As a teenager, I was an avid consumer of anything put out by the fledgling Virgin label. Keen not to pay out any of the Tubular Bells profits in tax, they seemed to throw money at experimental artists. including Canterbury scene artists, Hatfield and the North, Gong, Robert Wyatt as well as introducing Tangerine Dream and White Noise to a UK audience, and providing Captain Beefheart with an outlet.
If it made an unusual noise, Virgin would record it and release it. Possibly the least commercial and accessible of them all was Henry Cow. I did own a copy of the album they did with Slapp Happy, Desperate Straights, (still to come) but quickly came to understand that these were definitely Slapp Happy songs, not Henry Cow ones. Henry Cow didn't seem to do anything as vulgar as songs.
Many years later, I saw, on EBay, a copy of this album cheap from a USA remainder site and took a chance. So, how weird were Henry Cow?
The album opens with Nirvana For Mice, composed by guitarist Fred Frith, and has a smooth sax and horn opening, with a tinkling guitar bridge before a more frantic wind section. It's a rewarding piece, with far more structure than is at first apparent. It's followed by Amygdala, a much more gentle, almost ambient opening with Frith's guitar flowing over the simple background. But by the two minute mark, the gentleness fades, the drums are up and after a quick guitar solo, the structure deteriorates into what sounds like noodling.
Teenbeat Introduction is four minutes of clarinet and sax free-forming tunelessly, segueing into Teenbeat, whose wordless vocal accompaniment fades into fiddly guitar and sax before settling into something approaching a tune that you could tap your feet to. But don't get used to that, normal Henry Cow soon returns. There's a gentle break from the mayhem in Nirvana Reprise, a guitar solo of the theme from the opening tune, but the spell is broken by Extract from 'With The Yellow Half-Moon and Blue Star' - mostly discordant noodling, but luckily only two minutes long (the full piece is sixteen minutes!).
On seeing the next piece is Teenbeat Reprise, I was tempted to enquire "Why?", but it actually rocks a bit with some nice guitar work. The Tenth Chaffinch starts with a birdsong-like intro, but any semblance of tune soon vanishes, and it feels like improvisation, driven by Chris Cutler's percussion. Finally, at last a song! With words. Nine Funerals Of The Citizen King has strange staccato phrasings and a strange tune, but is recognisably a song to bring the original album to closure.
This CD has a bonus track in Bellycan, an outtake from the Greasy Truckers' Festival in 1973, which understandably didn't make that album. It's mostly distorted guitar and sax improvisation which doesn't add quality to the album.
Legend, and Henry Cow in general, aren't an easy listen, but if you're prepared to persevere there are real moments of beauty hidden in the chaos. However, they're well hidden, and it's not an everyday treat.
3* - a difficult album, but with interesting parts.
Comments