JOY OF A TOY

Joy of a Toy is the debut solo album from former bassist/ vocalist in Canterbury legends The Soft Machine Kevin Ayers. Kevin Ayers lazy life style with long breaks from the pulsating life in Britain spend on Ibiza is known to most prog heads as is his love for red vine and the sweet life. His outlook on life apparently didn´t fit into The Soft Machine´s busy work schedule and he left for a solo career where he could be the boss of his own life. Joy of a Toy is considered a Canterbury classic by many people and is highly rated at the moment here on Prog Archives.

The music is unmistakably Canterbury with the great english humour and the light pop/rock music. There are not many jazz influences here though and the music is generally very simple. So no long instrumental jamming parts. There are a few solos on Joy of a Toy like in the end of Stop This Train (Again Doing it) but the instrumental parts are not very long which means that what we have here are mostly simple pop/ rock songs that to most prog heads will seem a bit too simple. There are some really good songs on Joy of a Toy and I will mention Town Feeling and Song for Insane Times as some of my favorites. Most songs are good though maybe except for the foolish sounding Oleh Oleh Bandu Bandong which is just a horror.

Kevin Ayers is helped by his old Soft Machine collegue Robert Wyatt on drums, and David Bedford on piona and keyboards. Old Soft Machine collegue Mike Ratledge provides an organ solo in Song for Insane Times and Kevin Ayers replacement in Soft Machine Hugh Hopper plays the bass in that song. There are also some cello and Oboe playing on the album which adds to the diversity.

The production is pretty good if you remember that this album is from 1969.

Joy of a Toy is a good Canterbury album but nothing more IMO. I´ll rate this album 3 stars and I´m not sure why other people would hold this in such high regard as there are many much better Canterbury albums out there that I would listen to before this one.