Album Info

Kevin Ayers - BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert - 1992 - Windsong
"nobly idiosynchratic and genuinely timeless" David Sheppard, Mojo magazine 2008
"one of the great voices in British music." Simon Reynolds, Observer Music Monthly 2008
Live set by reformed Whole World (Ayers, Bedford, Coxhill, Oldfield and Dufort) and 12 piece orchestra, recorded at the Paris Theatre, London on 6/1/72 and broadcast on 15/1/72 for the BBC in London. The purpose of the concert was to promote Kevin's great "Whatevershebringswesing" album. Often regarded as an eccentric, and whimsical musician, and known for his distaste for self-promotion, England's Kevin Ayers, the son of a diplomat, is an important figure in the development of English Psychedelic/Progressive rock. One newspaper journalist called him "The Unsung Hero of Psychedelia". Kevin may best be remembered as a founder and vocalist of the great 70's Canterbury Rock band, "Soft Machine", and was always closely associated with the Canterbury genre. His Canterbury associations include Caravan, and Gong's Daevid Allen. Kevin has also worked with artists like Colosseum, Brian Eno, and the late Ollie Halsall of the brilliant band, Patto. Many critics say that Kevin's live performances can be "erratic" and "overexperimental". It is true that Kevin Ayers' music is eclectic. There is free-form jazz, symphonic rock, and avant-garde elements in his music, and he has always been a "genre hopper". Kevin Ayers has said himself, "It’s just the way I am—it’s as simple as that—and it’s to my disadvantage, I think. If you think about most best-selling albums, they’re all basically one tone, one direction, repeating the same thing over and over again. I just wasn’t able to do that. But there certainly wasn’t any showing off in it at all, I can assure you. That’s just how my mind works". This live album is an excellent example of some of Kevin Ayers' best songs. Again, as stated before on this blog, don't let terms like avant-garde, abstract, or free-form jazz deter you from listening to music like this. In a recent interview, Kevin Ayers said, "I don’t really listen to pop music these days. I listen to jazz—the old jazz—and classical music. I’m not trying to be snobby about it; there’s just so much crap around. I turn the radio on, and listen, and I just have to turn it off again. I’ll listen to world music, but mainstream pop, or whatever, I just find to be totally uninteresting". The guy has a point. Listen to Kevin's incredible "Whatevershebringswesing" album, and for music in a similar vein, listen to Matching Mole's 1972 s/t album.
TRACKS
1 Lady Rachael 6:36
2 May I 4:00
3 Clarence In Wonderland 5:02
4 Whatevershebringswesing 6:36
5 There Is Loving 6:55
6 Margaret 3:36
7 Colores Para Dolores 6:21
8 Crazy Gift Of Time 4:52
9 Why Are We Sleeping 12:05 [ N.B: This track has a guitar solo that Mike Oldfield reused at the end of Tubular Bells Part Two. ]
All songs composed by Kevin Ayers
MAIN MUSICIANS
Guitar, Vocals - Kevin Ayers
Guitar - Mike Oldfield
Bass - Archie Leggatt
Keyboards - David Bedford
Saxophone - Lol Coxhill
N.B: This album was re-released as Disc 1 of Too Old To Die Young in 1998. The actual concert sequence was Track 2, 5, 6, 4, 3, 7, 1, 8, & 9. The concert was introduced by the late BBC presenter, "Whistling" Bob Harris, famous for his BBC TV prog. rock programme, "The Old Grey Whistle Test", which introduced many great bands to the public
BIO
Kevin Ayers is one of rock's oddest and more likable enigmas, even if often he's seemed not to operate at his highest potential. Perhaps that's because he's never seemed to have taken his music too seriously — one of his essential charms and most aggravating limitations. Since the late '60s, he's released many albums with a distinctly British sensibility, making ordinary lyrical subjects seem extraordinary with his rich low vocals, inventive wordplay, and bemused, relaxed attitude. Apt to flavor his songs with female backup choruses and exotic island rhythms, the singer/songwriter inspires the image of a sort of progressive rock beach bum, writing about life's absurdities with a celebratory, relaxed detachment. Yet he is also one of progressive rock's more important (and more humane) innovators, helping to launch the Soft Machine as their original bassist, and working with noted European progressive musicians like Mike Oldfield, Lol Coxhill, and Steve Hillage. Ayers cultivated a taste for the bohemian lifestyle early, spending much of his childhood in Majorca before he moved with his mother to Canterbury in the early '60s. There he fell in with the town's fermenting underground scene, which included future members of the Soft Machine and Caravan. For a while he sang with the Wilde Flowers, a group that also included future Softs Robert Wyatt and Hugh Hopper. He left in 1965, met fellow freak Daevid Allen in Majorca, and returned to the U.K. in 1966 to found the first lineup of the Soft Machine with Allen, Wyatt, and Mike Ratledge. Wyatt is usually regarded as the prime mover behind the Soft Machine, but Ayers' contributions carried equal weight in the early days. Besides playing bass, he wrote and sang much of their material. He can be heard on their 1967 demos and their 1968 debut album, but by the end of 1968 he felt burned out and quit. Selling his bass to Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, he began to write songs on guitar, leading to a contract with Harvest in 1969. His relationship with his ex-Soft Machine mates remained amiable; in fact, Wyatt and Ratledge (as well as Ayers' replacement, Hugh Hopper) guested on Ayers' 1969 debut. Ayers' solo material reflected a folkier, lazier, and gentler bent than the Soft Machine. In some respects he was comparable to Syd Barrett, without the madness — and without the ferocious heights of Barrett's most innovative work. Ayers was never less than enjoyable and original, though his albums were erratic right from the start, veering from singalong ditties and pleasant, frothy folk ballads to dissonant improvisation. The more ambitious progressive rock elements came to the forefront when he fronted the Whole World in the early '70s. The backing band included a teenage Mike Oldfield on guitar, Lol Coxhill on sax, and David Bedford on piano. But Ayers only released one album with them before they dissolved. Ayers continued to release albums in a poppier vein throughout the '70s, at a regular pace. As some critics have noted, this dependable output formed an ironic counterpoint to much of his lyrics, which often celebrated a life of leisure, or even laziness. That lazy charm was often a dominant feature of his records, although Ayers always kept things interesting with offbeat arrangements, occasionally singing in foreign tongues, and flavoring his production with unusual instruments and world music rhythms. He (or Harvest) never gave up on the singles market, and indeed his best early-'70s efforts in that direction were accessible enough to have been hits with a little more push. Or a little less weirdness. Even Ayers at his most accessible and direct wasn't mainstream, a virtue that endeared him to his loyal cult. That cult was limited to the rock underground, and Ayers logically concentrated on the album market throughout the 1970s. Almost always pleasant, eccentric, and catchy, these nonetheless started to sound like a cul-de-sac by the mid-'70s. Ayers pressed on without changing his approach, despite the dwindling audience for progressive rock and the oncoming train of punk and new wave. He only recorded sporadically after 1980, though he remained active in the early 1990s, mostly on the European continent. The 2007 release The Unfairground was first 21st Century release. © Richie Unterberger, allmusic.com, http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:09fyxqr5ldae~T1
MORE ABOUT KEVIN AYERS
Kevin Ayers is one of the finest and most influential musical talents to have emerged in Britain during the mayhem and madness of the late Sixties. Yet like peer and fellow Harvest records pioneer Syd Barrett, he has always been profoundly uneasy with the self-promotion that the pop music world demands. In fact, he abhors it. Ayers is an English eccentric, a supreme raconteur, a maverick innovator who has always remained true to his musical ideals and for these reasons his legacy is being celebrated by a new generation of performers today. Ayers commands a devoted following throughout the world, gained through a succession of unique and innovative albums. He redrew the boundaries of songwriting, fusing wit, wisdom and eccentric observation to produce music of lasting originality. Born in Herne Bay, Kent on August 16th 1944, Ayers moved, with his family, to Malaysia when he was six years old, as his stepfather took up a position as a District Officer. Returning to Herne Bay at the age of twelve, the young Kevin sought the physical and mental freedom of his earlier childhood. This search eventually led to Canterbury and a circle of bohemian friends with Robert Wyatt at its core. At the large Georgian house owned by Robert’s mother, Honor, Kevin shared the company of Hugh and Brian Hopper, Mike Ratledge and a drifting Australian beatnik, Daevid Allen, spending many hours listening to modern jazz and being immersed in the world of beat poetry and Dadaist art. By June 1963 this group of people had formed the band The Wilde Flowers with Robert Wyatt on drums, Hugh Hopper on bass, Brian Hopper on guitar and saxophone, Richard Sinclair on rhythm guitar and Kevin Ayers as vocalist. Wilde Flowers would go through many changes with musicians such as Richard Coughlan and Pye Hastings joining the outfit. In 1965 Ayers travelled to Deya in Mallorca with Robert Wyatt to stay with the poet Robert Graves; lured by the prospect of good weather, blue sea and a relaxed life style. O n a subsequent trip ...