I think i was exposed to this lot when I was about 13 and it sounded bloody awful. I was just moving on from Alice Cooper and getting into Supertramp. I didn’t have the sensibility for it, any more than, at the time, i appreciated olives or whiskey. At 62, i decided I was ready to re-evaluate them given I liked all the precursors and influences. At last I have found a band I can proudly wear on a t-shirt and have only the cognioscenti (all older and corpulent, or grizzled and worryingly slim) nod to me in admiration. I can feel my neurones and synapses swell as I try to get my head around the complex tunes. To see them play must have been quite something, though i do suspect that live, there might have been rather more skronk.
Any love for Henry Cow?
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Any love for Henry Cow? That’ll be a big fat yes. I first encountered them on the Greasy Truckers Dingwalls album – and it all kicked off from there! Unrest is in my top 20 of all time.
I’m one of the two or three people who bought the triple box of reissues and live recordings. And I really love the two Slapp Happy/Henry Cow collaborative albums…but then I was primed by listening to the Softs and Egg and the Hatfields, so it wasn’t such a big jump.
Avant garde bassoon? Not ‘arf!
I have #233 of an initial run of 250 Cow Redux boxsets produced, so there was/is quite a bit of interest in this great band. The box is still available in a reprint; £75 gets you 17 or so excellent CDs and a DVD from ReR Megacorp. What a bargain.
On reflection: I should have typed “one of the two or three people on this site”!
Mind you, “quite a bit” of interest could be taken by some to mean Taylor Swift levels of interest, as opposed to Dagmar Krause levels of interest…
@Munster
It looks like I have the original issue of the three boxes rather than the Redux set. Can’t find an edition number – don’t suppose you know how many of the original set were produced? Ta.
I don’t. Sorry. I only know the number of Redux boxes issued on the first printing in 2019 as, as an enticement to buy the Redux box, the first 250 buyers had their name and a ‘This is…’ number inscribed on the box’s bonus CD ‘Collected Fragments 1971 -1978’. This allocation of a ‘loyalty’ number also happened on the later Fred Frith boxset and it seems to work – I bought that too!
Interesting. I got the 40th anniversary live boxes in 2009, plus a matching empty box to put my studio CDs in. IIRC, I also got a bonus CD, The Cow Cabinet of Curiosities. Think I bought the ExBox CD as a standalone, fairly recently.
You had me until skronk.
Ah, yes: but not much skronk at all on the studio albums – and none in the clips above!
Still but skronk!
I have possibly told this story before. In March 1973 I was a wide-eyed open-eared 19yr old living on my own in London (having arrived from NZ with my parents a few months earlier). With my meagre income I bought the NME every week (the current issue of course and not 3 months late like we got in NZ). I read about a concert by a band called Principal Edwards’ Magic Theatre, who sounded intriguing, and the admission price was affordable for me. The support act was Henry Cow. They were astonishing. It was the first time I’d heard music where I had no idea if what they were playing was composed or improvised. I bought The HC Legend LP at a market the following weekend (I used to buy whatever albums I could afford at markets cos it’s where the reviewers dumped their unwanted records).
Right now I’m ploughing through Benjamin Piekut’s rather dense book about the band “The World Is A Problem” and revisiting their music. Some of it’s a bit impenetrable but the same things that appealed to me back then still appeal, and it sounds like no other music I’ve ever heard.
It’s an interesting book – but a bit like reading an academic thesis in places.
Odd things I’ve heard from the sock album appeal to me. Must investigate a little more.
Which sock, Colin? At least three to choose from (Leg End, Unrest, In Praise of Learning) plus the odd unofficial release.
The one above.
Yeah I have the love: I discovered them from second hand shops in the 90s —I think “Concerts” is the most impressive and “Desperate Straights” the most enjoyable. The Piekut book is formidable, although they do come across as a bit pious and unlikeable in the 70s (didn’t one of them insist on smacking Dagmar Krause’s child as an act of socialist self-discipline?).
I was always curious about them, mainly due the Fred Frith’s rep. I looked on Spotify a year or so ago and there was hardly anything on there but it seems there’s more now so I shall plug this gap in my knowledge.
I do like a bit of Henry – like others, ’twas the Greasy Truckers that got me started – I had a tatty Legends LP for a while and eventually I bought the 40th anniversary boxed sets and the ‘Concerts’ live CD.
They’d have left the Pink Geranium in Pontardawe after a Saturday night gig with their tails between their legs and a collection of black eyes. Their precious mellotron in pieces.
Having been assailed with chums by the charming phrase “fuck off you communist punk cnuts” in a pub on the Old Kent Road in 1982, I am aware of the downtrodden worker’s false consciousness – and this attitude was particularly so in the days of Fatcher. A few years before, Henry Cow would have readily dismissed the equivalent suggestion of being “communist ‘ippie cnuts” and explained they were “actually communist cnuts”, ‘ippies being bourgoise hedonists with, due to their interest in mysticism, false consciousness. No mellotron, but quite possibly a bassoon, and no desire to entertain may well have still enraged a proletariat unfamiliar with Adorno. Because of this, they might still have got a shoeing.
I don’t think the punters at the Pink G would have cared if they were commies or not. The lack of Mud covers would have done for them.
This is the tragedy of artistic radicals; they rarely provide the entertainment value of Robbie Williams.
The distinct lack of basic ‘hummability’ has been the downfall of many a worthy radical artform.
How could they tell Henry Cow weren’t covering Mud songs?
Oh. Trust me. They’d know.
They’d have played the Arts Centre up the road, not the pub, surely? It was good enough for Deke and the boys for Mickey’s tribute night, so they’d have fitted right in.
I haven’t seen this much interest in Henry Cow since the golden days of Top Gear. Peel was a fan and they did five sessions for his show.
https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/Henry_Cow
The things I learn thanks to the AW,
“Although they gained an audience in Europe, in Britain Henry Cow were largely ignored. Their music was remembered, however, by Vic Reeves, co-host of the comedy quiz show Shooting Stars, on which Peel once appeared. When Reeves appeared on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 2003, he chose Henry Cow’s “Nirvana For Mice” as one of his eight selections.”
Almost funky!
Well, this thread has prompted me, at last, to get round to having a listen. My response is mostly favourable. Some is just too jazz for me and, as I have reported before, I don’t like jazz, but I do like things influenced by jazz. Not surprisingly, I can hear Robert Wyatt in there; more surprised to hear Steve Reich and Stravinsky – on reflection, maybe that shouldn’t be such a surprise. I think purchases will be made. If this was new today, I would be jumping up and down with excitement and checking where I could see them live.