Letters
Send your letters to us at: Prog, Future Publishing, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London, W2 6QA, or email prog@futurenet.com. Letters may be edited for length. We regret that we cannot reply to phone calls and we cannot always respond to individual messages. Find us on facebook.com under Prog.
JUST A DREAM?
When I saw the latest edition of Prog [148] during my weekly Tesco shop, I couldn’t believe my eyes! Was that really Tangerine Dream on the cover? Not only that, but a story about the making of Phaedra and some Edgar Froese postcards to boot. It landed in my shopping trolley quicker than you can say“krautrock”!
Chris Wheatley’s exposé on Phaedra cast a new light on one of my favourite albums and it was fascinating to read how much of its“otherworldly”sound was down to the Moog itself. As Steven Wilson says, it’s hard to believe that an album so strange and so truly progressive was so successful.
Those postcards have now been framed and Peter Baumann’s Virgin albums set has been pre-ordered –I had no idea they were being reissued so that was another very pleasant surprise as my original vinyl copies have certainly seen better days!
Thanks for another excellent read.
DREAM TEAM
Great article on Tangerine Dream in Prog 148, Phaedra certainly deserves the attention. [Margarete Kreuzer’s 2017 documentary on Edgar Froese] Revolution Of Sound on Sky Arts made a good companion to it.
How about having a Buyers’Guide in Prog? TD would be good for starters, and the excellent Mostly Autumn.
FROM GENESIS, A REVELATION!
Thank you for Prog 146 and the story on the beginning of the neo-prog movement. I have waited many years for a neo-prog cover story. What a great surprise to see this issue on the shelf at my local bookstore.
My prog journey began in 1981 with the Genesis album Abacab. That album completely changed my musical life. Over the next few years I explored the band’s back catalogue as well as some of the bandmembers’ solo albums. I absolutely fell in love with Genesis and much of the solo work of Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks and Steve Hackett. Much of their music was my introduction to the wonder world of progressive rock.
Jump ahead to 1987. One day while reading album reviews in a British heavy metal magazine I came across a review of the latest album by Marillion. I was aware of the band, but totally unaware of their sound. The reviewer angrily wrote that the band’s newest album, Clutching At Straws, proved they sounded just like Genesis. The reviewer wrote that as a negative. For me it was a positi
