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The Incredible String Band – “The 5000 Spirits… (6)

July 13, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

Side 2 of this truly amazing LP opens with A Robin Williamson composition called “Blue For The Muse”. This is a very lively little ditty, with Robin taking the lead vocal and playing guitar, with Mike on support vocals and harmonica, and of course the ubiquitous Danny Thompson on bass.

Track 2 is arguably the most celebrated of Mike Heron’s whimsies, this being “The Hedgehog Song”. The tune is extremely jaunty, and the lyrics concern a hedgehog who runs up to the singer at pivotal moments in his life repeating each time advice about him knowing the words and tune but never quite learning the song.

Track 3 is undoubtedly the most “sampled” song on the LP, in the sense that it turns up in many folky-type compilations. I am sure it is very much liked by many people, but for me it is insipid, and the weakest track on the album. It is very unusual for an ISB song in that it is almost entirely conventional; it is titled “First Girl I Loved”, and doe indeed concern the lady in question, dripping nostalgia in a way that verges on the soppy. It is a Robin Williamson composition on which he sings solo throughout and plays guitar, accompanied only by Danny Thompson on bass. I have never cared much for this track, mainly because it just doesn’t really fit in the ISB canon. I have to admit that there is also a sort of selfishness at work here; if I want nostalgia about old girlfriends, I have plenty of my own to look back on.

Pink Floyd – “More” (2)

July 4, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

The first two tracks on Side 1 create the most startling contrast to be found on any Pink Floyd LP, and indeed I cannot think of any more such on any album at all.

Track 1 is a typical dreamy thing called “Cirrus Minor”, and is a Roger Waters composition. It does indeed describe a trip to Cirrus Minor, even though it would still be a few months before men even first set foot on the moon.

Track 2 is another Roger Waters song called “The Nile Song”. This is unique in the entire Pink Floyd catalogue as being the band’s only ever genuinely heavy metal number. To say that it comes as a shock when you first hear it is putting it ridiculously mildly. It is a very good heavy metal song; it’s just not what you would ever expect from Pink Floyd. I can only think that the contrast effect was deliberate.

Track 3 is yet another Waters thing, and marks a welcome reversion to norm. It is titled “Crying Song”, and it is a most soft and gentle piece, very pleasant on the ear, and extremely restful.

This is the back cover of the LP:

The Incredible String Band – “The 5000 Spirits… (5)

June 29, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

Track 4 on Side 1 is a truly remarkable Williamson composition called “The Mad Hatter’s Song”. At 5.35 minutes it is the longest track on the LP. Mike Heron does not feature at all in it, but Danny Thompson again plays bass; also present is one John Hopkins on piano. Robin sings solo throughout and plays guitar, Soma sitar and tamboura.

What is remarkable about this one is that it comprises 5 separate songs, each one wholly different from all the others, and each utterly brilliant. The styles include one blues song and one rocker, the other three being showcases of Robin’s various ISB personas. This unique drama deserves a medal.

Track 5 is “Little Cloud”, and it could not be more different from the previous one. This is a Mike Heron composition, where he sings lead vocal and plays guitar; Robin plays drums and rattles [!], and supplies additional vocals. It is indeed a pretty little ditty concerning a conversation with a cloud. The chorus includes these lyrics: “Ya-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tow-tow-ta-ta-tow-wow”.

Side 1 ends with Track 6, a Robin Williamson song titled “The Eyes of Fate”. Robin sings lead vocal and plays guitar, Mike plays lead guitar and sings; and for the first time on the album, “Licorice” also sings. This delightful lady was Robin’s girlfriend at the time and would soon become a member of the group. This is classic Williamson stuff with dramatic turns and suddenly soaring bits, and with a catchy refrain. Super stuff.

Pink Floyd – “More” (1)

June 23, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

The band had been involved with several film projects during its short existence, and in January 1969 [when I was just starting the second term of my second year at secondary school], they were approached by Barbet Schroeder, who offered them £600 each to do the music for a film. His idea was that this was not to be any sort of soundtrack; rather, the characters in the film would be shown actually listening to each of the tracks. At the end of the month at Pye studios the band worked flat out and completed the required recordings in just 8 days, Roger writing the lyrics for music put together by the other three.

The tracks were collected onto an LP the full title of which is “Soundtrack From The Film More”, and is unusual for a Pink Floyd album, being a set of 13 short pieces. The only other such is their other soundtrack LP, from a film called by a French name that translates as “The Valley”, but that has a “proper” title, “Obscured By Clouds”. We shall come to that in due course.

Meanwhile, this is the front cover of “More”, as the album is usually referred to as:

The Incredible String Band – “The 5000 Spirits… (4)

June 21, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

Track 3 on Side 1 of the LP is a minor masterpiece called “Painting Box”. It is a typically cheerful tonal Mike Heron composition, but this one is truly outstanding. The credits read: “Mike Heron, lead vocal& guitar; Robin Williamson, lead guitar, flute & vocal, Licorice vocal & finger cymbals; Danny Thompson [see above], bass”.

The ensemble refrain is a hearty thing with these words:

“For somewhere in my mind there is a painting box; I have every colour there it’s true. Just lately when I look inside my painting box I seem to pick the colours of you.”

There are three verses, the song commencing with the first and ending with the chorus:

“When the morning of your eyes comes waking through my shadows, leaving just a trace of twilight sleep;

I whisper to the baby raindrops playing on my window, and tell them gently, This is not the time that they should weep.

My Friday evening’s footsteps plodding dully through this black town Are far away now from the world that I’m in,

My eyes are listening to some sounds that I think just might be springtime, With daffodils between my toes I am laughing at their whim.

The purple sail above me catches all the strength of summer. Fishes stop and ask me where I am bound.

I smile and shake my head and say my little ship is sinking, But I kind of like the sea that I’m on and I don’t mind if I do drown.”

The band, comprising just the two chaps, performed this song on UK TV in 1967 on the Julie Felix show, with her joining in effectively taking the Licorice vocals. I am fortunate enough to have a DVD which includes a video recording of this, and it is indeed pure joy to watch.

It was a perfect choice for a single, but sadly it did not chart:

21 June 2017

June 21, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Ah, and once more the nights start drawing in again.

In memory of Tim Hart deceased.

Pink Floyd in 1968

June 20, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

As will have been observed from the posts on “A Saucerful Of Secrets”, the group that recorded it did not exist in any precisely definable form. The group’s management split, half effectively going with Syd Barrett in the firm belief that the group was finished without him. A tour of the USA took place in the summer of 1968, a time when the groupie phenomenon was at its zenith. Indeed, there is a track on “Atom Heart Mother” called “Summer 1968” which deals with that very topic.

One big problem with doing gigs back in the UK, however, is that Pink Floyd Mk II was not in any position to recreate on stage the vast majority of the band’s recorded output.

As the year turned, however, a step in the right direction, albeit a curious and uneasy one, was about to be taken.

And they did look quite striking:

The Incredible String Band – “The 5000 Spirits… (3)

June 16, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

Track 1 on Side 1 is “Chinese White”. This phrase then described a type of heroin; and oh boy, from the opening notes of the bowed gimbri, it was patently clear that this was a very different album from the first one. It is a Mike Heron composition, and he sings lead vocal and plays guitar. Robin sings and plays the bowed gimbri. If you have never heard a bowed gimbri, the sound is enthralling and positively unworldly, sounding a bit like a violin on LSD. The song is a truly magnificent opener, with the refrain “Oh, will your magic Christmas tree be shining gently all around?”

Track 2 strikes a splendid contrast, being Robin Williamson’s “No Sleep Blues”. This could have come from the first LP, and is a super romp fantasising wonderfully on the topic of insomnia. I often describe this blog as a cure for insomnia. Robin takes lead vocal with Mike supporting, and both play guitars. Danny Thompson (shortly to be of Pentangle) plays “bass”, which is probably a double bass, as he does on quite a few tracks on this LP.

This track was also the B side of a single of which the very next track was the A side.

Pink Floyd – “A Saucerful of Secrets” (6)

June 8, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

As hinted at last Pink Floyd time, in this final post on this LP, these are the entire lyrics of “Jugband Blues”;

the break indicates the instrumental section; the final lyrics thereafter end the song and the album abruptly:

“It’s awfully considerate of you to think of me here and I’m most obliged to you for making it clear that I’m not here and I never knew the moon could be so big and I never knew the moon could be so big and I’m grateful that you threw away my old tunes and brought me here instead dressed in red…and I’m wondering who could be writing this song. I don’t care if the sun don’t shine and I don’t care if nothing is mine and I don’t care if I’m nervous with you: I’ll do my loving in the winter.

BREAK

The moon isn’t green…I love the Queen…and what exactly is a dream…and what exactly is a joke?”

The Incredible String Band – “The 5000 Spirits… (2)

June 7, 2017 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

This album has one of the most extraordinary psychedelic front covers ever produced, of a type which could only have come in to being in the late 1960s, and indeed really only in 1967 or at the latest 1968:

As can be observed, the only words are “The Incredible String Band”, but even these few are hard to discern in this amazing tableau. It was worth buying LPs in those days just to get the artwork.

The back cover is slightly more prosaic, and does include the album title in slightly more legible lettering:

The words “Layers Of The Onion” are the yellow bits with green stripes. Beneath the oval picture of the band members are their names, carefully arranged in the cover style to emphasise the names of two birds.

In the lower section are the track listings and credits. The sleeve design and artwork is credited to “SIMON & MARIJKE”.

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