Buyer’s Guide
The Canterbury Scene
The weird and wonderful proggy, lost jazzy world dominated by the inventive likes of Caravan, Soft Machine and Egg.
There are two things worth knowing about the 70s Canterbury scene. One is that many of its major players are not actually from Canterbury. The other is that there is/was no such thing as a ‘Canterbury scene’, according to even some people who were in it.
However, even those who say the scene never existed would agree that the tree from which the music blossomed was Wilde Flowers, which included all four original members of Caravan and a couple of Soft Machine men. Following branches from Wilde Flowers will lead you to just about every Canterbury scene band/artist of note.
You have Soft Machine, originally freeform experimentalists and psychedelic noodlers who developed into fullblown jazzers and were many rock fans’ introduction to jazz via their album Third.
There’s Steve Hillage’s band Khan, whose solitary album Space Shanty is a relatively unknown jewel, with ideas ranging from the spacey to the hard rocking, and featuring some outstanding playing from Hillage and keyboard player Dave Stewart. From there it’s but a short hop to Stewart’s post-Uriel keyboard-led trio Egg, who loved to blend a nice tune with a time signature that would make your head spin. Stewart later took his dizzying keyboard virtuosity to Hatfield And The North and National Health, both of whom blended Canterbury with jazz structures and produced music that was by turns emotive, jazzy, original, oddball and decidedly groovy.
Elsewhere you would just have to stop off at blond heartthrob Kevin Ayers. Apart from some evergreen songs, you could also rely on Ayers to deliver the maddest lyric imaginable with tremendous cool and complete sincerity.
You’d also come to Gong, the AngloFrench revolving-door collective of muso hippies whose line-ups included some seriously talented musicians and recorded music ranging from the unlistenable to the unmissable, from early psychedelic tripouts to jazz rock with soul.
Look around a bit more off the beaten track and you’ll also come across Henry Cow, Centipede, Gilgamesh, Delivery, Quiet Sun and many more, all of whom played a part in making the Canterbury scene such a rich, varied and, importantly, fun place to explore.
Paul Henderson