Inspired by @Everygoodboydeservesfruita’s thread abut music that didn’t quite last and @Arthur_Cowskip’s post re the Incredible String Band
Having got into scientology in a big way, ISB were a classic example of a band/act who outstayed their welcome.
By the time I saw them at Birmingham Town Hall about the time of 1974’s No Ruinous Feud, they were a shadow of their former selves. The only reason I went was to see Mike Heron whose Smiling Men album I was a big fan of. If that album/tour wasn’t their final go around, really should have been.
So intent were MH, Michael Le Maistre (whatever happened to him?) et al on flogging L Ron H’s dubious dianetics bollocks that they stayed behind to chat to anyone in the audience who wanted to find out more. Two or three of my mates went, the rest of us went to the pub
Clearly, they have outstayed their welcome to such an extent that no one is even bothered to agree with this view!
While Robin Williamson is a very nice fellow, I find their music irritating – unlistenable, mostly. As an aside, around 2007/8, I was sitting at a pavement café in the university area of Belfast when the one with the rictus grin sauntered past. I actually can’t bring his name to mind. I suppose he must have been there on holiday.
A bit too worthy – not on the Joni, Strummer level of worthy, they knock worthy out of the park – but too worthy, nevertheless.
There is an alternative to the ISB – Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Mod gets a hippy, mod gets photographed with a few books (which he doesn’t read), mod and hippy do a two-bob Woolies’ version of the ISB… with the added attraction of minor hits… and are completely unworthy, and transparently so, over five 45s and four LPs.
Highly recommended.
ISB? I thought you were referring to Gram Parson`s Cosmic Country Rockers, The international Submarine Band who were formed a year earlier than bunch of hairy haggis gobblers.
That`s it.
Is “hairy haggis” a breed? Or a particular variety?
Well, maybe I’m just strangely strange but oddly normal, but I quite enjoy a quick frolic through an ISB album from time to time.
I play them very occasionally and usually in a listening session with stuff of that ilk. It’s not for just flitting in and out – you need the vibe. I came to ISB via the compilation Relics. 15 or so at the time I got quite obsessed with A Very Cellular Song.
Speaking of vibes here is Neil from the Young Ones.
Twas the Relics album that first drew me in too. The original single LP release remains, I think, the only place that Williamson’s song ‘Nightfall’ has ever appeared.
To subvert the thread. Here’s a mini ISB LOVE IN.
Never seen this – ISB at Woodstock
Last one
If I might suggest:
Status Quo – could/would still sell out live shows, but it’s basically cabaret greatest hits. Acoustic was an intersting exercise.
Ver Quo officially went down the shunkie when Alan Lancaster left…TRUE FACT!!!
Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter is the only album of theirs I play at all regularly. A few bars of Koeeoaddi There and it’s 1968 again – it’s one of my aural madeleines, along with Bookends and Music from Big Pink. Wee Tam/The Big Huge seemed like overkill only a few months later.
I think I’ve mentioned this before…my sister insisted on playing ISB at her 50th birthday party, and said that anybody who didn’t like it could leave. I doubt anybody round here would be that hard core, certainly not me.
Your sister sounds like a formidable character, a force to be reckoned with…
My 50th party is coming up in just few weeks! This sounds like a challenge…
I wouldn’t ask Mike’s sister and her music, if I were you!
Indeed.
The whole peace and love side of the ISB seems to have passed her by
Oh come now…it was in the spirit of peace and love that she did it. It was her guests it passed by. 😉
I get your sister’s attitude on this. ISB are a challenge right from their very name? Incredible you say? How so?
They’d probably deny it but there is as much in ISB as in other tent poles of difficult rock, Hangman’s… is as close to Trout Mask Replica as it is to anything else.
And the music is awkward, weird and, yes, irritating and far too worthy as Colin H and deramdaze say above. And no surprise they ended up in Scientology. They scream ‘cult’ from the very beginning. You just know that, post gig, they’d get off the stage, mingle with the audience and and hand out leaflets with pictures of a benevolent Jesus. Or perhaps an equally benevolent L Ron Hubbard.
And yet I love ISB. The silly lyrics, the daft clothes worn by the band on Hangman’s cover, the harmonies are clearly are not in harmony, the mandolins, washboards and flutes. Love it all. I always like to sneak in a bit of ISB, even the likes of Painting Box, which is ridiculously optimistic.
So huge respect to your sister and her uncompromising attitude. Others might have fallen back on a playlist of popular tunes but that sorts the wheat from the chaff!
mikethep’s sister played the Incredible String Band at her 50th birthday party?
I hope she got some nice presents.
Maybe Mrs Thompson gave her a bear…..
2009 I went to the Fairport Witchseason celebration at the Barbican (Swarb decided not to play) the following night it was the ISB I decided to go as Dr Strangely Strange were playing at it (I’d never seen them).
I really enjoyed ISB much to my surprise (though R Williamson decided not to play), I detect a trend.
Saw M Heron with Trembling Bells a couple of times and enjoyed those too.
Would I play a ISB album? Not sure.
Oh come on Hubes, give it a go. What’s the worst that could happen?
Oh I have done in the past. Now though?
My selective eyes decided to focus on one extract of your post, which read ‘I decided to go as Dr Strangely Strange’. That’s one wild fancy dress party, I thought.
A kit of the serenest, surely?
Not having a go against early ISB or MH’s rather splendid solo album, Smiling Men.
Just that by the time I got to see them they were a run-of-the-mill four-piece guitar, bass, drum line up whose chief concern was flogging scientology.
As such, their music was mainly meat-and-potatoes rock that bore scant relation to the mainly acoustic stuff – much of it very good – they were doing when they were in their pomp a few years earlier.
Having started to turn out meh albums with pale imitations (Rockdale) of earlier classics (End of the World) REM would be another example of a band that stuck around too long.
Well then, that is a different thing. The band have become crap hence the disaffection.
Yes, they became crap and tarnishing their legacies by failing to obey rule number one of showbiz
I actually think it’s really difficult to find a band who HAVEN’T outstayed their welcome!
True
Television?
Good choice!
Some negative vibes for the ISB up the thread, but I think side one of The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter is near-perfect folk-psychedelia, and the second album has its moments. Probably too prolific for their own good in the end.
After all these years I have only connected ISBs Minotaur Song and Monty Python’s I’m A Lumberjack.
I love singing along to the call and response bits in the car.
Sadly, “Yes” are at the stage of outstaying their welcome. Steve Howe remains a great guitarist, and the concerts are ok to the extent they play older tracks, but they have terrible form in producing new music. It’s routinely weak and hookless. I’m a fan, and want to believe. I am not a purist as bands change. But there are no good ideas and arrangements now. Steve, tour with congenial musicians, and play what you like. You are sill great. But the lightning is not in the bottle for Yes. (Carl Palmer, this also applies to you.)
The Yes, surely…(a Blaast memory).
You’re quite right about them, of course.
Am I alone in thinking ‘Jethro Tull’?
No (he said in a voice so croaky not even auto-tunes could make it sound easy on the ear)
No, not alone. And I count myself as a fan: but IA should hang up his larynx and admit the game is over. Anyway, if Martin Barre isn’t on board, it’s not really Tull, is it? It’s IA and some musicians.
@Twang?
Or, on occasion, IA and some backing tapes
If they’re planning on replacing him, they should ask Matt Johnson who sounds very IA-like on Soul Mining
**gazes sadly into the distance**
Head and heart have been wrestling with this one since the start of this thread. With tears in my eyes I have to confess I think TMT have had their day. Their legacy is magnificent and right up to Crest of the Knave their albums are magnificent. The Steven Wilson remix boxes are a joy.
But, but. I can’t get around the loss of Ian’s voice, and also the song structures and arrangements are but a pale shadow of their former glory. As so often, I agree with Fitter. The absence of Martin Barre is regrettable too.
So I sadly add TMT to the list.
Postscript : a PR who sometimes offers me interesting things to review assumed I would want to review the new one. A bossy boots email arrived from Sony covered in bold and underlined fonts threatening with menaces what would happen if I reviewed it before whatever date, played it to anyone, here’s a “generic” pack etc etc. And it’s a poxy stream. Bog off.
The sharp eyed will have noticed that I have not submitted a review, not will I. I’d review the forthcoming Broadsword box like a shot, mind, if I get the thing. If not, I’ll pass on that too. I’m not wasting my time wrestling with their crap secure player again, ta very much.
The Tull were very much a flash in the pan of my musical consciousness. It was all over between Mr. Anderson’s band and I by 1972. A brief fling at best.
Your loss, if I may say so, Mike – Tull continued to produce good stuff until at least 1979 (and Twang might suggest beyond that…).
Nah, Mike is right. Except the twelve seconds they were Any Good.
Nah – you’re both wrong.
Mike is wrong: but you’re exceptionally wrong, Lodey…in deference to your nom de Word.
The Joe Boyd ISB remasters from a few years back are definitive. Absolutely.
Santana, you lost it, too. And “The Who” (last seriously good work was Quadrophrenia, a half century ago).
Sadly agreed.
Santana were finished for me after Borboletta. The Who after Quadrophenia.
I’m afraid I have to part ways with the Kinks after “Preservation Act II”
I think ISB do seem to be a particularly embarrassing band to play in public. I’m not sure why – I think maybe they just need a bit of context and I always feel like I need to do a background check on someone before I share my ISB love with them.
Case in point: I actually had “U” blaring away in my kitchen this morning while I was working, but then a guy turned up who is fitting some flooring for us just now. I turned them off before I answered the door! I was just self conscious about him thinking he was working for some maniac who plays crazy music.
Not ISB, but on Tuesday I was listening to an old BBC Radio 3 “Freeness” free improv programme when the lady from the letting agents arrived to do the (prearranged) quarterly property inspection. I didn’t want her to hear that I sometimes like listening to free improv, so I turned it off before I let her in.
Mind you, she spotted my vinyl copy of Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under A Groove” and said it was one of her favourite records…
Funnily enough, I had to phone a guy to negotiate a better price for car insurance and I had Katie Spencer’s new vinyl single playing while waiting to get through. ‘What’s that in the background?’ he asked. It led to a 20 minute conversation about Bert Jansch and vinyl collecting. In a way, no wonder I was waiting ages to get through…. but it was also a pleasingly unexpected conversation. And he improved the quote sufficiently for Mrs H (who had a rival’s quote to hand).