Of course, in my life, every week is Canterbury week
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Originally Posted by Howard the Duck
this is one of my fave Canterbury songs:-
more to follow later
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Ahh, this is one of my favorite National Health songs and one of my overall favorite songs from the scene ever (although there are many of those). Yet another brilliant composition from Dave Stewart who I really think was at his peak in the late 70s before he left that sort of thing to do pop with Barbara Gaskin.
Tenemos Roads is quite ambitious and I love the vocals by Amanda Parsons. I personally asked Dave (on FB) what the background for this song was and he replied writing that the title and the inspiration came from the book The Worm Ourboros .. Although in his mind, Tenemos Roads was a some place out in space and not on planet earth!
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Originally Posted by Sneer
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Arzachel has an interesting story. As you may know, this is an early incarnation of the band Uriel which evolved into Egg after Steve Hillage had left and they were advised to change their name.
It was basically put together in a matter of days to cash in on the psychedelic trend at the time. Later on, the album became a collectors item due to it's rarity value. From Dave Stewart :
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Originally Posted by Dave Stewart on Arzachel
What happened with Arzachel was this : we – the members of Egg, that is – knew a guy who had a demo studio in Gerrard Street, Soho. This chap, Peter Wicker, knew a foreign gentleman called Zack, who had a record label and was anxious to release some of this “psychedelic” music which was currently fashionable. We knew how to play this psychedelic stuff, having spent many happy hours at the Middle Earth Club listening to bands like Love Sculpture and Sam Gopal Dream. A deal was struck. We were to record an album in an afternoon – hey, no problem! – in exchange for a pitifully small amount of money that, at the time, seemed enormous. As we had just signed an exclusive deal with Decca, we thought it would be advisable to use a different name, so we settled on “Arzachel“, the name of a crater on the moon that Mont spotted on an astrological poster on the wall of his toilets. We also called in our old mate Steve Hillage to play guitar, sing and generally make things even more psychedelic. We rehearsed for a day, then whipped out the album in about eight hours. On side 2, most of the stuff was improvised, and we ended up banging away on a final chord for about five minutes, all of us watching the hands of the studio clock. As soon as it reached quarter past, we knew we’d recorded enough material for an album, and brought the piece – entitled “Metempsychosis”, yeah! – to a merciful halt…
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As for my own favorites from the scene, they've all been posted before, but I guess I can start off with Hatfield and the North's Fitter Stoke Has a Bath which was first released as a B-side to their only single "Let's Eat (Real Soon)" and later also appeared on their second album Rotters' Club.
The song is sort of autobiographical and was written by late drummer Pip Pyle. Fitter Stoke was the name of his daughter's imaginary friend. Pamela ("making cups of tea and washing clothes") was his girlfriend at the time (I believe) and the mother of his children. Actually, before she was with Pip, she was with Robert Wyatt .. And Pip was with Alfreda Benge who is married with Robert today. Yes, they traded girlfriends.
I slightly prefer this early version to the one found on Rotters' Club.