A cultural hot spot in the middle of a largely agricultural county (Kent was, up until 2006 when it was deposed by North Yorkshire, described as ‘the Garden of England’ thanks to a dish of Kentish cherries which particularly satisfied King Henry VIII), Canterbury is a city of surprises. Since geography lessons in the early 70s I had always assumed that the description ‘Garden of England’ was associated with agricultural output, but the criteria now applied in the competition include far more than orchards and allotments, the initial fame of which won Kent its title. The categories now include scenery, hidden corners, village traditions and the variety of wildlife which means Kent has lost its place because of perceived congestion, pollution and the adverse effects of over-building, plus a derogatory view of young, less-well off fashion slaves who, it is alleged, first appeared in Chatham; even the Channel tunnel rail link was considered to be a negative factor.
West Gate, Canterbury
Somewhat dramatically, this provincial city which had returned a Conservative MP since the constituency was created in 1918 (prior to that it was the Canterbury borough where up until 1885 there were two seats) elected a Labour MP at the 2017 General Election, Rosie Duffield, with a 45% share of the vote. Duffield ousted sitting MP of 30 years, Sir Julian Brazier by 187 votes; she increased her majority over the Conservatives to 1,836 (+3.1%) in 2019 and in 2024 her majority was 8,653 on a reduced turnout and after boundary changes where her share of the vote was also reduced, providing a boost to the Green Party.
Duffield’s stunning victory in 2017 was due to two factors, the candidate herself who seems genuinely liked by the constituents, and the student vote – Canterbury is a university city, and young people had been reconnected with politics thanks to Jeremy Corbyn’s vision that there was a viable, alternative way of running the country. The promise of ending tuition fees was seen by some as a bribe but it remains clear that the current system for student finance is working neither for the students nor the loans company itself, with half of all students unlikely to pay back their loan in full and it has been argued by people like Peter Scott, Professor of Higher Education Studies at the Institute of Education and former vice-chancellor of Kingston University, that ending student tuition fees makes both economic and social sense. Furthermore, reneging on a promise to scrap tuition fees has been proved to be an act of political suicide; does anyone remember Nick Clegg and the fate of the Lib Dems in 2015? A member of the public interviewed after the 2017 general election said that she never thought of Canterbury as a Conservative city and that her vote was vindicated, yet every constituency in Kent had a Conservative MP from 2010 until 2017.
Labour took 11 of the 18 Kent constituencies in 2024 although Duffield left the Labour Party in September and currently sits as an Independent; the Lib Dems also took a seat from the Conservatives.
General Election results for Kent constituencies, 2005 - 2024*. Canterbury was the sole Labour seat at the 2017 and 2019 elections
*Boundary changes came in to force for the 2010 and 2024 elections
Canterbury is home to the Church of England but the city doesn’t have the feel of an especially devout place. There are probably more tourists on a pilgrimage to the shops, where price tags in the chain stores are marked in both sterling and euros than there are going to see the site of the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, though the 11th Century cathedral, the ruins of St Augustine’s Abbey and St Martin’s Church, all part of a UNESCO World Heritage site are destinations worth seeking out for history and atmosphere. It’s not just the trainloads of schoolchildren arriving from France with their matching backpacks and laminated lanyards, part of the attraction of Canterbury is that is has an outward-looking vibe, welcoming everyone. The student adoption of left-wing ideals fits nicely with this openness but even outside of university terms, the city appears to have a surprisingly young demographic.
Canterbury cathedral
Canterbury is of course a city associated with a particular sub-genre of progressive rock, a movement which has a close association with left-leaning politics despite the vein of casual sexism present throughout the earlier works of Caravan. Robert Wyatt embraced the internationalism of the British Communist Party while cellist Georgie Born formed the Feminist Improvising Group with oboist Lindsay Cooper so it’s conceivable that the progressive nature of the local politics may help to explain Duffield’s electoral successes.
My introduction to the Canterbury scene was hearing For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night a little while after its release when my older brother borrowed it from one of his school friends. The album title and gatefold sleeve are very representative of Caravan and their use of innuendo which appeared to aim for the pubescent schoolboy market. The music was a bit of a mixed bag; sometimes jazzy and complex (L’Auberge Du Sanglier, C’thlu Thlu), mostly displaying a sense of humour and even disappointing (Surprise, Surprise.) I was evidently sufficiently unimpressed with the overall result that it took me until 1981 to buy any Caravan music, a cassette of Better by Far in a discount bin in the Tooting branch of Woolworths which I would subsequently find wasn’t worth the £0.99 I’d spent. Fortunately, hearing Nine Feet Underground, David Sinclair’s 22-minute epic from In the Land of Grey and Pink on Alice’s Restaurant, a progressive rock radio station broadcast in the London area on Sunday mornings restored my faith and shortly afterwards I invested in a copy of the compilation double LP Canterbury Tales.
For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night - my introduction to Caravan
Some of the protagonists deny that the Canterbury construct really existed but the geographic evolution of the Canterbury sound can’t be disputed; Soft Machine and Caravan were formed there, and Gong also has its roots in Canterbury. The story actually begins with The Wilde Flowers (the “e” in Wilde was said to have been introduced by the Kent-born, Malaysia-raised Kevin Ayers as a tribute to Oscar Wilde) which formed from the core of the Daevid Allen Trio in 1963, a differently-named version of which first appeared at the exclusive, private Simon Langton School on the outskirts of Canterbury, an establishment described by former NME editor Ian McDonald as catering for “the sons of local intellectuals and artists” that was “emphatically geared to the uninhibited development of self-expression". The Wilde Flowers was something of a musical collective, with band members coming and going, not unlike the interconnectedness of a mycelial network!
The original Wilde Flowers consisted of Robert Wyatt on drums, Kevin Ayers on vocals, Hugh Hopper on bass, Richard Sinclair on guitar and vocals, and Hugh’s brother Brian Hopper on guitar, saxophone and flute; the original Soft Machine formed in 1966 with a line-up consisting of Daevid Allen, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayres and Mike Ratledge, another former Simon Langton alumnus who had returned from university in Oxford; Richard Sinclair had become friends with the Hoppers when they went to see Sinclair Sr. play in his jazz band, David Sinclair also attended the school and Daevid Allen lodged at Wyatt’s parents’ house near Canterbury. The Sinclair cousins would go on to form Caravan in 1968 with another couple from the collective, Pye Hastings (Ayers went out with Hastings’ sister Jane) and Richard Coughlan (who had been introduced to Hugh Hopper via a mutual friend in the Sea Cadets.)
Both Soft Machine and Caravan were plagued throughout their careers with frequent personnel changes, as though they’d inherited a faulty gene from the Wilde Flowers. The first Soft Machine line-up failed to even record an album despite being, alongside early Pink Floyd, the darlings of London’s underground movement. Following a gig in St. Tropez, Daevid Allen was refused re-entry into the UK because of an expired visa, and he remained in France where he formed Gong. The remaining trio, augmented by future Police guitarist Andy Summers went on to tour the US supporting Jimi Hendrix (his manager Chas Chandler had signed Soft Machine to Polydor and Hendrix had also contributed guitar to Feelin’ Reelin’ Squeelin’, the B-side of their first single Love Makes Sweet Music). They recorded their debut album The Soft Machine in New York half-way through the tour but it was only released in America. The album material was mostly pop-psychedelia, and quite different from the free-form avant-jazz that comprised their live set. Long-time associate Hugh Hopper had acted as the group's tour manager and occasional roadie, and he took up musician’s duties once more to replace bassist/vocalist Ayers when he decamped to Ibiza at the end of the tour 1968.
ProgBlog's Soft Machine collection
Egg (Dave Stewart, Mont Campbell and Clive Brooks) are classed as a Canterbury band despite having formed as Uriel when at the City of London School, along with fellow pupil Steve Hillage. When Hillage left to go to the University of Kent in Canterbury, Uriel continued as a trio and were encouraged to change their name when they got a record deal. The organ-heavy material has little in common with Caravan, with the possible exception of the David Sinclair-penned Nine Feet Underground, though the overdriven keyboards do at times come into Soft Machine territory, which is hardly surprising since Stewart has acknowledged Ratledge as an influence. The psychedelia, whimsy and humour, seemingly shared by Egg with the other two groups was likely to have been a product of the times along with the shared interest in odd time signatures as ‘progressive’ bands moved away from the constrictive rules of mid-60’s pop. Hillage would later join Gong (1973-75) for some of their most coherent material, having disbanded his own group Khan and played with Kevin Ayers in Decadence, appearing on Gong’s classic Radio Gnome trilogy.
ProgBlog's Egg collection
Hatfield and the North, surfacing from a number of intertwining band histories, neatly fit in with any postulated Canterbury sound. Well away from that geographical area of Canterbury, Delivery was formed in 1967 featuring Phil Miller on guitar, his brother Steve Miller on piano, Pip Pyle on drums, Jack Monck on bass and Carol Grimes on vocals. Steve Miller would replace David Sinclair in Caravan for Waterloo Lily (1972) and Phil Miller, who was a guest musician on Waterloo Lily joined Robert Wyatt in his post-Soft Machine grouping Matching Mole, its moniker being a pun on the French for Soft Machine and a band that originally included Dave Sinclair on keyboards; Wyatt had previously introduced Pyle to Daevid Allen and the drummer went off to live and gig with Gong from 1971 to 1972.
The Hatfields first convened in 1972 and comprised Phil Miller, Pip Pyle, David and Richard Sinclair but the band only played a couple of gigs before the keyboard player departed, deciding that he wasn’t best suited to music that lacked structure. His replacement, Dave Stewart, fitted perfectly and their two albums, the self-titled debut (1974) and The Rotters’ Club (1975) are both excellent examples of progressive rock tinged with complexity and jazz sensibility, and presented with a madcap humour. Tricky time signatures and nice melodic moments are linked together by Sinclair’s ever-so-English vocals; a collective of incredible writing skills from all four members.
ProgBlog's Hatfield and the North collection
National Health emerged from the embers of the defunct Hatfield and the North and the far jazzier Gilgamesh who toured together in 1973 and on a couple of occasions played a 40-minute set as a ‘double quartet’, with music specially composed by keyboard player Alan Gowen. National Health inherited some of Gilgamesh’s changing personnel problems but still managed to release three brilliant albums, IMHO the choice pick of the Canterbury scene: National Health (1978), Of Queues and Cures (1978) and D.S al Coda (1982), the latter released following the death of Gowen from leukaemia in 1981, exclusively featuring his compositions.
ProgBlog's National Health LPs
Author and broadcaster Jerry Lucky describes the formation of the Canterbury scene as the first schism in the progressive rock meta-genre, with Yes, Genesis and ELP becoming ‘mainstream’ acts and another branch, many with their roots in the Canterbury region of England, being a more ‘serious’ group of musicians, less concerned about commercial success. Other commentators have linked the Canterbury sub-genre with distinctive creative and interesting outpourings. Jonathan Coe, author of the novel The Rotters’ Club, wrote the sleeve notes to the Hatfield and the North retrospective CD Hatwise Choice and also equates Hatfield and the North, Henry Cow and Gentle Giant with ‘fringe’ progressive acts quite distinct from Yes and ELP. He sides with the many critics that branded progressive rock as “pretentious and humourless” inferring that Hatfield and the North were anything but lacking a sense of humour. His opinion is not without merit. Would Yes have ever released a track entitled Lobster in Cleavage Probe or Gigantic Land Crabs In Earth Takeover Bid, or Big Jobs (Poo Poo Extract)?
Lucky actually includes Gentle Giant as a Canterbury band in an organisational chart describing the branches of progressive rock in The Progressive Rock Files (Collectors Guide Publishing Ltd. 4th Edition 1998. p.299). I’m unsure if he’s thinking of the Canterbury sound/scene or making a simple geographical error (Lucky hails from Canada where an appreciation for the relatively short distances between cities in the UK compared to the distance between Halifax and Vancouver or New York and Los Angeles, may be a factor in the thinking of commentators who have no appreciation of the distance between for example, Bournemouth, a coastal town in Dorset and the early centre of activity for a number of key progressive rock players, and Canterbury, a well-to-do provincial city in the middle of Kent.) If it were the former, I’d suggest that Gentle Giant’s soul/pop origins, lyrical content and penchant for medieval and baroque music rather than psychedelic whimsy and jazz excludes them from belonging to the Canterbury set. Furthermore, I’m personally not so sure that there’s any validity in attempting to make a qualitative distinction between the mainstream prog acts and the cohort of less commercially successful bands, some of which, like Caravan, were geographically associated with Canterbury.
Classification is obviously a grey area, but I think there are a related set of bands, none of which should actually be lumped into the Canterbury sub-genre, linked by the movements of different players from the core Canterbury scene. These include Bruford (Bill Bruford had been the original drummer for National Health and utilised the talents of Dave Stewart in his band); Camel (Richard Sinclair replaced original bassist Doug Ferguson and Caravan keyboard players David Sinclair and Jan Schelhaas were recruited for Breathless in 1978 with Schelhaas staying until 1981); Henry Cow (bassist John Greaves and his replacement in Henry Cow, Georgie Born, joined National Health in 1978, Born originally appearing as a guest cellist on Of Queues and Cures); Mike Oldfield (who had been the bassist in Kevin Ayres’ band the Whole World along with composer David Bedford on keyboards); and Quiet Sun, the Phil Manzanera pre-Roxy Music outfit featuring bassist Bill MacCormick (Matching Mole) who recorded Mainstream in 1975 during a Roxy hiatus.
A Robert Fripp connection to Canterbury goes back to 1970 when he was involved in Keith Tippett’s Centipede project, a collection of all the bright young things of the British jazz scene, plus members of Soft Machine and other members of King Crimson. This musical cross-fertilisation was responsible for the guest appearance of Tippett on In the Wake of Poseidon, Lizard and Islands, and Tippett band members Marc Charig and Robin Miller on Lizard, Islands and Red, and Nick Evans on Lizard. Fripp produced a couple of Keith Tippett albums and also produced Matching Mole’s Little Red Record. This all adds weight to the theory that Canterbury bands were outside the mainstream as Fripp liked to distance himself from the main culprits of progressive rock excess.
ProgBlog's Matching Mole collection
As part of my professional role, I’d visited Canterbury to attend meetings at Kent & Canterbury hospital a few times before I got the chance to explore more of the city. My first shopping trip was in 2007 and my first opportunity to seek out a ‘Canterbury’ section was a stop at the Fopp record store where I was surprised to be met with a blank stare from the sales staff! I left with two Syd Barratt CDs, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett that were on special offer, swayed by the fact that the Soft Machine line-up that recoded Two appears on Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs, though they go uncredited. The next stop was a stall in the indoor market where owner Dave Radford had connections with the original Canterbury bands. Following a chat I bought Hugh Hopper’s Numero d’Vol and Two Rainbows Daily (with Alan Gowen) on CD; by the time of my next visit, Fopp had gone into liquidation and had been replaced by an HMV and the indoor market had closed down so it wasn’t until 2017 that I found out Radford’s band Gizmo, which was formed in 1975, had released albums in 2012 and 2015, both of which were available in Soundz ‘n’ Sitez on the main thoroughfare through the city heading towards the Westgate. Run by Paul and Jayson, it was absolutely rammed with crates of second-hand LPs and retained a small comic collection from its previous incarnation, but it didn’t have a dedicated ‘Canterbury’ section, either. However, apart from entertaining me with stories about famous visitors to the shop (Rick Wakeman, in town for a gig, ventured into the store and signed some records) the pair did know Dave Radford who “used to be in a Canterbury prog band called Gizmo...” I chose to buy a copy the self-titled effort from 2012 on vinyl, sold at a special discount price, rather than 2015’s Marlowe’s Children, part 1: The Innocence. It certainly doesn’t fit the ‘Canterbury’ label and though the music is pleasant enough it’s not really prog either, unless someone thinks the lyrics sound as though they were written by Daevid Allen or Kevin Ayres in the early 70s. Confusingly, the shop at 9 St Peter’s Street now goes under the name ‘Soundz n Sitez’ on Facebook but ‘Sounds Records’ on Instagram.
Canterbury, not Canterbury - Gizmo, 2012
I’d occasionally drive to Canterbury but preferred taking the train, even though it was less convenient. The quickest pedestrian route to the centre from Canterbury East railway station (situated to the south of the city centre) is via Castle Street where I discovered the just-opened vinyl-only shop Vinylstore Jr (http://www.vinylstorejr.co.uk/) on the 2017 trip. The store concentrates on new issue LPs but includes an expanding second-hand section. It’s run by a very pleasant, helpful and knowledgeable chap called Nick who recognised the difficulty of providing a dedicated ‘Canterbury’ section in a shop selling new vinyl; at the time there appeared to be only two Caravan albums which had been rereleased as an LP, In the Land of Grey and Pink (the 40th anniversary edition remastered by Steven Wilson from 2011, a double LP with bonus tracks), and If I Could do it Again, I’d do it All Over You. The former was a limited pressing so there can’t be many left available and the latter was on the US label 4 Men with Beards (catalogue no. 4M239). There have also been some reissues of a few Soft Machine albums on vinyl commencing in 2010, including the self-titled first album, Second and Third. Unable to choose some original Canterbury music, I indulged in Roger Waters’ Is this the Life we Really Want? and a 2013 Harvest label reissue of On an On by a much more recent Canterbury-based band, Syd Arthur. This quartet, now comprised of three Magill brothers and Raven Bush play mostly short, intelligent and intricate songs washed with a gentle psychedelia which at times does call to mind Canterbury bands of the late 60s and early 70s. The closest On an On comes to progressive rock (the group won the Prog Breakthrough Act award in 2014) is the rather wonderful Paradise Lost. On a visit a year later Nick had introduced a section devoted to Canterbury bands, something he feels strongly about, so I bought another Syd Arthur LP, Sound Mirror (2014) along with Wrong Meeting (2016), a jazzy, funky, psyche LP by another Canterbury band, Lapis Lazuli and kept my subsequent purchases local on my next two visits when I acquired soft Machine’s Third and the Jack Hues-Syd Arthur EP Nobody’s Fault But My Own in 2019 and in 2021 I invested in Matching Mole’s Little Red Record (1972) and Arzachel (1969) by Uriel under the name of Arzachel - Uriel/Egg had just begun contract negotiations with Decca and had to record pseudonymously.
Vinylstore Jr, 20 Castle St, Canterbury CT1 2QJ - pre 2024 facelift
A visit to Canterbury Rock is like walking into a slice of history. Situated at 12 Whitstable Rd, out beyond Canterbury West station (which is to the north of the city centre!), the record store has been around since 1979 and is run by Jim, a former council gardener and Fairport Convention fan, who presides over more than just second-hand LPs, CDs and DVDs but has a vast collection of posters and memorabilia from all genres providing a unique documentary of music from the 60s onwards, none of which is for sale. It also contains stacks of second-hand audio equipment and occasionally houses small musical events. If you were fussy, you might think the place shabby, but its appearance belies its sociological value. Jim keeps some treasures hidden out-of-sight, but if you engage him in conversation he’ll tell you some brilliant stories. When I told him that I’d come to Canterbury specifically to look for vinyl associated with the Canterbury scene he proceeded to inform me that the Sinclairs lived around the corner from the shop and then reached for something hidden behind the counter, producing a slightly battered copy of Soft Machine’s Third. Opening the gatefold with a flourish, he indicated a Simon Langton School photo pasted inside and an arrow linking the inner sleeve photo of Mike Ratledge to a young Mike Ratledge in the school photograph!
Canterbury Rock, 12 Whitstable Rd, Canterbury CT2 8DQ
Even though Prog magazine seem to class Syd Arthur as prog, I don’t really think that’s the case. Like Gizmo, just because you’re based in Canterbury doesn’t mean you fall under the umbrella of the Canterbury sound and conversely, if you fulfil the sonic requirements of the genre but lack the geographical connection, you can come under the ‘Canterbury’ classification. A case in point is the Genoese band Picchio dal Pozzo whose two studio albums Picchio dal pozzo (1976) and Abbiamo tutti I suoi problemi (1980) are regarded as some of the best examples of the genre outside of England and though released when prog was becoming less fashionable in Italy, it helped that keyboard player Aldo De Scalzi was the younger brother of Vittorio De Scalzi from New Trolls, who happened to own the Grog label. The earlier of the two LPs is dedicated to Robert Wyatt (named as ‘Roberto Viatti’ on the album sleeve because the letters ‘W’ and ‘Y’ don’t exist in the Italian alphabet) while the later LP contains more free jazz and is most influenced by Frank Zappa and Henry Cow; any serious progressivo italiano buff should be looking out for both albums. The genre is still going strong and over the last couple of years I’ve added releases from Amoeba Split (A Coruña, Spain), Zopp (Nottingham, UK) and Tom Penaguin (France) to my personal collection.
Modern Canterbury - Zopp's self-titled debut (2020), Dominion (2023) and Live at Danfest (2024)
The city centre is really small but it offers a range of retail opportunities, from local independent to global brands. There are a number of different tourist attractions (I’m waiting for a long spell of settled weather for a punt on the Stour) but wandering around and looking at the architecture is free. You can also find some good second-hand bookshops when you’ve tired of the record stores and when you’ve visited all of them there are a wide variety of places to eat. I was in the process of decreasing my meat consumption on my last visit and I don’t recall any vegan cafés. I have had lunch in the café at 9 Castle Street (close to Vinylstore Jr) in the past which had a nice outdoor area at the back. The current iteration has vegan options and goes under the name of ‘Chatterbox’; there’s now a genuine vegan/vegetarian restaurant close to the cathedral called The Veg Box Cafe (17B Burgate) which gets good reviews, so I’ll be heading to that on my next visit. Canterbury has its own micro roastery, too, with the Micro Roastery Coffee House attached. I’ve bought some beans from there in the past, but I was also allowed free espressos to taste three different roasts. What’s regarded as a good coffee is obviously a matter of individual preference, and blend is just one of the three Bs that determine a well-made espresso-based coffee. I’d personally recommend a visit because the staff obviously know how to treat a bean but there are plenty of other cafés around.
It costs nothing to wander around and look at the architecture - Blackfriars chapel and the Great Stour
This means there are now a number of different reasons to make the pilgrimage to Canterbury; three independent record stores and a branch of HMV which cover subtly different consumer needs.
Some of the touristy bits aren’t too bad either.
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