Friday 29th July
venue: TBA
Theme: Japanese Prog 2

Like Japanese Prog 1, except more so.

Prog Club - Bringing you the Music of Tomorrow from Yesterday on the Last Friday of Every Month.

Friday 31st June
venue: Mike's place
Theme: Belgian Night

How much top notch prog can one tiny little European country put out? A hell of a lot, as it turns out.

Friday 27th May
venue: Paul's place
Theme: Themeless Night

Themeless nights are always fun, but they seem a little decadent somehow.

Friday 29th April
venue: Dina's place
Theme: Video Night - Beat Club

Thanks to Conrad for loaning us his awesome videos - hope to have them burned to DVD for all Prog Club members Real Soon Now (tm).

Friday 25th February
venue: Neil's place
Theme: Concept Albums

We listened to not that many albums actually.

Friday 28th January
venue: Paul's place
US Prog Part 1

I'm sorry, the Budweiser was taking it too far. Playlist coming soon.

Friday 24th November
venue: Wok's place
Japanese Prog

This night's Prog exemplified all aspects of the Japanese character - the post-apocalyptic aethetics of manga, the ostentatious showmanship of teppanyaki, the cuteness of Hello Kitty and the squidgy texture of raw fish.

I was lying about the Hello Kitty part.

Highlights included Flower Travelling Band, Foodbrain, People and Stomu Yamash'ta. For a full playlist, see the forums

Friday 24th October
venue: The Barleycorn, then Neil's place
Homegrown Prog

Prog of the Prog Club, by the Prog Club, for the Prog Club

We started off at the New Horizons in Violence gig at the Barleycorn then moved on to Neil's place where we listened to Buttress O'Kneel, Mantis Sage, Phonophobic, Bress, Cursed, Cursedophobic, ...And Oot Jumped the Mexican, adm, Zanzibar Cob, Maj Gorp, Sunglass,and Plastic Spacemen

Friday 24th September
venue: Paul's place
Themeless Night

We listened to Atlantide by The Trip, some live Circle, July's self-titled album, and odds and ends by Van der Graaf Generator, The Byrds and Phish.

But the highlight was undoubtedly the double LP masterpiece "Music to Eat" by the obscure Hampton Grease Band. Before the night Chris audaciously asserted:

They played better than ANYONE, with a brilliant feel for the spirit of music, and grind Zappa's dick into the dust (musically but perhaps not quite humorously)

And after giving it a listen none of us felt inclined to disagree with him. Hints of the Grateful Dead at their best, a good dose of Zappa, but mostly just those guys. Whoever they were. And a lot of gravel, too.

Friday 27th August
venue: Mike's place
Camel/Man Night

Unfortunately the Magma DVD slipped through our collective grasp this time, so instead, the long-discussed Something-Man night has become Camel-Man.

In case you think I'm talking about obscure superheroes, Chris helpfully explains:

First there was Tom Jones... then Wales produced one of their most enduring legends (and almost certainly the most stoned), Man [a.k.a. 'The Manband']. Come along this Friday night to hear just why they are a 'cult' band, why people like myself just love 'em, and most of all what music came from all that dope smoke being inhaled. We will be avoiding their later dreary pop rock and focusing on great tunes from the albums Revelation, 2 Ozs of Plastic With A Hole In The Middle, Man, Do You Like It Here? Are You Settling In?, Greasy Truckers Party, Live At The Roundhouse '72, Be Good To Yourself At Least Once A Day, Back Into the Future [well, all I've got is the title track] and Maximum Darkness. Also, as a tie-in, some tracks from Man guitarist Deke Leonard's first solo album, Iceberg.

And yeah, there's also Camel, the kings of wallpaper-prog. Find out why they have such a daggy reputation, and be amazed at the fact that they did make some good music here and there, when not residing in inoffensive blandness!

Look - out in the desert! Is it a cactus? Is it a mirage? No! It's Camel-Man!!

In the end we didn't listen to very much camel at all, so it was really just a Man night. What can I say? Seldom was a band so aptly named. Man.

The Wizard Quotient was high and the chips were crunchy.

Wow. That was different.

This was the month that Chris demonstrated that Sweden is not only about saunas, blonde porn stars, Abba, crazy muppet chefs and Volvos, but also weird and amazing music as well.

We listened to loads of bands that none of us could pronounce and I'm not even going to try to spell.

The official theme biscuit for the night was the Iced Volvo. Borski Borski.

We all tuned up our acoustic guitars and gathered round Neil's suburban campfire* for some Folk-Prog. If Prog-Punk is Prunk, does that make Folk-Prog "Frog"?

As it turned out, Folk Prog was Aktuala, Arbete och Fritid, Broselmaschine, Circushead, Comus, Dando Shaft (Chris had a proggier track picked than the one that was played, in case anyone got the wrong impression from this band), Nick Drake, Dulcimer, East of Eden, Emtidi, Holderlin, Incredible String Band, Jan Dukes de Gray, Kalacakra, Mahjun, Mr. Fox, Pentangle, Principal Edwards Magic Theatre, Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes, Siloah, Steeleye Span, String Driven Thing, Tea & Symphony, Third Ear Band, Trees, Withuser & Westrupp, and Gabriel & Marie Yacoub. Also chosen for playing but not played due to running out of time and awake people - Amon Duul I, Asgard, Between, Wilburn Burchette, Clark-Hutchinson, Extradition, Fairport Convention (I know, not playing any Fairport was a sin), Forest, Sergius Golowin, Madden & Harris, Magic Carpet, Mellow Candle, Linda Perhacs, Sallyangie, Stone Angel, Trad Gras och Stenar and even more stuff that Neil had piled up, including Trader Horne. Chris listened to some of these after Neil had passed out on the couch and everyone else had gone, but that doesn't really count.

* Obviously that's a poetic metaphor and should be taken figuratively. The more literal-minded can read "kitchen table" for "suburban campfire", and we didn't so much tune our metaphoric acoustic guitars as pack them.

This was Prog released after the "Golden Age of Prog", which more or less means Post-Punk Prog I guess. (Post-Punk as a purely chronological description - not necessarily punk-influenced Prog, although there was some talk a few years back of a "Prunk" night.) Further confusing redefinitions of terms are inevitable as this night was so successful, we'd thought we'd have another one some time.

We watched the DVD's in chronological order of subject matter, starting with the Syd Barrett story, which we all greatly enjoyed. Although there was little information presented that was new to us, the first-hand re-tellings made the old stories seem fresh.

Then on to Pompeii. The new interview sections were fantastic, and a vast improvement on the footage included in the 1973 release of the film - although it was fairly clear why the Floyd would not have approved them for release at the time. The amateurishly animated space sequences were less inspiring, and just left us all trying to remember what footage had been sacrificed to make way for it. The music was as arresting as always however, and the film was gorgeously restored, even if the colour was a bit over-rich. The interview with the director (DVD special feature) was informative and interesting as well, and not at all the total wank I was half-expecting.

The clock had already crept passed midnight by this point, but we started the DSOTM Classic Albums episode anyway, and most of us propped out eyelids open until the end. Nobody was game to start trawling through the special features on that one though.

We listened to prime cuts by Elonkorjuu, Kalevala, Haikara, Finnforest, Tasavallan Presidentti, Jukka Tolonen, Wigwam and Circle. To paraphrase Asterix: These Finns are crazy.