Incredible String Band

would love to see williamson sometime. i saw the robin-less ISB a few years ago in the US w/ Palmer looking very amused/ancient.

While my students were working on album-cover art the other day, one of them--triggered by having seen the covers for Cheap Thrills and After Bathing at Baxter's--asked to hear some actual hippie music. So I played "Dark Star" and "China Cat Sunflower" off YouTube, and then, just on a whim (it's not really hippie music, but it's strange, and great hippie music is almost always strange), I switched over to "A Very Cellular Song." My twenty-something student teacher: "What is that? That's awful."

Couldn't take the gimbri?

haha i put on A Very Cellular Song at work a couple weeks ago, my co-worker couldn't deal.

I tried playing a tape of the HGB lp on camp in the early days and it was viewed as unlistenable by Levellers fans. Gorlumme, how does one deal with people with poor taste?

don't know where I got the initials HGB for HBD but anyway, would have thought that it would be more popular and even something that people would be familiar with. But no, people's noses turned up at one of the greatest lps of all time in favour of post-commercialisation Levellers. bleurgh.

I thought you must be referring to something esoteric that only 'Stringheads' would know.

I think Wee Tam and BIg Huge are more 'accessible'.

less magical though

If asked to play hippie music I'd put on some "Gift from a Flower to a Garden"-era Donovan.

ISB is wonderful. Anyone that doesn't think so is lacking soul.

I've turned a lot of people on to ISB. I think set and setting are important to the enjoyment of music. I'm usually not working when I listen to them. Listened to Hangman's in its entirety on New Year's Day this year, that was good.

there's something strange and kinda spooky in the air while listening to ISB for the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_Pk4cqGGo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HN9y1z1Z9A

"Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending", a really incredible film originally made for BBC's Omnibus.

Every time I see a photo of a group of ragtag people standing in front of some trees, I think of ISB.
I almost tagged this picture ISB but I thought it was unnecessary

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbwjiq8HcM1rcq6xho1_500.jpg

I'm reading their Wikipedia page. I had forgotten they became Scientologists!

Listening to "Wee Tam" tonight. I really love the song "Air", so so beautiful.

Breathing, all creatures are
Brighter then than brightest star
You are by far
You come right inside of me
Close as you can be
You kiss my blood
And my blood kiss me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXtKESEZQLg

I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere, but Clive Palmer has died according to twitter

best COB song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kVgn6iBz4A

Oh no, I hope not.

saw him play about 5 years ago at a local veggie fair. not that it was exactly crowded to begin with, but his band pretty much cleared the room by the end of their set and there was just me and david tibet and his wife left watching. can't really remember what he played exactly - a lot of it was newer material - but i do remember that everything had the same warmth to it but with that wistful autumnal edge. seemed like a good guy who wasn't particularly phased by the fact that no-one was there, dunno why i didn't go and say hi

news seems to have come from wizz jones so i guess that's that

Aw, shame, RIP Clive.

listened to Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart this morning. lovely record. i saw him w/ the reunited ISB about a decade ago -- was sort of hard to tell whether he was happy to be there or kind of embarrassed, but his playing was great. looked like a man from another time.

Shame...really like the Spirit of Love C.O.B album.

aw, man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXK9gti146g

I'm wondering if the debut album sounds very crackly in places or if it's my headphones going bad.

None of their classic albums sound quite as good as i want them to. Fledg'ling remaster of Hangman's didn't provide the refresh I'd hoped for.

I just saw that prices are rising massively on the Fledg'ling Incredible String Band cds on Amazon marketplace.
That's the ones with the Joe Boyd remaster that people were thinking of as definitive back in 2010 when they were released. Since he was the original producer he should be about the best person to revisit the source and get the required sound.
Unfortunately Fledg'ling's license has lapsed, so I wonder if that master will ever reappear?
The label now have 3 copies of Hangman's Beautiful Daughter left and that's it.

Meanwhile BGO seem to have all the studio lps in print including 2fers of the later lps. They put out new versions of the early stuff last year. 1st 3lps on a 2cd set and a 2cd of Wee Tam and the Big Huge.
Those new ones are remastered by an Andrew Thompson, a name I'm not familiar with.
Could be good , but I don't know how they compare with something that has direct input from the original producer

Amazon is confusing things further by listing cheap marketplace prices next to the thumbnails of the Fled'gling releases. But if you click on the marketplace price you're taken to a BGO version of the cd. The BGO WT&BH has a redesigned slipcase with an alternative sleeve. All the Fledg'ling Joe Boyds have a stripe down the edge of the sleeve.

Yutututututut-yutututututut-yututututata-ta-tawowowow!

Having fun with the second album. Find it quite invigorating actually. I don't get this light whimsical sense of fun coming across so well very often.

Some of it beautifully carefree without going into the thing I hate most in music: sounding like you don't even give a fuck about the music you're playing.

I love the second album.. especially the heron tunes

childlike whimsy with its cock out and its women captive

no objection to distaste for ISB but that take makes no sense to me.

done this already but their vibe is 100% creepy cult to me, and that's even before considering the whole scientology thing - i would need strong anecdotal evidence showing otherwise to dissuade me. sorry for shitting up yet another isb thread but thbd was the single most unpleasant listening experience i've had of late and i will not withhold from expressing my revulsion until it is either resolved or chased away. live and let live sure but i'm not certain that was isb's credo

ISB: Still Freakin' Out The Squares

i would need strong anecdotal evidence showing otherwise

would be nice to have strong anecdotal evidence for the concern. seen this band live and they seemed chill. the records are pretty chill too. seen their documentary, also chill. what exactly is the cause for alarm?

does it go past "you got a bad vibe"?

Sound like a lovely bunch of guys to me.

Yutututututut-yutututututut-yututututata-ta-tawowowow!

I guess I just have never heard anything, at least pre-Scientology, that sounds aggressive or manipulative or particularly sexual, it all sounds like pretty sincere folky hippies who are really excited about instruments and drugs and making new sounds. It’s kind of culty in that it feels like they’re existing in their own world/community but I don’t hear anything sinister in it. But then I’m in the cult so I would say that.

imago needs his bumps felt

LOL @ the idea of Robin Williamson being sinister in any way whatsoever!

Listening to ISB recently, randomly googling pics of them etc and ended up reading some ex-Scientologist forums with people talking about auditing them back in the day. One guy claiming he knows where Licorice McKechnie is - supposedly in California not wanting to be found. No-one else has seen her in 30 years.

Yutututututut-yutututututut-yututututata-ta-tawowowow!

otm

Williamson's MYRRH album is a strange little record. Love these guys and I get the creeps from anything remotely "culty" so I think imago's take is interesting.

Myrrh is great

Had not seen this groovy thread before, and didn't know Clive had shuffled off this mortal coil, damn. In days of yore, I incl. a microview of Moyshe among a tiny Voice round-up of outriders, Dred Foole etc.:
COB
Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart

In the summer of 1971, COB, Clive's Original Band, led by Clive Palmer,
dropout co-founder of the Incredible String Band, descended through dogpaths of
Cornwall and into a London studio: barefoot buskers, shaking from their knapsack
the likes of cannily enigmatic "Lion of Judah," which darts across the parade
route of all orthodoxies. Meanwhile, the soulful "Chain of Love" has its own
karmic seeds to burn. And that's all, acid folks! But a taste for anyone who hasn't heard it.

I was in awe of these guys in my late adolescence. I must have been 16 or 17 when I bought a copy of Relics of the Incredible String Band and that record really changed me. I couldn't believe the level of musicianship, the intelligence, and just the sheer beauty of those early records.

Williamson's MYRRH album is a strange little record.

I didn't say the guy wasn't capable of strangeness - he surely is!

Cant decide between "Little Cloud" and "First Girl I loved" from second album as my favorite.

Confess that I find a lot of the Mike Heron's tweer songs difficult to listen to - with Williamson the wtfness tends to compensate for the tweeness, though not all the time.

A reminder that RW can be pretty twee:

ducks on a pond
ducks on a pond
verrrrrry prrrrrretty
swimming 'round

for example