Endless Guitar Solos and the Real Reasons for Opposing Fox Hunting. By Mark Pollard

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I love progressive rock. Always have done. There; I've said it. You can stick your three-and-a-half minute blasts of pop music where the sun don't shine. If it sounds great, let it drag on for half an hour is what I say. Why play one note when several dozen will do? Anyone in the band not done a solo yet? All three guitarists have had a go; the bass player's done his bit; the drummer's done both of his; and the keyboardist will be finished with his anytime in the next twenty minutes or so.

How the likes of Q magazine would scoff at the very mention of the words Emerson, Lake or Palmer, let alone if they happened to be uttered sequentially in the same breathe. But, despite the dismissive amusement which greeted such claims, I maintained all along that the sheer fickleness of the music-buying public (never mind the public at large) would probably see the genre come back into fashion again, if only slightly. I was right.

In 1997 Radiohead released their OK Computer album, one of the finest recordings of modern times, and I saw them perform one of its tracks on Later With Jools Holland. It was called Paranoid Android, and blow me if it wasn't prog' rock: six and-a-half minutes long, complete with changing time signatures, loud and quiet passages, full orchestration, self-indulgent guitar solos and the sort of indecipherable lyrics that would have confused even Yes's mystical babblemeister supreme, Jon Anderson.

And guess what? Those fickle, fawning, sycophantic wankers at Q magazine loved it. And, of course, so did almost everyone else who'd previously snorted their disapproval at such things. It pissed me right off. I'd been cultivating my love of the genre for years, genuinely indignant about the way that people with lesser taste than me would mock, but secretly enjoying the thoughtful otherness that (I thought) it conferred on me.

It was about this time that I started listening to less prog' rock and more English folk music, although I suppose my inner music snob self will be taking me off in a different direction again if I detect a wave of bright young pop things covering Fairport Convention or Martin Carthy tracks....... So what the hell has this got to do with fox hunting? I thought it was obvious; obviously it's not obvious. OK, I admit - I'm actually just using this as an opportunity to get two things off my chest at once. It's certainly a lot easier than getting up off my arse twice to write something. Anyway, I've started so I'll finish. Just call me Magnus.

Like it did with prog' rock, I wondered how long it would take for opinion to show signs of turning round with regards to the fox hunting debate. Now, I'm not going to suggest that we're seeing some unstoppable national groundswell of support for the backward, inbred, blood-lusting morons who partake of this sport - a collection of advocates which covers the whole of the traditional rural hierarchy from chinless, toffee-nosed, landed-élite gimps down to the Baldricks that have to follow proceedings on foot, bike or in their slurry-spattered Vauxhall Novas.

However, lately I've noticed that a few people who are around (if not completely in) the public eye have started to suggest that maybe fox hunting isn't so bad after all. We've long had to put up with the myopic nonsense spouted by the medieval throwback that is Ludovic Kennedy; then the Countryside Alliance (i.e. the pro-hunt lobby) started putting up posters which actually, incredibly, proclaimed that 59% of the British public supported hunting. 59%! I'd love to see a detailed breakdown of the scope of that survey - my guess is that it was carried out for less than an hour, in pouring rain, on a Tuesday morning, along the three miles of lower Arkengarthdale that lie between Langthwaite and Reeth. Really comprehensive.

More recently we had the usual, ideologically-confused rantings of Alexander Chancellor in The Guardian's Weekend magazine, then a few nights later on TV (don't ask me how, why, or on which programme) I caught a snippet of the utterly pointless celebrity chef/twat Anthony Worrall-Thompson. He was bleating on about how he supported hunting with dogs on account of the fact that he'd had 62 chickens killed by foxes.

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