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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9873 Posts |
 Posted - 02/11/2011 : 19:44:36
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THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND
For some an acquired taste but I love 'em!
Cousin Caterpillar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu0brlGGQ2Y&feature=related
Wee Tam and the Big Huge is the fourth album by the Incredible String Band, released in Europe as both a double LP and separate single LPs in November 1968. In the US, however, the two discs were released separately as Wee Tam and The Big Huge.
The album is considered by many to be, along with its predecessor The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, the best work the band ever produced. Consisting of a very varied selection of songs by Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, with intriguing and poetic lyrics, the album is rich with eclectic and adept instrumentation and arrangements. Around 15 instruments are featured, played mainly by the two band members Williamson and Heron but also, in supporting roles, on a few tracks by Rose Simpson and Licorice McKechnie.
Williamson explained the title as follows:- "I saw a man with a huge big dog, [and] we knew somebody called Wee Tam, in Edinburgh. It seemed like it was a good idea in terms of one person looking up at the stars - Wee Tam and the Big Huge, just like the vastness of the universe."[2]
Arriving at Woodstock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltpqnjVqvf0&feature=related
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The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter was the third album by The Incredible String Band, released in March 1968. It is regarded by many critics[who?] as a quintessential example of hippie culture, with its promotion of ideas such as communal living, eastern mysticism and rationalistic pantheism.
The album was a major commercial success in the UK, staying in the charts for 27 weeks with a peak of #5. It has sold 800,000 copies in the UK to date.[citation needed] In the U.S., the ISB always remained underground and the album struggled to #161 on the Billboard 200. However, it was nominated for a Grammy in the folk music category.
The album features a series of vividly dreamlike Robin Williamson songs, such as "The Minotaur's Song", a surreal music-hall parody sung from the point of view of the mythical beast. Its centrepiece is Mike Heron's "A Very Cellular Song", a 13-minute reflection on life, love, and amoebas, whose complex structure incorporates a Bahamian spiritual ("I Bid You Goodnight", originally recorded by the Pinder Family [1][2]) and an adaptation of a Sikh hymn ("May the pure light within you"). The album's layered production style employs multitrack recording techniques[3] and a very wide array of instruments from all corners of the world, including sitar, gimbri, shenai, oud, harpsichord, panpipes, and kazoo.
The album's cover art - which on original LP issues was the back cover, as the front showed just Williamson and Heron - consists of a photograph taken on Christmas Day 1967. It shows both musicians, their girlfriends Licorice McKechnie and Rose Simpson, friends Roger Marshall and Nicky Walton, several children of their friend Mary Stewart, and Robin's dog Leaf.[4]
Regarding the title, Mike Heron said at the time:- "The hangman is death and the beautiful daughter is what comes after. Or you might say that the hangman is the past twenty years of our life and the beautiful daughter is now, what we are able to do after all these years. Or you can make up your own meaning - your interpretation is probably just as good as ours." [4]
Witches Hat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL6a7ToCSZY&feature=related
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Don't you know there ain't no devil,
There's just god when he's drunk.
-Tom Waits |
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Wee Tam & The Big Huge-The Hangman's Daughter
