In the beginning....there Wasa Wasa

One of the places where I listen to music is in the car.  I'm making long journeys between the South-East and the North-West of England, and vice versa. This gives me a lot of time to listen. For part of the journey I listen to BBC 6 Music, depending on who's on, but most of the time I listen to albums.  I have a system.  There's a high-capacity USB stick which contains all the albums (I remove them once I've listened to them and need the space for new albums) I have bought recently (a loose term, could be two or more years ago), but the main point is they are albums I've not listened to all the way through, yet.  I work through them alphabetically by title and am currently going through 'T'.  There are a lot of albums whose title begins 'The', which is where I am.  Occasionally my desire to listen to a new album means that I go crazy and listen out of sequence.  Enough about my methodical madness.

'The Harvest Years'  is a compilation of the albums of Edgar Broughton Band from the Harvest record label.  I've been aware of the band for many years as Harvest LP inner sleeves used to have pictures of recent albums from the label including lots of bands who seemed to the young brain immersed in Deep Purple to be 'way out there'.  Pete Brown's Piblokto. The Third Ear Band. Quatermass, and many more (including Syd Barrett who I was only vaguely aware of at the time).

The Edgar Broughton Band looked like a bunch of crazies, so I steered clear of them at the time, plus they never seemed to get much radio play - the only source of new music back then unless a mate had an album.  Curiosity got the better of me a few years back and this and my alphabetic obsession led to me listening to five of their albums (plus a live set) back to back.

I'm glad I've heard these albums (which are from their heyday, I guess), though I don't think I'll be seeking out every other record by them.  Lyrically, there's a strong counter-culture vibe, which I like, and Edgar's vocals are reminiscent of Captain Beefheart at times.  Another positive in my book.  A few songs landed well, but there is at least one song which I found lyrically dubious. Overall, I think the best album is the excitingly titled 'Edgar Broughton Band' from 1971.  From it comes 'Call Me A Liar'.

A couple more tracks from the band, first 'Love In the Rain' from the album 'Wasa Wasa', whose cover I like the most (though this a variation from a 'Best Of' compilation), but also the album cover that most put me off the band as a teenager.  This is followed by 'Things On My Mind' from the band's final Harvest album, 'Oora'.

The next post will be more of a miscellany, probably with bit of commentary, on recent enthusiasms. Be seeing you.