SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND

THIS IS THE QuINTESSENTIAL symphonic progressive rock album, this is the DADDY. It should be No 1, because it has beauty, complexity and simplicity, it just has so MANY of the best moments in prog, all on the one album/CD. Gabriel's loan intro sends a shiver down the spine and we're into track 1 Dancing with the Moonlight Knight, and the English lyrics are contemporary for 1973, but they echo in eternity...Sublime compositional piano and guitar take us into the Single and again it's quirky English humour might be missed by some! It's a great song and then Masterpeice No 1 - Firth of Fifth, from tingling piano solo to superb flute/synth/piano arpegios, can it get better? Yes - with the finest guitar solo in prog rock history, it's not fast it's not clever but it's got orgasmic qualities that still get me now thirty years after I first heard it! Then the low point, Phil Collins singing a pointless lovesong (sign of things to come). Track 5 , The Battle of Epping Forest, again a topical story about gang-land violence almost cetainly prompted by the Kray's reign in Londons gang-land, Gabriel is sublime and the track works on many levels for me and I still love it. Then The Cinema show and another prog masterpiece what can you say about banks keyboards or the haunting classical guitars, then it's over with another topical ditty at the end. If you don't like this then you aren't a fan of symphonic prog rock, it's as simple as that. And it has THREE of the top 10 symphonic prog tracks OF ALL TIME, i'll let you guess which three they are!