The Canterbury Scene - BBC South

via percy_the_ratcatcher



http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent

One of the Canterbury Scene's main men, Daevid Allen talks about how his travels brought him to Canterbury and being part of the Scene.

Australian born Daevid Allen is one of the Canterbury Scene's leading men. He came to England in the very early sixties, arriving in Canterbury via London. He's best known as the leader of the Canterbury band Gong.

In this interview he talks about how his travels brought him to Canterbury and whether or not he thinks there was ever a 'Canterbury Scene'.


Guitarist and singer Steve Hillage came to Canterbury in 1969 to attend university. Within weeks he'd found his way into the Canterbury Scene.

Steve was studying History and Philosophy but spent a good deal of time jamming with other musicians active on the scene in those years. He was particularly friendly with the members of Caravan, and through them he was able to get a record deal.

Steve Hillage talks about his early days in Canterbury.

More about these interviews:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/entertainme...




Although for many years Robert Wyatt denied the existence of The Canterbury Scene he is certainly inextricably linked to Kents own special sound and the bands that developed it into something lasting.
Moving with his parents to Lydden near Dover, before he was a teenager, Wyatt was exposed to all sorts of musical influences from the lodgers who rented rooms in the 14 room house. It was here he met jazz drummer George Neidorf and Australian hippie Daevid Allen.
Robert Wyatt talks about the early day's of his musical education.




Originally from Leicestershire, Peter Geoffrey Richardsons playing has graced many a Canterbury Scene track. 
He joined Caravan in 1972 as the viola player but also counts guitar, mandolin and cello amongst the many instruments he can play.
Richardsons arrival in Caravan coincided with the departure of the Richard Sinclair and his cousin David. Some fans objected to his viola replacing Davids keyboards but he became an integral part of the bands developing sound.
He describes how one Caravan track Memory Laine, Hugh was dreamed up.

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Scatting Robert Wyatt

Amplify’d from wyattandstuff.blogspot.com

Scatting Robert Wyatt

Robert Wyatt worked with Genie Cosmas and the band Fish out of Water on the album "Lucky Scars" (Stream Records, 1995). He scatted on three tracks and played piano on two of them ("Once in a lifetime", "Cry from the city" in two versions). Now there are new mixes to be released of these,  and the track  "Her old man" (also with Wyatt), on Genie Cosmas´ album "Cry from the City. Music 4 Film, TV & Radio" (Stream Records 2010 (?)). This is a celebration of 20 years of Stream Records.

Posted by Svenn

Labels: Robert Wyatt Read more at wyattandstuff.blogspot.com

 

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Lotsa Early Softies w/Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge & (sometimes) Daevid Allen

SOFT MACHINE:THE EARLY YEARS-CANTERBURY ANTHOLOGY-VOLUME 2

1.Contusions (Summer 1966 Session)
2.Another Lover Has Gone (Summer 1966 Session)
3.Fred The Fish (from 1967 45'')
4.Feelin' Reelin' Squeelin (from 1967 45'')

 

SOFT MACHINE:THE EARLY YEARS-CANTERBURY ANTHOLOGY-VOLUME 2

(PART 2)

1.I Should've Known (Recorded in UK 1967)
2.I'm So Low (Recorded in UK 1967)

 

SOFT MACHINE:THE EARLY YEARS-CANTERBURY ANTHOLOGY-VOLUME 2

(PART 3)

1.Clarence In Wonderland (BBC Recording 12-5-67)
2.Certain Kind (BBC Recording 12-5-67)
3.Hope For Happiness (oops version of the 1968 released tracks)

 

SOFT MACHINE:THE EARLY YEARS-CANTERBURY ANTHOLOGY-VOLUME 2

(PART 4)

1.We Know What You Mean (BBC Recording 12-5-67)
2.She's Gone (from 1967 45'')
3.Lullabye Letter (oops version of the 1968 released tracks)

 

SOFT MACHINE:THE EARLY YEARS-CANTERBURY ANTHOLOGY-VOLUME 2

(PART 5)

1.Why Are We Sleeping (From Mono Single Released Early 1969)
2.Save Yourself (oops version of the 1968 released tracks)
3.Joy Of A Toy (From Mono Single Released Early 1969)

 

Soft Machine - Dim Dam Dom, Oct.1967

1.Hope For Happiness
2.Improvisation Musicale

French TV, Great Quality!

 

Soft Machine on Hoepla 1967

Great song by the Soft Machine on the Dutch TV Show 'Hoeply' from 1967, with a nice bonus at the end.

 

Soft Machine - UFO Club, 2 June 1967

Soft Machine, UFO Club, London, 2nd June 1967. 'Poem for Hoppy' by Daevid Allen. Flim & Lightshow Projections: Mark Boyle & Joan Hills. P&C Boyle Family Archive.

 

Early Soft Machine live

(Embedding disabled by request)

 

Soft Machine - I Should Have Known

Aka "Why Am I So Short?", as it was released on The Soft Machine, Vol. 1

 

The Soft Machine - 1967 - Soon, Soon, Soon

The Soft Machine en su segunda formacion, con Kevin Ayers en Guitarra/Voz, Mike Ratledge en Teclados y Robert Wyatt en Bateria/Voz, interpretando una de las dos canciones que tocaron en vivo en el programa de tv Hoepla, el 22/9/1967: We Know What You Mean (mas conocida como Soon, Soon, Soon).
Cancion compuesta por Kevin Ayers; inedita en The Soft Machine, luego editada oficialmente en la carrera solista de Ayers. Tambien se puede encontrar una version de este tema por The Soft Machine en "BBC Sessions '67-'71" (bootleg), a mi gusto, mucho mejor que esta.

 

PSYCHEDELIC LIGHT SHOW UFO 1967: Soft Machine

A rare example of the liquid lightshow projections created in 1967 by Mark boyle & Joan hills...this was the wallpaper at the legendary ufo club in tottenham court road.

 

Love Makes Sweet Music - Soft Machine

1967 single by The Soft Machine,one of the Canterbury groups.

 

The Soft Machine - We did it Again

A song by Soft Machine, Album "Volumes One & Two ( Vol. One )" 1968
Canterbury Scene
Kevin Ayers

 

Soft Machine - Save Yourself, Memories, You don't Remember.

Soft Machine 1967 Daevid Allen, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Mike Ratledge.

 

 

 

 

 

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Early Soft Machine (1966-68)

Amplify’d from www.headheritage.co.uk

Julian Cope’s Album of the Month

Early Soft Machine (1966-68) AOTM #120, May 2010ce

PHASE 1 – 1967 I Should Have Known (7.29) Feelin’ Reelin’ Squealin’ (2.51) Memories (2.58) Love Makes Sweet Music (2.31) She’s Gone (2.27) We Know What You Mean (3.09) PHASE 2 – 1968 A Certain Kind (4.14) Why Am I So Short?/So Boot if at all (9.02) Lullabye Letter (4.42) We Did It Again (3.46) Plus Belle Qu’un Poubelle (1.01) Why Are We Sleeping? (5.32) Note: This review is dedicated to my darling daughter Avalon – just turned 16 – whose higher appreciation for all things K. Ayers-related threw up the need for this Album of the Month.

Note 2: As a big fan of THE SOFT MACHINE debut LP, I was initially tempted to proffer that whole record as Album of the Month. Instead, however, I’ve picked only my very fave raves from the debut, inserting them all into ‘Phase 2 – 1968’. I’ve dedicated ‘Phase 1 - 1967’ to the band’s debut 45 (‘Love Makes Sweet Music’ b/w ‘Feelin’ Reelin’ Squealin’), interspersed with the quartet’s two most successful Giorgio Gomelsky demos (‘I Should Have Known’ and ‘Memories’) plus an unreleased B-side from ’67 (‘She’s Gone’) and one BBC Top Gear session from September ’67 (‘We Know What You Mean’). Ta muchly, JULIAN

Repping the Intuitive Non-Career Mover

Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge and Daevid Allen, 1967

Recorded in the seventeen short months between December ’66 and April ’68, the intensely psychedelic music contained within this Album of the Month displays such a rush & roar of Mithraic fire, such a manic intensity of youthful ardour, and such a burning desire to capture the spirit of Right Now that, despite having been recorded in umpteen different studios and with four very different (and highly successful) producers – Giorgio Gomelsky produced the Yardbirds’ hits, Chas Chandler produced Jimi Hendrix’s ARE YOU EXPERIENCED, Tom Wilson produced the Velvet Underground and the Mothers of Invention, Kim Fowley produced everyone – nevertheless, on these early recordings it is still only the extraordinary sound of the Soft Machine that ever shines through… that and the excellence of their self-written songs, of course. Back then, in the heaving & heady days of 1967, the Soft Machine’s forever-bare-chested singing drummer Robert Wyatt was a brazen & burning warrior elf with a dulcet tone like Dion Warwick and a splatter-clatter drumstyle unlike any outside the jazz scene, whilst the band’s leather-coated organist, the Norman six+ footer Mike Ratledge, evinced a keyboard sound close to the Animals’ Alan Price… but with wings. On guitar and several years older than the rest of them was the band’s mentor, the Australian beatnik poet (and future Gong founder) Daevid Allen, whose days in Paris had led him to novelist William S. Burroughs, from whose 1961 novel the Soft Machine took their name. But the band’s two high aces were undoubtedly their songwriters, singer/bassist Kevin Ayers and roadie Hugh Hopper, who’d played bass in Robert Wyatt’s earlier band The Wildeflowers. His hair receding by his early 20s, with buck-teeth and ugly as sin, Hugh Hopper nevertheless wrote poetic and desperately aching, lonely songs that the R&B obsessed Wyatt could deliver with heart-rending sincerity. In stark comparison to Hopper, the occasionally face-painted Kevin Ayers was a beautiful and beguiling psychedelicized Hans Christian Andersen figure, a Pie-eyed Piper with a flair for writing archetypally great Sandozian pop songs (check out ‘We Know What You Mean’ and ‘She’s Gone’ included herein), or intoning, nay, doxologizing lead vocals in a register deeper than Lee Marvin, and deploying – from his archaic-looking Gibson EB2 – a Molto-munting semi-acoustic bass sound even more radical than that of Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Cassady’s always-overloden (and equally archaic-looking [even to us back then, U-kiddies]) Epiphone semi-acoustic.

‘Love Makes Sweet Music’ 45

In September ’66, having followed Daevid Allen’s international beat connections from cloistered Canterbury up to London, the Soft Machine found themselves performing at one of the Marquee Club’s earliest Spontaneous Underground performances, soon afterwards being invited to share the stage of Tottenham Court Road’s UFO Club with Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd. It was in this fertile and lysergic atmosphere of experimentation that the Soft Machine rose to the challenge of re-arranging and deconstructing all the best songs that Hugh Hopper and Kevin Ayers could heave at them. Producers flocked to produce the band’s debut 7” single, but it was sleazoid LA scumbag Kim Fowley who dragged them through the portals of CBS Studios and successfully transformed Kevin Ayers’ darkly monstrous and highly experimental ‘Feelin’ Reelin’ Squealin’’ – a real Ayers vocal and bass tour de force – into a veritable Boris-the-Spider-thon. Displaying typical Fowley overkill, the producer emphasized the doomy discord of Ayers’ lyrical bombinations by layering the super sweet choruses extra-saccharine harmony vocals from Daevid Allen and Robert Wyatt, then undermining the entire song with an almost musique concrète approach to its bizarre instrumental section of piano-and-flute cut-ups, all achieved in a manner guaranteed totally to blow the band’s collective mind. Daevid Allen later commented: “The thing about Kim Fowley was, he was a complete codeine freak. So he never stopped talking. But secondly, he astonished everybody by taking the 8-track master tape and cutting; splicing the eight-track master tape, which nobody had ever seen done (laughs). It was really wild to make "Feelin', Reelin', Squealin'." So [Fowley] made these huge massive splices right across all of the 8-track… if you fuck it up, that's it, that's the end of the master.”[1] Believing Fowley’s recording of ‘Feelin’ Reelin’ Squealin’’ to be an excellent B-side but just too uncommercial for the single, the band next – just one month later – entered London’s Advision Studios with Jimi Hendrix’s producer Chas Chandler, who’d chosen for the prospective A-side another highly catchy Kevin Ayers song ‘Love Makes Sweet Music’, with Robert Wyatt as lead singer. This time the delightful results were picked up for a one-off record deal by Polydor Records, who released both tracks in February ’67, a full month before Pink Floyd’s own 45 debut ‘Arnold Layne’. Unfortunately, despite mucho airplay from John Peel and Radio Caroline, ‘Love Makes Sweet Music’ totally failed to chart. The band was nonplussed. To the fascinated media, the Soft Machine were – alongside Pink Floyd – considered to be co-heralds of the so-called Psychedelic Underground. And yet, with no long-term record deal forthcoming, no money could be made available to them for recording a debut LP. Refusing to appear discouraged, the band now entered London’s De Lane Lea Studios with Yardbirds producer Giorgio Gomelsky with the sole intention of creating a demo with which to sell themselves to a record company. Unfortunately, Gomelsky’s De Lane Lea sessions were haphazardly prepared and the results extremely patchy: the incredible clatter of R. Wyatt’s drums being lost in the colossal reverb of the studio, the sinewy Stylophonic Ratledge organ oft reduced to nowt but a distant chordal pad, Daevid Allen’s guitar too often merely perfunctory, and the molto-hefty Ayers bass merely dancing around the head of the listener, rarely landing a truly sonic KO. Inappropriately, time that should have been better spent on new songs by Kevin Ayers and Hugh Hopper was instead forfeited on a couple of Robert Wyatt’s oldest, most jazzy mid-60s songs (’You Don’t Remember’, ‘That’s How Much I Need You Now’), which here in Spring ’67now sounded merely anachronistic. Despite all of this, a wonderful version of H. Hopper’s magnificent ‘Memories’ was committed to tape replete with D. Allen’s moody signature blues lines, as was a stupendous 7-minute burn-up of Hopper’s “I Should’ve Known’, today perhaps the only recorded evidence of Daevid Allen’s guitar genius during his entire time in the band.

The trio in Dulwich Park, London, 1967

In late April, the Soft Machine joined the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the Flies, the Deviants and the Floyd at Alexandra Palace for the now-legendary all nighter THE 14-HOUR TECHNICOLOUR DREAM,[2] but their recordings with Gomelsky had clearly come to nothing. In June, two new recordings of Hugh Hopper’s songs ‘She’s Gone’ and ‘I Should’ve Known’ were recorded for a possible second Polydor single, but no offer was to be forthcoming. Without a record deal, the summer was spent jamming almost unpaid at various happenings throughout France. However, disaster struck on August 24th when, on returning to the UK, Daevid Allen was refused re-entry for having previously overstayed his visa stipulation. Continuing as a trio, Ayers, Ratledge & Wyatt made several European TV appearances throughout the autumn, also making their first trio studio recordings for the BBC’s Top Gear, before joining the Who, Eric Burdon, Tomorrow, Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix at London’s Olympia for December 67’s CHRISTMAS ON EARTH RE-VISITED. And it was here that Jimi Hendrix’ managers, Chas Chandler and Mike Jeffrey, offered the flagging band a management contract plus the support slot on Jimi Hendrix’s forthcoming US tour. Touring with Hendrix throughout February and March ’68, the trio honed down their songs into such immaculately-performed jewels of turbo-charged performance that they (at last) secured a record deal with ABC Records, who booked the band recording time at New York’s Record Plant Studios, to be overseen by Velvets/Mothers of Invention producer Tom Wilson. At last, at long long last, the Soft Machine received their belated opportunity to create a worthy LP statement and the results were spectacular. Gone was the lumpen chord work which had pervaded the weaker performances of the original quartet, replaced instead by a sound of extraordinary economy. Where once both Daevid Allen and Mike Ratledge had been content to punctuate the sound with stabs and sweating chords, now Ratledge entirely backed off, forfeiting his chordal organ washes for the sweet harmony vocals of Ayers and Wyatt. Where the quartet’s guitars and organ had previously drizzled sound across the entire rhythm section, now vast sonic spaces appeared that teased out every drum roll, every atonal freakout, every overdriven proto-Lemmy bass chord that Kevin Ayers thrummed out of his big semi-acoustic bass. More importantly, despite its re-write this self-titled trio album was a masterful exercise in jagged futuristic song experiments, songs such as the expansive & exhilarating ‘Lullabye Letter’ and ‘Why Are We Sleeping?’, radically confident garage soul songs quite unlike the cocktail jazz-tinged psychedelic R&B soul hybrid of just one year earlier. Despite its excellence, however, THE SOFT MACHINE was also far too little and far too late. Further held up until November ’68 for its US release, THE SOFT MACHINE would not even gain its own UK release until the 1970s. Exhausted by their seemingly endless US tour and unable to control his naturally hedonistic ways,[3] Kevin Ayers quit the band to pursue a solo career. Their psychedelic beginnings clearly over, roadie H. Hopper now laid to rest his years of superb songwriting and replaced Ayers on bass, joining Mike Ratledge on his curious quest to turn the Soft Machine into a pure jazz rock ensemble.

In Conclusion

Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt on Belgian TV, 1967

So listen now to this Album of the Month and think of what might have been. With the plethora of hip producers already involved in creating the early Soft Machine canon, I’ve often fantasised how great the band’s debut LP could have been had strung-out soul visionary Guy Stevens been hired as their producer in late 1966. With their R&B and soul fixations, perhaps Messrs. Ayers, Allen, Ratledge & Wyatt would have followed the Hapshash & the Coloured Coat trajectory and delivered us a stylish & freeform psychedelic soul debut LP on the Minit Records label. I know it’s daydreaming, but let me daydream. Music this adventurous should make its listeners daydream. Furthermore, just take one final look at the sheer Visionary breadth of musical and songwriting talent (barely) contained within the ranks of the early Soft Machine and try NOT to gasp at the possibilities and potential of what more coulda been.

Footnotes: Daevid Allen interview with Richie Unterberger. Former anarchist and Deviants singer Mick Farren, commenting on the backstage arrangements at the legendary psychedelic event THE 14-HOUR TECHNICOLOUR DREAM that many of the members of even the supposedly most illuminated and experimental of bands exhibited a disturbing ‘brown ale consciousness’. In the same interview with Richie Unterberger, Daevid Allen remarked of Kevin Ayers: “I've never seen anybody take so much alcohol, so much damage. It would kill anybody else. I've never seen anyone drink like him. He's got an extraordinary ability to drink, and an extraordinary ability to rejuvenate himself. He goes right to the edge, and then he goes swimming and runs around for a week and then comes out and starts again. I've never seen such an extraordinary level of ability to drink so much, and get away with it. He's gotten away with amazing amounts of stimuli. He really put it away.” Read more at www.headheritage.co.uk

 

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Biba Kopf Kevin Ayers Epiphany

http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/8GgBS8PJb3lvelHbbvx6YBhJ6ojaqk32tNipB_WwBZqDgj_ppmG_PfR_Mp8AYldg-N7MK5nJHpP01zYpaciXAumLYj92zg0n5cmgM8Leeq3F0A/KAWire.pdf

From richardbrunoelliott at the whatevershebringswesing yahoo group: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/whatevershebringswesing/


The Wire
epiphanies
Biba Kopf has his life changed by a
mysterious noise in the night


During one of their habitual tirades against the
evils of Western music, party leaders in Beijing
once unfavourably compared the oeuvre of Elvis
Presley with the Chinese revolutionary hit "The Faeces
Collectors Descend From The Mountain". Had the
venerable cadres been more familiar with Yukio
Mishima's startling literary debut Confessions Of A Mask
(1949), in which a four year old Yukio recounted his
sexual arousal at the sight of a youthful night-soil man
coming down the slope, they might have have been
more careful about the selections for their youthpurifying
revolutionary jukebox. For Mishima's encounter
was, he wrote, a presentiment that "there is in this world
a kind of desire like stinging pain". So who knows what
unusual longings Beijing's injudicious cultural watchdogs
unleashed in the hearts of young China?

A kind of desire like stinging pain... In musical terms
such a desire manifests itself through disharmony, dirt in
the ear, the spillage of noise. Pardon my pretension, but
my Christmas holiday reading of Deadly Dialectics: Sex,
Violence And Nihilism In The World Of Yukio Mishima,
accompanied by a video of a childhood favourite Tom
Sawyer—well, it was a holiday — unreeling in the
background, triggered a memory of the first time I was
really aroused by noise. It occurred during the following
Sawyer scene: a barge loaded with a cannon floats
downriver, intermittently firing salvos with a view to
raising the corpse of the hero, presumed drowned. The
blast, the recoil, the sonic boom rolling across the
surface of the water in this instance failed to bring up a
bloated body. But it did conjure for me the image of a
six-foot plus British blond, with a voice as deep and
resonant as that unfolding sonic boom. Inevitably, I
heard it first through the darkness of a late-night John
Peel show back in 1972, the voice naturally preceding
the name of its bearer. It was shrouded in a dense fog of
sound, consisting of depth charge bass and a knot of
indistinct, yet squealing lead noises, which slowly and
inexorably ricocheted across the song's watery base.
Maybe I should have gotten out more, but back then I'd
heard nothing like it, especially not the voice. Its very
English baritone defied the period predilection for mid-
Atlantic accents, just as the song cleared itself of rock's
usual drab, denim debt to 12 bar blues. I flipped on the
bedroom light and carefully noted the details of this, to
my fresh ears, unearthly performance. The singer? Kevin
Ayers. The track? "Song From The Bottom Of A Well".



As an arousing icon of transgression Kevin Ayers
hardly bears comparison with Mishima's night-soil man,
but you have to remember things were more innocent
then. (Or perhaps it was just
me — I can only imagine the
jolting pleasures of coming of
age to, say, a group like Coil.)
Naturally enough I sought to
repeat the experience and searched
out the song on the LP,
Whatevershebringswesing. The
anticipation was great but getting it
home was an immense disappointment.
Far from being an album spilling over with
dirty noises akin to "Bottom Of A Well", it
began with some orchestral idyll called "There
Is Loving", followed by a collection of dotty
ditties and a totally daft take on Velvet
Underground's "Sweet Jane", called "Stranger
In Blue Suede Shoes" (my George Washington
complex impels me to admit I made that last i
connection long after the fact). I mjght have shelved, it in
disgust, but economic factors dictated I couldn't afford
to play the thing just once. So the true pleasures of
Kevin Ayers's music surfaced slowly: his very Englishness
(probably preserved by a childhood largely spent in
some Far Eastern colony); his awry wit and lazy charm,
which manifested themselves in the countercultural
equivalent of a Noel Coward song; and a yen for
experiment that dated back to his experiences in
Canterbury during the early 60s, when he partnered
Australian gonzo Beat alchemist Daevid Allen in the first
version of Soft Machine.


Indeed, the two finest pieces on Soft Machine's debut
album are credited to Ayers. The first is a lengthy stiffriffed
workout on a track with a passing resemblance to
The Kinks' proto-Metal masterpiece "You Really Got
Me", called "We Did It Again". Legend has it that Ayers
wanted the group to hammer away at the single,
unvarying title phrase for as long as they could stand it,
with no changes or embellishments, but the others
buckled long before he did. The second is the great,
cod-philosophical wake-up call "Why Are We
Sleeping?", in which he dramatised the teachings of his
guru, Gurdjieff (in the 60s everyone needed a guru).

The fact that he quit Soft Machine after their first, by
all accounts gruelling US tour with Jimi Hendrix was the
first indication of Ayers's proto-slacker tendency to
escape to the Balearics at the first whiff of the kind of
serious hard work that prefigures commercial success.
He continued to escape there throughout what you
might charitably call a career of missed chances,
throughout which the dividends became frustratingly
more erratic as it progressed to his present invtsibftty Cr
you could read his laziness as his means of preserving
the fragile, but very precious qualities that set him apan
from his contemporaries. Though not without their
strong moments, Ayers's later albums became more
straitjacketed inside the usual rock expectations. But he
first three are all wonderful mixes of wistful, summery
(no, I can't believe I'm writing this either), vaguely
philosophical songs like Joy Of A Toy's "Lady Rachel",
harder edged locomotive pieces such as "Stop This
Train", and alternately hazy or Spike Jones-y
experiments. In addition, they are about as far rerrc. =:
from rock as you could then stretch while still being
somehow part of it. No real surprise, given that they are
performed by bizarre ensembles of noted fringe players
including his former partners in Soft Machine — most
persistently, Robert Wyatt — composer David Bedford
(also responsible for Ayers's off-the-wall arrangement
saxophonist Lol Coxhill, and... a very young Mike
Oldfield, whose double tracked bass and guitar parts ori
the title track of Whatevershebringswesing amount to
the loveliest two minutes in the entire Kopf collection.

Whereas by current standards "Song From The
Bottom Of A Well" now sounds positively creaky rather
than Big Noise creepy, the Whatevershebringswesing SB.
remains my single-most transgressive disc. Just watch
your friends recoil in horror when they discover they're
falling for an album with Mike Oldfield on it.

Kevin Ayers - Joy of a Toy (1st Album)

http://dropoutrecords.blogspot.com/2009/10/kevin-ayers-joy-of-toy-1st-album-uk.html

Sunday, October 4, 2009
Kevin Ayers - Joy of a Toy (1st Album UK Progressive Rock 1969)
.
Size: 126 MB
Bitrate: 256
mp3
Ripped By: ChrisGoesRock
Artwork Included


Kevin Ayers is one of rock's oddest and more likable enigmas, even if often he's seemed not to operate at his highest potential. Perhaps that's because he's never seemed to have taken his music too seriously — one of his essential charms and most aggravating limitations. Since the late '60s, he's released many albums with a distinctly British sensibility, making ordinary lyrical subjects seem extraordinary with his rich low vocals, inventive wordplay, and bemused, relaxed attitude. Apt to flavor his songs with female backup choruses and exotic island rhythms, the singer/songwriter inspires the image of a sort of progressive rock beach bum, writing about life's absurdities with a celebratory, relaxed detachment. Yet he is also one of progressive rock's more important (and more humane) innovators, helping to launch the Soft Machine as their original bassist, and working with noted European progressive musicians like Mike Oldfield, Lol Coxhill, and Steve Hillage.

Ayers cultivated a taste for the bohemian lifestyle early, spending much of his childhood in Majorca before he moved with his mother to Canterbury in the early '60s. There he fell in with the town's fermenting underground scene, which included future members of the Soft Machine and Caravan. For a while he sang with the Wilde Flowers, a group that also included future Softs Robert Wyatt and Hugh Hopper. He left in 1965, met fellow freak Daevid Allen in Majorca, and returned to the U.K. in 1966 to found the first lineup of the Soft Machine with Allen, Wyatt, and Mike Ratledge.

Wyatt is usually regarded as the prime mover behind the Soft Machine, but Ayers' contributions carried equal weight in the early days. Besides playing bass, he wrote and sang much of their material. He can be heard on their 1967 demos and their 1968 debut album, but by the end of 1968 he felt burned out and quit. Selling his bass to Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, he began to write songs on guitar, leading to a contract with Harvest in 1969. His relationship with his ex-Soft Machine mates remained amiable; in fact, Wyatt and Ratledge (as well as Ayers' replacement, Hugh Hopper) guested on Ayers' 1969 debut.

Ayers' solo material reflected a folkier, lazier, and gentler bent than the Soft Machine. In some respects he was comparable to Syd Barrett, without the madness — and without the ferocious heights of Barrett's most innovative work. Ayers was never less than enjoyable and original, though his albums were erratic right from the start, veering from singalong ditties and pleasant, frothy folk ballads to dissonant improvisation. The more ambitious progressive rock elements came to the forefront when he fronted the Whole World in the early '70s. The backing band included a teenage Mike Oldfield on guitar, Lol Coxhill on sax, and David Bedford on piano. But Ayers only released one album with them before they dissolved.

Ayers continued to release albums in a poppier vein throughout the '70s, at a regular pace. As some critics have noted, this dependable output formed an ironic counterpoint to much of his lyrics, which often celebrated a life of leisure, or even laziness. That lazy charm was often a dominant feature of his records, although Ayers always kept things interesting with offbeat arrangements, occasionally singing in foreign tongues, and flavoring his production with unusual instruments and world music rhythms. He (or Harvest) never gave up on the singles market, and indeed his best early-'70s efforts in that direction were accessible enough to have been hits with a little more push. Or a little less weirdness. Even Ayers at his most accessible and direct wasn't mainstream, a virtue that endeared him to his loyal cult.

That cult was limited to the rock underground, and Ayers logically concentrated on the album market throughout the 1970s. Almost always pleasant, eccentric, and catchy, these nonetheless started to sound like a cul-de-sac by the mid-'70s. Ayers pressed on without changing his approach, despite the dwindling audience for progressive rock and the oncoming train of punk and new wave. He only recorded sporadically after 1980, though he remained active in the 1990s, mostly on the European continent. His later work has gotten virtually no exposure whatsoever in the States, where he was known only by underground, progressive rock enthusiasts, even at his peak.

01. Joy Of A Toy Continued
02. Town Feeling
03. Clarietta Rag
04. Girl On A Swing
05. Songfor Insane Times
06. Stop This Train (Again Doing It)
07. Eleanor's Cake (Which Ate Her)
08. Lady Racheal
09. Oleh Bandu Bandong
10. All This Crazy Gift Of Time
11. Religious Experience (Singing A Song In The Morning)
12. Lady Racheal
13. Soon Soon Soon
14. Religious Experience (Singing A Song In The Morning)
15. Lady Racheal
16. Singing A Song In The Morning

Posted by Drop Out Boogie at Sunday, October 04, 2009 2 comments

(Link to original Drop Out Boogie blogpost for download)