Nick Mason is to be awarded the accolade of Prog God, honouring more than 50 years’ service to the world of progressive music, at the 2019 Progressive Music Awards. He’ll receive the award at a star-studded ceremony on September 12th at London’s Underglobe Theatre. Previous recipients of the title include Steve Howe, Carl Palmer, Jon Anderson and Peter Gabriel. Nick told Prog magazine, who are behind the award ceremony: I’m all in favour of recognition for drummers – particularly when it’s me – so I’m really delighted to be recognised as Prog God. It’s hard to believe that it was over 50 years ago that the music we know as prog rock was born, and it’s still being celebrated, played and developed in the 21st century. Long may it continue! Last year, he announced his new live project, Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, who have been nominated in the Event Of The Year category of the awards, the winner of which will be revealed on the night. At the time, he told Prog: I’d been ruminating on playing again rather than just talking about the old days, which I’ve done rather a lot of. It seemed like a good idea and it sounded as though we could actually find enough people committed to doing it. I think once we actually got some instruments and played together, I thought, ‘Oh yeah, this is fun and it could work!’ Nick has previously confirmed he has no plans to head to the studio with any of the material. [These songs have] been recorded perfectly well by Pink Floyd some years ago. I think the fun of it is to try to be true to the music but actually not slavishly copy every detail of it. What I like is the idea of playing live and I’m really enjoying [revisiting the old material]. There are enough tribute bands to cover most of it, but this is very much a labour of love for me. The full list of winners from the Progressive Music Awards 2019 will be printed in Prog’s special souvenir issue, which goes on sale from October 25th – more details of that, and the results of the award ceremony, when we have them. On the night, you can follow what is happening via the Prog website (https://www.loudersound.com/prog).
