Hot afternoon in the shade. The first of the season. A noise bubbled quietly in the background; as if from long ago and far away. I drifted somewhere and it was green and a shaft of sunlight fell to earth. Flute. A flight of children came into the garden and the slanting sunlight pixelated them into medieval elven sprites wearing mirrored tunics that blinded me. Mellotron. Melismatic notes fell out of the bubbling noise and lay on the ground in neatly ordered lines. I woke. The elves had gone. The music was amusing itself now with little introverted self-congratulatory notelets as if rewarding itself for lasting forty-five minutes.
That was the thing about progressive rock. Some of the over-serious stuff was not as good as those who were satirising it.
Playlist:
Thick as a Brick: Jethro Tull, 1972; Trilogy: Emerson Lake and Palmer, 1972; Music inspired by Lord of the Rings: Bo Hansson, 1972.
Highlight: From the Beginning from Trilogy, a diamond of a song lost in a forest of endless prog. rock.
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