| Rola: | No Sleep Blues |
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| Traducción: | Blues de no dormir | |
| Intérprete: | The Incredible String Band | |
| Compositor: | Robin Williamson | |
| Disco: | The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion | |
| Productor: | Joe Boyd | |
| Orden al bat: | 066 | |
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Williamson spent several months studying music in Morocco, and Palmer left the group to travel to Afghanistan. For the String Band's second album, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, exotic touches such as the Middle Eastern oud, Indian sitars, and tambouras began to permeate the group's sound. The band's lyrics also became more whimsical; highlights include Williamson's tale of insomnia No Sleep Blues
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| Duración: | 03:52 |
| Año: | 1968 |
| Formato: | 7" |
| A la venta: | 01/07/1967 |
| Lado B: | Painting Box |
| Disquera: | Elektra |
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Mike Heron - voz, guitarra y armónica Licorice McKechnie - voz y percusión Danny Thompson - doble bajo John Hopkins - Piano Soma (Nazir Jairazbhoy) - sitar y tamboura |
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No Sleep Blues
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Blues de no dormir
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Cracks rack the windows, Howls hold the floor; Rains rot the rafters, And do you just have to snore? It's a most inclement climate, for the season of the night, Is that mouse playing football, oh I thought they didn't like the light? And the dawn comes sneaking up When it thinks I'm not looking; I am starting to grieve, man, I used to know but now I believe, man. They tell me sleep is a gas, and if I want to lay down, But I'm sorry I woke you, I mean I've got the no sleep blues. There's mayhem in this mansion, Since the cows were coming home, With delirium no sleepum, In a cloud of nylon foam. But release scours the outhouse, And a hard rain sears the sky, But if you let the pigs decide it, They will put you in the sty. And the dawn comes sneaking up When it thinks I'm not looking; I am starting to grieve, man, I used to know but now I believe, man. They tell me sleep is a gas, and if I want to lay down, But I'm sorry I woke you, I mean I've got the no sleep blues. I think I'll get a picture, And I think I'll put it on a nail. I think I'll get another one, And put it in a pail. But the pail got so rusty I called it red, red, red for fun, And I laughed like a leaver till you ought to seen it run. And the dawn comes sneaking up When it thinks I'm not looking; I am starting to grieve, man, I used to know but now I believe, man. They tell me sleep is a gas, and if I want to lay down, But I'm sorry I woke you. I mean I've got the no sleep blues. The size of the future declared itself no part, Aloof like a Sultan in the autumn of your heart, But the heart got so hearty, that it pulled for the shore, And the sailors fired a big salute, and it made my ears quite sore. And the dawn was sneaking up When it thinks I'm not looking; I am starting to grieve, man, I used to know but now I believe, man They tell me sleep is a gas, and I want to lay down, But I'm sorry I woke you, I mean I've got the no sleep blues. I mixed stones and water just to see what it would do. And the water it got stoney, and the stones got watery too. So I mixed my feet with water just to see what could be seen, And the water it got dirty, and the feet they got quite clean. And the dawn comes sneaking up When it thinks I'm not looking; I am starting to grieve, man, I used to know but now I believe, man. They tell me sleep is a gas, and if I want to lay down, But I'm sorry I woke you, I mean I've got the no sleep blues |
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LADO A 1. "Chinese White" 2. "No Sleep Blues" 3. "Painting Box" 4. "The Mad Hatter's Song" 5. "Little Cloud" 6. "The Eyes of Fate" |
LADO B 1. "Blues for the Muse" 2. "The Hedgehog's Song" 3. "First Girl I Loved" (Williamson) 4. "You Know What You Could Be" 5. "My Name Is Death" 6. "Gently Tender" 7. "Way Back in the 1960s" |
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The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion was the second LP by The Incredible String Band, released in July 1967. Since recording their debut album the previous year, the original trio had been reduced to two, Mike Heron and Robin Williamson. They recorded The 5000 Spirits... in London in early 1967. The album also featured Pentangle's Danny Thompson on double bass, Williamson's girlfriend Licorice McKechnie on vocals and percussion, master sitar player Nazir Jairazbhoy (credited as "Soma"), and, on piano, counter-culture activist John "Hoppy" Hopkins, who had just set up London's UFO Club with the album's producer, Joe Boyd. The album demonstrated considerable musical development and a more unified ISB sound. It displayed their abilities as multi-instrumentalists and singer-songwriters, and gained them wide acclaim. As well as winning favourable reviews in the music press, it was received enthusiastically by the DJ John Peel, who regularly featured tracks from the album on his influential Perfumed Garden programme on the pirate radio ship Radio London. The 5000 Spirits... went to Number One in the UK folk chart, and was named by Paul McCartney as one of his favourite records of that year. The lyrics, the band's various Indian and Arabian instruments, and the striking cover art by The Fool, led to it being placed as a psychedelic work. Much of the music itself, however, draws more widely on traditional British folk music. The album included Heron's "The Hedgehog's Song", Williamson's "First Girl I Loved", later recorded by Judy Collins, Jackson Browne and Don Partridge, and his "The Mad Hatter's Song". With its mixture of musical styles, the album paved the way for the band's more extended forays into psychedelia, while also containing whimsical references to talking clouds and a magic Christmas tree. In 2002, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, chose "The Hedgehog's Song" for his appearance on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs. He described the chorus - "Oh, you know all the words, and you sung all the notes / But you never quite learned the song, she sang / I can tell by the sadness in your eyes / That you never quite learned the song" - as "a powerful summing-up of life and relationships". The Album was seen in the 2009 Philip Seymour Hoffman movie Pirate Radio as the last item Bob Silver attempts to rescue from the sinking broadcast platform that was the vessel Rock Radio. (Doctor Dave declares "Oh dear, that is not a good record." and throws it back.) |
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The Incredible String Band: Glasgow
The Incredible String Band (sometimes abbreviated as ISB) were a psychedelic folk band formed in Scotland in 1966.[1] The band built a considerable following, especially within British counterculture, before splitting up in 1974. The group's members are musical pioneers in psych folk and, by integrating a wide variety of traditional music forms and instruments, in the development of world music. The group reformed in 1999 and continued to perform until 2006. In 1963, acoustic musicians Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer began performing together as a traditional folk duo in Edinburgh, particularly at a weekly club run by Archie Fisher in the Crown Bar which also regularly featured Bert Jansch. There they were seen in August 1965 by Joe Boyd, then working as a talent scout for the influential folk-based label Elektra Records. Later in the year, the duo decided to fill out their sound by adding a third member, initially to play rhythm guitar.[2] After an audition, local rock musician Mike Heron won the slot. The trio took the name "The Incredible String Band". Early in 1966 Palmer began running an all-night folk club, Clive's Incredible Folk Club, on the fourth floor of a building in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, where they became the house band.[3] When Boyd returned in his new role as head of Elektra's London office, he signed them up for an album, beating off a rival bid from Transatlantic Records. They recorded their first album, titled The Incredible String Band, at the Sound Techniques studio in London in May 1966. It was released in Britain and the United States and consisted mostly of self-penned material in solo, duo and trio formats, showcasing their playing on a variety of instruments. It won the title of "Folk Album of the Year" in Melody Maker's annual poll, and in a 1968 Sing Out! magazine interview Bob Dylan praised the album's "October Song" as one of his favourite songs of that period. The trio broke up after recording the album. Palmer left via the hippie trail for Afghanistan and India, and Williamson and his girlfriend Licorice McKechnie went to Morocco with no firm plans to return. Heron stayed in Edinburgh, playing with a band called Rock Bottom and the Deadbeats. However, when Williamson returned after running out of money, laden with Moroccan instruments including a gimbri which was much later eaten by rats, he and Heron reformed the band as a duo. In November 1966 Heron and Williamson embarked on a short UK tour, supporting Tom Paxton and Judy Collins.[5] In early 1967, they performed regularly at London clubs, including Les Cousins. Joe Boyd became the group's manager as well as producer, and secured a place for them at the Newport Folk Festival, on a bill with Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. The duo were always credited as separate writers, maintaining their individual creative identities, rather than working as a writing partnership. Boyd wrote: "Mike and Robin were Clive's friends rather than each other's. Without him as a buffer, they developed a robust dislike for one another. Fortunately, the quality and quantity of their songwriting was roughly equal. Neither would agree to the inclusion of a new song by the other unless he could impose himself on it by arranging the instruments and working out all the harmonies." In July, they released their second album, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, accompanied by Pentangle's Danny Thompson on double bass and Licorice on vocals and percussion. The album demonstrated considerable musical development and a more unified ISB sound. It displayed their abilities as multi-instrumentalists and singer-songwriters, and gained them much wider acclaim. The album included Heron's "The Hedgehog's Song", Williamson's "First Girl I Loved" (later recorded by Judy Collins, Jackson Browne, Don Partridge and Wizz Jones) and his "The Mad Hatter's Song", which, with its mixture of musical styles, paved the way for the band's more extended forays into psychedelia. Enthusiastic reviews in the music press were accompanied by appearances at venues such as London's UFO Club (co-owned by Boyd), the Speakeasy Club, and Queen Elizabeth Hall. Their exposure on John Peel's Perfumed Garden radio show on the pirate ship Radio London, and later on BBC's Top Gear, made them favourites with the emerging UK underground audience. The album went to Number One in the UK folk chart, and was named by Paul McCartney as one of his favourite records of that year. 1968 was the band's annus mirabilis with the release of their two most-celebrated albums, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter and the double LP Wee Tam and the Big Huge (issued as two separate albums in the US). Hangman's reached the top 5 in the UK album charts soon after its release in March 1968 and was nominated for a Grammy in the US. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin said his group found their way by playing Hangman's and following the instructions. A departure from the band's previous albums, the set relied heavily on a more layered production, with imaginative use of the then new multi-track recording techniques.[4] The album featured a series of vividly dreamlike Williamson songs, such as "The Minotaur's Song", a surreal music-hall parody told from the point of view of the mythical beast, and its centrepiece was Heron's "A Very Cellular Song", a 13-minute reflection on life, love and amoebas; its complex structure incorporated a Bahamian spiritual ("I Bid You Goodnight") and an adaptation of a Sikh hymn (by "may the pure light within you"). Williamson and Heron in this album had added their girlfriends, Licorice McKechnie and Rose Simpson to the band to contribute additional vocals and a variety of instruments, including organ, guitar and percussion. Despite their initially rudimentary skills, Simpson swiftly became a proficient bass guitarist, and some of McKechnie's songs were recorded by the band. By early 1968 the group were capable of filling major venues in the UK. They left behind their folk club origins and embarked on a nationwide tour incorporating a critically acclaimed appearance at the London Royal Festival Hall. Later in the year they performed at the Royal Albert Hall, at open-air festivals, and at prestigious rock venues such as the Fillmore auditoriums in San Francisco and New York. After their appearance at the Fillmore East in New York they were introduced to the practice of Scientology by David Simons (aka "Rex Rakish", once of Jim Kweskin's Jug Band). Joe Boyd, in his book White Bicycles – Making Music in the 1960s and elsewhere,[7] describes how he was inadvertently responsible for their "conversion" when he introduced the band to Simons who, having become a Scientologist, persuaded them to enrol in his absence. The band's support for Scientology over the next few years was controversial among some fans, and seemed to coincide with what many saw as the beginning of a decline in the quality of their work.[citation needed] In an interview with Oz magazine in 1969 the band spoke enthusiastically of their involvement with it, although the question of its effect on their later albums has provoked much discussion ever since. Their November 1968 album Wee Tam and The Big Huge recorded before the US trip, was musically less experimental and lush than Hangman's but conceptually even more avant-garde, a full-on engagement with the themes of mythology, religion, awareness and identity. Williamson's otherworldly songs and vision dominate the album, though Heron's more grounded tracks are also among his very best, and the contrast between the two perspectives gives the record its uniquely dynamic interplay between a sensual experience of life and a quest for metaphysical meaning. The record was released as a double album and also simultaneously as two separate LPs, a strategy which lessened its impact on the charts. |
