Matching Mole.

i don't remember off hand what "o caroline" sounds like (is it a slow singing song?)

most of Matching mole is hard instrumental-jazz-rock-prog-fusion. imagine some Mahavishnu and Return to Forever interspersed with some mellow singing songs.

i love them, but i love anything wyatt touches (including End of an Ear)

"If you call this sentimental crap / you'll make me mad"

http://www.art-ificial.com/indie/matching.jpg

Do you think Wyatt sings "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'" (from Nothing Can Stop Us) with any irony?

I'm pretty sure Wyatt was in the CP and would have not looked favorably upon most if not all elements in Labour.

England/GB has produced more world class jazz musicians than any other country apart from America - discuss

Well it isn't jazz becuz null likes it.

I like the little soft machine i've heard.

It's one thing to have sung it in 1943, another in the mid-1980s. I'm presuming Wyatt sung it with some degree of irony (or did he?) but even so what exactly was the purpose?

But the above poster says discuss, English jazz musicians vs. American. OK, England is virtually the only other country where they even vaguely get what jazz/soul/r&b, etc., is all about, but there's no way you can compare what's come out of there with what American musicians have contributed. McLaughlin--great jazz guitarist, of course; I think Victor Feldman is English, right?; and so forth. So sure, jazz is revered in Europe and there are plenty of good players--Paris is the European jazz capital these days, they do a good job of subsidizing the art. And I won't say that Europeans necessarily lack in their feeling for the blues, without which there is no jazz, but I do think it's a lot harder for them. I mean Europe just doesn't have blues music, it's not part of their experience, except second-hand, and it's kind of sad when they come over and go to Mississippi or Memphis to get a feel for it--they ain't gonna get it. It's hard enough for middle-class Americans, white or black, to get it at this point, the whole culture that produced jazz and blues has pretty much vanished, except in a few places in the American south.

Plus, too, I like the jazz avant-garde OK, but I don't really think that the improvised music scene has much to do with what jazz is all about--Derek Bailey or for that matter Eugene Chadborne is pretty dreadful stuff to listen to. You have to have some reference point and you do have to play the changes, I think, or it's just not jazz. Something else that can be very worthwhile, but not jazz. Someone like Wyatt definitely appreciates it and what he does is very cool, it's sort of like West Coast jazz of the '50s played by committed lefties, actually.

This seems to be current college radio/Other Music/etc. orthodoxy, for some reason. Was there a thread abt this already?

''Was there a thread abt this already?''

I can't recall if there was.

"I just thought it was amusing to realize that the song had been done and how impossible it was going to be to find a composer, because he wouldn't dare say he'd written it anyway, when it comes to royalties.

"As that song ... points out, England and America were for five extraordinary and unlikely years anti-fascist countries, because they weren't being the fascists."

Context is all-important here. Wyatt released his version in February 1981, at the height of the dark days of the Reagan/Thatcher Cold War era.

The original was done at the height of WWII (1943) by the Golden Gate Jubilee Gospel Quartet, an acapella GOSPEL group!

that's an interesting bit from the bio. thanks. but his reasoning sounds like a customary bit of whimsy that doesn't cut it in this case.

Scrap my first ans: well derek has said that the stuff he does hasn't got anything to do with jazz. But i think just the fact that they are improvising does mean that it has actually. The changes aren't being played but from the little i know, improvising got back into music making in a big way through jazz.

!!!!!1!

grrrr julio!!

(sorry julio)

And why does Wyatt's "whimsical" explanation not "cut it"? Robert Wyatt has not, is not and will never be a Stalinist. His track record - musically and politically - speaks for itself.

His reasoning for doing the song seems entirely valid to me: gleefully (and, yes, whimsically) pointing out the relativity and fluidity of power politics and alliances, etc.

Interesting story: when I first got this record way back when, not only was I amazed to discover that my mother not only knew this song, it actually brought tears to her eyes! And the last thing she is is a Communist of any sort. What it was, she explained, was that she remembers hearing the original as a kid groing up in Texas during WWII. This song and the Soviet national anthem were played quite often; the American anthem, the British anthem and the Soviet anthem were played at the US cinemas before the showings began. A local gospel quartet at her church (hardly a progressive-lefty congregation) regularly sang "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'". Her tearful association with this had nothing to do with sympathy for Stalin but rather was something evocative of that time and place.

Did you know that just about every American who grew up at that time knows the Soviet anthem quite well? I certainly didn't hear it, but they heard it constantly at the cinema and on the radio.

The once commonplace has been written out of US history. Certainly I knew nothing about any of this until she pointed it out to me. Yes, Wyatt was being whimsical but serious as well.

It is NOT an apology for Stalin's crimes.

Next you'll be telling me that Wyatt's version of "Grass" is an evil exhortation to murder (or at least causing severe bodily harm via boards-with-nails-in-them whackings).

i think you have duly corrected me.... i don't know why i can't seem to shake the misconception that wyatt is or was some kind of stalinist. perhaps it's the presence on the same LP of the poem "stalingrad," which lionizes the defense of that city. i can't knock it, the battle was horrible and the citizens of course defended it heroically, but the terms in which they are lionized in the poem seem to come from another age of mythmaking.... it sees a kind of glory in war. and unlike "stalin wasn't stallin'" it's hard to see any irony in wyatt's inclusion of the poem on his record. put together it makes for a confusing mix... but perhaps the word i'm looking for instead is "heady".

"grass" is a great song.

Oh "fellow travellers"? You mean anti-fascists? Shame on them. Why should any human being be "ironic" about Stalingrad?

i said "fellow travellers" admiringly, did you read the part about my mother?

"The Little Red Record" is beyond amazing. I need to listen to it every day next week. 1972? Ambient parts bring to mind "Another Green World", released 3 years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCt2V92_0ew

Well it wouldn't be surprising if "Gloria Gloom" brought to mind _Another Green World_ given Eno's involvement... :)

Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere but Phil Miller RIP...

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/phil-miller-dead/

i forgot he was in matching mole! had heard he passed through facebook friends but always associated him with hatfield and the north more than matching mole...

<3 the Mole and the whole Canterbury scene

RIP

(xp) Yeah I almost posted to the solitary Hatfield & the North but I thought this thread might get more traffic.

Now here's a thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYg5OYpKYQ4

good stuff, did he often wear a balaclava indoors during his matching mole days?