The demented ramblings of a prog-rock guy
Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
Pink Floyd.
The B side of the single was another track I had never come across before, except as a live version on “Umma Gumma” [see above]. This was a studio version of ” Careful with that axe, Eugene”:
Both tracks appeared later on various compilations, but to have this in 1974 was nirvana.
Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
The Incredible String Band.
Side 2 opens with a beautiful 4 part unaccompanied Heron song called “Sleepers, Awake!”. Its first words, however, are “Sleepers awaken”. It lasts 3.44 minutes and of course all 4 members of the band sing on it.
Track 2 is a splendid Williamson composition called “Mr. & Mrs.”, coming in at 4.54 minutes. It really is a romp of great fun, though its lyrics are typically profound and unfathomable.
The third track ends the album, and we shall consider it next ISB time.
Whereas the left side of the inner gatefold sleeve was a Williamson thing, Mike does the right side with a words and pictures thing he titles “Reflection”. The words, however, appear to be the full lyrics of his long and rather tedious song “White Bird” on Side 1 of the LP:
Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
Pink Floyd.
The song on the A side of the single, “Point Me At the Sky”
is a brilliant, classic Pink Floyd song concerning a future time on this planet when it would have become ridiculously overcrowded. It has since appeared on various compilations, but in the UK in 1974 it was rare gem indeed.
Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
The Incredible String Band.
Side 1 opens with a Williamson composition called “Big Ted”. Robin sings lead and the other 3 provide backing vocals. He plays washboard and piano, Mike electric guitar and another piano, Rose bass, and Likky acoustic guitar, with the addition of a chap called Walter Grundy on harmonica. It is a very pleasant romp about a pig, lasting 4.21 minutes.
Track 2 is for me the least enjoyable one on the LP, being a dirge like Heron song called “White Bird”. The choruses are splendid, but short and few. But the song goes on for 14.46 minutes! Mike takes lead vocal and plays guitar, the other 3 doing the backing. Robin plays flute, sarang, Chinese banjo and percussion, Rose bass and Likky organ.
Track 3 ends Side 1, being another Williamson thing called “Dust Be Diamonds”, coming in at 6.14 minutes. It is a slightly frenzied piece, but very good indeed, and a welcome respite from the previous track. Robin sings lead and plays percussion and electric guitar, Mike guitar and vibraphone, Rose bass and Likky organ and kazoo.
The sleeve is a gatefold one, and the left side of the inside has this surreal Williamson penned picture:
Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
Pink Floyd.
I left school in December 1973, shortly before the notorious 3 day week that started in the UK. I had gained a scholarship to read law at Pembroke College, Oxford, but was not due to start there until October 1974. Accordingly, I had one of the first “gap years”, though it was involuntary, and only lasted two thirds of a year. It was a dismal time to be looking for work in Sheffield, but God smiled upon me, and found me a job at British Acheson Electrodes Ltd in Wincobank, a division of the late lamented international company Union Carbide. It was a fantastic introduction to the world of work in those days, and I earned £15 per week for a 5.5 day week, working Saturday mornings. This was quite a good wage then.
One Saturday afternoon in the spring of 1974, I was walking along a pedestrianised street in central Sheffield called Fargate. At that time there was a record shop there called Bradleys, and in their shop window I saw a single which utterly intrigued me:
By this time I had every track recorded by Pink Floyd, but this one was conspicuous by its absence! Moreover, it was obviously Italian. So, of course, I went straight in and bought it.
Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
The Incredible String Band.
This was the band’s first LP to feature the girls, Rose and Licorice, as full members of it. Its front cover shows all four of them artistically draped around the branches of a tree:
A lone stanza from the huge store of my teenage doggerel:
Or lack of sleep is killing me
Of all the nights to pick
To put the clocks on BST
Perhaps that made me sick
Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
Pink Floyd.
This time we conclude “Alex the Gnome”’s notes in the insert which came with the CD “An Italian Tale”:”
“This leg of the tour should also be remembered for of the notorious concert in Venice on July 15, 1989, when the stage was placed on a barge in the middle of the lagoon, that will be remembered more for the controversy (and the poor organization) than the music played. The band once again returned to Italy on [sic] September 1994, during the last world tour, for 6 concerts to promote the album “The Division Bell” and for the novelty of performing the entire rendition of the album “The Dark Side of the Moon” in sequence. This was the last gift from a band beloved by Italian fans for many years, who were mortified by the total absence of live performances by the Floyd when the band were performing, delighting audiences in many other European countries, the imagination and the many artistic expressions that made them great.
“All in all, the Floyd are largely in debt to their Italian fans, who were not guilty for relying on such poor local promoters and who were the first victims of the provincialism of certain cultural and musical choices, who had been keeping away from the country a large number of foreign artists at their artistic peaks. This Brescia show is released for the first time on CD and stands as a sort of compensation to those who wanted to be there but could not, who were there and did not understand and who were there but have not forgotten.
Alex The Gnome”
And a final pic:
Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
The Incredible String Band.
I see from the ISB Handbook , edited by Adrian Whitaker and referred to above, that the band did a lot of touring in 1969. I never saw them until they reformed at the beginning of this century. However, this was of course the year of Woodstock, and I learned about 15 years ago that the band had played there, and I now even have a DVD which includes their performance there. Frankly, it was easy to see why they were not included in the original 3 LP selection, as they did not really fit in. Moreover, they were doing “inaccessible” stuff from the forthcoming LP “I Looked Up”, which do not come over well at such an event as Woodstock was.
Anyway, the LP they released that year was “Changing Horses”, which I bought in early 1971 from a new discount record mail order service called “Virgin Records”, which was how Mr Branson started off.
One of the many reasons I am currently alternating posts on these two bands is that in 1971 they both released albums called “Relics”:
More of these in due course, God willing.
In the meantime, note that the PF Relics was only ever a single LP. In a typically confusing manner here, though, there is a single LP ISB Relics AND a double one! It is the double one shown here. I bought the single one first but gave this to my sister when I got the double one.
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