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Volume Two (The Soft Machine Album)
''Volume Two'' is the second LP album by The Soft Machine, released in 1969. The album combined humour, dada, psychedelia and jazz. In 2000 it was voted number 715 in Colin Larkin's ''All Time Top 1000 Albums''. Overview In the lyrics to "Have You Ever Bean Green?" Soft Machine thanks the Jimi Hendrix Experience, with whom they had just toured through the United States in 1968; as Hendrix's opening band they were exposed to large crowds for the first time. The title of this song is a play on the chorus lyric in the Hendrix song "Are You Experienced?", "Have you ever been experienced?". Wyatt thanks "Brian" (Brian Hopper) and "George" (engineer George Chkiantz) in the next section, ''Pataphysical Introduction – Pt. 2,'' which also includes a quote of "These Foolish Things." The title of the closing suite, "Esther's Nose Job", is derived from a chapter in Thomas Pynchon's novel '' V.'' Track listing Side 1 #"Rivmic Melodies" – 17:07 ##"Pataphysical Introduction – Pt. ...
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Soft Machine
Soft Machine are a British rock band from Canterbury formed in mid-1966 by Mike Ratledge (keyboards, 1966–1976), Robert Wyatt (drums, vocals, 1966–1971), Kevin Ayers (bass, guitar, vocals, 1966–1968) and Daevid Allen (guitar, 1966–1967). As a central band of the Canterbury scene, the group became one of the first British psychedelic acts and later moved into progressive rock and jazz fusion. Their varying line-ups have included former members such as Andy Summers (guitar, 1968), Hugh Hopper (bass, 1968–1973), Elton Dean (saxophone 1969–1972), Karl Jenkins (keyboards, saxophone, 1972–1978, 1980–1981, 1984) and Allan Holdsworth (guitar, 1973–1975), and currently consists of John Marshall (drums, 1972–1978, 1980–1981, 1984 and since 2015), John Etheridge (guitar, 1975–1978, 1984 and since 2015), Theo Travis (saxophone, flutes, keyboards since 2015), and Fred Thelonious Baker (bass since 2020). Though they achieved little commercial success, the So ...
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The Jimi Hendrix Experience
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music." Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army, but was discharged the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville then Nashville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the chitlin' circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after bassis ...
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Soft Machine Albums
Soft may refer to: * Softness, or hardness, a property of physical materials Arts and entertainment * ''Soft!'', a 1988 novel by Rupert Thomson * Soft (band), an American music group * ''Soft'' (album), by Dan Bodan, 2014 * Softs (album), by Soft Machine, 1976 * "Soft", a song by Kings of Leon on the 2004 album ''Aha Shake Heartbreak'' * "Soft"/"Rock", a 2001 single by Lemon Jelly Other uses * Sorgenti di Firenze Trekking (SOFT), a system of walking trails in Italy * Soft matter, a subfield of condensed matter * Magnetically soft, material with low coercivity * Soft skills, a person's people, social, and other skills * Soft commodities, or softs *A flaccid penis Tumescence is the quality or state of being tumescent or swollen. Tumescence usually refers to the normal engorgement with blood (vascular congestion) of the erectile tissues, marking sexual excitation, and possible readiness for sexual activity. ..., the opposite of "hard" See also * * * Softener (disambiguation ...
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Discogs
Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the largest online database of electronic music, the site now includes releases in all genres on all formats. After the database was opened to contributions from the public, rock music began to become the most prevalent genre listed. , Discogs contains over 15.7 million releases, by over 8.3 million artists, across over 1.9 million labels, contributed from over 644,000 contributor user accounts – with these figures constantly growing as users continually add previously unlisted releases to the site over time. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc. and located in Portland, Oregon, United States. History The discogs.com domain name was registered in August 2000, and Discogs its ...
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Hammond Organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated sound by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, and then strengthening the signal with an amplifier to drive a speaker cabinet. The organ is commonly used with the Leslie speaker. Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured. The organ was originally marketed by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano. It quickly became popular with professional jazz musicians in organ trios—small groups centered on the Hammond organ. Jazz club owners found that organ trios were cheaper than hiring a big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a ...
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Lowrey Organ
The Lowrey organ is an electronic organ named for its developer, Frederick C. Lowrey (1871–1955), a Chicago-based industrialist and entrepreneur. Lowrey's first commercially successful full-sized electronic organ, the Model S Spinet or ''Berkshire'' came to market in 1955, the year of his death. Lowrey had earlier developed an attachment for a piano, adding electronic organ stops on 60 notes while keeping the piano functionality, called the ''Organo'', first marketed in 1949 as a very successful competitor to the Hammond ''Solovox''. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lowrey was the largest manufacturer of electronic organs in the world. In 1989, the Lowrey Organ Company produced its 1,000,000th organ. Up until 2011, modern Lowrey organs were built in La Grange Park, Illinois. In 2011, it was announced that production of a few models was to be moved to Indonesia. History and notable users History Frederick Lowrey experimented with electronic organ design, trying different met ...
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Mike Ratledge
Michael Roland Ratledge (born 6 May 1943) is a British musician. A part of the Canterbury scene, he was a founding member of Soft Machine. He was the last founding member to leave the group, doing so in 1976. Biography and career Ratledge was born in Maidstone, Kent, the son of a Canterbury secondary modern school headmaster. As a child, he was educated in classical music, the only kind of music played in his parents' home. He learned to play the piano, and with his friend Brian Hopper, whom he had met at Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury, played classical piano and clarinet pieces. Ratledge also met Brian's younger brother Hugh, and Robert Wyatt. In 1961, he met Daevid Allen, who interested them in playing jazz. Through Cecil Taylor's piano pieces Ratledge became familiar with the music of Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In 1963, he played in the Daevid Allen Trio. Unlike his friends, Ratledge wanted to further his education, and studied ...
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Arrangement
In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orchestration in that the latter process is limited to the assignment of notes to instruments for performance by an orchestra, concert band, or other musical ensemble. Arranging "involves adding compositional techniques, such as new thematic material for introductions, transitions, or modulations, and endings. Arranging is the art of giving an existing melody musical variety".(Corozine 2002, p. 3) In jazz, a memorized (unwritten) arrangement of a new or pre-existing composition is known as a ''head arrangement''. Classical music Arrangement and transcriptions of classical and serious music go back to the early history of this genre. Eighteenth century J.S. Bach frequently made arrangements of his own and other composers' piec ...
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Hugh Hopper
Hugh Colin Hopper (29 April 1945 – 7 June 2009) was a British progressive rock and jazz fusion bass guitarist. He was a prominent member of the Canterbury scene, as a member of Soft Machine and other bands. Biography Early career Starting in 1963 as bassist with The Daevid Allen Trio, alongside drummer Robert Wyatt, he alternated between free jazz and rhythm and blues. In 1964 with Brian Hopper (his brother), Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Richard Sinclair he formed The Wilde Flowers, a pop music group. Although they never released any records during their existence (a compilation was released 30 years later), The Wilde Flowers are acknowledged as the founders of the Canterbury scene and spawned its two most important groups, Soft Machine and Caravan. With Soft Machine (1968–1973) Hopper's role with Soft Machine was initially as the group's road manager, but he already composed for their first album ''The Soft Machine'' and played bass on one of its tracks. In 1969 he was r ...
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Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt (born Robert Wyatt-Ellidge, 28 January 1945) is a retired English musician. A founding member of the influential Canterbury scene bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, he was initially a kit drummer and singer before becoming paraplegic following an accidental fall from a window in 1973, which led him to abandon band work, explore other instruments, and begin a forty-year solo career. A key player during the formative years of British jazz fusion, psychedelia and progressive rock, Wyatt's own work became increasingly interpretative, collaborative and politicised from the mid-1970s onwards. His solo music has covered a particularly individual musical terrain ranging from covers of pop singles to shifting, amorphous song collections drawing on elements of jazz, folk and nursery rhyme. Wyatt retired from his music career in 2014, stating "there is a pride in topping I don't want he musicto go off." He is married to English painter and songwriter Alfreda Benge. ...
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Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For '' Gravity's Rainbow'', Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction."National Book Awards – 1974"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-29.
(With essays by Casey Hicks and Chad Post from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog. The mock acceptance speech by Irwin Corey is not reprinted by NBF.)
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These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)
"These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)" is a standard with lyrics by Eric Maschwitz, writing under the pseudonym Holt Marvell, and music by Jack Strachey, both Englishmen. Harry Link, an American, sometimes appears as a co-writer; his input was probably limited to an alternative "middle eight" (bridge) which many performers prefer. It is one of a group of "Mayfair songs", like " A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square". Maschwitz wrote the song under his pen name, Holt Marvell, at the behest of Joan Carr for a late-evening revue broadcast by the BBC. The copyright was lodged in 1936. According to the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', British cabaret singer Jean Ross, with whom Maschwitz had a youthful liaison, was the muse for the song. Creation Although Maschwitz's wife Hermione Gingold speculated in her autobiography that the haunting jazz standard was written for either herself or actress Anna May Wong, Maschwitz himself contradicted such claims. Maschwitz ...
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