Half cut

If I’m honest, I picked up this newly published special edition of Uncut magazine both with interest and a degree of self-interest.

Big Big Train has been reviewed a couple of times in Uncut (an excellent and influential mainstream music publication) and, whilst I had no expectation of a high placing in the magazine’s top 200 progressive rock albums, I carried a slight hope that we might make an appearance or two in the lower reaches.

I flicked through the magazine in my local WHSmith’s (a shop that, in appearance, is now more a late-period Woolworths instead of the book-seller and newsagent of old) but found no mention of BBT in the first few pages (where the 200 to 150 chart placings were set out). Fair enough: we’re below the radar for many music writers.

However, I ploughed on through the magazine, no longer focusing on the self-interest angle but wondering how the list would play out, especially when it came to balancing albums released in the 70’s with those released during the early 80’s revival and those from the so-called third wave period (the 90’s through to now).

These lists are, of course, subjective but my assumption was that popular albums by Marillion and perhaps by Steven Wilson would be cheek-by-jowl with 70’s classics. I was intrigued as to how the editorial team would assess the relative merits of the different era bands. And how would the heavier rock fraternity (Rush, Dream Theater et al) be ranked? What about albums that successfully walk the line between alternative and prog rock (Radiohead, Talk Talk)? Howabout slightly more obscure but excellent albums by the 80’s second generation bands such as Twelfth Night (whose Fact and Fiction album has more than stood the test of time), Solstice, Pendragon, IQ and Pallas? Would any later period Pink Floyd recordings make the (un)cut? Many of these questions would surely be answered on the following pages.

But they weren’t because, according to this special edition of Uncut, prog rock only existed in the 70’s.

Well, that statement is not completely true, because two albums from 1980 did sneak in - Duke by Genesis and an avant / Rock In Opposition band from Belgium called Aksak Maboul whose album Un Peu De L’âme Des Bandits was awarded 182nd place on the list. But those two albums are, I think the latest releases mentioned. The other 198 albums are from the 70’s or 60’s.

I tried to think of a parallel scenario with different genres. The closest I could think of would be a best ever list of metal albums (a genre with a similar timeline to prog rock) which excluded Iron Maiden and Metallica. That would be a very strange list indeed.

I’m only too aware that the progressive rock glory days lie firmly back in the 70’s and that the charts will never again see simultaneous top 40 appearances from prog rock artists. Nevertheless, there is so much more to the genre than the extraordinarily narrow definition as deployed by Uncut.