Prom No.2 – Prog Rock: A Fanfare for the Common Man, Royal Albert Hall, London, 18th July 2026 – Well what to make of that on the Sunday after the Saturday night before then? Well on the actual morning of the show that playlist looked a tad polite, it all looked rather conservative, dare we say it was looking dangerously like it might be the Stuart Maconie/Radio Six version of Prog with Guy bleedin’ Garvey elbowing his way in and Supertramp for gawd sake! I mean, come on, all those musical boxes that could be opened, all those delights that could have been served up, all that musical adventure from the mighty hogweed-thrashing beast that once was Genesis and what do Maconie and company pick? Entanglement? Really?! And bloody Nights in white bloody satin wheeled out again? Northern bloody Lights? is this a Prog prom or a pop music prom? Could that bit of Incredible String Band they’ve selected be any more middle of the road polite? I mean, I don’t mind an occasional bit of mellow almost-folk flavour from the String Band on a relaxed mellow day but come on, hardly cutting edge prog when you’re armed with a great big orchestra and the Royal Albert Hall is at your disposal and we’re supposedly dealing in something that’s supposed to be a Summer-long celebration of the powerful wonder of classical music and you want all that married to the danger of proper thrusting this that was and is prog rock. You want that big symphony orchestra properly used, you want the big guns out, you want it over the top, the serious stuff, the defiance of is all, that great musical taboo, you want a plague of lighthouse keepers coming at you, you want your supper ready to go, you at least want nine funerals of the citizen king and the sweet mystery of life we all remember, or at least the rush of Camel’s Captured or the thrill of being blasted by the start of that life changing attack that was and always will be the opening Parallels and Yes and the thought of someone actually having the guts to be going for the one! Still, they are threatening to do Gentle Giant’s On Reflection, we do have to go! And anyway, Peter Hammill is performing! We surely don’t need no nights in white satin!
Now our admiration for all things Van Der Graaf Generator and Peter Hammill shaped is no big secret, the enticing thought of the man being there as part of the evening’s performance had us more than up and in the on-line queue for the day tickets way before the sun was awake (and nervous). Now as much as I love it in terms of sitting in a body of Van Der Graaf work, as beautiful as it is, Refugees is hardly the cutting edge dangerous really properly challenging dark side of probably (certainly!) one of the two greatest bands ever (no, of course there was never any danger they’d have the balls to include Cardiacs and the great(est) prog rock composer that was and is Tim Smith. You want proper prog challenge? No one did it better than Dr Tim Smith. Hell, a lot of this is what the punks used as ammunition during the great music wars of 76! Superbloodytramp for flip sake! Are we need that Peter Hammill fuelled version of the Stranglers’ Tank to drive through it all, or at least Rikki Nadir yelling about all these jerks and look at ’em! Is this all looking a touch out bloody rageously unambitiously safe…
Sure, there are some classics that needed to be there, although, I Know What I like is far too obvious when a big lump of Musical Box was surely crying out for attention and if they are going to do Entangled then you really want to at least hint at a touch dancing on a volcano afterwards and holy mother of god what is going on here! Same goes for the Yes selection : And You And I, a beautiful piece of music, but you’ve got a whole orchestra to fire up and take us flying out there, take is on great big classical rides, takes us right out there on a roundabout! Was this playlist put together by a mutant enemy of the great beast that is Prog? Stuart bloody Maconie, the man who probably wanted to put The Snake in his Northern Soul Prom a couple of years ago! The snake strikes again! Actually, give him his due, that Northern Soul prom back in 2023, even thought we did have to get through him as curator doing his bit of basic school teacher scene setting and explaining before introducing the orchestra, that Northern Soul Prom was rather brilliant in the end. Hope he’s not going to be allowed to do that introducing and explaining thing again tonight? Gawd, what if they let him flippantly start I Know What I like, please gawd, don’t let him tell is what time it is and that we might want some lunch, please gawd, don’t let the professional Northerner do that!
Wasn’t Maconie one of those NME writers constantly telling us all this glorious prog stuff was utter crap back there not so long ago? Wasn’t he one of the people telling us here at Organ just where we could go when we were releasing Cardiacs records and shouting about how proggingwell cool Van Der Graaf Generator were back there? He wasn’t exactly a champion of anything vaguely prog back there in the last part of the last century? Back there way before it was almost nearly cool to admit you actually secretly loved Prog Rock? Oh the abuse we’d get on the streets or in the bars of North London for daring to champion Prog back there, to dare to write about the last musical taboo (actually we still get it from some of the old farts still trying to squeeze into their faded Eater t-shirts, yes there are a few of them still out there bumbling around like lost Japanese solders waiting for Captured to finally get them). I remember a trio of NME writers cornering us before a Huge Baby gig in the Mid 90s and getting almost violent about it, one holding up a copy of Organ and demanding to know how we could have the audacity to say the self same Prog Rock they now claim to have always loved was cool! We remember those voices from our past and how there might have been a better future in the fire escape trade back there, we haven’t forgotten how saying Yes were cool would boil their inkie Brit Pop loving piss back there and….
So yes, we did wake up on the morning of the event full of genuine excitement, we were worried about getting our grubby hands on a couple of those only on sale of the day Promming ticket, that fomo thing. No worries, 635th in the on-line queue, only had to wait half an hour to the front of the on-line line. By 1pm though, by dinner time and a break from the lawn mowing for a spot of lunch and having paid a bit more attention to to the actual playlist posted in advance on the Proms website, having looked beyond the fact that Peter Hammill was performing, I admit I was starting to question if I was even going to go? Still got to be worth it for a blast of 21st Century Schizoid Man right? And there is the beef of that Sylvia riff and some Focus (even if it was their catchy pop hit), got to be worth going for that Focus riff surely? And yes, Gentle Giant’s On Reflection is a more that excellent choice, that surely is pure Proms classical experimentalism, surely On Reflection is going to be the proper thing! Surely just On Reflection is going to make it worthwhile (and of course Peter)
Then again, is this really what we want from the Proms? As we’ve argued before, surely The Proms are about nights of loud head-height angular Stravinsky challenge or the glorious flow of Beethoven’s sixth preceded by a premier of some left-field piece by an exciting new experimental composer (always worth getting there for the full program on a Proms night). I love going to the Proms, well besides that last night nonsense, wild horses wouldn’t drag me to the Last Night! The Proms are surely about properly proper classical music and as much as Emerson Lake and Palmer might have though themselves a classical outfit, they were really a rock band and do we want all this watering down of things? The Proms should surely be about properly classical things old and new, that and the beauty of the proper Promming and Henry Woods’ vision of the cheap tickets that can only be bought on the day. Those on-the-day tickets that are always held back and that idea that always was about music for once being for the masses: affordable tickets and classical music for the working classes without watering it down 9are we too dumb for properly classical concerts?Does it really have to be dumbed down? Don’t we deserve the credit?). I need the proms and that vital opportunity (still) afforded; classical concert ticket prices are mostly way beyond my pocket, I shall be off Promming again this season though, a bit of Stravinsky, some prog as flip Shostakovich, John Adams and Harmonium is always a highlight (26th July this year, highly recommended if you like it experimental, if you like it prog!) and yes, a bit of crowd pleasing Beethoven at the Proms is always a Summer treat, the 9th is this coming Monday. The supporting cast on any given night is what you really need to check out though, bit of pre match web searching can often throw up a vital slice or two of experimental music being premiered before the main piece of the evening is performed. Check out those programmes, do a bit of research, web-search a few names, it can be rather rewarding. Oh look, The proms are brilliant and yes, I guess we can have these occasional nights that stray, but hey, don’t be straying too much, don’t be watering down the glorious thing that is the Prom season and an accessible programme of classical music (and whatever you do, don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that dreadful last night and all that flag weaving crap is what the Proms are about, that last night is so so misleading, so off-putting, don’t let it fool you, that last night is a million miles away from what The proms are really about)
And like that Northern Soul Prom back in the Summer of 2023, the Hall is packed tonight; you’ve got your regular prom goers, a familiar face or two alongside the progheads, although not as many band shirts as we might have expected and as we said back then for the Northern Soul night, this is less reverential that your regular Prom crowd, the rituals and the codes pushed to one side. It does kind of look and feel like the Proms, we’re definitely in the Albert Hall, there’s Henry looking down, the room is dressed for another the Prom season (this is only the second night of the season that will last for a couple of months), there’s the orchestra all set out, and yet even before we start, it sounds different. The crowd don’t quite sound anything like the hushed crowd of a ‘normal’ Prom. Yes there are band shirts, there are people who have never been to a Prom before, only not quite as many bands shirts as we’d expected, seems a lot of the progs haven’t got their heads around how to Prom, about how easy it all is (if you live close enough that is): there’s a Van Der Graaf shirt, there’s a Six of the Best Genesis shirt, quite a few Yes shirts, the man in the Fugazi shirt (the band, not the Marillion album) has good moan about Nights in White Satin, a couple of Cardiacs shirts go past, knowing nods exchanged. Actually there’s quite a lot of debate down the front during the interval, regular prom goers asking what they should listen to, writing notes, Henry Cow you say? Sleepytime Gorilla Museum? Which Cheer Accident album do you recommend then as he scrolls through his phone at half time? Oh there’s far more to this than Jethro Tull’s rather stodgy 1969 number three hit Living In The Past. Why the flip is Marconie going on about hit singles!? Bloody “bangers” for fug sake! Prog rock was never about the watered down attempts at hit singles demanded by the record labels and that version of Living In The Past really really is flat. Prog rock was not about singles, it was about glorious gatefold albums, about albums you judged by the thickness of the spine! You sat on the bus in your school uniform on the way home from the record shop studying the lyrics, itching to get to a turntable, feeling the weight of it all; as thick as a brick!
Enough of this pre gig waffle, cut the chaise, we’re off. the annoying introduction from the BBC announcer and something about things being cosmic scowled at and we’re straight into it, Copeland’s Fanfare to The Common Man, the ELP version with Carl Palmer bombastically battering the orchestra and conductor Robert Aims, that trumpeted opening really was the only way it could start really. We’re off galloping, and yes, actually this is okay, a touch cheesy maybe, decent start to proceedings though.
Fanfare played, Palmer retreats, Oh gawd, Marconie is going to present and explain again, shut the flip up and let the music do the talking, quit it with yer “Bonafide chart bangers”. That version of Tull’s Living in the Past with that familiar voice of Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys fronting it really is stodgy (he will loosen up later) and is this going to sound like that awful series of K-Tel Classical Rock albums of the 70’s and just because it was an early career “Bonafidi chart banger” and number blood three hit in ’69 don’t make it classic Jethro Tull! Far from it, I’m already wanting something at thick as a brick to throw at him! That almost easy listening version of Jazz rock band Soft Machine’s Out Bloody Rageous doesn’t lift things much either and oh gawd, the first sighting of Guy Bleedin’ Garvey and argghhhh, bloody Marconie did have the audacity to announce that it was indeed one o’clock and time for lunch and no, block him out, block him out, pretend he’s not here and don’t mention the Wheel Tappers and Shunters club (hey, I’m from the North as well, shut up and let the music do the damn talking!) Oh, this ain’t going too well, Northern Lights next, the Renaissance “chart banger”, it always was a bit twee, Jane Weaver sings it well enough, but hell, come on! And the only good thing about Nights in White Satin is the thought of what comes next (oh, and the Pretty Things might have something to say about who came up with the first Prog Rock concept album even if the label did butcher it and released it all in the wrong order first time around six months of so before Strawberry Fields). The rather polite version of The Moody Blues’ rather polite Nights in White Satin drags on, shall we leave?
Hang on though, the least some of us can do is wave to each other and stick on in there, and quietly, modestly, almost sneaking on in his now almost familiar white, here comes Peter Hammill and that beautiful opening to Refugees and his voice may have aged now but that has added just as much as time might have taken away and this is, from that first suggestion that North was somewhere years ago, this is just right. Yes, i take it back, this is just the right selection, and there he is looking and sounding just as powerfully compelling as he was at the Royal Festival Hall last year, Peter Hammill doesn’t need an orchestra, although, at last, this is all starting to work, the arrangement, the strings, the thin line marking sea and sand and we can be happy (wonder if Mike and Susie are in the hall?) and let’s hope these are far from the spending of final days and tying it all up in brown paper and string and wow, I know I’m a fanboy, but what a performance, what a moment, this concert is finally alive, massive cheers. Van Der Graaf Generator have always been the real deal, no hit singles here! Proper big, proper progressive rock and far far more beyond just that. What would Rikki Nadir make of it all? You do know Peter Hammill was there with Rikki helping to kick punk off don’t you? Go ask Johnny Rotten what Mr Hammill was doing in ’75, he’ll delight in telling you, go search out Nadir’s Big Chance, Vital stuff!). At last, we’re off, we’re finally off, we’re properly off! Peter Hammill, to use another populist term, has well and truly nailed it!
And as well as that version of And You And I is sung (by a female duo called the Staves, no credit anywhere on the Proms or the BBC websites, they deserve to be named), it is a rather genteel follow up to Peter’s bit and yes, it is back to the safety harness when really Yes were the most preposterously brilliantly over the top classically self indulgent Prog band of them all and oh well, they could have really built on Refugees and instead they retreated to the semi-final halfway line to defend what they’d almost won. They played it safe when we really wanted it all to fly! And no, Mrs BBC announcer we do not want a “blissful walk down memory lane”, we’re here for cutting edge challenging classic interpretations of some dangerously adventurous pieces of exciting rock music by a a powerful symphony orchestra, we want to be challenged by interpretations of a collection of glorious pieces of music that are as relevant now as they were when most of them were made, this is no nostalgia trip!
Oh that version of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells that bookends the first part of the concert is a criminal bit of musical butchery. the less said about it the better!
Part two, Karn Evil Nine, Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends with the recorded vocals of Greg Lake and well, you can’t really mess that it up even if it is more of a fairground show that a piece of prog rock. Actually whoever arranged the orchestration of the section that pulled together Sylvia (Focus), Komfo (Osibisa) and the inevitable three minutes of Zappa’s Peaches en Regalia deserves a particular mention, I believe it was Christian Balvig, this bit is good, this is going to places that are a bit more than just doing slightly classical cover versions, this is taking the challenge head on, this is an inspired coupling of the three slices, three as a perfect pair ahead of the soon to come bits of King Crimson bits and the ten minute section of 21st Century Schizoid Man, I Talk to the Wind and Court of the Crimson King (this time arranged by the always worth checking out Fiona Brice) and okay, Guy Garvey did alright that time with his Cat’s foot, his iron claw and his neurosurgeons scream for more at paranoia’s poison door as did Gruff Rhys with his singing to the wind from the outside looking inside. Actually things are vastly improved in this second half of the show and that segue-way into the Court of the Crimson King itself was majestic, I like to imagine Fiona Brice quietly punching the air as that moment happened almost unnoticed by most. This is good, this is finally working, this is what we wanted, the sweet and sour is tasting good, if there’s a firewitch in the building she is probably approving, and that’s the second loudest cheep of the night (Peter Hammill enjoyed the biggest of course, now where was he for that bit, as good as Garvey was, surely someone could have brought Hammill back out to add to one of his old mate Fripp’s finest moments…
And actually, I take it all back, after the bite of the excellent King Crimson pieces, the gentle delight of Entangled is so right, as is the performance of both Guy Garvey and Jane Weaver. I mean it is a beautiful song, it is a fine slice of Trick of The Tale and that is such a fine album (the first Genesis album I ever bought) and here it is performed just right, spine-tingling, done in just the right way, a highlight: not sure how the live radio broadcast is sounding, inside the hall it is sounding perfectly interpreted, Hammond and all, although I do want to start singing holy mother of god at the end of it, it is an almost muscle memory thing. Instead of dancing towards a volcano, we get the triumphant start to the Gentle Giant master piece On Reflection. Okay, so there’s no vocals and we do kind of need the all around all around, but then do we? Isn’t this what we want the orchestra to be doing? Isn’t this what we want from the Proms? This is a piece of music as experimentally classical as anything you’ll hear in a good Proms season, and this version, even though there is heated debate and disagreement afterwards, is an inspired interpretation – some might moan about the cutting up of a classic, I like what arranger Sam Gale has done with it, On Reflection was always going to be a highlight, it didn’t disappoint.
Hey look, the Welsh experimental folk flavours of those Super Furry Animals were never a million miles away from the Incredible String Band’s Scottish experimental folk flavours and this is clearly something a labour of love for Supper Furry frontman Griff Rhys, it feels like he’s far more at home here performing this than he did singing Jethro Tull at the start of the evening. The nice and politely gently, the almost whimsical Maker of Islands is hardly a piece prog rock though is it? What the hell is it doing here bringing us down when we were so so up just a moment ago? This is like drinking hot chocolate in your slippers when you want to so some more stomping on giant hogweeds in yer dirty boots after the King Crimson bits. And well, dare I say I never liked Dark Side of The Moon that much, most of the room think Vanessa Haynes and the performance of Great Gig In The Sky she leads is brilliant, and yes, it is, admittedly, a brilliant vocal performance, and I’m getting elbowed in the ribs and told to stop scowling, and I’m imaging Peter Hammill driving that tank that belonged to the Stranglers again as the crowd erupts in appreciation and delight, in celebration of the Floyd…
And here come The staves again, the two of them were really good – hang on, let me do the Google bluffing thing – The Staves are an English indie folk duo of sisters Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor from Watford, Hertfordshire, England – they really did deserve a name check and although I’m no Supertramp fan either (even if he is ripping of that mask) and Crime Of The Century might well have been just that, and performing the title track of that album tonight might have been the rather safe conservative route opted for yet again, the polite option when they could have gone to so many places (Henry Cow maybe?), I have to admit this is a bombastically good version of Crime, an almost over the top of version to almost close the show.
And surely there’s all kinds of ironies and contradictions in the even more bombastic ending that is an orchestral interpretation of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s interpretation of Mussorgsky’s classically over the top The Great Gates of Kiev, with a lean and mean Carl Palmer adding an even more bombastic layer on top of all the icing and several cherries as he delights in almost defiantly beating the hell out of his drums with an air of I told you so and a great big shit-eating grin on his face (while the tired old punks drag themselves out for their endless 50th anniversaries, their flogging of dead horses and there trying to remember all those thing said back there in ’76).
And there’s Peter Hammill and Carl Palmer hugging each other up there at the end of it all while the rest of the cast take a well deserved bow (or several bows and call backs), and yes, I am including Mr Maconie here, he might be bloody annoying at times, he (mostly) did good here putting this together though, they all did, they all deserved the acclaim and the applause. Hey, it might not have been perfect and debates might have been raging on line, in pubs and on trains home afterwards, they might still be going on (my social media feeds have been full of it) and yes, there were things that could have been done in different ways, but yes, most of that was damn good, it was mostly a really rather special thing, a triumph, a fine celebration, a proper Prom it was a prog as flip… (sw)
Photos sneaked on a phone or stolen from the BBC social media feed or from someone called Jackson Greaves. Oh and you can find the whole concert of the BBC sounds radio app thing right now, via BBC Radio Three…
Previously
And loads more prog here…
ORGAN: Our best albums of another very musically busy 2025. Who did we rate? Part One, 1 to 10…
And if you don’t know who Peter Hammill is, this is your starting point…
and a booleg from Saturday night until someone takes it down
THE ORGAN 