I don’t think you can comprehend how animated living flesh is until you’ve seen the life taken from it right before your eyes.

Good-bye, Gazza.

Canterbury-born Hugh Hopper—bassist and founding member of the Wilde Flowers which split into two legendary bands: Caravan and Soft Machine—has died at age 64, in Kent, England.

The “Canterbury scene” remains to this day completely unknown to most who grew up with progressive rock’s late ’60s and early ’70s royalty—ELP, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Yes.

A heady amalgam of whimsy, psychedelia, and modern jazz, the Canterbury scene produced many of progressive rock’s finest albums, the McCartney-Lennon school of pop meeting the Davis-Coltrane school of improvisation.

A primer, then, to essential Canterbury recordings:

• Caravan, If I Could Do It All Over Again I’d Do It All Over You
• Caravan, In the Land of Grey and Pink
• Caravan, For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night
• Egg, Egg
• Gilgamesh, Arriving Twice
• Gong, You
• Hatfield and the North, Hatfield and the North
• Hatfield and the North, The Rotters’ Club
• Henry Cow, Unrest
• Hugh Hopper, Hopper Tunity Box
• Khan, Space Shanty
• National Health, National Health
• National Health, Of Queues and Cures
• Robert Wyatt, Rock Bottom
• Soft Machine, Volume Two
• Soft Machine, Third

If you want to hear something new, turn to the past.