Indeed, Soft Machine's sadly deceased bassist Hugh Hopper, who actually lived in Whitstable (near Canterbury) and was Soft Machine's roadie before joining the band for its second album, is quoted in Aymeric Leroy's exhaustive and comprehensive Calyx, 'the authority on all things Canterbury website, as saying: Still, beyond some of its key members coming from that small British town situated about 90km south southeast of London, musical comparisons with other Canterbury bands beyond The Wilde Flowers, from which Caravan emerged along with Soft Machine, are generally only superficially accurate at best. That said, Caravan has long been considered the quintessential Canterbury scene band, and certain comparisons with other groups and artists considered part of the scene certainly make some sense. Trying to find a distinct definition of what has come to be known as 'The Canterbury Sound' is as elusive as attempting to describe what, in the jazz world, has become an overused epithet for the German ECM Records label and 'The ECM Sound.' Attempts to do so usually fail short because, rather than being actual truths, their broad brushstrokes invariably miss the mark, even if they are sometimes not entirely incorrect. My review of Caravan's mind-bogglingly superb, 37-disc, career-spanning mega-box set, Who Do You Think We Are?, is published today at All About Jazz.