Now That’s What I Call Harmonium

Sid Smith has a thread going on the employment of harmonium in tunes and is making invitation for more recommendations. Read the Sid Smith Diary entries for Tuesday & Thursday this week (check http://www.krimson-news.com/kcnndiaries/SidSmith.shtml)

 

Tuesday, May 17 2005
I’m also taking nominations for a compilation I’ve been asked to produce that has the working title Now That’s What I Call Harmonium 1.
Tracks selected so far include;
The Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914) by The Zombies
Gog by Peter Hammill
Islands by King Crimson
Day Tripper by The Beatles

Well, as you can tell from the initial choice and bound to be a best seller. It can only be a question of time before we have Now That’s What I Call Bassoon (an Egg and Henry Cow fest in the offing clearly) and Now That’s What I Call Serpentine. Further suggestions to the usual address.

 

Thursday, May 19 2005

Now That’s What I Call Harmonium update

Wow – glad to see this thread a struck a chord (groan) although I may have to do some back-pedalling (more groaning) as several sharp-eyed observers have emailed to point out that Day Tripper doesn’t have any harmonium. Surely I meant We Can Work It Out? Dead right.

There’s been a couple of suggestions for additions. Thony C nominates the deeply wonderful Ivor Cutler. Those familiar with the Life In A Scotch Sitting Room series will appreciate the maudlin wanderings that rise and fall underneath the dour tones of this Grade 1 listed eccentric. I count myself as being very lucky to have seen Cutler and Phyllis April King several times in the seventies when they were regular performers at Newcastle’s Morden Tower – a premier venue for international poetry set in a circular tower located in the middle of Newcastle’s ancient city walls.

Someone else who came to read (though a little before my time) was Allen Ginsberg on a pilgrimage to meet the utterly fab Basil Bunting. Later in his career of course, Ginsberg took to performing his sutra poems whilst accompanying himself on something that sounds like a harmonium. And in a moment of inspired artistic free association I find myself wondering if there isn’t a harmonium to be found on George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord?

How about that amazing version of Like A Hurricane on Neil Young’s Unplugged? A note from Martyn suggests that a compilation that excluded Nico wouldn’t be worthy of the name. He’s right. The End, her seventies collaboration with Eno, Cale and Manzanera is surely one of the best. Delving deeper into the shelves of memory I extracted Ensemble Piece featuring the work of John Adams, Gavin Bryars and the extraordinarily beautiful MacCrimmon Will Never Return by Christopher Hobbs. Shuffling the pack slightly sideways, there is of course the track that must surely open the compilation, Music For A Found Harmonium by the Penguin Café Orchestra.

Anymore for anymore?

 

Procul Harum, "Nothing I didn't Know"

Forest- several tracks on each album

Univers Zero - "la Faulx"

Patrick Godfrey "Ancient Ships" ('79, private, Canada)
This be hissen maist progressive lp.
'eavy onna 'armonium (an' 'arpsichord). Vibes,marimbas,etc.

"Bells of Earth" an' "Small Circus" be sparser lps -strickterly pianni & 'armonium/'arpsichord.


Hey, Deep Purple "Child in Time' ha' wha yer efter as weel, right?

.....
Name th' lp where George Harrison be playin' 'armonium.

greenback wrote: okay: those albums have excellent harmonium most of the gryphon albums anthony phillips - the geese & the ghost pink floyd - final cut   to me the most intense harmonium track is gryphon's unquiet grave

In this Gryphon track are beautiful crumhorns in the beggining. They put me in tears always when i hear it, such beautiful sad melody.

(At the risk of making the whole thing a matter of incestious mutual congratulation), Sid Smith is currently acknowledging you guys imput here in his diaries - it appears a whole CD can be created............................. Interesting to see Judy Dyble contributing, a name that goes back to the original Fairport Convention and test drove a handful of early King Crimson songs on demos.

The St. Elmo's Fire album "Artifacts of Passion" has a lovely track called Esmerelda that uses those splended reeds, The Brain Forest album "Wood Of Thought" has a track called A Walk In The Sunlight that also includes this instrument.