One night he got excited to play me some Soft Machine. I knew nothing about this band but liked their name. (This was a little before I was cool enough to get the William S. Burroughs reference and before I was trying so hard to be cool that I actually read that entire book and felt, in between bong hits, like I actually liked it!) He thought I should start with a self-titled album. The die-cut cover was cool. The music was mostly horrible to my prog-insensitive ears: a lot of noodling on instruments I was not a big fan of hearing noodled. There was one song at the end, if memory serves, “Why Are We Sleeping?” I kind of liked that one, especially the set-up of the verses, with the talk-singing and the cool drumming. Then it got to the dramatic choruses and I had to laugh.
“They’re ruining this song!” I complained. My new friend John was hurt. He took this stuff very seriously.
Well…I mean, obviously the issue is that he didn’t fit into the Soft Machine, which is why he left after the first album. Although if you want to hear a version of the band in which Ayers is more properly integrated, their 1967 demos produced by Giorgio Gomelsky are readily available under a variety of titles. He was trying to make them write pop songs, so those tracks are a lot more concise and properly structured.
The thing is that Ayers, unlike the jazzheads contingent of the band, didn’t mind pop songs. In fact, for all the occasional weirdness of his Harvest albums, I always got the vibe that he thought he was making straightforward pop records. (And later, sometimes he *was* making straightforward pop records! His ’86 album As Close As You Think, co-written and produced (like much of his ’80s work) by Ollie Halsall of Rutles fame, basically sounds not unlike, say, Steve Winwood’s Back In The High Life. Naturally, prog purists despise it, although I’ve long owned and enjoyed the single “Stepping Out.”
Yes, I remember you directing me toward those early demos years ago! That was good stuff.
How come nobody uses that double, or sometimes even triple mic set-up, for singers anymore???
Tremendous question! And why did they do that in the first place?
Searching through old emails I found the following (a response to Dr. John) from RTH v1 from (gulp) 8 years ago:
“My first love is the “June 1, 1974” live disc with Cale, Eno, and Nico. I bought that LP for $1.99 at the old E.J. Korvette’s in Springfield, having recently made the acquaintence of those three but never having heard of Ayers. That had two songs which have remained in my favorites by him – “May I?” and “Stranger In Blue Suede Shoes”.
That led me to Odd Ditties, a vinyl collection that has never been
released legitimately on CD, and this remains my favorite Ayers album. “Bananamour”, “Shooting At The Moon”, “whatevershebringswesing”, and “Joy Of A Toy’ are all strong. After that the quality really varies.
I’ve always loved “Yes We Have No Mananas, So Get Your Mananas Today” for the title if not the actual album. “Diamond Jack & The Queen Of Pain” is the only one I recall as really enjoying but as far as I know that’s never been released on CD and I haven’t listened to it in probably 20 years.
Sometime I’ll relate the time I saw him live in ’93, possibly as bad a concert as I’ve ever seen.”
That concert in ’93 was in a record store in Waterbury CT. Ayers was clearly high and cantankerous. He was alone, fiddled with the tuning of his guitar constantly and ranted about the PA. Now, he was in a small room with about 20 people so he didn’t even need a PA but that didn’t stop the diva tendencies. He really only performed a handful of songs and that was it. So, been there, done that, sorta saw a concert.
There’s a collection of his first 5 records (Joy of a Toy, Shooting at the moon, Whatevershebringswesing, Bananamour and The Confessions of Dr Dream) with bonus tracks that came out last year titled The Harvest Years that’s available for a very reasonable $25 from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Years-1969-Kevin-Ayers/dp/B007FQW7LM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361541625&sr=8-1&keywords=kevin+ayers+harvest+years
I always assumed that one was for the house PA and the other was for the film recording (maybe so they could sync it up with the real mix later). But i’m just guessing.
Kevin Ayers and the Soft Machine are names that I’ve heard for as long as I can remember but this is the first time I’ve actually heard them. Not my cup of tea. I likes the syncopated rhythm guitars in Didn’t Feel Lonely, and the dueling leads were cool, although I suspect they would get old after a few listens. Other than that, meh.
I don’t really “get” the Cambridge or Canterbury scene bands (or whatever they’re called. You know, the ones that started off as experimental psychedelic music before evolving into prog), probably because I’m such a square.