Kevin Ayers And The Whole World – Drijbregen, Holland – July 30, 1970 – VPRO, Hilversum –
Running one of my favorites tonight. Kevin Ayers and The Whole World, recorded at Gemeendecentrum in The Netherlands on July 30, 1970.
Although it’s been available in various forms and incarnations, it never hurts to be familiar with Kevin Ayers and the amazing group of musicians he assembled during this tenure. The songs and the lineup are largely from his 1970 Shooting At The Moon album, notably Mike Oldfield, who would go on and achieve a huge success with his debut Tubular Bells album. Robert Wyatt on drums is a nod to the early days with The Soft Machine and further proof Ayers and Wyatt were some of the true innovators of the Progressive form.
That Kevin Ayers never really achieved massive international recognition is a shame, but probably allowed him to branch off and try new avenues, where being a vastly popular artist could stifle some of that. Still, he was very well known in an ever growing circle of musicians whose collective influence was deeply felt throughout the world and synonymous with the Canterbury Sound from the early mid-60s.
There was the musical summit with Kevin Ayers, Brian Eno, Nico, Phil Manzanera and John Cale which resulted in the milestone June 1, 1974 album which did a lot to further Kevin Ayers’ visibility to the rest of the world.
But any release featuring Kevin Ayers, whether via his solo work or his collaborations are essential projects to undertake. If you gravitate towards the musical road less traveled – Kevin Ayers is your perfect guide. Go exploring.
Crank this up and go there.
Summer is over, Winter is around the corner and everybody is back at work or school. If you’re in school you’re probably knee-deep in History – tests, reports, papers – homework. Reading about things that happened decades before you were born – can’t quite wrap your head around it. If you’re a teacher, it’s like pulling teeth to get your students even remotely interested in what happened before they were born. If you’re at work, you may be one of those people in middle-management who have to do presentations – something to amaze your boss and your colleagues – no pressure, but you have to deliver the goods, usually yesterday. Not to brag, but Past Daily is one website where you can find out about a lot of things you didn’t know about – hear things you aren’t familiar with – and by becoming a subscriber you can download all this audio (at last count over 10,000 sound files) you can build your own reference library, a mouse click away. You can also go exploring by using the Search Engine to dig deep.
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