The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

Any love for Henry Cow?

by 29 Comments

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.

Ultramarine

by 6 Comments

Anyone else into these? I go back with these guys…their ‘Every Man and Woman is a Star’ album was on heavy rotation in the early 90s as was the follow up ‘United Kingdoms’. They were a heady mix of Ambient Dub on similar territory to The Orb but with a very curious swerve into what was (back then) obscure art rock/folk/psychedelic music as well as the early Factory Records/Les Disques Du Crepuscule bands and the Canterbury Scene – they later collaborated with Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt. In other words, a world away from their contemporaries like The Prodigy or The Shamen. They’ve been a huge influence on my own music making and listening. They still crop up from time to time and they’re back with a new LP soon – as well as curious little 7″ single which has some suitably atmospheric sounds to accompany photographs, graphics and poetry inspired by a stretch of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex – get it here https://www.stjudesprints.co.uk/products/blackwaterside

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSpGJJiUbyg

Going mental in Spain in 1981

by 2 Comments

In the (continuing and annoying) absence of the reissue of Diamond Jack & The Queen Of Pain, here’s a blast from around the same time: Kevin Ayers and assorted mates having a lazy blast on a Spanish TV rock show.

Anyone else still hoping that the album will eventually appear? Anyone shed any light on why the HECK it hasn’t appeared? Yeah, yeah I know there’s a lot of discussion and speculation on’t web, even on the KA pages, but there’s no real FACTs out there. Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.