Flaming Youth (Phil Collins) - ARK2 (1969)

Out there in Texas they've probably already started building ARK 2. It will be ready and waiting for blast off as the fiery flood ignites the funeral pyre of Earth.
Only this time it won't be God who selects His Noah - it will be Technological Man, maker of miracles and inventor of his own doom. And this time he won't mess with all those animals - they've already had their space flights, pioneering the way of escape for their human masters.
Now there is only room for man with his cargo of blurring memories, his unchanging problems and innocent hopes all in capsule form for easy stowage.
You can anticipate his journey with the music that is ARK 2. You will discover that, though his circumstances change, man's dilemma does not. He is still capable of creating beauty as well as despair, still capable of nostalgia and lust, anger and love. And above all, those qualities which may save him for another ten thousand years: humour, irreverance and wit. At the end of your 45 minute preview perhaps you will discover that you can still like man, admire him even. You will hope he makes it.
This, then, is man's last trip.
Text taken from record sleeve, opposite.
(ark-2.co.uk/)

This was one of the great albums of the sixties - brilliantly melodic, original and intelligent - but known till now only to a small band of passionate cognoscenti.
ARK 2 was the first 'concept album' - a 'space cantata' (though that makes it sound inaccessible and pretentious, which it is far from being). Written by the UK songwriting team whose success, according to The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, was 'rivalled only by Lennon & McCartney': Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, both from Hampstead, London.
Though brilliantly reviewed in the music and rock press of the time (it was Sunday Times Rock Album of the Year in 1969), the BBC did not know what to make of it: there were no radio or TV slots for an extended rock work at the time. So it remained largely unheard except by those who sought it out.
It is noteworthy for the first appearance on disc of Phil Collins, but (Flash) Gordon Smith, Brian Chatton and Ronnie Caryl each contributed their own fantastic musicianship and vocal power.
As can be seen from the original 'sleeve notes', ARK 2, nearly forty years ago, was extraordinarily prescient, anticipating many of today's private and global dilemmas and anxieties.

Taken from PhilCollings.com: http://www.philcollins.co.uk/biog1.htm
"After a while, supporting John Walker of The Walker Brothers, Collins and his guitarist friend Ronnie Caryl formed Hickory who soon found themselves with a concept album, the backing of Phonogram, and a new name, Flaming Youth.
Their album Ark II, was premiered at the London Planetarium and received lots of favourable press, but musical differences and a lack of commercial success soon meant it was time to answer another Melody Maker ad, this time from a struggling young band from Surrey, called Genesis."
(ark-2.co.uk/about.htm)