Money is the one I discovered them with >> quite worthy

 

that Jet Propelled is really tough to enjoy >> I simply have not.

 

I think the main problem with the band is Allen's singing voice - limited to say the least. When he shuts up the music is more accessible.

 

BTW strictly Jet Propelled Photos was not Soft Machine's first offical album - it was a series of demo recordings not intended for general release. Eventually when the album was released without the band's permission in 1971 (5 years after its recording) it was called Rock Generation and then spread over two sides of different volumes of the Rock Generation series. When all the tracks were eventually brought together on one piece of vinyl in the late 70's, Charly Records called it From the Beginnings. The Jet Propelled title is of the 80's!  As Daevid Allen states in the liner notes his version of JPP, his intention was to re-record the demos under significantly better studio conditions than he and the rest of that line-up of the Softs suffered originally - Allen  even employed a guitarist who could play the music better than himself!

 

Sony/Columbia's Out-Bloody-Rageous plus the Harvest Records Machine compilation and the two Hux Records' Soft Machine BBC Radio sets, cover most of the materials found on Triple Echo - (while Graham Bennett's book Out-Bloody-Rageous provides the liner notes )

 

I have one of the French BYG label Rock Generation albums with Machine on one side - and on the other side  a number of mid 60's bands long gone and forgotten, e.g. the Mark Leaman Five. Giorgio Gomelsky seemed to be involved in producing these recordings, and may have been bands who were managed by him - he was the Yardbirds' manager. I also have the Rock Generation: Long John Baldry Steam Packet recording - which one obituary writer clearly had not found when writing about the late Long John Baldry, regreting no recording existed of LJB, a young Rod Stewart, Brian Auger etc. performing as Steampacket. A forgotten recording of Davey Graham (who influenced Bert Jansch, Martin Carthy, John Renbourne - hence Jimmy Page) is also hidden away in the Rock Generation series.