I thought I'd put some thoughts down about the Canterbury Scene... an English collection of bands and musicians that grew up around the city of Canterbury in the mid-late 60's and which survives to this day, albeit dissipated in terms of geography
The scene coalesced around a band called The Wilde Flowers, which later morphed into The Soft Machine. Robert Wyatt left to form Matching Mole, which included Dave Sinclair, who'd played in Caravan and went on to play in Hatfield And The North. Matching Mole also included Phil Miller who went on to join National Health. The early incarnation of Soft Machine featured Daevid Allen (who later formed Gong) and Kevin Ayers (who I met, coincidentally, last year at the Syd Barrett Barbican tribute. There's a good story there but I'll save it for another time ).
I think it's almost be impossible to map the scene and its members. The brilliant Calyx website does a great job of tracking the activities of bands related to the scene and Pete Frame and later Masaya Ichikawa have tried to map out the family tree, linking the hundreds of bands together in a massive nepotistic collaborative festival of diversity.
I have probably a couple of hundred Canterbury related albums in my collection. It all started for me with Soft Machine. I love their 'Fourth' and 'Fifth' albums in particular. Then I decided to check out Caravan and was blown away. The Soft Machine stuff I liked was the progressive- influenced free jazz stuff with Elton Dean on reeds and Mike Ratledge on keyboards. The keyboard sound on Soft Machine's stuff is very distinctive, but Caravan had similar elements within their music, though more poppy, and with a very English, very funny, lyrical take on things. Like the earlier pop-psych Softs stuff, but taken in a different direction. From there I checked out Hatfield And The North and National Health, and started working through the other artists listed on Calyx. I don't think I've found a duff album yet, at least not from the pre-1980's.
My Canterbury Starter For 10, in no particular order...
1. Soft Machine : Fourth (1971)
2. Caravan : In The Land Of Grey & Pink (1971)
3. Hatfield & The North : Hatfield & The North (1973)
4. National Heath : National Health (1977)
5. Egg : The Polite Force (1971)
6. Caravan : If I Could Do It All Over Again I'd Do It All Over You (1970)
7. Gong : Radio Gnome vol. 2 : Flying Teapot (1973)
8. Matching Mole : Matching Mole (1972)
9. Soft Machine : The Peel Sessions (1969-1971, released 1991)
10. Elton Dean : Just Us (1972)
I'm not sure how many folk on here are into Canterbury stuff, but if you are it would be good to hear from you.
Favourite bands, albums, performances...? I've steered clear in my notes above of the wealth of live and collectors material out there, but one great thing about the Canterbury bands is that they love releasing old performances on collectors labels. And these guys could certainly play live