This would have been a good title for the category – except I went with Reelin’ in the Years instead.

It makes a good match with last week’s offering.

Steely Dan: Do It Again

In the mid 70s (and for a good long time after) my favourite band was Genesis. Yes I’d moved on from the Troggs and Sweet. I never saw them live with Peter Gabriel but I did on their first tour without him and saw the man himself on his first solo tour – both at the Apollo in Glasgow.

This is the sad tale of a lad whose only knowledge of women comes from a “how to” book.

Move over Casanova.

Genesis: Counting Out Time

The Strawbs were the favourite band of another of my schoolfriends. Only somewhat proggy, they were on the folkish end of the prog rock spectrum.

This is a rockier track though.

The Strawbs: Lay Down

I missed marking the Eurovision Song Contest last week so thought I’d make up for it now.

Vicky Leandros, as Vicky, sang L’amour Est Blue in the year Sandie Shaw won the contest, 1967. However she triumphed with this belter in 1972. A song in French by a Greek singer representing Luxembourg. Only at Eurovision.

By the way, is there anyone else who hears a resemblance in the tune for each verse to a certain work composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber?

For some reason it must have been thought no-one in the UK would buy a song with a lyric in French, as Vicky’s UK chart entry came with the reworking of Après Toi as Come What May.

Vicky Leandros: Après Toi

Vicky Leandros: Come What May

Two days in a row. Yesterday Ray Manzarek, today Trevor Bolder, bassist for David Bowie in the breakthrough years and sometime member of Uriah Heep and Wishbone Ash. It makes you dread waking up in the morning.

The track I’ve chosen isn’t one of the most played from the Ziggy era but it shows off Bolder’s bass playing.

Trevor Bolder; 09/06/1950 – 21/05/2103. So it goes.

David Bowie: John I’m Only Dancing

Another one from 1970 but this is one of the great cover versions. A Jagger-Richard composition, Melanie (Safka) invests Ruby Tuesday with much more emotion than Jagger ever could.

Melanie: Ruby Tuesday

Yesterday at school one of the pupils mentioned a road safety programme called, “Safe Drive, Stay Alive.” My mind immediately flashed to, “Don’t want to stay alive, when you’re twenty five,” and the unforgettably named Mott The Hoople with this David Bowie song.

Mott The Hoople: All The Young Dudes

And here’s Bowie’s version.

David Bowie: All The Young Dudes

I’ve not had any prog rock for a while so here is Italy’s finest, Premiata Forneria Marconi (or PFM,) with a beezer. (Just wait for the hook about one and a half minutes in.)

Thank God if sometimes your oyster holds a pearl.

PFM: The World Became the World

And for added value here’s a video of the band performing Celebration on The Old Grey Whistle Test.

This was The Sutherland Brothers before they took up with Quiver. Only the second Scots group I could remember making the UK charts (after Marmalade) The Pie was their first – relatively minor – hit.

The Sutherland Brothers: The Pie

The Brothers version of Sailing which they wrote and Rod Stewart later took to number one can be found here.

In a passage in Adam Roberts’s New Model Army (see my thoughts on it a few posts below) one of the characters thinks of Jeff Wayne rather than HG Wells when he hears the words, “War of the Worlds.” He at once mentions Richard Burton, David Essex and the Moody Blues. Well, as another song has it; two out of three ain’t* bad.

The character can be forgiven for the mistake, though. His mind wasn’t working properly at the time and it is understandable. Richard Burton and David Essex were both heard on the recording but it wasn’t all the Moody Blues who contributed to Jeff Wayne’s endeavour but their lead singer, the distinctively voiced Justin Hayward, certainly did. While Richard Burton was the spoken voice of the journalist Hayward took over for the singing and thus gave us the haunting Forever Autumn.

Justin Hayward: Forever Autumn

*Sorry for the inelegant language in the quote there.