Henry Cow appreciation society

Michael P. Dawson wrote: Flight123 wrote: While on this Cow-related theme, did anybody see this? http://calyx.perso.neuf.fr/pipfuneral/main.html Wow, looks like Dave Stewart has as much forehead as Steve Lacy and Todd Rundgren put together!

Which of them is Dave Stewart?

Flight123 wrote: Look under 'more individual shots' - he is next to Jakko Jakszyk (now touring with King Crimson)

Oh, now I know! I was looking at the video. Thanks!

Man, I'm just revisiting Of Queues and Cures and absolutely love it. I've been thinking... Maybe create a seperate Canterbury Collective sometime?
This thread just proves how many connections Henry Cow has with Canterbury scene. I've also just found out that Mont Campbell played a french horn on Desperate Straights, which makes it the only non-Canterburian contribution of his (excluding the phenomenally-crafted world music he has been creating in the 90's). I firmly believe Campbell is one of prog rock's best composers. The track that I believe is a peak of his genius is "Prelude" from The Civil Surface. It has somewhat of a Magma feel to it, but more importantly, I think this track is up there with compositions of Stravinsky, Bartok or Messiaen. Rarely does one manage to mix the elaborate musical complexity with incredibly strong moodiness that the piece has, Campbell succeeded. Just listen to the track and feel the unbelievable magic that it has!

As to Henry Cow stuff, I think I'll be aiming to buy Unrest on vinyl, preferably the 180 g reissue from ReR or the original Virgin pressing.

^ Wow, double posting is not permitted, however, triple posting gets the point across
As is often the case, I seem to be the king of derailing threads. Perhaps we should start a Canterbury Collective thread - there may even be one from some time ago. Dave's solo at the start of Dreams Wide Awake is a ripper ! Whips anything from any other keyboard virtuoso !
And while we're at it, to me, Rich Sinclair's bass tone on Rotters' Club is the ultimate tone. And his playing is incredible.

'Squarer for Maud' goes deep into Henry Cow territory.  Not only is Greaves in the band for Queues and Cures, there are also appearances from Georgie Born and Peter Blegvad.  The brass section (Minton and Rutherford) were from Mike Westbrook's band that merged with the Cow to become 'The Orckestra' in 77/78.  Phil Minton was also part of the Lindsay Cooper tribute ensemble and delivered stunning vocals that night...

^Hey, thanks for sharing that! "War" is an incredibly good piece in my opinion, as the writer said.

Unrest is an spectacular album in my opinion, there's nothing I don't like from it. For me, what makes Henry Cow's music characteristic is improvisation, while some pieces are not accesible (like Concerts, Disk 2), others are very interesting to me (Vol. 3: Hamburg, Vol. 6: Stockholm & Göteborg, Vevey '76 from The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set) All of them, in the same vein of Unrest's complexity. 

ALotOfBottle wrote: Listened to Unrest yesterday and man... I was really underrating that album. I thought I had reviewed it too early a few months ago and ended up editing the whole review and rating. It's really good. Another thing is that my approach to free-form improvisation has changed immensly in the last months. Generally speaking, I'm more opened to forms that interfere with the aesthetic ideals set by the western society, if you will. So yeah, I highly encourage you to read my new review of Unrest. Amazing album. What do you think of it? Are you bothered or disturbed by free jazz? Anybody still watching this thread? Tom? Flight? <span ="st"="">José? </span>

Always

I'd love to resurrect this thread. It's been loads of fun.

If any of you have listened to the 40th Anniversary Box Set (I'm not sure about, Tom, from what I can remember. Did you get hold of it or listen to it in any form?), check out the intro to "Ruins", the first piece on the 2nd disc. Man, this is such a great moment. Love how it builds up tension resolved in "Ruins."


Edited by ALotOfBottle - August 20 2016 at 04:10

Tom Ozric wrote: Nope, I rarely buy CD's - I'm a stubborn Vinyl obsessive. This attitude has to change coz I guess I'm missing out on lots of special recordings/archival releases which will never make it to wax......

I'm a "vinyl junkie", too, I would say. But recently, I have rediscovered just how amazing CDs are. With the renaissance of vinyl, they are criminally underrated, while they often might produce even a better sound. Of course, with vinyl you get a) the warmth of analog and b) a musical artifcat (which I value very highly). Tellin' ya boi, what happened with vinyl in recent years might happen with CDs in not too long. Anyway, sorry for getting off-topic. Really, Tom, I highly encourage you to get hold of the box set (or at least the 1-5 volumes).


Edited by ALotOfBottle - August 26 2017 at 02:54