"Surely not all prog rock was as gutless as the Moody Blues"

Despite my romantic attachment to the punk year zero approach and a healthly scepticism about the worse excess of the seventies (Glueman's beautifully descibed "Coked-up musical onanism") there was some wonderful (and in some cases wonderfully bonkers) music produced under the loose banner of "prog" - most of Van Der Graaf Generator's output, Hatfield annd the North's "The Rotter's Club", Matching Mole's "Little Red Record", King Crimson's "Red", "Starless & Bible Black" and "Lark's Tongue in Aspic", Gong's "Flying Teapot" trilogy, Egg's "The Polite Force", Steve Hillage's "Fish Rising"... and that's just for starters.

Having said that, there was also plenty of prog that was gutless, fussy, prissy and plain boring. No point in me naming names when there's so much good stuff to mine, though...