Canterbury Appreciation

I absolutely love Caravan's Live at the Fairfield Hall

Listened to the Softs' second album yesterday and was quite surprised at how good it sounded.

Apart from that ... I'd like to expand my Canterbury horizon :3 Rotters Club never left much of an impression on me.

Also I don't know if it already has been mentioned here but The Tangent is often dubbed as very influenced by the Canterbury scene (and he has a series of composition bearing this name). What do the experts say to that ? :3

Doctor, I find Soft Machine's `Five' (or is it `Fifth', not at home to check my vinyl shelf lol!) really immersive and intoxicating! It's as bleak and gloomy as the black sparse front cover! It's a dear and unhappy friend of mine, and I always have a copy in the car for late-night trips!

A friend recently bought the 5 disc set of the Soft Machine's albums `Third' through to `Seven', and I keep telling him `Make sure you listen to `Five' at night, that's when it will make the most sense!'

Richard Sinclair must certainly have one of the most recogizable and distinctive voices in prog rock!

All because I mentioned a personal opinion about a singer's voice I wasn't much of a fan of? That's some serious `reading between the lines' at a whole endless heap of things that weren't there....

moshkito wrote: Aussie-Byrd-Brother wrote: Padraic, sadly I also find it very hard to warm to the first two Soft Machine albums, I simply can't stand Robert Wyatt's flat weezy vocals, even though all the playing is top notch. I think I much prefer the album `Fifth' onwards, so I must warm more to the fusion side of S.Machine. But there's endless other knockout Caterbury bands we can talk more highly about, no doubt!   If I may suggest, the way to appreciate Robert Wyatt, is by stopping to expect "music" in any of its forms and designs, and it is done on purpose ... and it has been so since the famous ABC that he dropped on a live concert! It was his big number 1 finger to the commerciality and locking down of music and its concepts!   If you don't like that individuality and ability that so many of the Canterbury folks play and enjoy goofing around with ... then, you are not a "Canterbury" fan, but an idealist that likes a couple of things, and thinks they are cool, and you are trying to justify them to yourself ... you really have no idea where it came from and where it was going ... take a hint and go back and read about it ... Wyatt, Syd, Ayres, Allen, Ginsburg, Burroughs, Smith ... all connected via the same house where many of them lived and goofed around ... but you have no idea what the literature scene was about, do you?   Syd was a sort of Magic Theater for a while that went sour and died a nasty overdose dream! The others got scared when Syd went down the tubes, Robert went down the drain ... and the other two were out right gay and simply scoring -- for their next books and words. Even weirder is that no one even realizes where steely dan came from! Which kinda tells you how disconnected people really are from the "source"! Better go read the book ... might learn something about Canterbury and folks! While at it read about the Magic Theater too!

Hang on a second, Moshkito, no need to attack me and start pointing the finger, accusing me of what I do and don't know. All I ever said was that I don't like Robert Wyatt's pained flat VOICE, mainly on those first two Soft Machine albums. I've always preferred him for his musical ability than his voice, though I know plenty of others find his vocals hugely charming and charismatic, full of character.

As for for your accusations that I like `Canterbury' because I think it's `cool' to do so, well that's bulls**t on a stick, because I've never been under the delusions that ANY sort of prog is `cool', nor could I care if it were to be labelled that way or not.

Canterbury and prog have been a twenty year love for me through the variety, musicianship and passion of it's endless players and personalities.

Some excellent stuff, Khan, Gong and Caravan in particular. I have soft spot for Egg too.

Love me some Canterbury. 

Hatfield
Health
Gilgamesh
Caravan
My faves. I don't like Soft machine much. Too pop in 60s and too jazz in the 70s. Prog rock is my style. Not pop, not jazz

I've been listening to Gong like heroine.  I even got the Daevid Allen book about his time in the band.  Extremely entertaining if you like their music.  He really explains a lot about where all their crazy concepts in the Radio Gnome albums come from and how they (somewhat) fit together.

Heh, oh yeah, John, Dave Stewart is just the cats pajamas, eh?

Even though I don't like the (ooh, controversy here!) `schoolboy choir' vocals from the girls in some occasional moments on the first `Hatfield' album, that album is endlessly inventive and colourful, goes in so many directions! It's taken me so long to get my head around it, but these days I even have an `emergency' CD of it always in the glovebox of my car should I need a quick `hit'!

Padraic, sadly I also find it very hard to warm to the first two Soft Machine albums, I simply can't stand Robert Wyatt's flat weezy vocals, even though all the playing is top notch. I think I much prefer the album `Fifth' onwards, so I must warm more to the fusion side of S.Machine.

But there's endless other knockout Caterbury bands we can talk more highly about, no doubt!