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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:

Incredible String Band in 1969 (2)

June 8, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

In #1 of this title [see above], I mentioned that the group had done a lot of touring that year; indeed they even appeared at Woodstock!

Tucked inside the gatefold sleeve of my copy of “Changing Horses” I have a bit of memorabilia I bought in 2011 for £19.55. This is the programme from the band’s gig at the Royal Albert Hall that year:

The programme contains many interesting words, including two unique poems by Robin. One starts:

“The wren sings morse without remorse among bright ivy and trumpeting haws

The invisible road vein stretches from stone to distant marker coruscations of the earth mind”.

This is the second, shorter one:

“Christmas feast with the outcasts in the stable

& present also at the queen’s low table

with trolleys big as carriages to renew

& many nobles stared to see us there.

the miser grandpa kept you there within the wall

kiss me sweet gwendoline

we float across the gravel through the stone

box hedges of blowing darkness

the voices of the tall winds sing louder than belief

the voices of tall winds sing very loud

terrifying and pure.”

Pink Floyd – “Meddle” (1)

June 6, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

Pink Floyd.

“Meddle” is the next LP released by the band, being the only one they brought out in 1971. In terms of written info, it is the sparsest of their albums so far. This is the front cover:

This is actually one of the best albums the group ever released; there is simply not one moment on it that is not brilliant.

There is only one track on Side 2, but there are five on Side 1. Track 1 is called “One Of These Days”, and was noted at the time as featuring Nick Mason’s vocal debut. I remember it being played on one of the very early editions of “The Old Grey Whistle Test”, a prog rock TV programme on BBC2 that had just replaced its noble predecessor “Disco 2”. It was played showing a surreal cartoon of swirling shapes. It is a real stormer, this one, with a relentless bass riff giving the whole thing a menacing feel, with the soaring guitar of Dave Gilmour and the ghostly organ of Rick Wright providing an astounding colour to the mix. The only vocals in the song do indeed come from the drummer Nick Mason about two thirds through, where in a rough and guttural voice he intones the words “One of these days I’m going to cut you up into little pieces”. Sheer magic!

Incredible String Band – “Changing Horses” (5)

May 25, 2019 · by listentomusicanywhere

Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band.

The last track on the LP is an amazing Williamson composition called “Creation”, which lasts an epic 16.04 minutes. The song comprises several discrete sections in different styles, all of which are truly wonderful, and all are separated by a very short and catchy refrain “Verily verily, Verily verily”. It is a veritable masterpiece. Its entire lyrics are set out on the back cover, along with the track listing and the credits. The instrumentation is unique, as it features a guest artist: Robin lead vocal, guitar, gimbri, violin; Mike percussion, sitar, mandolin, vocals; Rose bass, percussion, vocals; Licorice percussion, kazoo, vocals; and *Ivan Pawle organ, piano. “*appears courtesy of Dr. Strangely Strange, Island Records Ltd.” [see way above!]. This is the back cover of the LP:

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