Album of Last Friday

Garden Shed, by England (1977): England is a bit of an odd band, chronologically speaking. This, their debut release (only 1978's The Last of the Jubilees followed), came out several years past the peak of prog's commercial growth and just as punk was warming up to kick the ever living shit out of the genre. Garden Shed has a lot about it that the punkers despised - long songs, instrumental noodling, artsy-fartsy lyrics. From a prog standpoint, however, it is also fairly derivative of what came before (Yes and Genesis, in particular). Don't get me wrong - what they do, they do very well (the epic closer "Poisoned Youth" in particular), but there is a bit of "been there, heard that" about them. As it is, the hard-to-find disc from the late 70s has a certain cache to it that the same music wouldn't obtain had it come out 10 or 15 years later.