Music Arcades: U.K.: Night after Night

The cover of this record suggests it once filled the same role as David Gilmour's first solo album: to protect the covers of other more treasured albums

Ah, the backroads of prog! At school I generally stuck to the arterial routes: Genesis, Yes, King Crimson and… well, I dropped Pink Floyd and substituted Rush. We surely heard Gentle Giant, Camel and their ilk on the Friday Rock Show and tapes that were passed around. But Van der Graaf Generator — arguably not 'backroads' but more 'trunk' — were the only ones that caught my attention. And I liked Marillion's Three Boats Down from the Candy because it sounded like VdGG.

But apart from those exceptions, my friends and I did a little not-too-adventurous foraging by exploring the side-projects and splinter groups of Genesis, Yes and Crimson. U.K. started off looking on paper like a splinter from King Crimson, with Bruford and Wetton from the (then) recently-demised version of that band, plus Eddie Jobson in the David Cross role and Allan Holdsworth in the Fripp role. On record they sounded nothing like Crimson, of course, since Holdsworth wasn't Fripp, Jobson wasn't Cross, and Bruford maybe wasn't the same Bruford any more. Then Holdsworth and Bruford left. From this vantage point, it seems like they were the ones with the best taste (they subsequently played in jazzier offbeat bands, while Wetton went on to form Asia and Jobson joined Jethro Tull — I rest my case). Night after Night comes from after the splinter group had splintered further. It's a live album recorded in front of a Japanese audience, and it pretty much sucks.

I read something a while back saying the first U.K. album was the one that really mattered. I lent an ear on Spotify once or twice, but remained unconvinced: still too fiddly and fussy for me. Though it doesn't suck nearly as much, and you can hear that it was a strong influence on the Rush of Subdivisions.