An Accidental Decade

Ten years ago, the whimsical stories on Tiger Moth Tales' debut album, Cocoon, captured the imagination of the prog world. Marking the decade with a 10th anniversary edition of the album, TMT's Peter Jones shares some of his personal highlights with Prog and explains why he's still coming to terms with where it all went right.

- Alison Reijman

'In true prog fashion, it all started with a musical box, the one in the opening sequence to Camberwick Green, the 1960s children's animated TV series.

Followed in quick succession by Trumpton and Chigley, the memories these childhood shows evoked inspired Peter Jones to write the song that defines Tiger Moth Tales' debut album, Cocoon. Jones developed and elongated the catchy tune accompanying the revolving musical box and emerging puppet figures, turning it into TMT's now-classic A Visit To Chigwick.

It's now joined on Cocoon's 10thanniversary edition by a companion piece, the autobiographical Return To Chigwick. In it, Jones reflects on TMT's "accidental" decade, one for which he is eternally grateful, and especially for the continuing devotion of his faithful fans, the Mothingtons.

Not surprisingly, Prog finds Jones in an upbeat, jovial mood as he contemplates the magnitude of his achievements since Cocoon, made purely for his own enjoyment, on which he sings and plays all the instruments.

"If you'd said to me 10 or 11 years ago, 'You will make something out of your musical career by doing prog rock', I would have said, 'Get out of here!' It really wasn't something on my radar," says Jones with a laugh.

He's now the veteran of several bands, countless musical collaborations and eight TMT albums.

Camel, Magenta, Francis Dunnery's It Bites and Cyan are just a handful of the prog luminaries with whom Jones has since performed - not bad for a lad living in Sherwood Forest, who thought his musical zenith was appearing on The X Factor.