Category: Culture

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Space Patrol

One of our favourite tv series from the very early 1960s was Space Patrol. This is the UK puppet (actually marionette) series about Captain Larry Dart and his crew who fly round the galaxy (actually, just the solar system) trying to keep the peace and sort out problems.

It was a black and white series, though you can find colourised episodes on YouTube. There are box sets available of the originals.

It’s a little forgotten these days, partially we suspect because it is not Gerry Anderson.

The stories were a bit silly. Science seemed to go out of the window. It took them months to fly anywhere so they went into deep freeze, while the people left behind got no older.

There’s also some oddly weird dialogue that you may hear if you watch an episode.

There were some things we liked: the design of New York and Space Patrol HQ, watching Galasphere 347 coming in to land on that building, and the electronic music and sounds. In truth, 60 odd years later and we still like them.

Here’s a clip:

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Pete Sinfield

It has just been announced that one of the possibly great unsung heroes of prog rock, Peter Sinfield, has died at the age of 80.

Sinfield first came to prominence as the lyricist for King Crimson in the early days. His work with Ian McDonald, who also died recently, forms the key part of the first album, especially the title track, In The Court Of The Crimson King, and set a tone for the first albums for the band.

Sinfield was also important in the sleeve design for the albums, and also developed a light show for live performances.

While members went and came, Sinfield and Fripp steered the band along a prog rock route, with In The Wake Of Poseidon, Lizard and Islands. Sinfield also features on the live album Earthbound where you can hear his controlling of a synthesier during Ian Wallace’s drum solo.

But Fripp and Sinfield had an increasingly strained relationship, and one had to leave. It was Sinfield.

He continued to work with Greg Lake for ELP, wrote English words for PFM, recorded a solo album Still, wrote for a diverse selection of popular artists including Celine Dion and Bucks Fizz.

In later years he moved to Suffolk.

In the days when BBC Four television had interesting music programmes on Friday nights, Sinfield would appear on the prog rock history shows (many clips are still on YouTube). Here’s a clip of a song from his solo album:

His health was declining, rather sadly.

If some of his lyrics now sound a bit twee and hippy, well they did then too. People who talk about the birth of progressive rock will always cite the first King Crimson album, and songs like 21st Century Schizoid Man and Epitaph, with their wonderful words.

And the amazing cover.