I've recently added this album to the Soft Machine discography, before getting hold of a copy and so gathered info from various sources across the web.  I was very pleasantly shocked to find in a very comprehensive site dedicated to Machine's discography, that this album was recorded at Nottingham University in November 1975, and realise I was there! However, as a Machine freak I have admit I hadn't gone to Nottingham University for Machine. No, I was leading a rag raid on behalf of Loughborough University. Soft Machine was the opening band of Nottingham student union's 1975 Rag Week.

I was deputy chair rag at Loughborough (about 20 miles from Nottingham), and had decided our previous abyssmal takings for charity had to improve. I discovered several thousand unsold rag mags from the previous 5 years, and realising Nottinham's rag was soon up, decided we would raid Notts SU and sell our back catalogue. A busload of Loughborough students easily got into Notts SU, and started to sell our magazines by the load. After an hour 16 of us got "arrested" by Notts SU people, who begged us to stop selling our old magazines - coincidently there had  been a delay at their printers and they were still waiting for their new 1975 edition magazines. We felt obliqued to contribute to their rag charity boxes having sold all ours. After being escorted out of the building did I discover Machine were about to play - and serves me right I had been banned from their buildings!

Based on this policy of running rag all year round Loughborough has been hitting half a million sterling for charities over the last few years, way ahead of any other uni in the UK.

Strange how things come around to 'haunt'

Catholic Flame wrote: I'm sorry, what is a rag?

I'm not sure of the derivation but Rag Week in British universities and college, is week set aside annually for fun and frolics, whilst students collect money for charities. There is usually a procession through town of floats on the backs of trucks, supplied by different union committees and student residential halls, with tableaus ranging from the risque to the romantic. And there is always the risk of lectures being invaded by kissograms or the Black Magic Man delivering a box of chocolates for a "sweetheart" and other chaos... And inevitably bands will play. And I know our radio station goes  FM for a month, to add to the AM broadcast and the much superior webcast.