The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Any love for Henry Cow?

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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.

Albums you never listened to back in the day and now you find out they were wonderful after all

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Ladies (I know there’s not many here) and Gentlemen (there are some here) – I give you –

HENRY COW – Unrest

I bought the 1st album “The Henry Cow Legend” on the basis of seeing them supporting Principal Edwards Magic theatre in March 1973. I though they were extraordinary. What parts of this music are composed, what is improvised? An aesthetic that drives much of my musical appreciation to this day.

Anyway I missed the 2nd album, I’d left the UK to be a hippie traveler in Europe, and when I got back to NZ later that year the record stores weren’t exactly groaning with piles of HC albums.

Then recently I heard their second album, “Unrest”. It is truly fabulous. This track “Half Asleep Half Awake” exemplifies what I love about them. A peculiarly English piano intro, reminiscent of the piano intro to the Bonzos’ “Rawlinson End”, followed by a piece of chamber music which seems to have no precedent in terms of musical style or reference. Possibly an English version of Frank Zappa’s instrumentals such as Uncle Meat.