Clouds

That's the nature of the business (of any business) - take Kaleidoscope (UK) for example - prominent in the UK pop-pscyhe scene in the late 60s, played (and composed the theme song) for the Isle of Wight Festival and were in the process of producing their Prog rock opus when it all went spectacularily wrong and the album get shelved for 20 years, or The Enid who had a massive cult following in the UK and played two Reading festivals just as Punk Rock exploded across the broadsheet rock press, sending them spiralling into obscurity. It happens, all we can do is support them now and sing their praises to any who would listen, there is little to be gained from regretting the failures of the past or dwelling upon them.

 

 

 

 

 

You can go now.

 

The way 1-2-3 have been written into the history of Prog over the past 3 or 5 years by a cadre of three or four hard-core fans who do little else but edit Wikipedia and spam various Prog websites is highly suspicious, couple that with the very dubious "live" recording of America that was allegedly recorded at the Marquee club to an audience of hysterically screaming teenage fans, apparently played live before "Bookends" was even released, during a headline residency at the Marquee that doesn't seem to be documented anywhere, and that the provenance for most of the citations and other corroborating evidence does seem to be rather self-referential, then it doesn't present itself as an immediatly compelling case.

 

Natural scepticism is not a result of not accepting that our "heroes ideas weren't as original as they thought" - heaven forfend we should think that they were given the wealth of talent and influence that was around in the mid-60s - but that the case for 1-2-3 being so pivotal looks to be very revisionist.

 

Sl*g off Prog Archives all you like it doesn't bother me any, we have as many differing opinions here as we have members - we are a review site, not a Prog rock encyclopedia or historical reference.

 

I actually have no hard opinion either way - if Yes copied 1-2-3 on a cover song then so be it, bands in a "scene" feed off each other all the time and nothing forms in isolation. I'm not a fan of Yes, Emerson or King Crimson so knocking them off their plinth does not bother me. But the picture being painted, (mainly across Wikipedia by one or two editors all indirectly referencing a single source), is that 1-2-3 influenced everyone of "importance" who may or may not have frequented the Marquee in 1967/8, including Yes, Wakeman, Emerson and Crimson. Yet this "influence" remained an obscure and unknown secret for over twenty years, then went silent for another twenty years until this "lost recording" resurfaced recently. That I find hard to believe (and a just little too convenient). I'm not at all certain that Wakeman even heard 1-2-3, even with his well documented Bowie connection (which should be far stronger case than any claim that he may or may not have heard them at the Marquee as the wiki-page implies), but the Yes arrangement of America was by Kaye, not Wakeman.

 

 

I miss no point about the recording - "where" the recording of America was made is important as it has absolutely no provenance other than the claim it was recorded at the Marquee in1968. That point is key and just by listening you have no way of telling when it was recorded: it could have been recorded 45 years ago or 45 minutes ago, but what I can say is it does not sound like any other Marquee recording of that time - the resonance/ambiance is wrong for a venue of that size, the mix and balance is wrong for a live mix and the audience reaction is completely wrong. There is no way on this earth that it is a recording of an audience at the Marquee, nor does it sound like were they recorded at the same location as the music - it sounds like it is from a much larger venue reacting to a completely different type of Pop music that was tacked on to the 1-2-3 recording after the event. Further more, given the reaction of the audience to that one song (if it really is the pukka 1-2-3/Marquee audience) then it is incredibly odd that there are not other recorded tracks from that gig - anyone setting-up the recording equipment to record each instrument so perfectly that garnered such an ecstatic audience reaction would have recorded more than one song - it is inconceivable that other songs weren't also recorded. This isn't a bootleg recording made by an audience member using a portable ¼" tape-recorder and a hand-held dynamic microphone (that's the best the technology of 1968 could offer) - it's a professional recording which would have had to been made using (expensive and bulky) professional mobile recording set-up.

 

Once there is doubt about the location of the recording you instantly raise doubt about when it was recorded. If it seems like the audience is fake and the music recording quality does not match the venue or the time-period then any confidence in the whole of the recording being "real" rapidly evaporates.

 

It may very well be a replication of what 1-2-3 used to perform in the Marquee in 1968, but I am not convinced at all that it is an actual recording from that place or time. 

 

That is extremely unsatisfactory no matter how you look at it.

 

 

 

DiamondDog wrote: PS I would never 'sl*g off Prog Archives. I enjoy the site and it has many fine qualities and contributions to make. The site itself cannot be held responsible for every aspect of deficiencies in reporting or commenting by members.

The only person here questioning any of this is me, yet you have managed to construe this as everyone:

• "That's one in the eye for some of the Prog audience who seem to find it hard to accept that their heroes ideas weren't as original as they thought"
• "the rest of us accepted this stuff long ago."
• "Your comment may well be true about Prog archives itself, every band has fans who do that stuff! "
• "but there is a definite tendency in prog circles to want to deny the sequence of events"
• "From what I know of Prog archives ... I don't see any change in this attitude no matter what evidence emerges, the Proggies and the Cloudites are coming from opposite directions and never the twain shall meet."
• "Unsatisfactory, but there we have it."
• "...every aspect of deficiencies in reporting or commenting by members"