Progressive Pop: It's not your Grandad's virtuoso twaddle

Various Artists

Patterns On The Window - The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1974

(Grapefruit 3 CDs)

For anybody who has been following this series since the beginning, it’s around about now that one could be expecting the wheels to fall off the bus. Arguably prog itself had long since peaked by now; the best bands were either “reinventing” themselves or going down with all hands; the new faces were simply repeating everyone else.

In the wider scheme of things, rock and, indeed, roll were still punching above their weight; were still capable of pushing out the surprises. But prog itself… there’s only so many times one can bathe one’s underpants in the sylvian pools of cosmic understanding before they begin to look a little threadbare.

Welcome, then, my friends to a show that begins with Bryan Ferry, Sparks and Cockney Rebel… that continues on with Mick Ronson, John Cale, Be Bop Deluxe, Ronnie Lane, Thin Lizzy, Status Quo, UFO and Jona Lewie, and that’s just half of disc one.

Across the board, and across a slew of genres, Patterns On The Window is half the arty side of British glam (T Rex, Hello, Slade and Roxy Music turn up elsewhere); half ambitious pub rock (Dr Feelgood, Brinsley Schwarz, Paul Brett, Kilburn and the High Roads); half unrepentant hard rock (Alex Harvey, Nazareth); and a bunch more bonanzas aside.

Equally excitingly, listeners are as likely to bump into an unexpected B-side (Medicine Head’s “Cajun Kick”; Richard & Linda Thompson’s “When I Get To The Border”), a demo (Dana Gillespie, Dave Cousins) or an overlooked single (Fancy’s “Touch Me,” the less than well-starred follow-up to the squelching glory of “Wild Thing”) as they are a bona fide hit.

But Ferry’s “The In Crowd,” Rod Stewart’s “Farewell,” Splinter’s “Costafine Town”), Brian Protheroe’s “Pinball,” Quo’s Breath The Rules” and Cozy Powell’s “Na Na Na” all push their way into the picture. And, in so doing, they remind us of the one thing that separated progressive “pop,” as this series calls it, from the progressive rock that the pedants might demand.

Prog was all about standing still and making certain you’d been paid for every note you played on your last solo. Progressive pop continued moving forward and, whether you know the songs or the artists or not, there are few tracks here that don’t fit that bill.

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