You favourite Soft Machine album

Bundles and 7.

Volume One.  I've heard a few tracks from Volume Two and I have Third... it's difficult.

I like their quirky side, which Third lacks a little...

Very tough question, they're one of my favorites.

I'll say Third and Volume 1 tied.

You're weird Blowie!  Why no debut in the top 6?

I guess you prefer the later era, no matter.

Soft Machine's "Bundles" was a huge influence on this Los Angeles Californian Guitarist as a teen-ager;and moved to London to play in the scene.(Thanks to Peter Gabriel,and Nick Magnus(Steve/John Hackett),for helping me;recomending me!)

Dick Heath wrote: Live At Paradiso - Wyatt at his vocal best and drumming best

MikeEnRegalia wrote: Dick Heath wrote: Live At Paradiso - Wyatt at his vocal best and drumming best   Good to hear that - they have some Soft Machine albums available on emusic, including this one. Have a look:   http://www.emusic.com/artist/11514/11514431.html   Which one would you recommend?

Without doubt Paradiso. With the exception of Rubber Riff - which has been written up as an exercise in creating "copyright free library music" but with Jenkin employing some  Softs as session musicians to make musak - unless you are a completist don't touch the others. Poor quality bootlegs, recorded by friends often from the audience with portable cassette recorders. Compare Cuneiform's  with Voiceprint/Blueprints live Soft Machine recordings and I think you'll find Cuneiform has had the pick of the bunch - for instance  it helps when they got hold of the mastertapes from which  CBS used a small fraction of for Third. Strangley the more recently released live recordings have been the  better quality. The two 1975 recordings released in the last year  British Tour 75 and Floating World are excellent quality and contain excellent music. BTW anybody in this thread who enthuses about Bundles  should check out Floating World - same line-up, many of the same tunes but recorded approx 6 months before  by a good FM radio station, and personally I think with this as a comparator, may suggest the Machine had gone a bit stale by the time they recorded the studio version with Bundles. BTW Etheridge on British Tour  (recorded locally at Nottingham University) does many of the tunes on Bundles and puts quite a differnt edge on them cf Holdsworth. However, Holdsworth is superb on Floating World.

Third.

Volume I, I have listened to that so many times it's scary yet I always find it even more incredible.

By the way, Fifth is the worse of the numbered albums, too cold sounding and samey.