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micky

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Posted: September 29 2007 at 08:22

Thanks Richard

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Posted: September 29 2007 at 09:42

Well certainly Keith used a lot of classical stuff in the Nice, but his exotic lounge influence didn't show as much till ELP albums like the first one and Trilogy. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that he wasn't using synths in the Nice.

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Posted: September 29 2007 at 15:23

I saw Clouds live three times. The first playing at a festival headlined by Jethro Tull in May 1970. They were
ok, but nothing great. Tull blew them away. Then saw them twice more at different times at the Whisky A Go Go.
They were always alot better live than on their albums. Their first album Scrapbook is a complete embarrassment.
Their second album Water Color Days is only slightly better. There is NO comparison between what Clouds was doing at the time and their contemporaries. I saw the band Quatermass around the same time as Clouds, and Peter
Robinson absolutely DROP KICKED Billy Ritchie! Ritchie is NOT even close to the same league as Emerson, Wakeman, Auger, Peter Robinson, and Vincent Crane! I've seen all of these Great Men Live and Ritchie was just ok nothing special. His claim to fame is that he says he was the first to play standing up. The Clouds Web Site is a complete EXAGGERATION!!! Just listen to Scrapbook!

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Posted: September 29 2007 at 15:47

Dick Heath wrote:

Clearly debatable - cross-fertilisation certainly for bands around London at the time, who would have been mingling. However, Middle Earth, Tiles, also were important (perhaps more important) venues for bands to play and hang out. The Cuneiform Records release last year, (of one of the so-called influencees) Soft Machine's Middle Earth Tapes, undoubtedly reveals Mike Ratledge and Machine were capable of doing their own thing in 1967 and many sources have stated than Ayer's mantra -like tunes, Ratledge's avant classic/jazz keys, Daevid Allen's experimental rock, and Robert Wyatt somewhere between Elvin Jones and Ringo Starr, give them a unique sound. I think if I can introduce contradiction on behalf of one band, then others can do so for other so-called infleuncees. So I don't accept that - but more than willing to check out Clouds in further detail. As to ELP, this indicates one writer is unaware of Emerson in Nice in 1967 - and Nice, I thought, might have been listening to Vanilla Fudge as much as any other band. Finally, if Cloud were good, why were Pink Floyd and Soft Machine the top underground bands during this period?

But to repeat, I'll check this band out - I'm sure I have an odd recording on a psychedelic collection. But such claims don't really add up.

Finally it is total bollocks to lay the blame for the invention progressive rock/music etc. at the feet of one band, the music evolved! As I've stated before, progressive music/underground music (1966 to 1971), was about the experimental hybridisation of (this new fangled thing we were only just calling) rock with other musical genres - there were so many combinations to go at , and I suggest it was impossible for one band to use more than a few combinations at one time.

Of course it's nonsense to ascribe the development of Prog to one band - it's obvious that the Clouds website is exaggerating in order to get attention.

What I'm trying to find out is whether the previous incarnation, known as 1-2-3, were in some way instrumental in laying down the foundations or inspiring particular bands (specifically, the ones that the Clouds website claims influence upon, notably The Nice and Yes. Others may be taken with a grain of salt - the Genesis link is the most tentative of all!).

You're completely right about Pink Floyd (and the Softies) - they were undoubtedly the leaders of the underground, but they didn't use the particular techniques I'm interested in;

1) Fusing Jazz/Rock and Classical styling - this is all evident in the recording I've heard - and if the recording I've heard is of 1-2-3/Billy Ritchie, then he's a fantastic rock keyboard player with a very fertile imagination. Whoever played on this recording had some brilliant ideas - and the available Clouds recordings will not tell you much about this kind of invention. It does back up the claims on the website that the band were unhappy with the albums, and that they did not represent what the band did live - as with so many bands at that time.

2) Elaborating on other people's songs - this was something Vanilla Fudge were noted for, and it's VF's approach that I'm trying to backtrack. Allegedly, 1-2-3 predate VF in this.

3) Using the keyboard as the Lead instrument - in the recording I've heard, it's extremely prominent, and leads much the same way Emerson led. Again, it's alleged that Keith was in the audience when 1-2-3 played (he was in the backing band for P P Arnold at the time - this is before The Nice formed), and this is where he got his ideas.

The previous response is interesting - the band certainly split opinions of witnesses down the middle, as Amazon testifies: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B0000011OV/sr=8-3/qid=1191138069/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful/105-8561709-5829234?ie=UTF8&n=5174&qid=1191138069&sr=8-3#customerReviews

There are those who seemed to think that the sun shone from their proverbial, and those that thought they sucked - and I can see why; there's an amateurishness in Ritchie's approach that some could see as charming, others as painful.

Certainly, the recording I've heard is on a par with The Nice's cover of the other "America" in terms of invention, fireworks and down to earth rock and roll. I've yet to hear anything by Quatermass or Atomic Rooster that would blow it out of the water - it sounds at least equal, but allegedly is a couple of years earlier.

Certainly, compared to the live recordings I've seen of AR on YouTube, Vincent Crane's keyboard work is primitive in comparison - mere repetitive rhythmic stabs of a very limited number of ideas - no wild flights of fantasy taking the listener to Bach and back.

Maybe Clouds stopped playing this type of material on record company advice?

If this recording turns out to be the real thing, ie from early 1967, it puts 1-2-3 in the right place, as an important part of Prog's development - but not as the inventors, as the site might have you believe!

If it turns out to be from later, then as long as it predates Prog proper, the band deserve an honourary mention in the history books.

If it's a fake, then I'm still enjoying researching this particular era (pre summer of 1967).

*edit - is that the same J Cleary who posted the Amazon review?

Why the animosity? Were they really that awful? Did you ever see them when they were 1-2-3?

Can you describe what they did in technical terms?

This would be VERY useful to the research.

Edited by Certif1ed - September 30 2007 at 03:59

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 08:10

Cert ,
Did you catch the 2nd episode of Jazz Britannia - about 18 months ago - on BBC4? It was argued because the old guard of British jazz musicians would not allow the new guard touch their instruments (esp the piano), the"kids" went and brought in their electric pianos, organs to play live (suggested there as the start of the UK jazz rock movement), e.g. Georgie Fame, Graham Bond (an early pioneer of the Mellotron), Brian Auger - I can only think of a young John McLaughlin being on the scene with a guitar. In addition there were keyboard lead pop/R'n'B bands: Manfred Mann, (Alan Price in) The Animals, Stevie Winwood in the Spencer Davis Band - Ian Stewart was often called the 6th Rolling Stone and necessary to the band for his keyboard work. So there would have been experimentation from about 1962/3 - so if you are exploring pre-1967, check out some of these band's albums and hear what sort of "album-fillers" were being played.

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 09:54

Jon Lord had some sort of instrumental band early on, they were sort of "surfy" sounding and were named after somewhere in California, maybe Malibu, I don't recall.

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 13:51

Dick Heath wrote:

Cert ,
Did you catch the 2nd episode of Jazz Britannia - about 18 months ago - on BBC4? It was argued because the old guard of British jazz musicians would not allow the new guard touch their instruments (esp the piano), the"kids" went and brought in their electric pianos, organs to play live (suggested there as the start of the UK jazz rock movement), e.g. Georgie Fame, Graham Bond (an early pioneer of the Mellotron), Brian Auger - I can only think of a young John McLaughlin being on the scene with a guitar. In addition there were keyboard lead pop/R'n'B bands: Manfred Mann, (Alan Price in) The Animals, Stevie Winwood in the Spencer Davis Band - Ian Stewart was often called the 6th Rolling Stone and necessary to the band for his keyboard work. So there would have been experimentation from about 1962/3 - so if you are exploring pre-1967, check out some of these band's albums and hear what sort of "album-fillers" were being played.

Thanks, Dick - these are exactly the avenues I'm exploring, and the stuff about electric pianos was one of the first tid bits that leapt out at me when I perused the course of the birth of the Cool - and the criminally overlooked Lennie Tristano, who should be well-known to all Prog Metal fans not least because of his and Billy Evans' work tutoring Joe Satriani, but mainly because his tightly structured approach to modern jazz has more in common with Prog Rock than Miles'. I followed this in conjunction with BeBop through to Hard Bop before I found rock/jazz crossovers. Sadly I missed the TV programme you mention.

In an earlier post in this thread, I mentioned Graham Bond's Organisation as the first recorded band to use the Mellotron, and the Animals as early keyboard/rock bands - Spencer Davis Group are an old favourite of mine, but that's a good heads up about Ian Stewart though!

I'm really wondering where the improvisation and elaboration started to appear in rock - or whether Floyd and the Softies really were first.

There are the bands from the US, of course - the Grateful Dead with their tentative "jazz influences", and a band called Fifty Foot Hose, who I'm having a whale of a time exploring. These guys were influenced by jazz for real (early 1967), and also avante garde composers - particularly Varese (as Zappa was), but were so experimental they actually built and modified instruments to get the sounds the wanted.

I recommend their album "Cauldron" for repeated listens in order to "get" why they're so important. The song "Red the Sign Post" is clearly the basis for "Space Trucking" by Deep Purple...

Then there's the fascinating Delia Derbyshire, who set up Unit Delta Plus, and organised a festival of electronic music in Newbury in 1966, and also performed at the million volts light and sound rave at the roundhouse in 1967 - surely Pink Floyd weren't far away?

...none of which has much bearing on 1-2-3, sadly... I'm trying to track down more recordings of them live - it seems odd that there's apparently only one track in existence - you'd think there would be an entire reel or two somewhere from the sound desk of the Marquee, Dunfermline ballroom or other venues.

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 14:41

Jon Lord's 'surf band' were called, AFAIK, Santa Barbara Machine Head. I have a track of theirs somewhere but as I understand it this was just a cobbled together name for a group of session musicians jamming; like the 60s jams between Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton (allegedly recorded in one of their living rooms), these have been endlessly recycled as if they were some sort of holy grail when they are anything but that and are really just ordinary blues jams, IMHO.

Jon Lord was, however, in an R & B act called The Artwoods which like The Graham Bond Organisation, is something of a breeding ground for British rock talent. Alongside Lord on the organ, Keef Hartley played drums and Art Wood, the brother of Ron Wood, handled the vocals. I have their album 'Art Gallery' and will have to give it another listen...Jon Lord also contributed some lovely mellotron to the cash-in (but I love it to bits) record by The Flowerpot Men, 'Let's Go To San Francisco'.

As for improvisation and elaboration in rock, I remember hearing the original version of 'White Rabbit' by The Great Society on Dick's radio show. It has a very lengthy guitar introduction that was way ahead of its time, and is arguably even more ambitious than the Jefferson Airplane version...which I loved anyway! Perhaps The Byrds' 'Eight Miles High' is relevant here too, IMHO, with its Indian-inspired guitar lines.

Manfred Mann also did a few instrumentals in their earlier days; before any of the hits, they did a jazz-based single 'Why Should We Not/ Brother Jack', and in later years when Jack Bruce joined, did an EP called 'Instrumental Asylum' which had their takes on chart hits of the day. And The Yardbirds apparently did their 'rave up' versions of blues standards like 'Smokestack Lightining' that could go on for something like 20 minutes. 'Five Live Yardbirds' doesn't provide evidence of that, but then if you read the sleevenotes on the back of the original sleeve it's clear that that performance was not a natural representation of their normal set, IMHO. Still, at least it is still live; I know certain live albums (particularly those 'recorded live' at the Cavern, it seems!) from the era are not live at all but were doctored later on...

Didn't Delia Derbyshire contribute to the arrangement of the original 'Doctor Who' theme in 1963, written by Ron Grainer? It's funny how the very earliest versions of that theme have aged SO much better than the 80s-era ones; the Sylvester McCoy era version in particular played by Keff McCullough is utterly ghastly sounding!!

Edited by salmacis - September 30 2007 at 14:47

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 15:11

I have a cassette a friend of mine made for me that has the S.B. Machine Head songs (about 5 I think) and the Artwoods and maybe something else, but I will have to look around. Thanks for the info.

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 15:13

P.S. You probably already know this but I think Lord played on some of those early Kinks hits too.

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 17:08

salmacis wrote:

I've got the Great Society's album, "Conspicuous by it's absence" - the version of "Somebody to Love" is great too, but these were the originals, ie, before the days of the Airplane. There's definitely a more improvisatory feel to the piece - but that's probably the influence of the Grateful Dead, who were the improv masters in that scene at the time, as I understand it.

8 Miles High is completely relevant not just here, but in modern rock generally - as is their electrified renditions of Dylan's songs that led to Dylan causing an outrage at the Newport Folk festival in 1965. The Byrds also introduced the Beatles to Ravi Shankar - these 3 (Dylan, Byrds and Beatles) and their important meeting(s) are probably THE most significant things to happen to rock music, ever - but that's all part of what came before Proto Prog, and this huge set of strands is well documented.

salmacis wrote:

OK, so this is painting a picture of a growing trend that we can easily fit a band such as 1-2-3 into - they took this approach, but gave it their own little twist. I'm wondering how much of a twist they gave it - I'd really like to distribute the 1-2-3 recording I have among interested parties, but I'm currently waiting for my contact to give me permission.

salmacis wrote:

Indeed - it is that Delia Derbyshire - she was utterly amazing, God rest her soul. "Love Without Sound", the first track on "An Electric Storm" is Trip Hop, two decades before its invention - except it's more haunting even than Portishead's "Glory Box" and seems to come from a different dimension... what a truly remarkable song!

Easy Money wrote:

I have a cassette a friend of mine made for me that has the S.B. Machine Head songs (about 5 I think) and the Artwoods and maybe something else, but I will have to look around. Thanks for the info.

Can you mp3 these and upload them somewhere?

That'd be really cool.

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 17:57

Certif1ed wrote:

[

Joe Boyd in his autobiography White Bicycles, wrote about rock coming about at that Newport jazz & folk festival, when Dylan walked on stage with members of Paul Butterfield's BB and Al Kooper (?). Personally I don't remember using the word 'rock' until the late 60's - indeed whilst the word was freely bandied about by the music media (especially the underground press), my hesitancy to its use was because no clear definition of the term were provided - hence my confusion/bemusement what the difference was with rock'n'roll? Perhaps a forgotten reason why the terms 'progressive music' on this side of the Atlantic and 'underground music' both sides were preferred. So if 'rock' wasn't used until mid 60's, things having the name 'rock' crystallised very quickly or did they? I still hold that 'progressive rock 'only became commonplace after 1971/2

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 17:59

Regarding early Lord material: More than happy to share what I have, I need to find the casette first, the copy I have may have been copied from cassette, so the sound may not be great. Also, I may have to burn it to CD and mail it to someone because I haven't dealt with transferring to mp3s much. I'll let you know when the casette turns up.

Edited by Easy Money - September 30 2007 at 18:00

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Posted: September 30 2007 at 23:28

I found the casette with the early Lord material, it sounds better than I expected, but you might want to know that you can get the only 3 cuts that SB Machine Head released on a CD called Pre Purple People.
As far as the cassette goes it has those 3 tunes, a bunch of Artwoods and Jon Lord accompanying some really old school singer named Evelyn Freeman on something that sounds like a roller rink organ.
Most reviews say that SB Machine Head plays blues, but it is closer to kind of weird semi psychedelic garage rock. Lord seems to be influenced by the rock/RnB instrumentals that Billy Preston put out in 65 and 66. Ron Wood's playing is very strange and off the wall. You can definitley hear the roots of the early DP recordings.
I don't have any way of putting this on mp3 but I can burn it to CD.

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Posted: October 01 2007 at 03:09

OK, I got permission to share this recording of 1-2-3 - I've no idea how genuine it is, but it certainly sounds like the same band that plays on the verifiable recordings of Clouds that I have, and I also have some solo stuff by Billy Ritchie, which shows the same hallmarks in the keyboard playing style.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea, so the point is not whether this is to your taste or not, or how proficiently executed it is (some of the playing is indeed "sloppy"), but whether this is musically innovative enough for the alleged recording date (March 1967) for this band to be considered Proto-Prog.

Obviously, I'm not gunning for archive inclusion of the band on the basis of this single track - especially as it's not published and is generally not available.

Not only that, but it appears to be two separate recordings, somewhat inexpertly spliced - you can hear the join as a gap at 5:56 - it's the right place in the song, but the EQ appears to be different, and if you listen to the crowd at the start, there's lots of screaming, while the crowd at the end is distinctly lacking in screams. There's another odd moment at 6:31, but either it's a far more expert splice, or it's just someone fiddling with the controls on the tape deck during transfer from the master.

For those interested, you can download it from my 4Shared folder at http://www.4shared.com/dir/4048545/caab73df/1-2-3.html

****The password is Pr0gArchives****

(note the zero instead of the letter "o"!).

..is it just me, or does the lead vocalist sound a bit like Greg Lake?

Edited by Certif1ed - October 01 2007 at 03:20

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Posted: October 01 2007 at 04:43

Is the date correct - I've try to find out when America was released by Simon & Garfunkel (at least as part of the Bookends LP) - one source indicates 1968.....?

http://sglyrics.myrmid.com/bestof.htm#track19

so does Wikipaedia (but not my favourite reference)

Edited by Dick Heath - October 01 2007 at 04:44

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Posted: October 01 2007 at 05:08

I have this from my source;

"When the Premiers (the band's name before 1-2-3) were taken to London to record by Cyril Stapleton, the engineer at Radio Luxembourg, Stewart 'Stu' Francis had also worked at Levy studios and had a tape of Paul Simon, who had recorded there in 1965. Stu became a friend of the band, and was present at all the London gigs during the 1-2-3 years. Out of the recordings, Billy (Ritchie) chose 'The Sound of Silence' and 'America'. Hence 1-2-3 played both in 1966, some two years before the world was aware of them."

Edited by Certif1ed - October 01 2007 at 05:11

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Posted: October 01 2007 at 05:15

My better half wonders why the applause is filled with girly screams typically reserved for the Beatles, and also noticed a disparity between the song quality and the applause quality, suggesting overdubbing of a sort.

I myself am too tired to know for sure, but hey, food for thought? Tongue

Edit: Rob's still logged in, whoops LOL

They're his thoughts, so I'll just leave it. -MO

Edited by Harry Hood - October 01 2007 at 05:22

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Posted: October 01 2007 at 06:43

Certif1ed wrote:

I have this from my source;

Does this story ring true? Sure, bands were picking up on the likesDylan, e.g. from bootleg recordings that were to become the Basement Tapes, but Dylan was the guv'nor, universally known. Why would Paul Simon, known in the limited Biritish folk circles, be picked out from allsorts of demos, to be played to a yet to be successful British pop group?????????????

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Posted: October 01 2007 at 07:04

Certif1ed wrote:

Obviously, I'm not gunning for archive inclusion of the band on the basis of this single track - especially as it's not published and is generally not available.

For those interested, you can download it from my 4Shared folder at http://www.4shared.com/dir/4048545/caab73df/1-2-3.html

****The password is Pr0gArchives****

(note the zero instead of the letter "o"!).

..is it just me, or does the lead vocalist sound a bit like Greg Lake?

Thanks for sharing the recording, you asked for some feedback so here it is: I've been playing kybds professionally for 20 plus years and have listened to all kinds of kybdsts in that time. Billie's playing is OK, but his timing is very rushed, which probably cut him from a lot of pro work other than playing his own music. I think his tastes are very corny and his musical pastiches have no logic except look at what I can do. He sounds a lot like guys who work in music stores. Unfortunately its that kind of 'everything and the kitchen sink' musical style that mars a lot of Emmerson's work. I think Brian Auger and Mike Ratledge were both coming from a more mature musical expression at this time. As for who came first Billie or Keith I have no idea.
Overall though, I would say Keith is a far superior player and Billy sounds more like an immitator.

Edited by Easy Money - October 01 2007 at 08:19