Subscribe to my blog?

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Join 23 other followers

Browsing Category Uncategorized

Pink Floyd – “Wish You Were Here” (2)

May 13, 2020 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

There are effectively three songs on Side 2 of the LP, the first of which is a Waters’ composition called “Have a Cigar”. This neatly follows the previous track, the last one on Side 1, “Welcome To The Machine” [see last Pink Floyd post], in that it is very much about the world of the music business, at least as it was in 1967 when the band came into existence. However, it is a much more relaxed number than its predecessor, and again it is classic stuff. To provide a feel for the ambience of this one, here is a short extract from the lyrics:

“The band is just fantastic, that’s what I think. Oh by the way which one’s Pink?”

This is the back cover of the outer sleeve:

Incredible String Band – “U” 4

April 4, 2020 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

Track 2 on Side 3 is an instrumental called “Astral Plane Theme” (4.55 minutes). It is a Williamson composition, and he is the sole performer on it, playing one instrument only, guitar. This is a truly remarkable tour de force. It encompasses a huge variety of different styles, including bursts of flamenco, and is delivered with perfect precision and timing. It would have required a great deal of effort on Robin’s part to produce this, and it is indeed a minor masterpiece.

Track 3 is another Williamson composition, a dirge-like chant called “Invocation” (4.48 minutes). The credits are unique: ” Robin, with thanks to Greg Heat’s voice sitar”. Robin does sing the whole thing solo, to the positively eerie accompaniment of this “voice sitar”. It is an extraordinary piece, featuring the often repeated refrain “Aid me, and I will aid you”.

Track 4 is another Williamson composition, a truly brilliant thing called “Robot Blues” (4.02 minutes), and it really does what is says on the tin. Robin performs this entirely on his own, singing along to a classic 12 bar blues tune which he plays on the piano. It is well worth setting out some of the lyrics of this one:

“Down in Robot City, you might think it’s play play play

But a Number 5 Robot he must work in all the night and day

Number 1 come by me, he give my work to me

Oil the flowers, fix the showers, clean the electronic trees

Shine the light, fix it right, now listen carefully

Don’t you go romancing with that pretty Number Three

[Chorus, which I’ll set out at the end]

When I see that Number 3 I get charge all in my dial

When I see that Number 3 my piston fills with oil

You know what I’m talking about

But she likes that Number 1 because he’s rich with all my toil toil toil

That Number 3 she charm the heart of any robot man

Moving her body like an old tin can

If I could get my claws on her I would lubricate her free

I’ve got a perfect action why won’t she play with me

[Chorus]

Well I think I’ll get a ray gun

I will see what that will do

I think I’ll get a ray gun

I think I’ll get a ZZ Special Q

I will blast the Number 1’s gaskets

and his coils I will refuse to renew

He seen me coming, sneak up from behind

switched off my ignition and he left me stone blind

I could not see to blast him

here’s the ending of my tale

He went off with Number 3 and I cursed to no avail

[and the song ends with the

Chorus:

and that’s why why I got the Robot Blues

Down in my heart compartment

Down in my old magnetic sole shoes”

Side 3 ends with Track 5, but I’ll leave that until the next ISB post; it’s called “Puppet Song” and as I noted in my first “U” post, it is a very special track to me.

This is the left side of the inside of the album cover:

Pink Floyd – “Wish You Were Here” (1)

March 7, 2020 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

This LP is a thinly veiled tribute to the late Syd Barrett, who was still very much alive when the record was being made, and indeed sat in on some of the recording sessions. He was the main man in the original line up, which only made one and a bit LPs [see above].

Side 1 is almost wholly taken up with Parts 1 – 5 of the main theme, a piece called “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (Parts 6 -9 appearing on Side 2). It is a truly excellent and varied masterpiece, much of which is instrumental, but the sparse lyrics are very accurate, e.g. “You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon” and ” You wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the steel breeze. Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper*, you prisoner, and shine!” (*The first Pink Floyd LP was “Piper At The Gates of Dawn” – see above).

Side 1 ends with the second and final track “Welcome To The Machine” which does what is says on the tin, with lots of menacing whirring mechanical sounds throughout. It is of course much shorter than the main theme, but it is still classic Pink Floyd, and a worthy part of this wonderful trilogy comprising this album and the ones immediately before and after it.

This is the startling front cover:

No words at all appear on the outside cover, except on the spine.

Incredible String Band – “U” 3

February 23, 2020 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

As was noted in the last ISB post, this is a remarkably long album, and almost certainly the “best value” full price album I have ever bought.

Anyway, we now get to Side 2, which kicks off with a brilliant instrumental called “Partial Belated Overture” (2.54 minutes), composed by Mike, who plays piano and [electric] guitar. Robin plays shanai and fiddle, and Rose plays bass. This is fantastic, urgent rocker, in the inimitable ISB style, and sheer ecstasy to hear.

Track 2 is another Heron composition, which expressly combines two very different songs in one, called “Light in Time of Darkness/Glad to See You” (10.18 [!] minutes. The first is a soft, slow romantic dirge, being abut four times longer than the latter, which is a piano rocker with vocals which are at times almost screamed. Mike sings solo vocals throughout, and Rose plays bass.

Track 3 is another Heron composition called “Walking Along With You” (3.58 minutes). It does indeed have an ambulatory feel to it, with Rose and Mike sharing the vocals, mostly in sweet harmony, with Mike paying guitar and Robin bass. it is an exceptionally pleasant and soothing song to listen to.

Track 4 is a Heron romp called “Hiram Pawnitof/Fairies’ Hornpipe (6.27 minutes). He wrote the song, but the instrumental part at the end is credited as Traditional. He plays guitar and mandolin and does solo vocals throuhout, Robin fiddle, Licorice spoons, and Rose bass.

The Side ends with another short Heron composed instrumental called “Bridge Theme” (2.15 minutes) (and which title is clearly intended as a link to the next track, Track 1 on Side 3). This is much more laid back than Track 1, and sounds a bit like the theme music for a 1930s film. Mike plays [electric] guitar, Robin shanai and soondri, Licorice drums, and Rose bass.

It will be observed, therfore, that Side 2 is very much a “Heron sandwich”, with the short instrumentals composed by him as the “slices of bread”.

Side 3 opens with yet another Heron composition called “Bridge Song” (8.45 minutes) [see what I mean?]. This is a lovely, deeply thoughtful and profound song, described as a conversation between “Beautiful Girl” and “Seeker”.

The album comes with a sheet with all the lyrics on. This shows it with the words for this song:

Pink Floyd – “The Dark Side Of The Moon” (3)

January 15, 2020 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

The second side is one long track. It really is impossible on the LP (but not of course the CD) to determine exactly where one track ends and the next begins, except of course for the start of the first track and the end of the last one. There is also a lot of that mumbling I mentioned earlier, but I now see that all this adds to the general brilliance of the album.

Track 1 is “Money”, arguably the best known of any Pink Floyd track, not least because it is still played in quite respectable financial advice programmes on the TV and radio. It kicks off with what can be best described as a cacophony of cash registers. Oddly, there is now something nostalgic about this, as they aren’t around any more; electronic tills have replaced them. It has three verses, the second and third being separated by a lengthy instrumental break, dominated by some upbeat jazzy saxophone playing by one Dick Parry. As with the soul singing on Side 1, to my teenage ears this was another great betrayal of all that the band stood for. Now I see it as an essential element of the masterpiece which this album comprises. It is a Waters composition which elides seamlessly into another one.

This is Track 2, “Us and Them”, and is classic Pink Floyd. It is the only other track on the LP to feature Dick Parry’s saxophone, but here it is much more subdued, and actually quite tasteful. This becomes Track 3, an instrumental called “Any Colour You Like”, which in turn becomes Track 4. This is “Brain Damage”, another Waters song, being notable for quoting the album title twice. This is the second one, which features in the last verse of the song:

“And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear

You shout and no one seems to hear

And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes

I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.”

This slides into the final track, Track 5, another Waters song called “Eclipse”. It is brilliant wistful cadence to this magnificent album.

A few posts ago I include a Melody Maker article from 24 November 1973, some 8 months after the release of the LP. This was the photo that accompanied the article:

Incredible String Band – “U” 2

December 29, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

This was one of the first full price albums I ever bought, the third I think after “Liege & Lief” by Fairport Convention and “Alchemy” by the Third Ear Band, and I bought it almost exactly 49 years ago, after Christmas 1970 but before New Year’s Day 1971.

I had heard the track “Puppet Song” on the radio, the first Incredible String Band music I had ever heard, and was immediately entranced by it.

The double album carries a subtitle or description: ” A surreal parable in song and dance concept by Incredible String Band and Stone Monkey”. It remains one of my favourite albums of all time, and is a very close second favourite ISB album after “Wee Tam and The Big Huge” [see above!!!].

Side 1 opens with a brilliant acoustic instrumental called “El Wool Suite” lasting an astonishing 9.02 minutes. Mike plays sitar, Robin gimbri, flute and clay drums, and Rose table and guitar. Every second of this is pure bliss.

There follow a couple of short typically comic/dark stuff short Robin songs. Track 2 is “The Juggler’s Song” (3.05 minutes) and 3 is “Time” (3.57 minutes). He is solo on the latter, providing vocal, 12 string guitar and mandolin. On the former he is joined by Licorice on vocal and plays guitar, bass and mandolin.

Track 4 is an extraordinary mock country and western song sung by a lady called Janet Shankman titled “Bad Sadie Lee”, lasting 3.52 minutes. Mike plays piano and adds backing vocals, Robin plays fiddle, Jew’s harp and washboard, both the girls provide backing vocals, and a chap named Peter Grant plays banjo. It is the most “wall of sound” track ever produced under the ISB banner.

Side 1 ends with a beautiful, soft, romantic, and very slightly pornographic epic called “Queen of Love”, coming in at 8.37 minutes. It is another Robin song where he sings the solo vocal and plays guitar and bass, and Janet Shankman plays harpsichord. Uniquely, I think, for an ISB track, this one also has a credit for the arrangement, going to one Tom Constanten.

It can now be observed that side 1 lasts an amazing 29 minutes, which is typical of all the 4 sides of the album. This was great value for money!

This is the back cover:

Pink Floyd – “The Dark Side Of The Moon” (2)

December 8, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

There are two odd things about this LP. The first is that it is liberally peppered with snatches of almost completely unintelligible spoken interludes. The second is that on both sides of the record, the tracks seamlessly elide into each other, so that you can’t tell where one ends and the next one begins; with one arguable exception.

Track 1 on Side 1 is a Nick Mason composition called “Speak To Me”. This is one of the “instrumentals” on the album, though none of them truly is because of that first peculiarity I mentioned; and that title is strangely ironic in that sense. It is a dramatic, staccato thing, and classic Pink Floyd to my teenage ears.

It becomes Track 2, “Breathe”, credited to the other three members of the band, and again this is classic Pink Floyd. The “principal” song has just two verses, each of 8 lines. In each case the first 4 are soft and gentle, positively soothing, while the second fours are louder and more urgent. Great stuff.

This becomes another “instrumental” called “On The Run”, a Gilmour/Waters composition; a busy little thing featuring much searing Gilmour guitar, and again classic Pink Floyd. This is the arguable exception to the “elision” oddity I mentioned above, because it ends with a “Reprieve” of “Breathe”! This is really strange, and just now I can’t recall any other example of the syndrome. What you get here is a third 8 line stanza of “Breathe”, following exactly the same pattern, ending with the couplet:

“Calls the faithful to their knees

To hear the softly spoken magic spells”

There is an almost discernible gap between that and the cacophonous alarm clocks which introduce The next track:

“Time”. I immediately made a connection here, that Cat Stevens had also earlier done a song with the same title. This one is credited to all four members of the band, and is once more classic Pink Floyd. It elides into track 5

This track ends Side 1, and is called “The Great Gig In The Sky”, written by Rick Wright the keyboards player, Not surprisingly then, it begins with an innocuously pleasant piano intro. Quite soon, however, a lady called Clare Torry starts to do some technically brilliant note perfect soul screaming and wailing. This does in fact turn out to be the main feature of the piece. I was just 17 years old when I heard this, having been a great fan of the band in respect of all its previous recordings, and I was horrified! What on earth was this stuff doing on a Pink Floyd album? I have to say that fairly soon after, I came to realise that this was in fact the best album the group had ever made, the first of a classic trilogy, and irrefutable evidence that this was a truly “progressive” band.

This is the back cover:

And, tucked inside my copy of the LP is this cutting from “Melody Maker” of 24 November 1973:

Incredible String Band – “U” 1

November 18, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

1970 saw this, one of the longest records with the shortest (equal) title (matched only by Jethro Tull’s “A”), and one of the shortest tracks with certainly the longest title, being the “B” side of Fairport Convention’s single “Now Be Thankful”. That short track was a lively folk rock instrumental called “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament for the 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat from the Straits of Loch Knombe, in the Year of Our lord 1727, on the Occasion of the Announcement of Her Marriage to the Laird of Kinleakie”.

“U” was the third full price album I ever bought, the first being Fairport Convention’s “Liege & Lief” and the second Third Ear Band’s “Alchemy” [for both of which see way above], and the first double LP I ever bought. This purchase occurred between Christmas and New Year at the end of 1970, very nearly a year after I got my first record player. It also occurred about six weeks before the UK converted to a decimal currency; and this leads nicely onto the front cover, and the curious syndrome of dual pricing:

Not visible, but still stuck on, is the price label. In old money, which of course is what I paid, the correct price is shown, 69/10, i.e. £3, nine shillings and tenpence. However, the decimal price is shown as £3.99, which would have been £3 nineteen shillings and tenpence, ten bob more, or in decimal 50 new pence more, than the correct price. I might try and get a close up of the price tag and post it later.

Pink Floyd – “The Dark Side Of The Moon” (1)

November 17, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

This album came out in March 1973, about 3 months before my A Levels and about 9 months before I left school. I was doing the babysitting job and so was able to buy it straight away,

It did of course turn out to be the band’s biggest selling LP.

My initial reaction to it, though, was that the band had sold out. Saxophones? Female soul singers? Tracks called “Time” and “Money”? To my prejudiced teenage ears, this was a gross betrayal of all the band had previously done.

This is the very famous indeed front cover, of course:

Incredible String Band – “Be Glad…” (2)

October 9, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

I have a VHS video of this film, and it is a joy to behold. It really is psychedelia at its zenith, featuring inter alia a dancing pirate.

The music on the album is typical of the group at this time, and all of it is unique to this record and utterly brilliant.

Side 1 has 5 tracks:

Come With Me

All Writ Down

Vishangro

See All The People

Waiting For You

Side 2 has just one long track, being the title track “The Song Has No Ending”. This is how it is described on the LP cover, very accurately:

“a collection of instrumental pieces featuring all four on their characteristic instruments.”

This is the back cover of the LP:

Page 2 of 185 « Previous 1 2 3 4 … 185 Next »