100 songs - number 1

[philmophlegm]

chainmailmaiden has this thing on livejournal whereby every so often she posts about one of her favourite songs. She does it in far more depth than I'm likely to and far more eloquently, but I like the idea so I'm going to do the same. Or at least I'm going to start. I might get bored. (You might get bored too, but you can just scroll past...)

So here's the first of my One Hundred Songs. Actually, it's not a song, but an instrumental piece by 70s/80s (actually I saw them live in the early 90s after a few lineup changes) classical / prog fusion supergroup Sky.

Ladies and Gentlemen, 'Toccata':

Believe it or not, this got to number 6 in the charts. Sky at this time was John 'Britain's Greatest Ever Classical Guitarist' Williams, Curved Air keyboardist Francis Monkman (I've always thought that there weren't enough harpsichords in rock), bass player Herbie Flowers (who played the bass on Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side and Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, but also wrote 'Grandad' for Clive Dunn...), drummer Tristan Fry (he may be uncool but I like a drummer who really hits the drums hard) and guitarist Kevin Peek.



For a long time in my childhood, I had a strange aversion to music with words and much preferred instrumentals. When my dad first got a car with a tape player, this album ('Sky 2') was the first cassette he bought me and so we spent many a long drive (visiting relatives in the Midlands for example) listening to Sky.

Of course, if you got into the top 10 in Britain in the 70s, there's a good chance you'd be asked to perform on Top of the Pops: