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‘Hope for Happiness’: The Soft Machine live in Paris, 1967

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The Soft Machine line-up was always kinda fluid but didn’t fully set until Kevin Ayers (bass, vocals) joined Robert Wyatt (drums, vocals), Daevid Allen (guitar), and Mike Ratledge (organ) sometime in the summer of 1966. Wyatt and Allen had played together in the Daevid Allen Trio in 1963, before Wyatt, Ayers, Ratledge and Hugh Hopper formed the Wilde Flowers which would later include members of Caravan.

The Soft Machine (always the Soft Machine until 1970) took their name from the book by William Burroughs. Allen had stayed at the “Beat Hotel” in Paris when Burroughs, Ginsberg, Gysin, and co. were in residency. He had been “the friendly straight with those guys.” He took drugs, made music (composing the soundtrack for a short film version of Burroughs’ novel The Ticket That Exploded), and soaked up the free-wheeling bohemian lifestyle. By the time he hooked-up with Wyatt, Ratledge and Ayers, Allen was a seasoned musician, poet, beatnik, and proto-hippie traveler.

Ayers arrived in England from Malaya at the age of twelve to attend “any school that would have me.” This turned out to be a high school in Canterbury called the Simon Langton Grammar, where he met Wyatt and Ratledge. Wyatt was into a range of music from jazz to classical, while Ratledge starting to experiment with tape loops. This potent mix of music and experimentation found its full expression in the Soft Machine.
 
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The Soft Machine as a four-piece with Daevid Allen.
 
The band moved through various lineups before settling on the foursome of Allen, Ayers, Wyatt, and Ratledge. The band were resident at the legendary underground club UFO alongside house band Pink Floyd. There was a rivalry between the two until the Floyd trumped their opposition with the pop single “Arnold Layne.” The Softs were never as commercial (though they did release what is arguably the first psychedelic single “Love Makes Sweet Music” in February 1967) as they preferred live improvisation and experimental sounds. Theirs was truly the music of the underground and a sound that would see them rightly hailed as “one of the more influential bands of their era, and certainly one of the most influential underground ones.”

According to Allen, the Softs first gig as a quartet was at the launch party for IT (the International Times) which quickly turned into a happening when Yoko Ono joined the band on stage and encouraged the audience “to touch each other in the dark.” A motorcycle was brought onto the stage and a microphone placed against the cylinder for “a good noise.” According to IT publisher Barry Miles in his memoir In the Sixties:

They also gave young women rides around the outer rim [of the venue] the Roundhouse on [the bike], bumping through the dirt and debris, raising clouds of dust.

The Softs were under Chas Chandler’s management, ex-bass player with the Animals who was also manager to Jimi Hendrix. Through Chandler, the Softs toured Europe and as support to Hendrix in America. However, after a tour of France, Allen was refused re-entry into England as he had an Australian passport and no visa. Allen quit the band, returned to Paris and set about forming the prog rock Gong. After recording and releasing their brilliant and seminal eponymous-titled debut album in 1968, Ayers quit the band to pursue a solo career. That was almost the end of the Softs, but due to contractual reasons Wyatt, Ratledge and Hugh Hopper reformed the band to release Volume Two in 1969. Since then, Soft Machine has continued under different line-ups (though lacking its original members) right up to the present day.

In October 1967, Ayers, Wyatt, and Ratledge were filmed performing “A Certain Kind,” “Save Yourself,” “Priscilla,” “Lullabye Letter,” and “Hope For Happiness” for the French TV show Ce Soir On Danse, which was broadcast in August 1968.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.06.2019
08:08 am
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Brian Eno & Kevin Ayers team-up for oddball progrock poetry album ‘Lady June’s Linguistic Leprosy’
01.02.2018
04:37 pm
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I’ve been on a bit of a “70s Brian Eno kick” of late, scooping up all of the recent 2XLP 45rpm editions of Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, Here Come the Warm Jets, Before and After Science, etc. and then fanning out through some of his work as a sideman and producer, which was quite extensive during that decade. Aside from the obvious collaborations with Robert Fripp, Talking Heads, DEVO and David Bowie, Eno also made music with Nico (The End), he’s on both of Robert Calvert’s wonderfully loopy 70s solo albums and believe it or not, Genesis for whom he provided “Enossification for two tracks on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (”In the Cage” and “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging”). But the item I want to call to your attention here is the marvellously eccentric 1974 album—newly released by Mental Experience/Guerssen Records in a beautifully published vinyl version with extensive liner notes and lyric sheet—Lady June’s Linguistic Leprosy.

When she died of a heart attack in 1998 at the age of 64, her obituary in The Independent called “Lady” June Campbell Cramer “a great British eccentric and cosmic prankster.” That’s already a pretty good claim to fame, but the obit went on to say that her “most achieved performance was herself: she succeeded in turning her existence into living art, bristling with humour.”

“Lady” June—the honorary title given to her due to her upper-crust, aristocratic voice (she sounded like a really stoned Judi Dench) and the fact that she was the de facto London landlady of many a progressive musician from the Canterbury set—was a sort of free-spirited hippie bohemian poetess and multimedia performance artist who ran with the crowd that included Gong and Soft Machine, who she first met in Spain in the early 1960s.
 

 
According to Daevid Allen, who was in both groups, June’s enormous twelve room Maida Vale flat was “London’s premier smoking salon”:

“She was ferocious in the mornings until the first joint arrived: she’d hover over you with a wet cloth demanding that you clean the stove.”

Amongst the other tenants in June’s apartment were Steve Hillage, members of Henry Cow, Hawkwind, Hatfield and the North, Tim Blake and David Bedford. Some of her tenants were more conventional types who were often dismayed by the likes of nine freaky members of Gong suddenly turning up to sleep on the living room floor.

Gilli Smyth of Gong was her best friend, and it was at a dual birthday party June threw for herself and Smyth that a drunken Robert Wyatt fell out of a window, falling four stories and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
 

 
In 1973, June took part in the chaotic BBC Radio 4 series If It’s Wednesday It Must Be… with Kenny Everett and former Bonzo Dog Band member Vivian Stanshall. Later that year she recorded Lady June’s Linguistic Leprosy, her surrealist poetry set to music by her longtime friend (and longtime tenant) Kevin Ayers and Brian Eno, a neighbor who lived nearby. The recording was primarily made in the front room of her apartment with Ayers on guitar, bass and vocals, and Eno playing guitar, bass, Imminent, Linearment (sounds mathematical, right?), and something called “Lunar Lollipops,” with Gong’s drummer Pip Pyle and David Vorhaus of White Noise mixing. It is said to have cost just £400. A wary Caroline Records—the arty Virgin subsidiary set up to release things with little to just about zero commercial potential in the first place—pressed up only 5000 copies, but the album sold out quickly when news of her famous collaborators got around. June performed on bills along with Gong, Hawkwind, The Pink Fairies and Hatfield and the North.

“Lady” June Campbell Cramer returned to Spain in 1975 and became an active and creatively fulfilled participant in the artists’ community of Deià in Majorca. It is primarily for the company she kept—and this one remarkable album—that we remember her today. According to the reissue’s liner notes (and her nephew Tim Campbell Cramer) when June died at the age of 64 in 1998, she was cremated and guests at her wake tied little parcels of her ashes to helium balloons and let them go into the Mallorca breeze.
 

“Optimism,” music by Eno
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.02.2018
04:37 pm
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‘Lady June’s Linguistic Leprosy’: Art rock obscurity featuring Brian Eno and Kevin Ayers


 
When she died of a heart attack in 1999 at the age of 68, her obituary in The Independent called “Lady” June Campbell Cramer “a great British eccentric and cosmic prankster.” That’s already a pretty good claim to fame, but the obit went on to say that her “most achieved performance was herself: she succeeded in turning her existence into living art, bristling with humour.”

“Lady” June—the honorary title given to her due to her upper-crust, aristocratic voice (she sounded like a stoned Judi Dench) and the fact that she was the de facto landlady of many a progressive musician from the Canterbury set—was a sort of free-spirited hippie bohemian poetess and multimedia performance artist who ran with the crowd that included Gong and Soft Machine, who she first met in Spain in the early 1960s.

According to Daevid Allen, who was in both groups, June’s Maida Vale flat was “London’s premier smoking salon”:

“She was ferocious in the mornings until the first joint arrived: she’d hover over you with a wet cloth demanding that you clean the stove.”

Gilli Smyth of Gong, Allen’s wife, was her best friend, and it was at a dual birthday party June threw for herself and Smyth that a drunken Robert Wyatt fell out of a window, falling four stories and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
 

 
In 1973, June took part in the chaotic BBC Radio 4 series If It’s Wednesday It Must Be… with Kenny Everett and former Bonzo Dog Band member Vivian Stanshall. Later that year she recorded Lady June’s Linguistic Leprosy, her surrealist poetry set to music by her longtime friend (and longtime tenant) Kevin Ayers and Brian Eno, who lived nearby. The recording was made in the front room of her apartment (along with Gong’s drummer Pip Pyle and David Vorhaus of White Noise) and is said to have cost just £400. A wary Caroline Records—a Virgin subsidiary set up to release things with little to no commercial potential in the first place—pressed up just 5000 copies, but the album sold out quickly when news of her famous collaborators got around. June performed on bills along with Gong, Hawkwind, The Pink Fairies and Hatfield and the North.

“Lady” June Campbell Cramer returned to Spain in 1975 and became an active and creatively fulfilled participant in the artists’ community of Deya in Majorca. It is primarily for the company she kept—and this one remarkable album—that we remember her today. Lady June’s Linguistic Leprosy was re-issued on CD in 2007 by Market Square.
 

“Everythingsnothing”/“Tunion”
 

“The Letter”
 

“Tourisy”/“Am I”
 

“To Whom It May Concern”
 

“Some Day Silly Twenty Three”
 

“Missing Person,” a gorgeous number from a 1984 French various artists release entitled History of Jazz.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.18.2014
08:53 am
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Progrock’s greatest uneasy lovesong: Kevin Ayers’ ‘The Lady Rachel’ live in 1975
03.26.2013
06:16 pm
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Now she’s safe from the darkness
She’s safe from its clutch
Now nothing can harm her
At least not very much

When the great Kevin Ayers died on February 18th, I checked YouTube to see if there was a vintage live clip of him performing my favorite song of his, “The Lady Rachel” from 1969’s progrock milestone Joy of a Toy. There wasn’t, but a few weeks later, a kind soul posted this humdinger of a performance from Belgium in 1975.

Ayers, with a band including Zoot Money and Ollie Hassell, does an astonishing twelve-minute long “Lady Rachel” here. If you’re a Kevin Ayers fan, you’ll plotz. The quality is great, too.

The thing that I wondered about is the audience murmuring among themselves at the song’s start. Who the hell would have talked during Kevin Ayers in his prime? Idiots!

When Joy of a Toy was remastered with extra tracks in 2003, it included an outtake from the sessions titled “Religious Experience” [take 9] (aka “Singing a Song in the Morning”) with Syd Barrett on guitar.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.26.2013
06:16 pm
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Soft Machine founding member Kevin Ayers dead at 68
02.20.2013
12:17 pm
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“Kevin Ayers’ talent is so acute you could perform major eye surgery with it.”
—John Peel

Sad to hear that founding Soft Machine member, Kevin Ayers, one of the most important characters in the history of psychedelic rock, has died at the age of 68. The singer-songwriter guitarist passed away at his home in the French village of Montolieu.

During his career that spanned five decades, Ayers worked with the likes of Brian Eno, John Cale, Syd Barrett, Elton John, Nico, Robert Wyatt, Andy Summers and Gong.

Fun fact: Kevin Ayers is “The bugger in the short sleeves fucked my wife” who is referred to in John Cale’s “Guts.” Cale caught them the night before the famous June 1, 1974 recording.

“Eleanor’s Cake (Which Ate Her)”:
 

 
The gorgeous “The Lady Rachel” from 1970’s Joy of a Toy album:
 

 
In this clip taken from the POP2 TV series, Ayers (who obviously spoke French pretty fluently in that plummy public school voice of his) performs in Paris at Taverne De L’Olympia, sometime in May of 1970. Supporting the release of his second solo album, Shooting at the Moon, Ayers plays with The Whole World, a group that included a young Mike Oldfield on bass, avant-garde classical composer David Bedford on keyboards (Bedford had orchestrated Ayers’ Joy of a Toy record previously), and the great jazz saxophonist, Lol Coxhill.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.20.2013
12:17 pm
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Mind-blowing early Soft Machine footage, 1968


 
The amount of high quality video footage of the Soft Machine unearthed in recent years has been truly impressive and a godsend to fans of the ever-changing line-ups of the Canterbury prog-rock greats. For me, the earlier the better, so this 1968 performance of the group on French TV is some of the best footage of the Softs, I’ve seen, period.

Showcasing the improvisational brilliance of the classic Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge line-up in a way that their first album did not, this 24-minute long set is a barnstormer throughout, ending on an extended, energetic romp all over their classic,“Hope for Happiness.”

If you’re a Soft Machine fan, this will absolutely blow you away.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.06.2011
07:05 pm
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Kevin Ayers: May I ?
06.02.2010
01:53 pm
Topics:
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Seeing as how I name-checked the man in my Rick Grossman post yesterday I thought I’d share this lovely 1972 clip by Soft Machine founder Kevin Ayers. He’s surrounded here by a rogues gallery of prog luminaries : Mike Oldfield on bass, Lol Coxhill on soprano sax, Mike Bedford on accordion, etc. This song, from his Shooting at the Moon LP, seems to sum up his breezily casual, pleasantly stoned approach rather nicely. Goes down smooth.

Posted by Brad Laner
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06.02.2010
01:53 pm
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