national football team

Side Two:
1. Church of the Holy Trinity and Rectory (Middletown, Connecticut)
2. Vivian Fowler
3. Berkeley Hills
4. Campton, Kentucky
5. Eugenio Azcarraga

and then nothing until i heard the announcement through the tinny pa that Rosa Stone were coming on and not only that but also that they were going to play their masterpiece 'Gunhild' aka War Sword in its entirety.
I wiped the spittle from my chin and wrung my t shirt out and loped towards the stage which seemed to be moving away from me depspite my most concerted loping. As the opening bars of the space juggernaut that is 'Plak Raet' boomed out across the fields the acid kicked in. 'Timmy Purcell' the ephemeral second track danced through the crowd only to be crushed by the pounding majesty of 'Ran' as the band hit their stride. I was convinced my eyes were decieving me but i was sure that the power of the song was actually lifting Ariel Winston (their stellar stoyteller)off the stage as he retold the horror and redemption that was the track 'Lifting body'. I needed a break, things were getting too intense; it was not to be. I turned to head for some space in the field near the mushroom house (really a tent)when i was almost blown off my feet by the white heat of the sun that shone from Didi Keener's fretboard as he ploughed into 'Castros Island'. I had to sit down. I knew how this was going to end and they didn't disappoint. 'Ruger .308' blasted from the Marshall stacks and laid me out cold with its slabs of sound coated with the sugar of melody.
When i came to everyone had gone but that gig lives forever in my heart and head.

Artist: Museum of World Culture
Album: Guyana School of Agriculture

1. Javid Taghiyev
2. Willetton Senior High School
3. Stephen Parkinson
4. CCBeck
5. Il Pigmalione
6. Discount Tire Company
7. Brockport New York
8. Disaggregated Sovereignty
9. Singalila Ridge
10. Tobias Ohls

Fusion band "Museum of World Culture" followed up their breakthrough album "Villa Garzón" with this 1993 offering. Receiving lukewarm reviews it failed to establish the group as leaders on the World Music scene. Many fans felt that it tried to appeal too much to Western, particularly US, tastes, as exemplified by such tracks as "Discount Tire Company" and "Newport New York".

However, it did contain fan favourites "Javid Taghiyev" and "Singalila Ridge" which became regular fixtures in live performance. The standout track was of course "Disaggregated Sovereignty", which many fans felt should have been the album title. It was a shame that the rest of the band could not persuade glockenspiel and tamagotchi player, Lars Ohls, to drop the sickly ode to his new son "Tobias", which finished off the album (in more ways than one). The sounds of Tobias in the womb with which the album faded away, only added to the sense of nausea this last track induced in the listener.

....of Emirates Towers and their groundbreaking album "Neobathiea" with its mystical sounds and challenging tracklisting

1. Laurence Gronlund
2. 2000 Labatt Brier
3. Kormista
4. The Ashes
5. The Barristers Association of Philadelphia
6. Arthur Rudolf Hantzsch
7. Captain Spaulding
8. Metro Prystai

It all went pear-shaped after the real Barristers Association of Philadelphia sued the Towers and they were left penniless and broke....it was a wondorous time while it lasted.

Artist: Club Chipmunk

Debut (and Final) Album: Abdullah Baiat

They were out of Bicester but hiked to London with one drum pad and a large Boots No.7 makeup bag. Incredible live (as long as they plugged the tape machine in), it was the poor production values on Abdullah Baiat that put paid to what could have been the biggest musical movement since Denis Roussos.

If I remember correctly, the track listing was as follows;

Side One

1) Maurice Stokes - named after their hairdresser who doubled as costumier 'cos Tony Hadley refused to speak to them. Sort of Spandau meets Johnny Cash with swearing. And rollers.

2) Charles Steven Booth - instrumental based around a jazzy 7/8 loop.

3) Hits 93, Vol III - includes the classic line; 'I feel as if I'm in a dream, where Club Chipmunk steals the scene.'

4) Basketball Handbook - possibly the first example of a legitimate sample. The crazy introduction to a Harlem Globetrotters game at Wembley Arena over electronic pan pipes. Always a live favourite.

Side Two

1) Cam Carreon - Bicester Gaelic; Nigel the vocalist always had trouble with this, said it made his tongue go numb, but that could have been the paracetamol.

2) Cruise of the Jasper B - their greatest never hit. Entered the charts at 902 after Nigel's mum taped it off Steve Wright in the afternoon and played it in Bicester Town Hall during a debate on the bypass. I remember Boy George saying he wanted a piece of this. I think that's what he said.

3) Thromboelastography - the ballad. Made grown men cry. Only a few of us know it was based on truth. When Nigel admitted he'd been diagnosed with it at the Hackney Fruit Market gig we knew it was over.

4) Lemonade (album) - written the same afternoon as the Fruit Market gig and rushed onto the album.

Nigel had a fear of the number 5, hence the number of tracks on each side. I suggested he call the album 'Fear of Fives' but he said it was post-obvious.

When it all went wrong, Nigel took up divining and the makeup bag signed with Revlon for a 2-figure deal. I last saw Nigel heading towards the A1, all shocking pink mascara, limping from the Throm... and clutching two oak twigs in his shrivelled right hand.

your train will soon be arriving at ....

Midorigak Station

Please remember to take all your luggage with you and, of course your complimentary copy of
the Station' debut album Marnian Epoch which contains such piping hot "numbers" as:

Buffer P2
Doug Wilson
Humanist Party Of Switzerland
Roger de Flor
San Silvestron
United people Party (Poland)
Cane Grove
Vredenburg
AV-8 Harrier 2
Joseph Of Arimathea

We hope you have enjoyed your journey and will soon be travelling with us again.

... ploughed the furrow left by Oasis, the same could not be said of Claude St. Sauveur.

This 4-piece band initially started in the jazz clubs of Cleethorpes, but never really fitted in with the scene - "too French" was the cry oft heard in the cold winds of eastern England. Their jazz beginnings, however, still bubble through their debut (and only album) "Clay Nail" - but the core style of this critically forgotten album remains distinctly funk.

Led by the shy singer/drummer Greene Township,it is hard to believe a powerful vocal punch that demands your attention could come from one so withdrawn from society. This vocal style - often mimicked, rarely matched - was the main reason George Chetwynd signed them to his now defunct label ‘The Kindness Of Strangers'.

Rumours persisted in certain parts of the musical press that the recording of this album nearly never happened - with much of the blame being laid at the door of the controversial , yet charismatic bassist, Nepenthes X Kuchingensis . This tension between singer & bass-player meant that gigs often descended into childish games, Kuchingensis aping Townships nervous tick - to which he would simply mutter ‘Laiko'.

Despite this ultimately destructive rivalry in the band, the other members Cloudveil Dome (Keyboards) & Wilma Building (trumpet) forged a close personal relationship - which would ultimately lead to them leaving the band in 2003, to forge a career as session musicians.

Kuchingensis, having grown weary of the UK music scene - moved back to his native Greece - where he helps to produce local Athenian artists. What happened to Green Township remains unknown, even in Cleethorpes - latest rumours being he had changed his name to avoid recognition - and is now doing charity work in Canada.

Tracklisting:
Libburn
WKRB
Delasonica
Unsaturated Compound
Move-By-Wire
Mucronea
Boomerang
Base Details
Belau Rekid
Model Behaviour

P.S.

Since this article was written, Claude St. Sauveur have reformed and are now engaged on a lucrative tour of the middle-east.

In the second part of our interview with prog rockers Xavier de Maistre, the band take us track-by-track through sides one and two of their classic double album Healey, Kirklees

SIDE 1

Crispin Keating-Dower: Jan Fuxx from the New Musical Express erroneously described side one of Healey, Kirklees as a suite. In fact it was conceived as a triptych.

1. Pseudomonas Jessenii

Crispin Keating-Dower: This is one of our more autobiographical songs.

Richard Slann: One evening Crispin and I broke into the biology labs at Oxford University. We were both dressed as court jesters and had these homemade banners with us that read ‘Pathogens Have Rights Too'. The plan was that we would steal some of the vials of bacteria and release them into the wild. It was a piece of performance art that went badly awry.

Crispin Keating-Dower: It transpired that the lab we broke into was involved in the production of an infectious strain of the chicken pox virus. Richard and I fell ill almost immediately. I later passed on the virus to my harpsichord.

Graham Page: At the time we were all living together in the same house. The morning after the break-in, some men in hazard suits came crashing through the front door. Crispin and Richard were taken away to hospital. The harpsichord was carted off to parts unknown.

Richard Slann: The authorities did some tests and concluded that the virus had taken up residence in the keyboard. I heard through the grapevine that it was sealed in concrete and buried at a secret location.

Crispin Keating-Dower: In 1989, I had the local constabulary turn up on my doorstep. Apparently some nutter had worked out where they had buried the harpsichord and had dug it up. I told them: "It weren't me guv. Look for the bloke with spots on his face."

2. Jaraguá do Sul

Crispin Keating-Dower: It is the year 1999 and Jaraguá is the barbarian king of post-apocalyptic Brazil. He is at war with the Roman empire, which has re-established itself in North America. The Roman leader, Cadnium Ceaser, comes to respect Jaraguá's courage in battle and offers him prefecture of South America in return for an end to hostilities in the region. Jaraguá turns down his offer, even though he knows the cost to himself and his people will be high. The song is an allegory for colonialisation. On a more personal note it's about the relationship I had with my father, with me in the role of Jaraguá.

Richard Slann: There is nothing in Crispin's lyrics that explicitly says that the story is set in Brazil, in the near the future, or that Jaraguá is engaged in a war with the neo-Roman empire. We leave it to our audience to read between the lines and work things out for themselves.

David Cribbage: In most modern pop songs, half the lyrics are exposition. If you look at something like Wannabe by The Spice Girls, they spend most of it setting the scene. We are lucky to have been blessed with an intelligent fanbase. It means that when we come to write narrative songs, we can dispense with a lot of background detail and get right on with telling the story.

Crispin Keating-Dower: I think there is a strong case for saying that this song anticipates the war in Iraq.

3. Carphalea Obovata

Graham Page: My girlfriend left me during the Gironde sessions. I came home one day and she had cleared-out our flat. The only thing she left behind was the Spider Plant that lived on the kitchen windowsill.

Crispin Keating-Dower: Carphalea Obovata was inspired partly by the break-up of Graham's relationship and partly by the written works of Franz Kafka. It's the story of a man whose girlfriend turns into a Spider Plant and then slowly takes over the house. Lyrically the song breaks new ground. I was the first person to rhyme "lies" with "photosynthesise." The Ivor Novello award that I received in 1987 was a belated recognition of this achievement.

Graham Page: Most concert-goers wave cigarette lighters above their heads during the slow numbers. Our fans wave Spider Plants. Sometimes I look out into the audience and it's like the day of the triffids.

Richard Slann: At the height of our popularity we were getting Spider Plants sent to us through the mail. Fans were leaving them on our doorsteps.

Graham Page: In 1982 we launched Xavier Plant Wholesalers. We began by selling job lots of Spider Plants to local stores. The business has grown to the extent that if you buy a Spider Plant anywhere in the mainland UK there is a 98% chance that it's one of ours. Last year we expanded into Europe. We've made more money off the sale of Spider Plants than we ever did on any of our records.

Richard Slann: Graham and I effectively manage the business now. All our plants are descendants of a single specimen that was thrown on stage during a gig we played at the Courville Club in Paris, 1978. That connection with our music is very important. We don't want to lose touch with our roots.

SIDE TWO

4. Lawrence Clarke

David Cribbage: Ah, the epic tale of young Lawrence Clarke.

Crispin Keating-Dower: (Sings) Every day is such a lark…

John Mottson: Lawrence is a classic anti-establishment figure. I based the character on our resident hell raiser - Richard.

Richard Slann: John sat me down and interviewed me for nine straight hours. He wanted to know about every awful thing I'd done in my life.

John Mottson: Lawrence commits his first murder at the age of six, when he pushes his little sister down a well. A few years later he develops pyrokinetic powers and is expelled from school for setting fire to a teacher's motorboard. Later he gets a job as a civil servant. He snubs the accepted dress code and goes to work wearing a velvet cloak…

Richard Slann: John has taken a certain amount of poetic licence with my personal history. It's true that there was a well in the garden of the vicarage where I grew up. It's also true that I did push my little sister down there on any number of occasions. Fortunately for both of us, the well had been filled-in and was only three feet deep.

John Mottson: Lawrence comes to a sticky end after he is caught robbing a highstreet bank. The police have him surrounded but before they can move in and arrest him, he is stabbed through the heart by a mysterious man, disguised as a court jester.

Richard Slann: The image of the jester has been a recurrent motif throughout my life.

David Cribbage: My medieval lute solo comes in for a lot of stick. What I was attempting to convey is that Lawrence is a man born out of time. Had he been around in the 1300s he might well have been a knight, a wizard or a knave, instead of a junior bookkeeper.

John Mottson: I should point out that we have nothing to do with the Lawrence Clarke cartoon currently being shown on the CBeebies children's channel. I sold the rights to the character some years ago and have no creative control over him. Lawrence was conceived as a cosmic prankster in a similar vein to The Joker in the Batman comics. The BBC turned him into Dennis the Menace!

I found this gem in a "charity shop". Sadly the cover had been lost.
Artist: Younger Dryas
Title: Castroville, California
Side 1: Cosimo Ulivelli (6.31)
Tiarella Cordifolia (8.52)
Whatareya? (5.14)

Side 2: Matczyn (22.11)

Dick Grote (this is secret track at the end of the grooves..it goes on forever)

Their name may no longer trip off the tongue in the same breath as Can, Faust or Popol Vuh, but back in 1973 no self-respecting connoisseur of Krautrock would have denied Pseudagrion Superbum their place among the elite in the pantheon of psilocybin-and-Party-Seven-fuelled Austrian experimental post-bebop/prog-rock fusion bands.

Formed as the result of an acrimonious split between the members of the more overtly political Geologische Bundesanstalt IV (who themselves had stemmed from a domino-effect series of acrimonious splits between the members of an anarcho-Taoist-Maoist commune who lived in a now-legendary Salzburg squat), Pseudagrion Superbum - better known as just Pseud to the faithful - fleetingly perked up the world's ears with their debut (and only) LP on the Eurasian Minnow label, Wisborough Green.

The album's many delights include the subtly hidden cycling-holiday motifs in "Maglia Rosa", the barely contained improvisational mayhem of "61 Virginis" and the chilling interplay between Johannes Stöffler's throbbing Moog and the insistent mosquito-like whine of Ludwig ("Luigi") Hussak's hedgecutter on the platter's moody closer, "Alpena Light". But the standout cut, featuring as it does the litany of scratchy atonal squeals that make up Stöffler's still-unsurpassed 12-minute electric-viola solo, undoubtedly remains the epic, neo-Wagnerian "Battle Of Mount Scorobas", as caustic as it is coruscating.

UPDATE: Having been reduced for three decades to being just another long-forgotten name on one of Pete Frame's then-seminal wiring diagrams in ZigZag, Pseudagrion Superbum are enjoying an unexpected resurgence in popularity of late and are even rumoured to have been pencilled for a plum support spot on the upcoming sold-out-in-minutes Ash Ra Tempel reunion tour. In an ideal world, of course, Pseud would have been wowing a new generation because of the sheer quality of their musical legacy. But this is not an ideal world, so they've been rediscovered because of an old TV outtake that's gone viral on the Internet.

The footage in question is of frontman and lead axe Luigi Hussak's infamous freakout during Pseud's first (and only) appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test, when the band were about to perform their mantra-like signature anthem, "3'-Hydroxy-N-Methyl-(S)-Coclaurine 4'-O-Methyltransferase". Although Bob Harris had managed to rattle off the name of the enzyme without a hitch when introducing them, he somehow failed to pronounce "Superbum" correctly: that is, with the stress firmly on the second syllable rather than the first. Hussak's reaction was instantaneous, as raw as it was primal. "Don't you know who we are?" he shrieked Teutonically at a bewildered Whispering Bob, before brandishing his trademark hedgecutter and snarling, "We're bigger than Mozart in Salzburg, sunshine, and who, who, who are you?" The rest of the the band, as if on cue, then tore into the unmistakable power chords of the track's 15/8-time riff, as intellectually intriguing as it was quite hard to tap your foot to.

Viewed now on YouTube, that performance, while frustratingly brief, seems almost unwatchably intense, as dark as it was edgy - a potent portent, perhaps, of times to come.

"Hmm, nice!"

(Luigi Hussak's hedgecutter was recently acquired at auction for an undisclosed sum by the Salzburg Hard Rock Cafe.)

-------

Artist: Pseudagrion Superbum
Title: Wisborough Green
Label: Eurasian Minnow Records
Year: 1973

Track listing:

Side One:
1. Prunus Necrotic Ringspot Virus
2. Common Lisp
3. 61 Virginis
4. Battle Of Mount Scorobas

Side Two:
1. Soy Molasses
2. Phiml
3. Maglia Rosa
4. 3'-Hydroxy-N-Methyl-(S)-Coclaurine 4'-O-Methyltransferase
5. Alpena Light

Brett Buerck

Title: Murillo El Fruto

Year 1971

Side one

1. Computational chemical methods 18.21

Side two

1. Seena Owen 9.15
2. Fews 3.02

Parisian DJ Tanga! burned the down the disco with his massive hard house hit Froxfield Bottom Lock.
The song was named after a device found in the gay clubs of Le Havre, France.
He died when his head exploded whilst committing to memory the lyric of his follow up single Telephone Numbers in Poland. He was 12.

The mid-Eighties was not kind to prog

The band: Societe Nationale De Constructions Aeronautiques du Centre

The album: Farshad Bahadoran, a concept album about a wandering Algerian minstrel's travels around the world. He spent rather a lot of time in the UK.

Tracks
1. Dauchingen
2. Valea Spranii River
3. Carnite-acylcarnite Translocase Deficiency
4. How To Be A Complete Bastard
5. Hola Mohalla
6. Diagonal Form
7. Rock Parrott
8. Nokendai Station
9. Stolen Sweeties
10. George Best

Every Secret Thing crashed the already dull shoe-gazers party a little late in 1991, just as the scene was disappearing up its own white noise. However, after Win Butler told The Word magazine that the first album he ever bought was EST's debut, 'Vega Baja del Segura', interest in this forgotten gem has perked up. Driven by brother and sister team, Allun and Merrie Overfront, EST were not afraid to wear their prog influences on their sleeves.

Here's a track-by-track guide:

1. Melody Club: the attempt at a catchy commercial single.
2. The Wrights: not, as some imagined, a tribute to the fathers of modern aviation but actually a song about the parents of Princess Bride star, Robin Wright Penn. Includes the lyric, 'My feelings were mixed, when her nose was fixed.'
3. Dukha: 6 minutes of syrupy distortion, bound up with EST's drummer reciting Larkin's 'Sunny Prestatyn'.
4. Rathdowney, Queensland: The digeridoo meets Rickenbacker 12-string.

5. Christiaan: Apparently a song about the singer's little brother who once went to a Episcopalian ukelele festival in Gerrards Cross.
6. Time-space compression: the one every remembers, mainly because it was an attempt to play 'Interstellar Overdrive' backwards. At twice the speed. Live. In Glasgow.
7. Myyrmäki railway station: oddly accessible 3:30 of shunting and creaking.
8. Armenian Music TV Charts: a list song.

The NME are championing Munster Junior Football Championship as the big stars of 2008 (so they must be good?)
Their debut album Cervera del Llano hint at their Grimsby-Spanish roots .
We got an exclusive on the influences on this "long-player":

Track 1 - The Green Mile - as young nippers they would run to school as Northern kids with their flat caps along the playfields of North Grimsby, nicknamed by the locals as the Green Mile.

Track 2 - Tornimparte - a town in Italy, the Munsters like pasta, but lead guitarist Jimmy Knuckles doesn't like "that poncey fruscheta sh*t"

Track 3 - Boris Vyacheslavich - Boris was a prince of Tmutarakan, they liked his surname and thought it would look good on the band merch.

Track 5 - Ichthyophis supachaii - none of the band appear to be able to pronounce this so lead singer Ringo Bingo calls it the Itchy song.

Track 6 - The Himalayan Times - "sounds mystic an' that" was drummer DD Lips view on this 20minute drum solo.

Track 7 - Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band - he left in 2005 as he failed his GCSE's and had to do re-sits. This is to inspire him as he studies for his Biology.

The Munsters hit the road in January with eagerly awaited dates as part of their Chiswick Bridge Tour supporting the nu-rave duo, Clemente Palma.

Artist: Hugh Torney
Album: Longhorn Cavern State Park
Label: WILLA Literary Award

Tracklisting:

1. Pisek District (8 mins 23 sec)
2. Lyle Tuttle (32 sec)
3. Denton, Dover (11 mins)
4. Shih Wing Ching (19 mins 35secs)
5. Dream Evil (2 mins)
6. Passover (Purim) (13 mins)

Following the demise of Turtle Neck Souffle in 1971, lead lutist and merchandise stall manager Hugh Torney went it alone. It was a risk, this was Hugh's first record without longtime collaborator Mivvy Swedenship and one that saw Torney moving away from Turtle Neck's skiffle-based electro space jazz to a more esoteric sound. However, Torney's label, WILLA Literary Award, quickly brought legendary producer and maverick milliner Wif McNorbley to bear on Longhorn Cavern State Park (a name inspired by Torney's obsession with limestone rock formations). Wif's gentle touch at the controls and pionneering recording technique (Torney's 9 minute lute solo on Shih Wing Ching was famously recorded in an abandoned slate mine in Cornwall) brought a critical acclaim that had so far eluded 'old beard-fingers'. Poor sales though and a disastrous twenty-one year tour of North-East Kent meant that WILLA had no choice but to drop Torney early in 1992.

I, for one, would love to hear more of this on the radio...

In the final part of our interminable interview with Prog rock legislators Xavier de Maistre, the band present the case for sides 3 and 4 of their classic double album Healey, Kirklees.

SIDE 3

5. Domination and Submission (BDSM)

David Cribbage: This song is about the naughty things that we got up to with some of our more female fans.

Richard Slann: Contrary to what [ex-manager] Brian Souder says in his autobiography, we did have some groupies who weren't spotty 14 year old boys.

Crispin Keating-Dower: Our place on the Cowley Road was known locally as Fuckingham Palace. Then Shelby Flint* moved in two doors down and usurped the title from us.

*[inexplicably popular 60s crooner, who was enjoying a resurgence with the now somewhat creepy ballad 'I Dream of Schoolgirls']

Richard Slann: We did things that would have shamed Led Zeppelin, although nothing as unsavoury as that business with the Red Snapper.

Crispin Keating-Dower: If we had pleasured our groupies with fish, we would have used fillets of turbot or wild salmon.

David Cribbage: In the interests of hygiene, we would have made sure that the fish had been properly cooked first.

6. Southern Army

Crispin Keating-Dower: Although it is never said explicitly, Southern Army is intended as a companion piece to Jaraguá do Sul. I imagined Jaraguá's army advancing on the North American border. Instead of marching they dance the samba. What I was saying with this instrumental, is that war, while terrible and immoral, can also be joyful and liberating.

7. Panama Davis Cup Team

Crispin Keating-Dower: Unlike the rest of us, Graham has always favoured quality over quantity. On those rare occasions when he brought a song into the studio, you always knew that it was going to be brilliant.

Graham Page: It occurred to me that, even with the spirit of the optimism that characterised the early 1970s, there would be certain hopes and dreams that would remain unfulfilled, regardless of how hard anyone tried.

It was self evident that, no matter how much money or goodwill was expended, Panama would never enter a team into the Davis Cup. In fact a common expression at the time was: "That's about as likely as Panama entering a team into the Davis Cup." I decided to write a song around this concept.

In 1996, Panama, after decades of struggle, did manage to enter a team into the Davis Cup. After that the song took on a new meaning. Now when we play it, it's about overcoming adversity and staying true to your dreams.

Crispin Keating-Dower: I think Panama Davis Cup Team amply justifies Graham's claim to be a futurologist, as opposed to a lyricist. His songs are like challenges to future generations.

SIDE 4

8. WASO

Crispin Keating-Dower: (affecting really stupid voice) "Unicorns? Here, in Cheshire?" said Mrs Pierson. And the cat, curled-up beside her on the three piece suite, grinned broadly.

John Mottson: There was a three week period in 1973 when I became very interested in experimenting with narrative forms. WASO was conceived as a hybridised spoken word piece - a cross between a play and a monologue, but with instrumental passages. It's actually an excerpt of a much longer work in progress.

Crispin Keating-Dower: (Stupid voice) Where? Where? In the dell, my dear.

John Mottson: A blessing of unicorns emerge from dense woodland, close to the English market town of Macclesfield. They soon become the target of hunters and teenage vandals. WASO is the unicorn leader who unites his brothers and leads them to war.

I took my inspiration from the Wishbone Ash album Tarkus, which is about an armadillo who is also a World War One tank. In my story WASO is a unicorn, who is also a motorcycle.

Crispin Keating-Dower: The rumours that we are working on a WASO stage musical are untrue.

John Mottson: We did talk about it. The problem is that we would have to make significant changes to the story, in order to make it relevant for the 21st century. Cheshire is no longer the cultural nexus point that it was in 1973. WASO would have to manifest himself somewhere that young people can relate to, such as the internet, maybe on youtube or facebook. He could no longer be a motorcycle/unicorn hybrid. He would have to be a new type of MP3 player or a mobile phone.

...their long awaited second album, Bette Bright.

1. Flora, Apayao
2. Robert Del Naja
3. Priesthood Correlation Program
4. Yvan Bordeleau

The European Special Edition CD also features the bonus tracks:

Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
State Tribunal of the Republic of Poland

And a live rendition of the previously unrecorded behemoth that is Koolhoven F.K.52.

Sutton band Quantum Mineralogy have reissued their magnum opus "Dowsing" on their own label Rottingdean (since being dropped by EMI in 1977). First released on February 29 1976, and including the classic tracks "Radiation poisoning", "Formula 1 (PS1)" and the 19 minute long "Behind Closed Doors" - which takes up the whole of side 4.

For this reissue - Quantum Mineralogy have included an extra live disk including the fan favourites "Heather Juergensen", "Operation Archway" and "Budew" all recorded live at the Tripler Army Medical Center in December 1977.

Full Tracklisting
Disk - 1 - Side 1
1 - Radiation poisoning
2 - Ronald Fellowes, 2nd Baron Ailwyn
3 - Rene-Marie Madec
4 - Rose of the Rancho

Side 2
1-Wesley Lance
2-Formula 1 (PS1)
3-Doctor Jones
4-Tom Fox (activist)
5-Province of Terni

Side 3
1-Anarchy Archives
2-Malum prohibitum
3-2007 College Football Hall of Fame ballot

Side 4
1 - Behind Closed Doors

An essential Christmas purchase for the prog rock fan in your life.

Looked like an amusing game so (work forgotten, holidays ahoy) I called up Wikipedia and pressed the random article button and got.......Android Lust. Brilliant, I thought. Great name for a band (unless Thom Yorke has it already pencilled in for his next solo album). Scroll down....oh...."Android Lust is the industrial solo project of Shikhee, that combines elements of rock, industrial, gothic and classical styles into a blend of music that she describes as "electronic and dark." Her music is embraced by the gothic culture for its themes of hurt, loneliness, lust, rejection, impatience and anger, though Shikhee dislikes the 'goth' label."

Oh well, up the "lust" in 08!

Back to being a solicitor.

Had to join in with this...

Band - Colegio Militar Caldas(!)
Album - Henri Desmarets

I gave it 10 tracks but that may be a little lengthy for a prog rock album...

Side One
1) Reality Rap(a prog rock rap intro - whatever next?)
2) Alan Ferguson(little bit of politics)
3) Rainbow (mmmmm, mellow)
4) Mermaid
5) Delphinium purpusii (this should really be part of The Aphex Twin random title generator)

Side Two
6) José Manuel Caballero
7) Manduca diffissa
8) Jiří Čunek (more political stuff!)
9) Blue Sun (this should be Wiki-Orb surely)
10) Torrecuadrada de Molina (what a way to end the album!)

I think they got a bit bogged down with tributes to obscure politicians but look out for these in 2008...

International Opium Commission bring you a deluxe box set reissue of their cult 1973 album Kollagunta Gopalaiyer Ramanathan.

Side one
1 Agii Apostoli
2 Weekly Torah portion
3 Airlift Device
4 Bambari

Side two
1 School uniform
2 Speleoseismite
3 Daniel Aloysius Riley
4 Dedinka

The new CD issue contains 4 previously unissued demo's
I, a Man (1972)
Manyame (1972)
Regina Lakeview (1973)
André Lefèvre (Scouting) (1973)

And as an added bonus 1 track from lead singer Rasim Kara's previous band ,Viking revival, entitled Cachorrito de charco palmal.
Also included is a DVD which includes 2 hours of rare footage including the infamous 1975 concert in Egyházaskesző, Hungary. Some say this is the gig that killed Prog. It didn't but it did give it a bloody good kicking.