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Pink Floyd – “Obscured By Clouds” (3)

September 7, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

Side 2 opens with a Gilmour composition called “Childhood’s End”, which is a very lovely, beautiful and varied song indeed; it makes a truly splendid introduction to the side.

Track 2 is a curious Waters composition called “Free Four”. It opens with the band counting from one to four, but starting with just one of them, two on two, three on three, and finally all four on four. it is impossible to tell whether the third is “three” or “free”. It is a bit of a plodding song, but nevertheless very pleasant to listen to, and basically concerns an old man’s memories of his youth. The lyrics are actually quite touching.

Track 3 is a Waters/ Wright composition called simply “Stay”, and in my view it is the best song on this album. It is a strong but soothing lullaby, wonderfully and slowly performed, with all the members of the band giving their all, both vocally and instrumentally. It is a work of pure genius, and deserves a pedestal of its own.

The album concludes with what for me has always been the worst track on the record. It is titled “Absolutely Curtains”, and one of only a handful of numbers credited to all four members of the group; there is a lesson in there somewhere. It starts off as a fairly standard Pink Floyd song, but the last half of it comprises some unaccompanied staccato chanting. As a teenager, when I bought this LP, I found this chanting immensely irritating. Being nearly 64 now, I have become much more forgiving, but I still don’t like it much.

The inner sleeves of Harvest Records in those days were adverts for their LP releases, and the one that came with this one was one of the best:

Of course I recognised almost all of these from the “Picnic” sampler – see WAY above!!!

Incredible String Band – “Be Glad…” (1)

August 25, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

While 1968 was the year the ISB released two or three LPs, depending how you count them, 1970 was the one when they released three albums, comprising 4 LPs. These were the only years they released more than one LP. The odd 1970 one is the music soundtrack of a film called “Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending”, and the LP has the same title. However, it was released on the Island label, whereas all the others were of course on Elektra. This is the front cover:

Pink Floyd – “Obscured By Clouds” (2)

August 11, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

Track 3 on Side 1 is a beautiful, slightly mournful song called “Burning Bridges”. It is a slow, plodding sort of thing, with much swirling organ, and very pleasant indeed to listen to.

Track 4 is “The Gold it’s in the…” and is a stylish rocker of the type that only this band could ever do, and again is pure joy to hear.

Track 5 has another odd “partial” title: “Wot’s…uh the deal”. It is another slow, meandering and slightly mournful song, but here the organ is subdued.

Side 1 ends with Track 6, a gentle piano based instrumental called “Mudmen”. These characters appear to be unnervingly menacing in the film, but turn out to be utterly harmless. A picture from this scene is one of three from the film on the back cover of the LP:

Incredible String Band – “I Looked Up” (3)

July 29, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

Side 2 opens with a most whimsical Heron composition called “This Moment”, lasting a pleasant 6.07 minutes. All four members of the band sing on it, with Mike taking the lead and playing guitar. Robin plays electric guitar and Rose bass. It is all about the uniqueness of the present, and of course there were an infinite number of such moments during the recording of the song in 1970.

Track 2 is the other Williamson song that makes the LP inaccessible, this one also lasting an epic 10.58 minutes. It is titled “When You Find Out Who You Are”, and is again not a bad song, with many variations and agreeable interludes, but again it goes on too long. Robin sings lead and plays guitar, Licorice provides backing vocals and plays drums, Rose plays bass and Mike piano.

The album ends with Track 3, a lovely harmonised Heron song called “Fair As You”. The vocals mainly comprise a wonderful duet by the girls, with Mike contributing the odd balancing burst. Mike plays guitar, Robin gimbri and flute, and the song lasts a most respectable 6.27 minutes. It is a splendid cadence to this rather difficult record.

This is the back cover of the English version, which features the same blurred photo as adorns the front of the USA one:

The back cover of the USA version is this:

All were on more or less the same red Elektra label:

Pink Floyd – “Obscured By Clouds” (1)

July 27, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

The next album after “Meddle” was this one, released in 1972, by which time I was earning a lot of money babysitting for a lady who worked as a night nurse, who actually paid me for sleeping! I was therefore able to buy it as soon as it was released. I have always loved the LP to bits, with the exception of one section right at the end of it, which as a teenager I found profoundly irritating. I am now much more forgiving of it, though it still doesn’t seem quite to fit with all the rest.

The album is correctly subtitled “Music From La Vallee”, a film I acquired on DVD last year, 2018:

The film is indeed largely in French, and starts with the heroine coveting some Birds of Paradise feathers. However, she soon becomes involved in an adulterous relationship with an explorer who entrances her with his talk of a hidden valley that was reputed to be utopia, but which had never been mapped because it was always obscured by clouds; hence the title.

Like its predecessor, the LP cover is very thin on words. It is also unique, in having curiously curved corners. this is its front:

There had not been a PF LP like this since the last film score they did, for “More” [see above], in that there are no long tracks, but rather a collection of short ones.

The record opens with the title track, “Obscured By Clouds”, a truly classic PF instrumental, with a thudding repetitive bass and drums foundation, filled out with swirling organ, and intermittent bursts of soaring Gilmour guitar. Track two is also an instrumental, called “When You’re In”, but it is shorter and much more laid back and dreamy.

Incredible String Band – “I Looked Up” (2)

July 21, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

The last track on Side 1 is Track 3, a Williamson composition called “Pictures In A Mirror”, which lasts an epic 10.43 minutes. It is one of the two songs on the LP, both of which are the longest songs thereon, which in my view make the album “inaccessible”, but is is by no means a bad song, and does have some very attractive features; but it goes on too long. In common with most of the Williamson epics, this song is wierd and has many varied sections, and usually these work, notably “Creation” on “Changing Horses”. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t.

A few years after I got the LP, I was able to buy a second hand copy of the English version, and this is the wholly different front cover of the sleeve:

Pink Floyd – “Meddle” (3)

July 11, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

Track 5 on Side 1 ends that side, and is titled “Seamus”. It is in fact the same track as appeared on the “Live at Pompeii” video [see above] as “Mademoiselle Nobs”. It is unique amongst all the output of Pink Floyd in that the sole vocals are provided by a dog howling in perfect tune and time with the instrumental accompaniment.

I got this LP on the lovely Harvest Label:

and there is just one track on Side 2:

As you might see, this is called “Echoes”, and it is a masterpiece lasting over 21 minutes. Dave Gilmour is on record as saying that it started the classic and very successful period that the band enjoyed in the mid 1970s. It starts and ends with a beautiful, soft and soothing bit of vocals, with a brilliant and varied instrumental break in the middle. You really have to hear this track to appreciate fully its utter brilliance.

However, without doubt the most striking feature of this LP is the photo which occupies the whole of the inside of the gatefold sleeve, apart from the few words on the cover which are superimposed to the bottom right of each side of the inside cover. The photo shows the band as it was in 1971:

This was the year my sister got the band’s autographs while they were staying at the house of a schoolfriend of hers, but sadly she promptly lost them.

Incredible String Band – “I Looked Up” (1)

June 26, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

I have always regarded this as the “least accessible” (but not the worst) ISB album.

It was released in 1970, but I first acquired it in 1975 from the trendy record shop on Little Clarendon Street in Oxford. The copy of the LP I got then was the USA version, this being the front cover:

Yes, the photo REALLY is that blurred!

There are three tracks on each side of the LP, Side 1 opening with a very jolly romp of a song called “Black Jack Davy”. [Oddly, it was later to appear on the 1972 ISB LP “Earthspan” in a more electrified version then called “Black Jack David”.] It certainly makes very pleasant listening. It is a Heron composition, with him playing guitar and singing lead vocal. Licorice plays bass but does not sing on this one; Rose and Robin both play violins and provide backing vocals. The track lasts 3.59 minutes.

Track 2 is another Heron composition called “The Letter”. Mike does all the singing and plays guitars and Rose plays bass. Dave Mattacks plays drums (!) “(courtesy of Fairport Convention)”. The track is a sort of whimsical rocker, and indeed is all about the postman delivering a letter. It is another comparatively short song, coming in at 3.08 minutes.

Track 3, however, is the first of the” inaccessible ones”, which we shall examine next ISB time.

21 June 2019

June 21, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

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

In memory of Tim Hart deceased.

Pink Floyd – “Meddle” (2)

June 20, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

One thing I forgot to mention in “Meddle” (1) is that the first track begins and ends with the sound of howling winds. This is significant because track 2 on Side 1 is called “Pillow of Winds”. This song could not be more different from the first, however. It is a very soft, gentle, soothing tune, very typical in fact of many of the pieces that would, over the years, follow.

Trak 3 is “Fearless”, a very upbeat song with a relentless riff throughout. Nevertheless, it is still on the “relaxing” side of the band’s repertoire. It is unique, however, as it ends with an utterly faithful recording of the Liverpool Kop (obviously no later than 1971) heartily singing “You’ll never walk alone”, a song from a 1950s musical called “Carousel”, made famous though as a hit single by the Liverpool group Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1963, and very soon thereafter adopted by the Liverpool Football team supporters as their anthem.

Track 4 is “San Tropez”, a slightly jazzy and very laid back thing, but capturing perfectly the feeling people got when sunbathing there on a package holiday with Swan Tours.

As I said before, there are not many verbal features on the cover. This is the back cover:

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