Out-Bloody-Rageous

I've got this piece about Soft Machine in the latest issue of TQ, which you really ought to buy...

As a kid, I grew up in a house that adored music, though not perhaps the most obvious kinds. The old fella only possessed Irish folk records, such as seemingly the entire recorded output of both The Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers. He took his sartorial notes from them as well; while most of his contemporaries in Felling had affected a quasi-Rat Pack look in bumfreezer jackets and ankle strangler strides, he’d most often be seen propping up various counters on licensed premises, bedight in an Arran gansey and wellies. Fair play to him as well. My mam, who actually saw Bob Dylan at the City Hall in ‘65, as captured by D. A. Pennebaker in Don’t Look Back, was something of a folkie too, though she tended towards the gentler sounds of singer songwriters like James Taylor and his sort. Soppy I know, but far better than the preferences of her sister Maureen who only collected James Last albums. When she died in 2008, we cleared out hundreds of them from her attic; all skipped without further ado…

Anyway, being beguiled and fascinated by music when I was still in nappies, one of the factors involved in teaching myself to read, was by rapaciously devouring the advertising essays on CBS inner sleeves, which led me to forming the opinion cover art could be as fascinating as the sounds the records themselves made. This was a thought I held on to for years, meaning that after the legendary Pop Inn record shop opened in Felling Square in summer 1975, I would spend most of my school holidays in its clutches, endlessly surfing the racks, not for the purpose of potential purchases (I think albums were £2 a shot and I was on 75p a week pocket money back then), but just to study covers that fascinated me: Ghosts by The Strawbs, Cunning Stunts by Caravan, Unorthodox Behaviour by Brand X, All Funked Up by Snafu and even more obscure cuts by the likes of The Amazing Blondel and JJ Cale. These arcane images set my imagination alight.

One band who intrigued me above all were (The?) Soft Machine. Now, this was long before I was given my diagnosis of autism, before the concept of obsessive compulsive disorder was in the public domain, and indeed before the soubriquet “nerd” had entered common parlance. I was just very interested in lists and details, specifically why Soft Machine couldn’t decide on a consistent method of naming their albums; why Volume Two, then Third and eventually Six and Seven? It drove me up the wall, although I was prepared to forgive, and desperate to hear, any group who had songs such as: Out-Bloody-Rageous, Hibou Anemone & Bear, Plus Belle qu’un Poubelle, Eamonn Andrews, Hullo Der, Esther’s Nose Job and The Man Who Waved at Trains.  Despite having discovered the esoteric delights of the perfumed, pre punk John Peel Show around this time, with the first track I ever heard him play being a Dick Gaughan number that the old fella sang along with, note and word perfect (though this was to prove the exception to the rule in subsequent shows, certainly from early ‘77 onwards), it appeared that the great man had moved on from what I hadn’t yet learned to call the Canterbury Scene and prog in general. Even the faint signals from pirate stations off the coast of Norfolk, offered little solace in terms of introducing me to thoroughly obscure experimental wig outs. If only Saturdays hadn’t been dedicated to football in the winter and cricket in the summer, as they are now, I might have stumbled upon Fluff Freeman’s show. As it was, I found myself writing the names of bands on my school jotter that even the most pretentious sixth form longhairs hadn’t heard of.

And then, in the summer of 1977, the year that punk broke (though Neil Young’s American Stars and Bars meant more to me than the Sex Pistols et al, with only Wire’s magisterial Pink Flag staying the test of time from that crowd), my obsession with Soft Machine firstly grew stronger and then was, somehow, sated slightly. Reading a discarded NME in the school canteen on the last day of term, I found news of the imminent release of a 3-album retrospective Soft Machine compilation, entitled The Triple Echo, telling the history of the band from their first single to the latest album. I remember saccharine soul classic Float On by The Floaters played on Radio 1 as I digested this news item with my school dinner. I knew, I simply knew I had to get hold of this fascinating release (Soft Machine I mean). I did as well, but not until 1985 at the end of my second year at university, when a bloke from the year above sold all of his worldly goods ahead of graduation, intending to travel the world on the proceeds. I’ve no idea if he did or not, but I’d like to think the £3 I gave him for The Triple Echo helped him on his way. This piece is dedicated to you Pete Burns, but I know you won’t be listening.

Back in 1977, my mother began to act as an agent for Kays’ Catalogue, for “pin money” as it was called at the time. Of even more interest to 13 year old me than the ladies’ lingerie models in the underwear section, was the fact the catalogue carried a random, eclectic and slightly bizarre selection of records in the “leisure” section, with each sleeve blown up to cover a quarter of a page. Eschewing the wider range of products carried by Callers, Windows or even HMV in town, my mother decided to purchase, for about 22p a week I think, a series of musical Christmas presents for the family and, with me being an August birthday, I became the guinea pig to see if Kays could be trusted to deliver the goods, so I got to make two choices, for summer and for winter. Alongside Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits (her choice), James Last Live in Moscow (including strange cover versions of Looking After Number 1 and Go Buddy Go) for Maureen and Blonde on Blonde (my Christmas double album), there was an album that lacked any advertising spiel about its genre, content or context. Instead, all it showed was a cartoon cover of an old man in overalls and flat cap, setting a pigeon free in his back garden. This was Bundles, by Soft Machine. My heart almost stopped and then it almost burst. It wasn’t The Triple Echo, but it was the first realistic opportunity I’d ever had to hear and to own anything by them. Bundles was the first album of theirs not to have a numerical title and, so I was to discover, the last to include any of the founding members.

Whenever I picture Soft Machine or call upon a musical memory of their work, I see them as comprising of louche, bibulous bassist Kevin Ayers, cheroot and claret in hand, scruffy, bearded falsetto percussionist Robert Wyatt, antipodean, ganga fuelled pixie guitarist Daevid Allen and inscrutable, academic organist Mike Ratledge, apparently still married to Marsha Hunt after all these years. Hugh Hopper, tall and balding, is there in the background, but I don’t see Roy Babbington, Allan Holdsworth, Karl Jenkins or John Marshall at all. In fact, I don’t hear them either and that is strange because, with modest input from Ratledge, they were the musicians who recorded Bundles.

My 13^th birthday was a Thursday. There was a film of Fleetwood Mac performing Dreams on Top of the Tops, while Eddie & The Hot Rods’ anthemic Do Anything You Wanna Do caught my attention, but nothing on that show, introduced by “Kid” Jensen, had made me think quite as hard as the album I’d been presented with by my mother that morning; Bundles was utterly unlike anything I’d ever heard before. For a start, it didn’t have any lyrics. For another, most of the already lengthy pieces seemed to merge imperceptibly into each other, apart from a couple of truly odd guitar and percussion pieces that didn’t seem to fit at all. Listening to the album again for this article, I feel Holdsworth’s Gone Sailing is a beautiful virtuoso performance, unlike his decidedly dull Land of the Bag Snake on side 2, that is perfect for the end of side 1, but that Marshall’s formless Four Gongs, Two Drums offers nothing to the record at all.

Did I like the album? I wouldn’t have been able to answer you back then, as the concept of challenging music was not one with which I was familiar on the day I became a teenager. Ask me now and I’ll tell you most affirmatively that I do. The five-part opening suite Hazard Profile is a strong and compelling piece, which is only bettered by the closing The Floating World that still is a highlight of live shows played by whatever iteration or brand Soft Machine are operating as these days. The title track is a banger as well. Sadly, poor Mike Ratledge was sidelined to the extent of having his two brief, but promising sections shoved in the middle of side two. Both Peff and The Man Who Waved at Trains should have been explored in more depth. To these ears, Bundles is a very good album and one I grew to appreciate more as time passed, but it is a rather staid and humourless piece; a generic, jazz rock set of sterling, disciplined musicianship that offers little in the way of surrealistic flourishes. It is the logical destination of the journey the group had been on since Robert Wyatt joined Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen in bailing out before the release of Fifth a couple of years before. Compared to the surreal, playful joy of the first three albums, it sounds like the work of a completely different band, mainly because it is the work of an almost completely different band.

I’ve mentioned my Auntie Maureen and her James Last obsession already. Well, my mother had a pal with far better musical taste, in the shape of Cynthia, who was a fine art lecturer who’d been to art school in London. Apparently, she was the first woman in Felling to live across the blanket with her fella instead of getting married; no doubt a Bohemian habit she’d picked up down the smoke. Not only that, but her walls and ceilings were painted black, she didn’t watch telly and made her coffee in a percolator, into which she poured demerara sugar. We’re talking the nearest thing to the Beat Generation on Windy Nook Bank in the mid-60s. I became mates with her son Jeremy (tough name to have in NE10 back then to be honest) when we were in High School, as we were both intellectuals in the O Level Stream. Several times I went round theirs to listen to records, mainly on account of finding Cynth, as she encouraged us to call her, owned the first four Soft Machine albums.

I was far from a Benjamin Braddock wannabe (the term MILF didn’t exist back then either), but I happily hoovered up the fact that Soft Machine, in the early days at least, were as daft and delightful as I’d always hoped. Surreal, crazy and simply exploding with ideas, I loved those albums. Sadly, at the end of school, Jeremy moved away to a Quaker boarding school to do his A Levels, while his mam and her latest beau, some character in long hair, beads and an Afghan, shifted their operation out into the wilds of the North Pennines, running an artist studio in Nenthead, Allendale or some such isolated head space. I kept the Soft Machine flame alive by discovering and falling deeply in love with the subsequent work of Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen, including Matching Mole, The Whole World and Gong. One time, I might even tell you about seeing Here & Now at the Black Bull in Wardley in 1979…