CANTERBURY SCENE

Put "Cunning stunts" on and perhaps it will sound a little bit like the art rockers "10cc" (which is another great band). Caravan nice sound and catchy melodies has allways made a bridge to poular music and here they did it even clearer. But this is not a failed try to be popular, it feels honest every minute. "The show of our lives" is the starter with nice vocals and melody. "Stuck in a hole" is better with speed and interesting feeling. "Lover" has string and brass arrangements which makes it feel classical. "No backstage pass" is the albums second best track with the typital withdrawn vocals and a wonderful melody. Small influences of jazz in this pearl. "Welcome the day" is more ordinary but a clear rock song where the singer is aloud to show more of his abilities. "The badsong conshirtoe" is a true masterpiece of art rock like "Feel the benefit" by 10cc. It's a clever composition with a lot of intertexts from different styles and cultures. Maybe Caravan fans are unused to this new heavy Caravan but it is truely worth listening. The closer "The fear and the loathing in Tollington park rag" is short but not less beautiful. An acoustic little rag.

I don't think I can hear any Canterbury scene here but I hear wonderful music and what is wrong with that? A somewhat inferior A-side takes away one star but four remain. Recommended!

At least if we are talking about debut records. In that case Caravan is better than most rock bands. Beatles debut wasn't fantastic, not Genesis and Yes' was good but not as good as this. Sure even Caravan developed but their original sound was almost precised.

The disc Caravan has a cover showing the members looking sacred with minds devoted to god(or music?) and an emply dusk background in yellow and orange. Caravan (Richard Couchlan, Richard Sinclair, Pye Hastings, David Sinclair, Jimmy Hastings) does a very good record here. Back in 1968 the sound has more psychedelic influences than later and what makes this so pleasent is that it's like joyful pop melodic performed in a sophisticated progressive way. The vocals are magnificent here. I think they work better than on next record. Every song is great and worth enjoying but my favourite track is the longest(as it use to) "Where but for Caravan would I" which is a angelic composition with beauty and power. "Love song with flute" is also one of the best, perhaps by matter of the flute and you can't escape this feeling of genuineness. On many tracks, like "Grandma's lawn" you want to dive into the rich organ orgies which are so cleverly played. The drums are also amazing and make this so powerful as a unit.

Caravan's music is nice, and it was nice from the very beginning. Just its niceness makes it the perfect music to introduce someone to prog rock with. It's no way a matter of crossover stuff or something like that, just very nice, that's it. I won't say it's a masterpiece or perfect, not today after a first listening, but it was an impressing start of this wonderful band.

Four stars with opportunity to be raised even higher!

Now, I will not ever claim to be an expert on the unusual isolated realms of prog (Zeuhl, Krautrock, the Canterbury Scene and the like), but looking at the tracklist and the fact that Dave Stuart and Robert Wyatt make appearances here (both well known Canterbury prog rockers), the possibilities are endless when you're talking about a hive mind of Canterbury prog vets who know how to boggle the mind. Sure enough, they scrambled my brain with this record. And then some.

Why all the songs are divided as such, I'll never know and never bother to question (why is the intro 30 seconds long with a 10 minute jam just shortly afterwards?), but the creepy tinkling intro gives way to a 30 second verse ("Big Jobs"), followed by a cool jam ("Going Up To People And Tinkling" [with a few guitar links that sound very Grateful Dead-ish]), and then another 2 minutes of men saying "Ahh" a lot ("Calyx"), all leading in to the 10 minute jam, "Son Of 'There's No Place Like Homerton'".

Now, I am familiar with Soft Machine and the drug-crazed insanity that resulted in many of the early Gong albums, but as far as British drug-crazed insanity goes, "Hatfield And The North" might just take the cake. At least with Gong, many of the early albums followed a storyline. An insane story line, involving drugs (a lot), but a story nonetheless. This album has no story. No guidelines. No rules. Even during the somewhat sober 10 minute jam "Son Of", it's very much a free-flowing progression. The sax lines move without care or progress, the organ has a mind of its own, the drums have a very mechanical feel, even during some of the impressive solos and fills drummer Pip Pyle engages in.

It really wasn't until this song that I could understand the point of this album. This band is a collection of prog veterans, a British supergroup of drugs, pornography and plenty of alcohol. "Son Of" broke open the chaos of the first five minutes by introducing order, a massive contrast to the first four tracks heard previously. Yes, it's not for everyone. But then again, drugs are not for everyone either, but that's another story entirely.

I digress, "Aigrette" starts like a sort of spin-off of "Son Of", with the mindless shouts and singing of "Calyx". Once it bleeds into "Rifferama", though, the groove becomes infectious. It seems like everyone wants to rock out all at the same time, til the guitar takes center stage. Definitely one of my favorite tracks of the album. It still has the crazed, drug-hyped, spasticality of Canterbury prog with the groovy, infectious tone of classic 70's rock that everyone knows and loves.

"Fol De Rol" takes a step back from the fast-paced insanity and slows down the jam, with the bass getting time to shine for 3 minutes. Love the telephone, though. The guy picks it up and the singing picks up where it left off, through the telephone. Nice little effect there. Luckily for fans of long jams, though, the fun continues with another long jam, this time 8 minutes long, with the amusingly named (and truthful) "Shaving Is Boring". Pyle picks up the pace a little bit with the drums, and Phil Miller pulls off some impressive licks on the guitar here. Though, I'm still confused about the samples of previous songs, then what sounds like a guy punching a radio, running over to another radio, turning it on to another sample, punching it again, and running away again. Odd. Still, it goes back into another jam. And that's nice.

"Licks For The Ladies" is actually a misnomer. There are no real licks, here, just a ballad of sorts. "Bossa Nochance" is actually a continuation of that ballad. And, coincidentally, so is "Big Jobs No. 2". This sequence of tracks, then, is the first properly structured song on this entire album. And also, the last. Segue into the weirdly named "Lobster In Cleavage Probe", which mainly consists of a female chorus, til the guitars and synths plug in halfway into the track with skipping lines and up and down licks. Ominous bass lines pepper "Gigantic Land Crabs In Earth Takeover Bid" , headlined by a massively distorted guitar solo that sounds like a lick taken straight out of Buckethead's book 30 years prior. Then it suddenly settles down again, seamlessly bleeding in and out of this chaos/order philosophy. "The Other Stubbs Effect" is a continuation of the weird sparkly intro to the record which ends this set of tracks.

Then you get to the bonus tracks, which aren't really bad at all. "Let's Eat (Real Soon)", funny enough, is the complete opposite of the previous song. A happy melody, a cool little verse, and a nice little synth lick with peppy drumbeats filling the whole track with life. "Fitter Stoke Has A Bath" is structured similarly, With a vocal line, a happy melody and lots of little licks and lines from synths, guitar and flute.

VERDICT: This record is definitely not for the faint of heart. Of course, if you love Wyatt and Dave Stewart's works, and Canterbury prog in general, this will be a must have. Surely, then, if you are reading this review, you probably like Canterbury Prog and know what to expect, so my review will probably be misleading to both insiders and outsiders of the genre. In terms of sweeping melodic lines and beautiful song structures, this album is definitely, repeat, DEFINITELY NOT FOR YOU. It takes a bit of a stomach to appreciate the boundaries these guys are breaking and leaping beyond to create this record. As I said previously, this is mainly a free-formed collection of jams. The album focuses less on songwriting and more on sound sculpting. The Chaos/Order philosophy occurs many times throughout this record. This album gives no mercy upon its listener, so hopefully this review helps to prepare you for what you'd expect when popping this in a record player or iTunes.

Then again, if it's still confusing for you, just think "drugs". It'll all make sense eventually.

Listening to the crowd reaction and cheers during "Outer Temple Gliss" it is as if time has rolled away. There aren't many musicians who can lay claim to being active over such a long period of time, and Daevid was in his Sixties already when this was recorded, and showing no sign at all of slowing down.

This isn't a high tech recording, but it wasn't a high tech event and the result is a warm entry into a small club where the Gong family are present and it is a privilege to watch them at play, albeit at a distance.

Originally appeared in Feedback #72, Feb 03

All but the most fanatical fans (guilty as charged!) will want to avoid this release. This captures the band in concert around the time of their first album, the trio of Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, and Mike Ratledge. The acoustics, in what sounds like a concrete basement, are fairly rough, and most of Robert Wyatt's vocals are all but inaudible, though that may be his own fault for not singing directly into the mic (which can be tough to do when you're busy drumming).

This set is notable for showcasing a couple of early Kevin Ayers tunes which did not appear on a Soft Machine album but later were recorded by Kevin as a solo act -- "We Know What You Mean" (aka "Soon Soon Soon") and "Clarence in Wonderland". The versions are unremarkable, but it's fun to hear them in such early, intimate versions.

Much of the set, however, is given to extended versions of tracks from the debut, which give some idea of how noisy and unhinged this band could be in their early days. "Hope for Happiness" runs for 13 minutes, with Mike Ratledge's organ screeching away at top volume. "I Should've Known" (later retitled "Why Am I So Short/So Boot if at All" for the debut) takes a similar path. As if such free form insanity weren't enough, there's a fully improvised piece called "Disorganization" that will certainly test your patience.

I'm glad to own this, but honestly it's a rough listen. Recommended to historians only.

Not really a prog classic, but a nice addition to the solo works of Canterbury. Only two Canterbury artists have more notable solo careers: Steve Hillage and Robert Wyatt. Ayers (who sadly died earlier this year) will be fondly remembered by the prog community. This is to me his best album. 3½ stars.

Firstly - and I am sorry to say - all members of this band have left us over the years. Great artists who left their mark on the music scene collectively and individually. RIP.

There is little point for me to repeat what's already stated in the Bio. Suffice to say that comparisons can be drawn between this album and Soft Machine's "Fourth", but there is a major difference.

"Fourth" was released in 1971, a time when every new album was eagerly awaited for, every note keenly absorbed - regardless of how difficult some works may have been. Fast forward to 1978 by which time, there is a glut of accumulated releases. Many of those are more accessible and Soft Heap chose to defy the trend for "popular Prog" and went the other way to. create "difficult" music instead. Music that may have appeal to, a degree of appreciation by a small section of society. I give it to SH that they had the courage to do that.

The end result is an album that's extremely difficult to get into, even for those, like myself, who are very keen on Jazz. Whereas "Fourth" had a definite structure, here we are dealing with something bordering on Free Jazz with a bit of Avant on the edges. The musicianship is great, but the end product fails to sink in as pleasant listening. No, it's rather a challenge, one doesn't really want to encounter on a daily basis. Not even Yours Truly. It also gets to a point when Elton Dean's relentless soprano sax reaches irritation levels and amounts to something akin to punishment.

I don't mean to knock this work, but truth is that I won't be putting it on very often. In it's place, I'd much rather prefer Soft Machine Legacy that also features Dean and Hopper. Less challenging, more fun.

Golf Girl is, no more no less, a classic song for any classic rock fan. It's the opening track and it makes you wonder what will come, it's the key to this wondergul Land of Grey And Pink. So, the second track, the first masterpiece. Sounds strange, I know, but I always felt shiver when I heard Richard's singing "Carry me with you...", and then the whole band starts to play. Winter Wine is one of the most beautiful songs that I ever heard. It starts slowly. The song follow a dreamer (after drinking wine) to an epic dream, and you know, "dreams are always ending far to soon". Love To Love You (And Tonight Pigs Will Fly) is the third track, starring Hastings on vocals, and the song called In The Land of Grey And Pink is the next, similar to Golf Girl in the guitar rhytms and another great track. And we have the B side: Nine Feet Underground. This is so catchy that I use to play this song intro in my own mind, unconsciously, almost everyday. Beautiful keyboards here. Beautiful everything. The song is divided into 8 parts, and I love them all. This is real music!

Yes, it brings it all back to me.