[Buying the albums sampled on "Picnic"].
As I said last time, this is a very odd LP. It is completely different from “Joy of a Toy”, curiously in much the same way as Soft Machine Vol II differs from their first album. In fact, once I finish with this one, I plan to take a brief detour into those first two Softies.
Frankly, most of this record is virtually unlistenable; it positively grates along the senses, and is painful to the ear.
Having said that, it does contain one of the very best songs that Kevin Ayers ever did, and one or two lesser gems of immense merit. As far as I can remember just now, that does differentiate it from Soft Machine Vol II.
Side 1 kicks off with a brilliant song “May I”, which is classic wistful KA stuff, with a truly wondrous backing track; sheer bliss. This one is very much in the style of “Joy of a Toy” and strangely reminiscent of the first track on the Matching Mole LP. I love this one to bits, and it promises much for the rest of the record.
The next song starts off well enough, this being the bit called “Rheinhardt and Geraldine”, a little coffee shop jazzy, but nice to listen to. However, after the first 90 seconds, we get a weird staccato cacophony, which goes on for nearly two minutes, before the song proper is more or less resumed, in quite a pleasing way. This morphs seamlessly into the next piece, of wich more next time.
