This reminds me of John Peel. I first listened to Peel in the early 70’s when I was about 12 or 13. A rare treat to stay up late and listen to some frankly weird music that was nothing like what was in the charts. It was around the same time I first watched the early Monty Python’s Flying Circus TV series. Something about the silliness, wackiness, just “differentness” of it all really appealed to me.
As well as music Peel would play spoken word stuff by Viv Stanshall and Ivor Cutler that perhaps made sense of the Python link. Ivor appears on this album; and I am damn sure I would have first heard songs from it on the great man’s radio show. I picked it up about 10 years later as a “twofer” double album with Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard.
Rock Bottom is a beautiful thing. Wyatt sings like no-one else and he and the musicians just seem to let the songs flow of their own accord until they are done. It is impossible to compare to anything else really. Nothing like The Soft Machine that preceded it that’s for sure. It’s just different, but makes it’s own perfect logic after a while.
Sounds really interesting, will find myself a copy.
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