Prog Britannia on BBC Four

I've just been watching the BBC's documentary on progressive rock on iPlayer. Wonderful.

I wasn't into what you might call hardcore progressive rock - Yes, ELP, Genesis, King Crimson - myself, though I respected it. (We didn't call it "prog": it didn't sound serious enough.). Partly this was because I found the lyrics too whimsical and the music somehow not muscular enough. Partly it was a money thing: I could only afford to buy an album every other month. If you don't like one of the tracks on an album with eight tracks, it's liveable-with; if the album has only three tracks (like, for example, Relayer) it's a disaster. So I didn't take the gamble. I finally bought The Yes Album in the early 90s, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The key to enjoying prog is not to take it too seriously.

Two criticisms of the programme - there was hardly a mention of Pink Floyd (though bits of their music could be heard in the background) even though they could surely be categorised as progressive up to including 1971's Meddle ("Echoes" is surely one of the archetypal progressive pieces, with its length and episodic nature, its nebulous lyrics and musical virtuosity). The other was the way in which it made prog out to be an exclusively English thing but (although I don't know about Scotland) there were important bands in Ireland (Fruupp and Horslips, the latter marrying rock to Irish folk music) and especially Man (from Wales), who showed that you could do progressive and heavy blues at the same time.