ROBERT WYATT

One of the progressive movement its finest moments.

With a fall from a window from the fourth flour the drumming career of ex-Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt had come to a pittifull end, yet it also marked the beginning of his careeer as a vocalist and keyboard player. After eight months of recovery and learning to cope with life in a weelchair Wyatt continued working on some material he had already been working on before his excident. His artistic mindset had changed, stating that his limitations would make touring almost impossible, which let him to the conclusion he could free himself from the limitations of the fixed band and do whatever he wanted to do in the studio with whom he wanted it. The album has some nice contributions (along others) of Richard Sinclair (Caravan) and Hugh Hopper (Soft Machine). On the last track Mike Oldfield adds some great & recognisable guitarlines, whereas Ivor Cutler (a Scottish poet and musician) ends the album with an eccentric performance on harmonium and vocals which is funny and sentimental at the same time.

The highly innovative and artistic music of Rock Bottom flows from the free, almost un-sensical form and mind-set. Far away from the intellectual and logical prog of his peers, Wyatt music potraits roots of child-like playfulness and cosmic chaos - using symphonic equipment and vocals/lyrics in a totally original way. In nature complexity arises out of the way chaos and selection intertwine, a totally different way from how complexity arises from the mind. Rock bottom captures this universal principle beautifully. All this would give rise to a very personal and intimite atmosphere in which mind-states as love and fear are expressed so deeply that I just forget about myself. I'm all music.

Enough said. Five stars.

The list of musicians who came out to help Wyatt with this project is impressive: Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper, Caravan/Hatfield bassist/vocalist Richard Sinclair, former Gong drummer Laurie Allen; Mike Oldfield adds guitar to one song and Henry Cow's Fred Frith adds viola to the same song. Pink Floyd's Nick Mason produced the album and although he doesn't play any drums here, he does on the single for the cover of the famous Monkees song "I'm A Believer" which was released around the same time as Rock Bottom. Compared to the debut End Of An Ear, this is less chaotic but also more minimalist. There is also nothing here that sounds like it could fit on a Soft Machine or Matching Mole album; Wyatt is basically in his own world here.

"Sea Song" is a terrific opener. The lyrics are nonsensical but are delivered in a serious manner. The synth appears to sort of solo. The piano playing becomes more dissonant and avant-garde for awhile. Love the part over halfway through with synth and some kind of synthetic choir vocals which leads to Robert scat-wailing. The percussion in this song works like a metronome. A classic Canterbury song that only Robert Wyatt could have created. "A Last Straw" starts with some light jazzy cymbal work and either a double-tracked organ or guitar. When Robert starts singing the song picks up and sounds somewhat like an early Soft Machine song. Robert does some altered "wah, wah, wah" scat singing which sometimes sounds like a rubber duckie in the middle. I like what sounds like a bluesy, Floydian slide-guitar near the end.

"Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road" is probably the stand out track here. Featuring overdubbed trumpets that sound like you are at an ancient Roman game in the Colosseum...yet also sound jazzy. Interesting and hypnotic percussion and bass playing. The piano playing is superb and breathtaking; it fits Robert's vocals perfectly. The lyrics here seem more serious and are delivered in a more emotional way. Halfway through the song the vocals get reversed and played backwards. Yet, Robert's vocals do not lose any emotional impact! The vocals continue forward again. Ivan Cutler does some talking in a heavy Scottish accent and you hear non-vocal backwards sounds as the bass playing gets more busy. Echoed and/or looped trumpets to end it.

Robert (or someone else) repeats "alif" at the start of "Alifib" as some bass notes and avant-organ playing carry on underneath him. Melodic jazzy guitar joins in. Eventually the organ starts to sound like a smoke alarm going off. Robert starts singing the song like it's a lullaby...albeit a sad and depressing lullaby. Robert's vocals get double-tracked later. This continues right into..."Alifie." This features some percussion and skronky sax work. The creepy sounding organ works really well here. Altered vocals from Robert are almost talked. The organ playing gets looser and almost improvised at times. The sax almost does a 'normal' solo. Robert's future wife Alfreda Benge does some talking at the end with what sounds like distorted bass feedback. This track just builds in intensity and would be less powerful taken out of context from the album.

Album closer "Little Red Robin Hood Hit The Road" opens with Mellotron(?) and military drum rolls with Wyatt singing. Some Fripp-ish guitar playing from Mike Oldfield for a bit. The guitar starts imitating what Robert was saying. Loose drumming leads to some chanting. What sounds like bagpipes fade in as the rest of the music fades out. Ivan Cutler returns to recite his words from "Riding Hood" but in a different tone of voice. Harmonium and viola join in. A strange but wonderful ending to such a great album. Shortly after this Wyatt would release another album that consisted mostly of other people's songs(unlike here where he wrote everything). Then he would disappear until the 1980s. Rock Bottom is a one of a kind album, it could only have been made by those who made it when they made it. A classic. 5 stars.

"Rock Bottom" is more than a beautiful album; it's a somber lesson of life.

Who is the most gifted and most dedicated Prog musician? Of course, there is not a universal answer, but Robert Wyatt sure proved himself that he deserves to be recognized as a musical legend. After the infamous incident, Wyatt was forced on the wheelchair for the rest of his life, thus, he would have never been able to play the drums again. He put his sadness and melancholy in music, creating one of the greatest masterpieces of Rock history; that is 'Rock Bottom', an timeless landmark LP that never seizes to amaze listeners.

Robert Wyatt was and is known as a somewhat crazy fellow, and his music, especially with the Soft Machine, was extremely surreal, yet innovating and bold. His first album as a solo, 'The End Of An Ear', was received sort of poorly but I believe it is yet another extraordinary manifestation of Wyatt's romantic madness. But, only with 'Rock Bottom', did he manage to fully express his genius: these six songs are full of deep melancholy and sadness, as it could have been predictable, but they all have the Wyatt stamp on them, that makes them so idiosyncratic and original. The ex-drummer focuses on organ, keyboards, and his beautifully original voice, another great trait of his music. Then, of course, there are all the guest musicians, from Richard Sinclair to Mike Oldfield, all of them carefully put in their place by Nick Mason's gorgeous production. All of these songs as a consequence have an utterly lush and dense sound, where tons of layers are put together in a dreamy, surreal soundscape, that feels so mature and real, for a grown child like Robert Wyatt. To call this Progressive Rock is superfluous; it bends so many rules, to the point where it is simply an album of it's own genre, isolated from the rest of the music, untouched. It would be easy to say that it's more of a Singer-Songwriter album sunk in the romantic flavors of Canterbury, and smothered by a ethereal, Jazzy tone. Indeed, 'Rock Bottom' is a different world, living underneath the sea, with no other currents influencing it.

This is much more than an album, it is a lesson of life: an observation of radical changes, which can be unexpected and unpleasant, but they have to be accepted, no matter what. This is fully succeeding a challenge that seemed impossible to execute, but turned out to be exemplar to say the least. It might be sad to see such a big, curious baby facing the harshness of the world, but it shows how only with pain, can you find within yourself your greater artist, as Robert Wyatt obviously did.

Starting with 'Sea Song', Wyatt delivers one of the most beautiful songs he's ever done: a sadly romantic piece that makes the listener plunge into the music itself, surrounding himself with suspended-note keyboards, the odd piano virtuosities, and Wyatt's unmistakable, falsetto-like voice. 'A Last Straw' however seems to be a bit darker, thanks to the gorgeous slide guitar (played by Wyatt), the lower pitched vocals, and the magical keyboards accompanying. The vocal harmonies too are dark, haunting, yet so dreamy and somewhat jazzy too. 'Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road' is much different than the previous two tracks; stretched out, hypnotic, yet beautifully haunting piece that finds it's dorsal spine in the romantic resonance of the trumpets playing for the entire seven minutes of the song. 'Alifib' and 'Alife' seem to go together; the first part much more mellow, with some unique breathing sound by Wyatt, but becomes shortly a wonderfully melancholic piece, when he starts to sing; 'Alife' on the other hand is much more tense, obsessive, with a wild Robert sounding like a madman: the song repeats many ideas of the previous track, putting them however in a completely different, almost creepy context. The last song is the one that sounds the most epic, most ethereal, and the only one where some traces from traditional Progressive can be heard. Once again sounding extremely emotional, it unexpectedly ends humorously, with a man singing with a strong accent.

'Rock Bottom' is not only Robert Wyatt's masterpiece, but also easily one of the best Rock albums ever released, and a key album for the entire Progressive Rock genre. Such deepness in music is rarely heard, and, when we do hear something as profound, there is only Robert to thank for it.

Robert Wyatt was recovering from a horrendous fall breaking his legs and his spirit. The remains of that shattered spirit is injected into every vocal and musical instrumentation on "Rock Bottom". The melancholy of the album is astounding; it overflows with sadness and yet one could not sense any bitterness in Wyatt's vocals. He is so reserved apart from the Soft Machine and Matching Mole among other projects. Here we have the paraplegic man in solitude at his piano in his most reflective thought provoking mood. His fragile vocals are soothing and emotionally charged but there is no self pity. The music ranges from beauty to inner rage appropriate to the flowing organic atmospheres. This one grows slowly on the listener like crawling poison through the veins and is definitely one to savour if you want to hear the inner depths of a man's soul laid bare. Wyatt opens up his spirit, his mind, his soul to anyone who would dare to listen.

'Sea Song' is one of his quietest songs with a powerful ending with swirling synths and intonations of Wyatt's angst driven emotion. Richard Sinclair's bassline and Wyatt's gentle piano opens 'A Last Straw'. Wyatt indulges in some of his ad lib scat style but its okay. He really shines on vocals on "Rock Bottom". Some nice guitar breaks on this lift the spirits.

'Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road' is more towards the experimental Soft Machine style, with wild sax and Wyatt gasping for air, perhaps reliving his tragedy through music. He ad libs some cries of desperation "stop it, oh deary me, what I heaven's name." The music reverses into backwards as does Wyatt's vocals and the result is very unsettling but appropriate in projecting the awful torment of losing the use of his legs. The narration is an incoherent Wyatt at his lowest point and then dissonant music builds with truly chilling effect. Fred Frith's violin has a Celtic flavour.

'Alifib' begins with the pulsations of Wyatt's breathing as though strapped to a life machine in a coma, thus a re-enactment of the situation he had faced. The guitar is trilling nicely over a layer of ethereal keyboards and bass. Wyatt's vocals are mixed to the front and are full of disconsolate tones. The melody is rather pretty but still have dark nuances. It changes into Gary Windo's sax squeaks that speak insanity and Wyatt lapses into madness with vocals such as "Alife my larder, Alife my larder, I can't forsake you, or forsqueak you." The dissonance of piano barricaded by a downbeat melody and depressed sax is an astounding combination. One may be reminded of Van der Graaf Generator here with the great Jaxon on sax. At times the sax is blown without any noise penetrating through; I have never heard the sax used so intensely, it just screams in spasms of agony, and is very disturbing to the ears. The song ends with more incoherency from Wyatt and a really creepy narration; "I'm a dear little dolly", and then closes with multi buzzing drones.

Without warning Wyatt begins the next song 'Alife' with higher vocals and a marching timpani rhythm. The lyrics are the same as the previous track but it is a completely different style and much more restrained. The low vocals of Ivor Cutler on the final track are burblings of madness "I want it I want it give it to me I give it you back when I finish the lunch tea, I lie in the road, try to trip up the passing cars. Yes, me and the hedgehog, we bursting the tyres all day. As we roll down the highway towards the setting sun, I reflect on the life of the highwayman, yum yum. Now I smash up the telly and what's left of the broken phone." It ends on this note with a manic laugh.

At the end of the album it leaves this reviewer rather drained as it is an intense experience entering the mind of the genius madman and we can really sense his emotions that are in turmoil from the experience. It is a wonderful cathartic album though as it delivers such bold and powerful statements. Wyatt does not hold back his pain and we feel refreshed as we experience it with him from the comfort of our headphones. This album may be Wyatt's finest achievement.

Even at the best of times, Soup Song, a silly piece about food, doesn't grab me. But the simple songs, like Sonja can keep my interest if I'm feeling mellow enough. Where this album does keep my attention is in the jazzier songs. Team Spirit is one of those, with a fine Canterbury jazz rock style. 5 Black Notes and 1 White Note is also different enough to keep my attention.

It's a nice albun, but not great.

Robert Wyatt was originally the drummer and vocalist of SOFT MACHINE, then he made two albums in 1972 with his band MATCHING MOLE (wordplay from 'machine molle', soft machine in French!). Before launching his proper solo career he fell from a window and has been using a wheelchair ever since. This accident naturally shaped his music: he had to give up drumming and instead started to use more vocals and keyboards, and his music became more minimalistic, compared to his earlier groups. Also, as the touring was not possible, he felt free to use various musicians guesting on his albums. That shows here too. You see names like Oldfield, Eno, Manzanera, Nick Mason - and Scottish poet Ivor Cutler.

This compilation (first released in Japan; my copy had liner notes in Japanese) is a good summarization of Wyatt's solo output. Most of the albums are represented by two tracks, some by three. From Rock Bottom (1974): 'Sea Song' and 'Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road' (the latter with Cutler's funny poem-reading); fromNothing Can Stop Us: lovely cover tunes, 'Shipbuilding' (originally by Elvis Costello), late night jazz ballad 'Memories Of You' and the dreamy, lazy 'At Last I Am Free' which still is one of my favourite Robert Wyatt numbers. His albums of this Millennium are also included. The running order is non-chronological. Naturally one can argue if this 17-track set can really do justice to his many-sided and long-time output, but as a single disc compilation this succeeds as well as one can wish. Wyatt is not, and has never been, a musician who has certain "greatest hits" (hence the funny title), but this song list manages to include many songs that are among my favourites.

If you think you can manage with just one Robert Wyatt CD, let it be this. But if you already are a connoisseur, this is quite unnecessary.

The main problem with the album is the sound quality, which is really rather poor even for the era - and the mix isn't great either, so the joyous cover version of I'm a Believer that ends the album is rather murky and Ivor Cutler's poetry readings are almost completely swamped - a crying shame. I'd say this definitely fits the criteria of "collectors/fans only", since I can't really recommend the album to anyone who wasn't already a huge Wyatt fan; anyone else is better experiencing the music here in the studio album renditions.

In a way, it actually was quite predictable that after buying Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom CD the corresponding live recording Drury Lane 1974 would be the next one to buy. And thanks to Amazon I could immediately download it as an MP3 for 8 Euros or so.

I do have to admit that I had been a bit sceptical about the sound quality of this record. I know the Refugee archive recording from the same year, and admittedly the sound of that one isn't the best. But the sound of Drury Lane is plain marvellous, at least in the first nine-and-a-half tracks (two thirds of the record): soundboard recordings without any speed problems or notable interferences. The master tapes of the last four-and-a-half tracks weren't completely available so that snippets of recordings of various sources were taken and glued together: interestingly, the sound is quite good here, too, even if the first two thirds are - of course - cleaner: but however, it's better than the typical bootleg quality and just a wee bit worse than Welcome Back My Friends... - in terms of sound quality, of course. ;-)

Some words about the record itself: the first thing to know is that, especially when you want to explore the jazz fusion scene, many jazz/experimental musicians participated in certain all-star-ensembles in the mid-1970s: the most popular example could be 801 (with Francis Monkman, Bill MacCormick and Brian Eno) - and this Robert Wyatt concert features 11 or 12 famous musicians from the surroundings of the Canterbury Scene who may also trod into the spotlight once or thrice. To understand that one should know the relevant events about Robert Wyatt's biography. This man, a drummer/singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist, is one of the veterans of the Canterbury jazz scene, began with the Wilde Flowers (the bud of all of the most famous Canterbury groups), went on with the psych/jazz fusion band Soft Machine for some years and ended up founding the experimental band Matching Mole (Wyatt's most intense use of the Mellotron here, by the way). Before recording the third Matching Mole album in 1973, Robert Wyatt fell out of a window and now suffers from paraplegia; of course, playing the drums hence isn't possible to him no more.

But nevertheless he continued making music and - thanks to the help of some friends - had finished his first "post-traumatic" album Rock Bottom in 1974. And with this illustrious line-up - plus some musicians who didn't take part in Rock Bottom - Robert played the complete album and some other tracks from the Canterbury surroundings.

And not only the sound is deeply impressing, but the music and Robert's attitude towards it, too. In my opinion, a thing which is typical of good progressive rock is the balance between experimental and conventional elements: accessible sounds meet unaccessible ones, acoustic meets electric, rock meets folk music.

THE SOUNDBOARD QUALITY PART

On this album, Robert Wyatt does exactly this thing: he shocks his audience with concentrated strangeness and at the same time brings a smile on their faces.

One example is Dedicated To You But You Weren't Listening, an old relic from Soft Machine days, and the only one from this period to be played during the concert. The version to be featured here is extremely dissected and surreal, compared to the rather laid-back 1968 version. The sung melody is still the same, but the musicians ad-lib here and make this track sound quite chaotic: arhythmic Fender Rhodes sounds, stray violin noises and random drum strokes featuring Robert Wyatt's high, nasal voice singing: When I was young, the sky was blue And everyone knew what to do But now it's gone, the telly's here Mass media, the sewer too - yes, weird music to accompany these lyrics about technology or whatever. And still there is this wicked sense of humour spread all around in this piece. A minimalist starter, mere 90 seconds long, but it's a moment of incredible pleasure for me to hear that someone once started his one-and-only comeback concert with this daring piece. Eccentric and incredibly concise.

Memories is perhaps the right way to continue in order to retain the audience (mainly those who expected more songs like Robert's hit single I'm A Believer): an old piece written by Hugh Hopper already in the days of the Wilde Flowers, later played by the Soft Machine of 1967 and revisited in 1974 as the B-side of the I'm A Believer single. (Do check out the psychedelic Daevid Allen cover version, the alternative rock rendition by Mars Volta and Whitney Houston's jazz ballad cover of this song as well!) What you hear here is understandably most closely related to the solemn Wyatt solo version, a slow 6/8 ballad with partly rather weird chord progressions which in spite of that sound beautiful. The melody is really awesome, as well, unusually bluesy for Robert's means, and it sounds really emotional. Interestingly, from the very beginning on you know that the 3 guys of the rhythm section (Fender Rhodes, bass, drums) are to deliver some further great moments of music during this concert. Dave Stewart (then playing in Hatfield & The North) is on keyboards, Laurie Allan (previously with Gong and Coxhill&Miller) plays the drums and Hugh Hopper (also present on Wyatt's Rock Bottom) is the bassist. Dave Stewart (on keyboards) limits himself to mellow, laid-back jazz chords on the Rhodes piano here while Hugh Hopper gives the piece a certain groove with his well-arranged bass lines. Still the real star on this number actually is Fred Frith on the violin who leads the piece from 1:40 on, superbly counterpointing Wyatt's voice in the last stanza in a pastoral and lyrical manner: pop meets folk, it's nearly similar to the jazzy Pink Floyd tracks in its mood.

With Sea Song Robert Wyatt begins the Rock Bottom set and is granted the first applause within a song in this concert; what appeared as a slightly psychedelic ballad for one singing voice and a cheap organ, a love song of which you don't know if it's addressed to the sea or to a woman (or maybe to both?), has changed considerably towards a darker atmosphere which still retains the same kind of child-like optimism, parcelled in Wyatt's colorful, surreal soundscapes. The band line-up in a way gives this piece of music some extra rock/fusion feel once more, and the rhythm section again is a plain treat to listen to; just note the inventive tom tom work from 1:15 and the punch of the hi-hat at 1:30. But the real surprise doesn't start before 2:09 where Hugh Hopper, having already used a slight fuzz before to re-create the 'drone'-like quality of the studio version, turns on his fuzz box to play some mean licks to the dispersing of the drum rhythm, something which wasn't there in the studio recording. At this place Allan switches from the slow ballad rhythm to an unsteady, rugged free-jazz curling in which only the hi-hat stays in the straight 4/4 rhythm. This gently prepares Dave Stewart's *best ever* keyboard solo in which he starts up his whole array of keyboard instruments: I hear the Moog synthesizer and atonal electric piano clusters, but the lead instrument is a wah-wah-treated Hammond organ: the well-known Canterbury organ sound (Caravan, Camel), but even a tad sicker. Stewart's organ rambles and wails along a whole-tone scale, the scale which Robert Wyatt already disposed in the piano playing of the studio version, and the whole band playing is brutal and adventurous. I daresay that this is a keypoint of progressive rock which everyone should know, it sends shivers down my spine after repeated listening. This keyboard battle finally cumulates in an ascending scale to lead into the next stanza, in the mellow arrangement of the beginning. After some time Wyatt has his first vocal solo, similar to the one of the studio version, but here again a lot more eccentric - and this is where the opinions differ. Wyatt doesn't have a smooth voice, so those who do not like his voice will have problems listening to this album because his scatting appears quite often in this concert - even with one or two voice cracks. But I like this idea of using one's voice as an instrument with specific qualities and characteristics very much, and Soft Machine lost an important element in their music when Wyatt stopped singing and eventually quit the band, so I say that that's a very nice way to end this piece, especially the calming-down at 7:57 or so is cool. Thanks to the superb improvisation by Stewart and Wyatt and the fantastic band interplay this is the doubtless highlight of this album.

A short cesura and The Last Straw begins. It has always been a jazz piece, with typically jazzy chord progressions and an adventurous vocal melody, but the watery slide guitars and keyboards on the original version overlaid the jazz with clear psychedelic characteristics. What is featured here is a rough version: bass guitar, drums, electric piano and vocals. And this is a slight problem: the composition itself is a perfectly implemented Canterbury tune, combining playfulness with the genre-defining hint of oddness, but what made it stand out was the hypnotic piano accompaniment (think Old Brown Shoe by the Beatles), Wyatt's unorthodox approach to playing slide guitar and the drifting keyboards. After an unabridged instrumental introduction without a clear solo instrument Dave Stewart shows that he is quite in the free jazz mode - it nearly sounds like the Zawinul-Corea combo on Davis' Bitches Brew in a way. Hopper's elaborate bass lines guarantee rhythmic diversity and the drums play a usual swing rhythm. Because of these band limitations the solo parts are shorter, but the nice thing are the various band breaks, for instance after reminds me of your rocky bottom, and the mutual imitation, as in the when we collapse in which Stewart counterfeits Wyatt's descending vocal melody. Flamboyant is Wyatt's maybe crankiest scatting improvisation where he switches between scarce single notes and really mean squeaking and croaking: an acquired taste, and not as dreamy as the original version, but it certainly is a resourceful interpretation - although I reckon that listeners who (like me) aren't too much into jazz will have their slight problems with it.

I was really curious to hear how Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road was realized live since it was the most tape-effect-heavy song on Rock Bottom, with the mechanical ticking of the looped bongos and the droning trumpets. And the live version is genuinely outstanding: there is a driving rock rhythm with prominent hi-hats, switching between 10/4 and 8/4 and Frith's clean and effective rhythm guitar backing. The role of the first solist is taken by the South-African trumpeter Mongazi Feza, improvising wonderfully on the ridge between tonality and atonality. Wyatt also sings in a lower register and hence the whole piece rather sounds dark and stormy than whimsical, it's the same rousing emotion as in the Sea Song. I always wonder from which genre(s) Wyatt took influence here, and I'd say that this is the most outright classical piece of music to sound absolutely un-classical. The chord progression and the desperate vocal melismas are utterly operatic, but the severity is counterfeited by the silly lyrics and the surreal arrangement. This is the "sonic humor" of Canterbury music which I love that much.

Alife and Alifib appear in reversed order and also have new arrangements, real band arrangements which are again quite stunning. Alife lacks the weird vocal interlude by Wyatt and his spouse Alfie Benge, but in spite of that faithfully reproduces the free jazz madness of the original album version - not much is changed here. In fact the whole piece is a saxophone solo, and the fact that Windo plays the tenor saxophone with its dark and sawing tone adds to this madness.. Alifib is soothing in its otherwordly babbling of vocals and lead bass guitar. The 'alif' sample has been replaced by a really slow drum rhythm: a brushed snare-drum and some minimal ride cymbal strokes, sometimes making way for a steady rock rhythm with more intense hi-hat work. I enjoy the texture of the electric piano and the wah-wah-treated electric guitar quite a lot, and Hugh Hopper again plays his outstanding gurgling bass solo in the beginning which sounds like a flamenco guitar played on a Fender Jazz Bass. The song itself is Robert Wyatt's idea of a love song which sounds more like slightly deranged nursery rhymes than poetry (No nit not, nit no not, nit nit folly bololey), and in its musical substance it reminds me of an English madrigal paired with jazz phrasing. Still, the most absorbing moment is the counterpoint which Hugh Hopper retains from the studio version at 3:05: simple, but most effective and damn catchy.

Mind of A Child is fascinating in its own way, and the concert benefits from this recording very much. Singer Julie Driscoll had great success in the 1960s with Brian Auger and Mellotron-laden hits like 'This Wheel's On Fire' until she married jazz pianist Keith Tippett who helped in making King Crimson's 'Lizard' suite as stunning as it is. Julie Tippetts' first solo album is regarded as the pendant to Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom (=melodic, but experimental solo album recorded with many Canterbury musicians), and this meditative jazz ballad comes from this album. Performed solely by Tippetts' deep alto voice and her upright piano this piece blends in this album very well. It's a ballad, but it rather sounds like a precursor to Van Morrison's ad-lib mantra longtrack 'When Heart Is Open' than like a bland jazz pop tune, there is just so much dynamic variety in this piece, moments of peaceful tranquility and verses which rear and send shivers down your spine. Let me have the mind of a child again (...) there's a wisdom surely lacking in the heartache that I feel: yes, that's what so many Canterbury songs are about. Art which shows - both in terms of music and in terms of lyrics - that looking at complex things with the simplicity and intuition of a child is a perspective which isn't naive, but simply 'different'. And looking at jazz with a portion of humour and musical anarchy - yes, that's what the other pieces played during this concert really do.

THE BOOTLEG-QUALITY PART

The soundboard tapes of the following pieces are incomplete, but the sound falls short of the 'good bootleg'-niveau merely at some places. Instant Pussy is the heavily deconstructed version à la Matching Mole, not the piano ballad which Wyatt already performed for the BBC in 1969, which means: exploration of the human voice by Robert Wyatt and Julie Tippetts to a sweet jazz mantra, a riff which stays the same in the whole piece but gets transposed into different pitches. However, the piece is exciting because you can hear how Robert Wyatt's voice sounds if he doesn't stretch it up to the highest notes: after an impersonation of a friendly goat at 1:56 he switches into a powerful operatic tenor, and meanwhile Julie Tippetts starts shrieking again. Exertive stuff, yes, but the way how the two voices entangle and squirm is very entertaining. Mike Oldfield now plays the guitar (with quite a delay-fed tone), but his playing becomes more prominent in the next piece.

Signed Curtain, another piece from the first Matching Mole album, is equally experimental since the only thing which Robert does all the time is describing the piece's structure, i.e. this is the first verse, and this is the chorus etc. Apart from this avantgardistic concept of the song this is the one in this concert which is closest to pop music - apart from the chord progression which also seems to be a problem for Mike Oldfield when he plays his solo in the end. Not a particularly memorable solo, but showing Oldfield's distinctive playing style without fuzz. I wish Matching Mole had also done a full-band version of this track; I like it better with drums and guitar.

Calyx is taken from Hatfield and the North's debut album which was published in 1974 - and it's kind of a mixed blessing. I thoroughly enjoy the original version, but the original version featured Robert singing without any words (i.e., scatting) whilst Wyatt prepared some words for this live version which sadly don't enhance the piece in any way. 2:01 really makes me listen up because from this moment Wyatt uses his voice as an instrument again, and it really sounds more noble without words. Seemingly, Calyx is the only piece in which some centimeters of tape are missing, although a clever use of studio delay effects hides this effectively. My choice of words reveals that these previous two pieces are, in spite of being perfectly listenable, the weaker 10 minutes of this concert. Perhaps I would judge differently if the sound was better.

Anyway, Little Red Robin Hood Hit The Road comes as a blow and finishes the 'Rock Bottom' set, a song which is stunning from the beginning onto its end, even though it is actually three different ideas cut together. After the hymnic vocal beginning (which sounds like two or three Roberts singing simultaneously - strange!) Mike Oldfield plays his outstanding guitar solo which has gained cult status among the Canterbury connaisseurs: Gibson SG, neck pick-up, slight distortion and lots of string bending and finger vibrato result in this characteristic soaring tone without which the piece wouldn't be as stunning. When Robert's vocals enter again Laurie Allan abandons the marching rhythm and plays on without any limits until the whole cacophony of sound is replaced by what sounds like a post-rock rendition of a sea shanty: Fred Frith plays a sustained viola drone which Ivor Cutler, a famous poet, takes over with this concertina until he starts reading Wyatt's famous poem which neither has a real sense nor a rhyme nor anything which a poem should usually contain (basically, it deals with broken telephones and a hedgehog destroying car tyres). This part even sounds more like The Velvet Underground with the distorted organ sounds in the end, but sadly this is the piece with the worst sound quality. Anyway, the quality of the performance completely makes up for that.

I'm A Believer was Robert Wyatt's single, and the song doesn't become less commercial when Robert sings it. Still it was his first and last single hit (#29 in UK), and I grant him the sum of pocket money he received for that. But this nearly gospel-like rendition of the old Monkees hit is pretty annoying, although Nick Mason plays the drums here. Okay, it's the throwaway song, perhaps the encore - but somewhere in the middle things change when the whole band starts a jolly carnival which sounds like a Bavarian marching band on LSD and speed at the same time. Feza and Windo on winds & brass join in as well and Julie Tippetts has her most eccentric vocal performance here. This ending which sounds like a mixture of Monty Python and Tom & Jerry saves the song. And don't worry: it's over after six minutes, the other 7 minutes of this track consist of silence and a strange mix of the 'Alife' riff (played on the guitar in the studio, I don't know where this comes from) and the please smile verse in 'Sea Song'. An easter egg - perhaps the booklet of the CD would explain more about it.

So, the first half of this concert is outstanding, and the last ten minutes, too. But the three middle pieces and the decay of the sound quality are disadvantages which must be considered in the overall rating. I thoroughly recommend this recording to every fan of the Canterbury Scene, no-one who likes Matching Mole, Soft Machine or Robert Wyatt will be disappointed by this adventurous live recording. A very good 4 star rating overall - a superb concert which fully deserved its (late) release.