PA's Top 100 Prog Albums, Year by Year

As far as I'm concerned, top 10s would be very fine. 

As stated/documented by, as far as I remember, Enigmatic in another thread, this sleeve note first appeared in the 1972 reissue. 

Hi,

At the time, a lot of the music was depending on radio play, specially in America when the AM radio was still favored, which was to begin falling apart the following year, when a lot of the folks on it, started the dumping ground on the new materials, including a jackass in Madison that called Jimi Hendrix a stoned kid that didn't know music, and at least twice that I caught, he started the single and ripped the needle through the rest of the song! I would have fired that idiot on the spot for being in the wrong business and not supporting the music!

PF, on that first album, was kinda known in England, to a small degree, along with other bands in their "college circuit" of bands, that at the time also featured The Soft Machine and others ... but beyond that I think it was kinda ... so what ... more weird, far out, quasi psychedelic music ... (PF's early stuff is NOT psychedelic at all, despite it being around during the time) ... that was getting some attention, but in America it was not going to get played much on the AM radio. It was later on the FM radio band that PF got better known in America, because the weird/eccentric nature of the music was an attractive new choice, and a much better product than some cheap stuff or "I had too much to dream last night", which, btw, is not even a drug song!

It is, neat, and far out, that some 50 plus years later, we can sit back and say ... that was a far out album, even if Roger still speaks of them as crap and not worth discussing! Dave has an inch of respect, but does not think of it as valuable when it comes to composition, since it does not feature one of his solos !

But what it told us all was that in the next few years, the long cut and the "tripping" was what a lot of music was all about, which meant that a lot of the Syd stuff was no longer an interest for the new radio folks with FM radio in America. England different in this aspect, and even Dave Cousins book on it (he worked in the evolution of FM radio in England) is elusive and sometimes not clear about all the music, and what it needed ... and maybe all he really wanted was to get a new keyboard, or guitar so his band could continue, and his wife wouldn't throw the bum out the door!