Katie Puckrik’s Prog Passion: BBC 6 Music

Broadcaster and columnist Katie Puckrik hopes sharing her passion for prog music will appeal to people who may not realise they already love the genre.

Her one-hour special, Katie Puckrik’s Progressive, is broadcast on BBC 6 Music on Sunday, March 24 at 12noon. She’ll play a selection of tracks that she hopes will draw connections between pioneers of the 1960s and 70s and the current wave of artists.

She tells Prog Magazine: “I’ve always loved anything magical, mystical, ethereal, theatrical in music. I was programmed early by older siblings to love the stuff that was coming out of Southern California and Britain in the late 60s and 70s. I had Partridge Family and children’s songs alongside Thick As A Brick and The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.

“I was recently listening to BBC 6 and hearing all these bands – Grizzly Bear, Tame Impala, Goldfrapp, Bat For Lashes – and I thought, ‘This stuff is pretty much progressive rock. Let’s do a non-linear family tree. Let’s rehabilitate the term.’

“I’ve called the show ‘Progressive’ as opposed to ‘prog rock’ because I’m expanding the definition to include freak-folk, psychedelic soul, art rock… it’s a catch-all term for anything that’s left of centre.”

Many might find it strange that someone like Puckrik would be a die-hard prog fan – but she doesn’t. “I was talking to Mark Radcliffe recently and his assumption was that prog is a boy’s club, that it only attracts male listeners. He was surprised that I was a chick into this stuff. It’s colourful, it’s light, it’s surprising, it’s weird, and that’s what I’m into.”

Dance plays a big role in her life – she studied the art for many years and was once in a contemporary dance company. “In terms of dancing to that kind of music, anything goes!” she says. “It’s not deep cuts I’m playing; it’s prog you can dance to. In the show, Alison Goldfrapp talks about being indoctrinated by older siblings into the cult of prog rock: before you know it you’re dancing like a hippie chick at a free festival in the 60s.”

Puckrik laughingly dismisses the notion of prog being a cult – but shares one of her earliest memories of being inspired by the music of It’s A Beautiful Day. “I devised a game called Born Free, getting all my little friends to take all their clothes off, then we danced in the dark. We had one flashlight in the basement and we’d dare each other to antelope-jump through the light to this crazy music. God – it is a cult!”

She recalls the punk era as “a big old bummer,” explaining: “I was watching from afar – I was following it from my suburban bedroom in Virginia via imported Melody Makers and NMEs. I tried to grasp the social significance of everything, but I never grasped or endorsed why we were supposed to put away our prog rock albums; why suddenly it was uncool to like complicated music. I loved the Ramones and the Clash, but I didn’t know why it meant I couldn’t listen to Eno, early Roxy Music and Yes.”

The amount of new prog music available today came as a surprise to Puckrik; she’s delighted to have discovered so many contemporary acts leading the movement forward.

But she’ll always find time for a favourite old classic: “My wake-up music in the morning is Tubular Bells,” she says. “It’s my upbeat ‘tiger in my tank’ kind of music. I never saw The Exorcist. Most people associate Tubular Bells with it. I don’t – to me it’s percussive, percolating, bubbling, mysterious and uplifting.”

Lol!... Grizzly Bear, Tame Impala, Goldfrapp, & Bat For Lashes? Not too many of those seem to have found their way past the Progarchives gatekeeper, but it should be an interesting show nonetheless, and I'd sure as Hell like to know how to dance to King Crimson...!!