From Gryphon to The Banned & back again, or why prog to punk ain't always a groove…

I was hanging with a mate the other day who'd just acquired a pile of vinyl from a friend who was emigrating to the US. You could tell by the content of this record collection that the former owner had  been born in the 1950s. I'd never heard Procol Harum Live with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and by listening to it I discovered I hadn't missed anything at all. I had heard Mountain at some point in the seventies and one track of their generic blues rock was enough to remind me of why it...