These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things – Part Five – Radio Comedy

On Sunday mornings when I was young, the radio in our house would be tuned to the BBC Light Programme, or Radio 2 as it became from 1967, for Two-Way Family Favourites. Presented by Cliff Michelmore and Jean Metcalfe, Family Favourites was a musical request programme that connected families at home in the UK with British Forces serving in West Germany and other countries overseas.

When Family Favourites ended there was an hour of comedy, with shows like The Clitheroe Kid, The Navy Lark, The Al Read Show, and Much Binding In The Marsh. 

The Much Binding cast: Left to right, Kenneth Horne, Dora Bryan, Richard Murdoch, Sam Costa, and Nicholas Parsons.

Not all of these were new shows, for instance Much Minding In The Marsh was last recorded in 1954, four years before I was even born. The Navy Lark showed remarkable longevity though, with the first episode being broadcast in March 1959, and the last in January 1976. But whether it was new or old, I lapped it up, even if some of it – and I’m particularly thinking about those Bona Performers, Julian and Sandy in Round The Horne – went completely over my rather young head.

Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams (Julian and Sandy)

At some point, my Dad ‘acquired’ a Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder (I wouldn’t say that it was hooky, but certain items he brought home were either ‘won’ or ‘liberated’ rather than being bought through more orthodox channels, and this was one of them), and having carefully positioned the microphone by the radio, I would record my favourite shows, complete with background noises and muffled conversations.

We had a machine like this. Laughably, it's called 'portable.'

During the mid-1960s we ditched the reel-to-reel monstrosity in favour of a more modern cassette recorder, which had only come on the market in 1963. One of the first cassette tapes we owned, and which was bought for me by my parents, was a recording of Hancock’s Half Hour. 

The first cassette tape of Tony Hancock that I owned.

The first episodes I heard were The Reunion Party and The Missing Page; I was immediately hooked and, like so many other fans of The Lad Himself, still frequently listen to old episodes, of which The Wild Man of The Woods, and Sunday Afternoon At Home are my absolute favourites.

It is probably fair to say that the 1940s and 1950s were the golden age of radio comedy. During the 1940s, programmes like It’s That Man Again were credited with bolstering war-time morale; through the 1950s, they did a similar job of keeping the country cheerful during post-war austerity. The coming of television, and especially commercial television, which began broadcasting in 1955, could have brought about the demise of radio comedy; fortunately, it didn’t. Today we have hundreds of TV channels, including some devoted entirely to comedy, and it would be easy to believe that radio comedy is on the decline. Far from it, radio comedy is as fresh, vibrant, and varied as ever.  It is also generally streets ahead of TV comedy in terms of originality.

Having neglected it for some time, my interest in radio comedy was rekindled just after I retired in 2012. A friend of ours mentioned that he regularly went to BBC Radio recordings at Broadcasting House, and so we started applying for tickets. We were unsuccessful early on, probably due to the fact that I was only applying for shows I’d heard of, namely the most popular ones. Adopting a ‘scatter-gun’ approach proved more successful, and the first show that Val and I saw recorded was What Does The K Stand For? written by, and starring Stephen K Amos. Since then we’ve seen hundreds of shows, including Clare In The Community, Reluctant Persuaders, Tom Wrigglesworth’s Hang Ups, Newsjack, The Now Show, Dead Ringers, and The Missing Hancocks to name but just a few, plus non-comedies like Brain Of Britain, Click, Word Book Club, and Counterpoint.

Radio comedy scores over TV comedy when it comes to seeing it recorded as well as when it’s broadcast. A typical evening in the Radio Theatre will see us watch two episodes of a radio sit-com being recorded back-to-back. Even with the inevitable re-takes (pickups), a half-an-hour show only takes about 45-50 minutes; a TV sit-com of similar length can run to two or three hours (or more).

Due to coronavirus, our visits to the BBC have been curtailed, but shows are still being recorded. One such is Ankle Tag, a show we have been to in the past. The third series has just begun broadcasting, and has clearly been recorded without a studio audience; the absence of laughter is quite marked.

I still regularly listen to old episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour, but of the more recent radio comedies that the BBC has broadcast, these are a few of my favourites.

Double Science – Ben Willbond and Justin Edwards star as Colin Jackson (‘no relation’) and Kenneth Farley-Pittman, chemistry teachers at a sixth-form college whose rather unorthodox approach to teaching is upset by the arrival of a new head of department, Alison Hatton, played by Rebecca Front. Sadly, only six episodes of this really rather excellent series were ever made.

Ben Willbond and Justin Edwards as their Double Science characters

Tom Wrigglesworth’s Hang Ups – Sheffield-born Tom now lives in London, but his parents still live in South Yorkshire and Hang Ups chronicles his weekly phone calls home. As with all of the best observational comedy, the humour here is just one slightly absurd step away from reality, so much so that on occasions (such as returning a faulty domestic appliance to the Ideal Home Show), Val and I have wondered if Tom Wrigglesworth hasn’t been observing us for material.

Welcome To Our Village, Please Invade Carefully – A small Buckinghamshire village is invaded by aliens who form the advance party of a planned invasion of the whole planet. Some of the villagers resist the invaders, some accept them, while Ulijabaan, the leader of the aliens, gradually becomes assimilated into English village life.

Clare In The Community – As someone who has worked in social services, Val found this series about the right-on, control freak social worker Clare Barker, played by Sally Phillips, especially funny. The strength of the series is the range of characters, with au pair Nali (Nina Conti) my favourite. In some episodes, Clare has an Australian team leader called Libby, played by Sarah Kendall, which brings me to…

Sarah Kendall’s Australian Trilogy – Val and I have been lucky enough to see all six episodes of this show being recorded (there have been two series). The very first episode – A Day In October, the story of the miracle of George Peach – is perhaps the finest, funniest, saddest, most moving show I have ever had the privilege of seeing; I would have paid good money to see it. All three episodes of the second series were recorded in a single Saturday evening at the Radio Theatre, throughout which we were absolutely spellbound. Sarah Kendall is not a household name; she really ought to be.

Ångström – “Adapted from the bestselling Ångström Trilogy by Martin English, writing as Bjorgen Swedenssonsson,” or so the trailer says. This absurd, surreal, hilarious parody of Scandi-noir stars Matthew Holness as Knut Ångström, a brooding, alcoholic, maverick Swedish detective trying to solve a baffling murder (in which no one may actually have died). Lots of snow, lots of brooding, lots of laughs.

The BBC may have its faults, but its comedy output is a joy, and the BBC Sounds app is chock full of it. I wouldn’t be without it.

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things – Part Four – Gigs

A calendar notification popped up on my phone last Friday: “Yes at the Royal Albert Hall, 8pm” it said, to which I could only mutter under my breath, “No, Springwatch on BBC2 in my living room.”

 

Yes at The London Palladium in 2018

Recent years have been something of a golden era for me in terms of going to see live music, and in 2019 I saw 35 bands or artists in 23 shows, ranging from opera, through BBC orchestral performances, to major rock bands, at venues as diverse as The Royal Opera House, Temple Church, Boston Music Rooms, and the Hammersmith Apollo. This year has been somewhat different so far, and sadly it’s unlikely to change much.

 

Before the coronavirus pandemic that sent us into lockdown and caused the closure of the clubs, concert halls, and theatres that I would otherwise have been visiting, I managed to see Joe Stilgoe and The Guildhall Studio Orchestra performing songs from the movies in January, and in February, Alice’s Adventures Underground at The Royal Opera House. Joe Stilgoe (some of you may recall his father, Richard, who is probably best known for performing comic songs on Nationwide and That’s Life!) was very entertaining; Alice’s Adventures, not so much.

 

Joe Stilgoe 

I should have seen Lifesigns in Southend in mid-March, but although there were then no restrictions yet in place, the threat of the pandemic was such that I decided to err on the side of caution and stayed at home.

 

Lifesigns at Resonate, 2018

Since then, gigs involving Fish, and Doris Brendel, Jump, Fischer-Z, Yes, and Roger Hodgson have been cancelled completely or rescheduled for later this year or in 2021, although I’m doubtful that those that have been moved for later in 2020 will take place. I’m supposed to see Steven Wilson in September, Cosmograf, Sparks, and Level 42 in October, Steve Hackett, and Genesis in November, and IQ, and Lonely Robot in December – I would be surprised if these go ahead, and not sure how comfortable I’d be about attending even if they do.

Doris Brendel

 

If I’m honest, I’m probably missing going to gigs more than I’m missing going to football matches. I’ve seen some great shows in recent years [1] with stand-outs including such diverse acts as Steven Wilson, Steely Dan, David Byrne, Chic, and Steve Hackett. I’ve seen few that have disappointed apart from one rather amateurish performance of Tubular Bells (not to be confused with the magnificent Tubular Bells For Two), a slightly underwhelming show from Blue Oyster Cult, and The Flower Kings, about whom I was somewhat indifferent. Oh, and a couple of operas (Jack The Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel, and the previously mentioned Alice) that really did nothing for me.

The brilliant Tubular Bells For Two 

 

David Byrne. Picture: Getty Images

There was a time when I would go to see a band and would want to know all of the material they would perform; these days, not so much, largely because many of the bands that I have seen in recent years have produced many more albums than I have had the opportunity to listen to. For instance, I saw Marillion last year, despite having heard only a handful of the fourteen albums they have released since Fish left in 1988, and enjoyed the songs that were new to me just as much as the ones I knew. Likewise, Gary Numan; the last album of his I bought was Telekon in 1980, but I thoroughly enjoyed his more recent material when I saw him.

 

Gary Numan

Then there are the support acts, the good, the bad and the indifferent. I once saw Bryan Ferry completely outshone by his support act, Londonbeat; I saw Dire Straits (who were excellent), supported by the wonderful Fischer-Z; I saw Doris Brendel support Fish and was so impressed that I now go to see her as much as I do to see him when they play gigs together. Seeing a band I’ve not heard of, and thoroughly enjoying them, is one of the things that makes going to shows so rewarding; Harry Payne (who supported Marillion last year), was one such.  And when I went to The Stone Free Festival at The O2 a couple of years ago, principally to see the Anderson, Rabin, and Wakeman version of Yes, I was blown away by Roger Hodgson, not that I was unfamiliar with his work with Supertramp, but I had rather taken him for granted. There are some support acts that are at the opposite end of the spectrum; we’ll draw a veil over them.

 

Roger Hodgson at the Royal Albert Hall, 2019

As a rule of thumb, the bigger the artist, the bigger the venue. The bigger the artist, the harder it can be to get tickets; the bigger the venue, the further from the stage you’re likely to be, the more you’ll have to pay for the ticket and refreshments, and the bigger the queue for the toilets. More and more, I’m happier in smaller venues like the Islington Assembly Hall, The O2 Islington, or Dingwalls, venues where it’s mostly standing and you can get closer to the stage. The Hammersmith Apollo remains near the top of my list of favourite venues; The O2 at Greenwich is near the bottom, but it has to be tolerated to see the big names. Likewise, Wembley Arena, which has the added disadvantage of being so time-consuming to get home from.

 

After over forty years of going to gigs, it’s nigh-on impossible to give a definitive list of the best I’ve been to and the criteria are something of a moving target, but here are some that I’ll never forget, including one (David Byrne), of which the NME said, “may just be the best live show of all time”:

• Ian Dury and the Blockheads – Hammersmith Odeon – 1979
• Genesis – Earls Court -1977
• David Byrne – The O2 – 2018
• Tubular Bells For Two – Union Chapel – 2017
• Big Big Train – The Anvil, Basingstoke – 2018
• Porcupine Tree – Indigo at The O2 - 2008
• Steely Dan – Wembley Arena – 2019
• Frost* - Dingwalls – 2017
• Steve Hackett – Hammersmith Apollo -2019

I’d like to think that the best gig I’ll ever see is one I’ve not been to yet. When – or indeed if – that happens, I’ll let you know.

 

 

 

[1] See posts under The Prog Blog

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things – Part Three – Books

After much internal debate, I managed to come up with a list of eight albums that I would take on Desert Island Discs, and a handful of films that I would consider to be my favourites. They were easier lists to compile than the books that I would regard as my top five, ten, or even fifty.

These days I don’t seem to be able to read books at the rate I used to. There was a time when I would get through one or even more a week – on one holiday in the Maldives, I managed six in just under a fortnight – these days I’m down to about one a month, although there are exceptions.

One reason may be that novels seem to be getting longer. Where once 250 pages might have been considered a decent length, it now appears that most have barely blown the dust off the story at that stage, with 500 pages seeming to be the norm. I find this somewhat challenging at times; all too often I’ll race through the first 200 pages of a novel and then stall for a further couple of hundred that seem no more than padding before reaching the denouement, which itself gets dragged out for a further 100 pages or so.

I’m looking forward to Robert Galbraith’s new novel in the Cormoran Strike series, Troubled Blood, which is to be published in September 2020, but the hardback is slated to come in at over 900 pages; the story is going to have to be pretty damn good if I’m going to wade through a book that long.

Like most people, my taste in books has changed over the years. From The Famous Five, and Jennings as a child, though Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, Alistair McLean, and Frederick Forsyth as staples; through science-fiction, courtroom dramas, murder mysteries, thrillers, and steampunk, I’ve gone through many phases and authors, but there are a few books that I cherish, and some that I have read and re-read with never diminishing pleasure. At present I’m steering clear of the more dystopian type of books – I have a couple lined up that at present I’m saving for happier days – in favour of more escapist stories.

The War of The Worlds by HG Wells is by any definition, a classic. It has been the inspiration for TV and movie adaptations (although I’m still waiting for a faithful, Victorian-set version, the BBC’s offering last year was a grave disappointment). It’s a relatively short book and the plot is everything – the characters are fairly non-descript (we learn little of them other than their professions) – but it’s a more subtle book than it appears at first glance, with its commentary on evolution, British colonialism, and potential invasion of Britain.

Around the time I first read The War of The Worlds, I dipped my toe into more modern science-fiction with Larry Niven’s Ringworld. Niven’s Known Space universe comprises a consistent environment for his stories in which man co-exists with other, alien species, of which two travel to the artificial megastructure, the Ringworld, along with the human, Louis Wu. This spawned a series of sequels and prequels, but this is the original and best. A number of Niven’s later novels featured too much science and too little fiction; this gets the balance right.

Philip K Dick is one of science fiction’s most filmed authors. Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, and The Adjustment Bureau are among the films that have been inspired by Dick’s writings, Electric Dreams was a highly successful TV series based on some of his stories and most recently there was Amazon’s brilliant series, The Man In The High Castle. Having recently watched that series, I reread the book, which despite the alternative history theme, is one of the most mainstream novels that Dick wrote. Of all his novels, my favourite is Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, the story of TV chat-show host Jason Taverner, who wakes up one morning to find himself in a world where no one knows him and his TV show does not exist. As with many of Dick’s works, Flow My Tears, which is set in a USA that has become a totalitarian, police state, following a civil war, deals with identity, what being human means, and the possibility of alternative realities. 

Few books warrant repeated rereading as much as The Diary of A Nobody, by George and Weedon Grossmith. The book describes the largely mundane daily events in the lives of a London clerk, Charles Pooter, his wife Carrie, his son Lupin, and their friends. Pooter is a literary forebear of Victor Meldrew or Captain Mainwaring; he’s a bit pompous, being over imbued with a sense of his own importance, he’s a bit of a social climber, but things often go wrong for him. 

In a similar vein, Augustus Carp, Esq., By Himself: Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man, depicts someone lacking any sort of self-awareness; pompous, practically useless but endowed with a belief that he is brilliant in all his endeavours. Originally published anonymously, Augustus Carp was written by Harley Street doctor Henry Howarth Bashford, I would recommend it to anyone who has read and enjoyed Charles Pooter’s adventures.

It is always rewarding to read a book, recommend it to someone, and then see them share the enthusiasm that one has for it. Two such books that I have suggested to my wife are The Crimson Petal and The White, and The Magpie Murders. Michel Faber’s Crimson Petal revolves around William Rackham and two very dissimilar women, his wife Agnes and the prostitute, Sugar. It’s a wonderfully written, thoroughly absorbing story that is rarely a comfortable read but is very rewarding.

he Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz features a novel within a novel, as a book editor reads one of her author’s latest manuscripts, about a very Agatha Christie-like detective, and finds a real murder mystery entwined within its pages. It’s really very clever and enormous fun.

I am often drawn to so-called weird fiction; Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities trilogy, and China Mieville’s The City and The City for instance. Iain Banks’ Walking On Glass is in part, weird, but Banks is (or sadly, was, as he died in 2013) otherwise a writer I have struggled with. His mainstream novels, written as Iain Banks are eminently readable, however of his science-fiction stories (written as Iain M Banks), I lapped up The Player of Games, but the struggled miserably with his subsequent sci-fi tomes and had to give up on the last one I attempted (and I cannot even recall which one it was), so impenetrable (and boring) was it.

These days I like to read solely for pleasure; I've given up any pretence of reading much that is literary or high-brow except occasionally. Frankly, life’s too short to read dull books, so in addition to the above, my reading centres on what I enjoy, such as Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series, the Shardlake novels of CJ Sansom, and Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels.

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things – Part Two – Films

I don’t go to the cinema very often. Last year I went to see Bohemian Rhapsody, but before that, I think that my most recent visit would have been to see The Incredibles, which was released in 2004.

It isn’t as though I gave up going to the cinema, I have never been an avid moviegoer, and if I’m honest there are not that many films that have made a huge impression on me. In the days when it used to be years between a film being released and it appearing on TV, cinema-going made sense if you wanted to see new releases. Since the advent of films on video and DVD, and even more so nowadays with streaming services, the period between a film appearing at the cinema and being able to watch it at home has been compressed; actually going to the cinema is only really necessary if you want to be among the first to see a particular film.

The films that I am listing here are not, in the grand scheme of things, cinematic masterpieces. Call me a philistine if you wish, but this list doesn’t include anything deep, meaningful, profound or particularly influential. Of the British Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Films of All Time[1], I have seen precisely seven, and none of them features here.

The first film on my list, while not especially deep, or meaningful did cause a major stir when it came out, and I did actually go to the cinema to see it. I was never a great fan of Monty Python on TV – too hit or miss for my taste – but when their third film, The Life of Brian, was released in 1979, it was immediately apparent that we were in the presence of genius. Littered with memorable lines, of which "He's not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy," is the most quoted, hilarious set-pieces (the stoning, Biggus Dickus, and the Crucifixion scene), The Life of Brian is 94 minutes of sheer pleasure (unless you consider it blasphemous of course). Apart from the controversy that the film provoked, it generated a lot of good television debating it – Michael Palin and John Cleese discussed it with Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, and Not the Nine O’Clock News featured a sketch lampooning the criticism that is as funny as the film itself. The joy of The Life of Brian is that you can watch it again and again, and laugh afresh at lines you know as well as the back of your hand.

Keith Waterhouse is one of my favourite writers, and he made something of an industry of his greatest creation, Billy Liar. The tragic-comedy story of a day in the life of undertakers’ clerk and would-be comedian/script-writer Billy Fisher first saw the light of day as a 1959 novel, which spawned a film, a stage play, musical, and TV series. Released in 1963, the film of Billy Liar belongs to the British New Wave "kitchen sink drama" movement, but unlike contemporaries such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, or Look Back in Anger, the gritty realism of a young man’s quite mundane life in a Northern city is offset by humour and the fantasy of Billy’s day-dream life as President of Ambrosia. And because Waterhouse co-wrote the screenplay with long-time friend and collaborator Willis Hall, it is as faithful to the book as a film can possibly be. It was shown on TV a few weeks ago, and it engrossed me as much as it ever did.

Tom Courtney as Billy, and Julie Christie as Liz in Billy Liar

Super-hero films have become cinema’s biggest money-spinners in recent years. The Marvel Cinematic Universe dominates and their long-term rivals, DC, don’t really have characters with such enduring appeal in my opinion: except one – Batman.

Batman has always been my favourite super-hero but the 1966 film was too comic (in the humorous sense), and Tim Burton’s series of films started well but declined alarmingly with the George Clooney vehicle, Batman and Robin, the subject of much derision. The first two of Burton’s films, with Michael Keaton in the lead role, were great entertainment, but it wasn’t until Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy that Batman got the treatment that the character deserved. Batman Begins – the origin story – lacks the glamourous villains that we associate with these sorts of films, but it’s brooding, dark and absorbing. The Dark Knight is a film that I’ll happily watch over and again, and as good as Christian Bale is as Batman, the late Heath Ledger’s performance as Joker is exceptional. And as I’ve written before, Batman and Joker have a symbiotic relationship which this film exploits to the maximum.[2]  I came late to the third film– The Dark Knight Rises – and it was a good few years after it was released before I saw it. It rounds off the trilogy neatly, and as much as I’d like another Batman film from the same people, this left me satisfyingly wanting more but not at the risk of any deterioration in quality.

If the Batman movies are films that I can watch over and again, then Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one I will watch over and again. It’s on so frequently that it is often the case that I’ll be scrolling through the channels on the TV and see that it’s on, and no matter how much of it I’ve missed, I’ll watch however much is remaining. Terminator 2 is good, old fashioned hokum and its charm has not been matched in any of the subsequent films in the series (especially not Terminator: Salvation). The success of the first film and that of Arnold Schwarzenegger demanded a sequel, especially one where Arnie could be a good guy. Terminator 2 does what it says on the tin and it’s none the worse for that. Independence Day, starring Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, or the Men In Black films (Smith again, with Tommy Lee Jones) are a few more I’ll happily watch any time, either completely, or just in part, but none of them is quite up to Terminator 2’s standard.

Honourable mentions must go to some films, most of which I saw at the cinema that were in some way groundbreaking:

• Star Wars (the first one that came out in 1977, and is now number four in the canon) and Alien were science fiction at their best. I’m by no means a Star Wars fan, and I have a feeling that if I watched the original film in the series again now, I’d not be as impressed by it as I was back then.
• The Long Good Friday (1980) was a gritty British gangster film that bridged the gap between the superficially gaudy but impoverished 1970s and the emergence of the more affluent, aspirational decade that followed it. Rightly, it marked a period of success and popularity for its star, Bob Hoskins.
• I remember little of The Accused (1988), but distinctly remember being very much impressed by Jodie Foster's Oscar winning performance.
• The much-lauded Blade Runner is a film that I could, perhaps should have included in my list of favourites, except it flatters to deceive, and as good as it is, there’s just something missing.
• The Warriors - I think I only went to see it because there were calls for it to be banned. It was really rather innocuous.
• Airplane! - Ridiculous and hilarious, surely one of the most original comedies of the 1980s - and don't call me Shirley.
• Finally a film released in 1977 that I loved the music from but, until about eighteen months ago, had never seen, believing it not to be my 'thing.' That film was Saturday Night Fever. A lot grittier than I'd expected and with music that took me back forty years, it was a surprise and a delight.

My preference is for films that offer escapism that I can watch again and again, which applies to all of the above, in spades.

---

[1] See https://www.bfi.org.uk/greatest-films-all-time

[2] See https://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.com/2014/01/elementary-my-dear-batman.html

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things – Part One – The Albums

No raindrops on roses nor whiskers on kittens; No bright copper kettles nor warm woollen mittens, but these are a few of my favourite things.

In idle moments I have sometimes wondered which records I would take with me if I were ever invited on to Desert Island Discs, not that I ever will be. The castaways on Desert Island Discs are asked to select eight tracks. I’ve chosen eight albums instead.

Over the years this selection has changed from time to time, but there is a pretty consistent hardcore and if I were to have to settle on eight records, this would be my list. The factor that made me come to the conclusion that these albums would be my desert island discs is that they reside in my head to the extent that it’s almost as easy to listen to them in my mind as it is to put the CD on.

Selling England By The Pound - Genesis

I know that I am not alone in thinking that this, the band’s fifth studio recording, is the quintessential Genesis album. I discovered prog rock at school, in the Sixth Form in the early-mid 1970s, or perhaps I should say that I was subjected to it at first. My first exposure to albums like Close To The Edge (of which more later), In The Court Of The Crimson King, and Foxtrot was not auspicious. Selling England By The Pound (SEBTP) was slightly different; more accessible and with better melodies, closer in form to the sort of light classical stuff my parents might play at home. It was possibly the first album I heard that contained music that actually provoked an emotional response: it gave me goose bumps, and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. It still does, and if you don’t get that sort of reaction when you hear Tony Banks’s piano introduction to Firth of Fifth, or Steve Hackett’s guitar solo in the same song then that’s a shame.

Close To The Edge - Yes

What is this noise? That was my first reaction on hearing Close To The Edge (CTTE). As we had only four resident albums to go with the record player in the Sixth Form block, CTTE was on pretty heavy rotation; constant exposure meant that it wheedled its way into my head, and stayed there, becoming a firm favourite. Like SEBTP, CTTE is the fifth studio album produced by this band (the albums were released within a year of each other), but while the Genesis line-up was consistent for many years, Yes always seemed to be in a state of flux, with members coming and going at will. CTTE is my favourite Yes album (just, Fragile is hard on its heels). What CTTE and SEBTP have in common (to my ears) is variety within a structure – the tracks fit together, similar but different, but whereas SEPTP is clearly a collection of separate pieces, CTTE has always been a single piece with the title track and And You And I all one, and just Siberian Khatru standing alone. And, like Selling England, Close To The Edge – especially the title track – gives me goose bumps. Roger Dean’s artwork for the album is instantly recognisable and adds to the sheer glory of this record.

Dire Straits

The first, eponymous, Dire Straits album blew me away. I had heard of their single, Sultans of Swing, from work colleagues, and when I heard it for myself could not think of anything to compare it to. The album, which was released in 1978, has become a bit of an afterthought in the wake of Brothers In Arms which came along in 1985 and from which Money For Nothing became one of MTV’s most played music videos. Where Brothers In Arms was slick, highly accomplished and had lavish production values, Dire Straits (the album) was raw, exciting, and different, redolent (for me) of East End pubs and Soho clubs.

The Underfall Yard – Big Big Train

The Underfall Yard was my introduction to Big Big Train, and to be honest if I had discovered them at an earlier stage in their career, I’m not sure I would have persevered. The Underfall Yard was their first with David Longdon as lead singer, and his Peter Gabrielesque vocals were an instant attraction. Comparisons with Genesis are obvious, even apart from Longdon’s vocals, but BBT have their own sound that includes much brass (live, they employ a five-piece brass band), violin, and that prog stand-by, flute. For any Genesis fans who wanted a new proggy album by the band after they went poppy, this is the closest we’ll ever get. If you can listen to Victorian Brickwork or the title track without getting a little emotional, then I’d be surprised. This album does what all good music should, it stirs the soul. Since the album was brought out in 2009, BBT have released six further studio albums; all are good, but this is great.

Hand. Cannot. Erase – Steven Wilson

Steven Wilson is one of the most prolific men in music. His band Porcupine Tree (sadly now defunct) were my way back into prog rock in the early years of the 21^st century. Apart from his many side projects and work remastering classic albums by bands like Yes, and Jethro Tull, to name but two, he has released a number of solo albums, of which Hand. Cannot. Erase is by far his best. It is based loosely on the life and death of Joyce Carol Vincent, a young woman who, having cut herself off from family and friends, died alone in her north London bedsit in December 2003, but whose body was not discovered for two years. Like much of Wilson’s work, the album can best be described as melancholic. Ironically perhaps, the stand out track has the happiest title, Perfect Life.

Milliontown – Frost*

I cannot now recall how I discovered this album, but what I do remember is that it was played at least twice through immediately it arrived. From the swirling, and sometimes frenetic, keyboard driven opener, Hyperventilate, to the sprawling twenty-six minutes of the title track that closes the album, the whole thing is a joy. Frost* fit into one of prog’s many sub-genres (neo-prog in this case) although I find it difficult to really care about genres, and does it really matter, when Milliontown’s composer, Jem Godfrey, has written for Atomic Kitten and won an Ivor Novello in May 2006 for the bestselling single of 2005, "That's My Goal", for The X-Factor's Shayne Ward?  It’s all just music; genre matters less than whether you like it or not. Two more Frost* albums have followed, but this is streets ahead their best.

The Nightfly – Donald Fagen

“I’m Lester the Nightfly, hello Baton Rouge”

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were the core members of Steely Dan, a band with an ever changing cast of session musicians. This, Fagen’s first solo album, was released in 1982; it’s jazzy, bluesy, and sultry, evocative of smoky music rooms. The lyrics are thoughtful, nostalgic and perfect to listen to with a nice glass of your favourite tipple, the windows open and the curtains sighing gently in the breeze of a summer evening. In the title track, Fagen is Lester the Nightfly, the late-night DJ on WJAZ, chatting to an audience of insomniacs and lunatics, and it’s perfect.

The Lexicon of Love – ABC

The Lexicon of Love, ABC’s debut album released in 1982, is a lush offering of strings and guitars, and although I don’t think that it achieved songwriter Martin Fry’s ambition of fusing punk and disco (there’s not even a glimmer of punk in this album to my ear), it fitted perfectly into the new-wave, synth-pop explosion of the early 1980s. In the days when album length was still largely dictated by the limitations of the vinyl LP, The Lexicon of Love comes in at a very spare 37 minutes and 25 seconds, and there is not a second wasted. For my money, this is the perfect pop record, and if I could take just one of my selection to my desert island, this would be the one. I never tire of it, and if The Look of Love isn’t the most perfect pop song ever written, I don’t know what is…unless it’s Show Me…or Poison Arrow…or Tears Are Not Enough, or…