Kevin Ayers C/D - RIP Feb. 20th, 2013

My question was: I've got Soft Machine 1, Joy Of A Toy, Whatevershebringswesing, Bananamour and "Collection" - which of his other albums (if any) are worth buying?

'whatevershebringswesing' is denser and more orchestral, a little more portentious but i would recommend this one too, especially for the opening song

The great thing about these re-issues: if you put the Bonus Tracks of all four CDs together, you also get a full re-release of the FIFTH essential Ayers album, the 1976 compilation "Odd Ditties", which has never been re-issued on CD in this country.

The other Ayers albums are of more limited interest, but there's still plenty of good stuff to be found on them. Confessions Of Dr Dream suffers from the session men, but is the next best for sure (Didn't Feel Lonely Till I Thought Of You, Everybody's Sometime & Some People's All The Time Blues, a re-make of Soft Machine's Why Are We Sleeping, a duet with Nico.) The June 1st 1974 live album with John Cale/Eno/Nico has some good stuff, and I'd also recommend Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy (by Lady June), which was mostly recorded in collaboration with Ayers (or Eno). Sweet Deceiver (75), Yes We Have No Mananas (76) & Rainbow Takeaway (78) are all listenable, if a lot less experimental and a lot more "commercial", in intent at least. That's What You Get Babe (80) and Diamond Jack & The King Of Pain (83) are absolutely bloody awful, so that's where I stopped...

Fiver in Fopp, the first four, you guys!

"The management announces that Kevin has been hospitalised a few days ago, due to health problems. His recovery will take at least a month or more. All planned gigs and studio work has been cancelled till further notice.

We all wish Kevin a quick recovery."

Yes. Er I mean no. Perhaps?

I was listening to "Yes We Have No Mananas" yesterday, I love that album. Everybody goes on about his "classic 1969-74 period", and I love that period too but "Mananas" is just a great pop-rock record, wonderful charming songs - and Ollie Halsall too... what about that solo on "Blue"!??!? Phew, what a scorcher!!! I also love "Rainbow Takeaway", which is even more MOR but, what the hell, it's lovely.

Surely I can't be the only person that's listened to Unfairground. Or am I?

Is that the new one??

You're not the only one. I like it a lot. His best since the early to mid-70s glory years, maybe because he sounds like he's trying again, and not just idly letting the hired hands walk all over him.

And what a collection of hired hands: full track-by-track credits are missing from the CD, but they're listed here - http://www.kevin-ayers.com/info.html - and it's particularly great to have him re-united with Bridget St. John for the duet "Baby Come Home".

Lyrically, it's a real departure, with a new sense of crepuscular world-weariness; most of the easy-going pastoral whimsy has been extinguished, and you feel that he's digging deeper than he usually digs. And his knack for a winning tune seems to have re-appeared, as well.

I got quite excited on the week of release, as it climbed as high as #33 on Amazon UK, giving me hope for a first ever chart entry... but it was not to be, of course.

Pity there are no live shows to promote the album, but KA recently said re. touring that you either had to be very young or very rich to put up with the misery, the shit hotels and the shit food. There have been meaty feature-length pieces in the Times, Telegraph and Independent, and some radio interviews, including Radio 4's Today programme and Stuart Maconie's Sunday show on 6Music. He's still a reluctant interviewee, but a wonderfully informed and sympathetic guy on Radio Bremen coaxed a full hour out of him... a great interview, if you can find it.

This just in from Kevin's manager, on the ever-reliable whatevershebringswesing Yahoo group:

"EMI are planning a 4cd Ayers anthology for release in the
early summer -- this includes a wonderful find from their vaults of a
1973 QEH concert. The arrangements of 'We did it again' and 'why are
we sleeping' are some of the most extraordinary pieces of music I
have heard in a very long while."

sounds pretty good.....

agree that the unfairground is the best things he's done for a long time...

this guy needs more praise

"Song From The Bottom Of A Well" is incredible.

So my Kevin Ayers binge is in no way stopping lately.
I'm working my way up his discography (oldest to newest).
So many great things.... so many.

Sax or Clarinet... these things help make the band totally unique. Cool wind instruments.

His last album - Unfairground (2008) - is excellent as well.

He has been my best new (old) artist find in the past 6 months.

I picked up Shooting At The Moon when I was in NYC recently. Peel's famous statement about how specific his talent is is really right on. Totally great stuff.

Eleanor's Cake on Joy of a Toy is so beautiful I get weepy

I'd like to revisit with this guy. I have the Bananamour LP but haven't heard it in several years. I've heard the tracks off the June 1, 1974 thing, and remember them being quite good, but that's the extent of my knowledge.

I've only fully heard "Bananamour" (did Island print too many? It seems to infest 2nd-hand shops) and can only affirm its distinct averageness. The other bits I've heard are similarly OK-but-not-great.

I suspect that any retrospective interest is more a condemnation of the boringness and superficiality of contemporary music, than a confirmation of the greatness of Kev.

Hmm. Interesting take on it. I think I'll try one more album, though before I decide for sure.

Best interviewee I've ever had, and he even rung up my Uncut editor and his PR people at the time to say how much he'd enjoyed our chat.

His work isn't to everyone's taste - including those looking for instant retro-avant garde shots - but it is a slow-growing taste which needs careful cultivation and I'm glad he's still at it and still making fine music in the process.

Thanks Marcello!

I would add that what made me buy Bananamour in the first place was The Church covered a song off it for their covers album Box of Birds and I liked their version and they are one of my all time fave bands ever and they are actually the whole reason why I discovered Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel (talk about unknown in America!!) so I do believe there may be something more in Ayers' work in store for me that I may enjoy.

Also that Confessions album had a damn cool sleeve.

Get Joy of a Toy. There's a good and cheap CD reissue. It's one of the best records I nicked from my parents.

I wonder what Ayers career would have been like if he'd been a bit harder hearted, had more ambition?

He always looks good in photos.

I wonder what Ayers career would have been like if he'd been a bit harder hearted, had more ambition?

A bit more like Bryan Ferry for instance?

I see Bizarro World Ayers more as going down the Robert Palmer route. Kev doing "Addicted To Love" with the same video would have been a thing of remarkableness.

Oh yes, absolutely, kind of a hippy Robert Palmer, that works

I'd like to hear Ayers "Johnny & Mary".

I've interviewed Kevin as well - see the front page of Stylus, where it shall remain for ever more! He wasn't exactly the easiest of subjects on the day, but I re-read the full transcript a couple of days ago and now think that it's one of my better interviews. Like Marcello, I got great feedback afterwards, which as a lifelong fan meant a lot - and even an unsolicited signed CD in the post at Christmas, which meant even more.

Fellow Ayers diehards will be excited to hear that there's a new album of private demos and out-takes from the 1970s, containing some unreleased songs and an early demo for the Dr Dream Suite, available by mail order from Voiceprint, which his manager describes as "Kevin's Holy Grail". David Bedford, Mike Oldfield, Archie Leggett and Robert Wyatt all feature:

http://www.voiceprint.co.uk/web/Release/RR009/

Impossible to imagine a harder-hearted, more ambitious Ayers, as his self-effacing singularity is central to his appeal. But I guess it would have involved the triumph of his cynical side over his idealistic/romantic side, whereas his best work has both aspects locked in dynamic equilibrium, to great effect.

Wrong link to transcript. This one works....

I like "That's What You Get Babe"!

I suppose that Diamond Jack and the Queen of Pain (1983) was an attempt to turn Ayers into a cross between "Johnny and Mary"-era Robert Palmer and "Young Turks"-era Rod Stewart. The result, as you might imagine, was an unqualified disaster.

Mike T. Diva, don't you owe me a compilation of good (R&B) club music in the early 80's? We've talked about this before...

I haven't forgotten. Honest...

Okay I've got "Joy Of A Toy", now. And this is some freaky-ass Beatles-y shit. Which is not a bad thing at all! I dig it. Very nice. And better than early Pink Floyd. Sorry.

Not better than floyd, though Syd does play guitar on one of the demos.

Marcello, you wrote that uncut piece? Ha! I ended up with a free copy of that issue, and that piece was singularly responsible for making me check out solo Ayers. Which I consider my most important new pop interest of my thirties. Thanks.

Mike, thanks for sharing as well.

I am sitting in Brooklyn housing court waiting for number 48 to be called and I just read the 2008 interview. My heavens that was sad.

every so often i need to really vibe out to "whatevershebringswesing" (the song) for a few days. it's late summer so i guess the time is right.

Kevin's ashes were laid to rest in Deya last weekend, on what would have been his 69th birthday. He was placed next to Ollie Halsall, in a ceremony led by his daughters Galen and Rachel (video link), and followed by a concert at a local bar. Bridget St John sang "May I", Mike Oldfield linked up via Skype, and Bob Geldof was in attendance.

Bridget St John sang "May I",

;_;

He was placed next to Ollie Halsall

;_;

Listening to the "Songs For Insane Times" box. Disc 3 does a great job cherry picking from the inconsistent later albums and the live show is a treat.

And, yes, his voice is a cozy warm blanket.

Andy Williams. An exploding piano. And Kevin Ayers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix-Jrni28uY

I liked his Soft Machine contributions, but don't think I played his side of June 1, 1974 very much, still need to check several of his albums---did end up liking The Unfairground well enough to unsuccessfully pitch it to Whiney at the late and sometimes great Paper Thin Walls (where we based coverage around a posted advance track:

Kevin Ayers, “Unfairground”
From The Unfairground (Gigantic)
vintage violets //Out Now

Aye, ‘tis the almost-title track (“The” dropped to make the protest more emphatic?)
from Kevin Ayers' first album since 1992's Still Life With Guitar, a title that would be all too appropriate for several tracks in this set, despite the all-star accompaniment (Hugh
Hopper, Phil Manzanera, Architecture In Helsinki, Euro Childs, many
more). At first he confines himself to a gruff petulance, and the
backup's deferential, not to mention genteel and drippy (despite my
loving some of the guests' own albums). But "Wide Awake" pulls him into the
music, of his writing and the ensemble, "and when I'm dancing and
singing along, it doesn't matter if it's right, doesn't matter if it's
wrong," which suits both his stoical and hedonistic tendencies
(his own press kit mentions---well, never mind 'til edit).The song ends with a jolt.
But he's still awake, and has a "Brainstorm": "So you shout, so you scream,
'Give me back my dream,' but if it's lost if it's gone, I won't keep hanging
on, so the storm, can blow me away," with cracking loose-wire guitar
after that, waiting for him, although not quite
dangerous-enough-seeming for the context, to my taste, anyway. But
then "Unfairground" finds him lured back into the sporting life, prowling the
galleries, seeking a prize, 'til the carnival music slides him back
into the country daylight, another sucker observing "birds in singing
in a cage. You understand you lost one. You step outside your
rage"(yeah, because we get a jolting, loping beat on this song, a
shrug, an elbow, a number of turns, also with guitar strum and
bouncing bass bow for a while, and he's past the aforementioned
petulance) "But what's left to believe in. The children in the lake? I
didn't see them go under. Let's try, another take." Told you there
were some jolts and turns! Not that he's that far from the tunnel of
love or his beloved (bottle) or "you", whom he's murmuring all this to,
the old terseness serving him well for the moment(in balance with imagery and
stealthy progress). If we didn't get to use this song, those others
would be okay, and I could still talk about this 'un (oh yeah, and in the
last one, "Run Run Run", he seems to be married again, and handling it
okay, face-to-face-wise; some good terse vitality here too).

His part of June 1, 1974 is awful, please don't judge him by that.
Spurred on by the talk of brass in pop songs, I was listening to Whatevershebringswesing today, still astounding from start to finish.

It's not awful.

Shooting at the Moon is so good, maybe the perfect Harvest LP (actually maybe that’s 3EB but anyway)

Has anyone read anything good about the recording of this album?

I couldn't call any record perfect that wastes eight minutes on "Pisser Dans un Violon", but otherwise it's great! (Never heard Third Ear Band, my favourite record on Harvest might be... Drastic Plastic?)
There's only a few paragraphs on the recording of the record in the liner notes to the 2003 CD. I bet there's some information in Mike Oldfield's memoir, he held Ayers in high regard as a mentor.

ha for some reason i really like the self-indulgent farting about on this album - for reasons I don’t understand it feels like it flows really nicely between the songs and the “experimentation” and (for me) it all works as a coherent listen

thanks for the Mike Oldfield lead, good idea, i will keep an eye out for that one

I’d be over the bananamoon if someone did an Ayers bio.

https://www.charlesmarlow.com/blog/2017/02/14/kevin-ayers-and-deia-all-that-crazy-gift-of-time/

Good stuff.

Keep thinking about this one Robert Sheckley novel about Ibiza, SOMA BLUES, which really stayed with me.

I love the idea that Kevin lacked ambition. It makes him appear far cooler than today’s nakedly thrusting rock and rollers. But I don’t believe it’s true. I would say it was more the case that Kevin lacked direction. Or perhaps that there were no route maps for his generation of musicians.

This was a weird detail:

‘He actually first came in 1964,’ one person told me, ‘because Robert Wyatt’s mum Honore used to come to Deia.’

I really fucking love Kevin Ayers but there was a massive drop in quality around 1974/1975 which he never seemed to return from, and June 1, 1974 is far from the peak Ayers referred to in the article.

(but this is nitpicking, it was a lovely bit of writing and wonderful to hear the locals' stories)

Otm on all counts.

To me, Kevin often sounds like a vair British

xxxpost Over on the Wyatt thread, somebody mentioned that young Robert came there with his Mom, so maybe they brought Ayers, or told him about it.
xxxxxpost Though Ayers did make objets d'art, while Swann's only art was his life, as depicted by Proust (Ayers did some life-art too, apparently).

Robert Graves was a family friend of the Wyatt/Ellidge's. "Vair" is an attempt to at transcribing a peculiarly upper class English version of "very".

"I was very very drunk..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cwyq3XWeHE

The bugger in the short sleeves visited my mum.

Also---Thomas Pynchon to thread! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vair

^Also a disciple of Robert Graves, to some extent apparently.

Also also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vair_(disambiguation) (V. was becoming a remarkably scattered concept..." but think most of this relates, one way or another? Some of TP's characters no doubt think so too.)

aw that Deia article is really sweet, thanks

Yeah, really enjoyed reading that. I spent a nice 20 mins wandering around it on Google Maps too.

The Robert Wyatt bio makes no mention of his mum, Honor, going to Deia, just Robert and then the rest of the Softs going to visit family friend Robert Graves.

that video upthread has me wanting to listen to "Why Bother?" by Peter Cook and Chris Morris again

"Vair" is an attempt to at transcribing a peculiarly upper class English version of "very".

very effectively used by cartoonist John Allison in his Tackleverse comics (/derail)

I thought it might be some reference to Heathers U.K.

TIL the meaning of "vair" thx all

Vair
The moment I met you
I swear

Let’s see if this works:
https://scontent-lga3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.18169-9/1016999_620689121285602_1671609400_n.jpg?stp=cp0_dst-jpg_e15_fr_q65&_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=e007fa&_nc_ohc=2MAtvK5xFdIAX8F6ffn&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-2.xx&oh=00_AfCziAvPoGE6s2AuRq5cQANkQSD8hgFjlk58PBQ5emN5Ww&oe=643F1197

That’s seems to be a photo of Ayers’s daughter(s) with some musicians that also played with John Cale and Ollie Halsall at Kevin Ayer’s memorial, including Ollie’s ex.

https://www.facebook.com/GalenAyersMusic/photos/a.620688967952284/620689121285602/?type=3

Meh, I got it right once but I kind of knew I’d put at least one apostrophe on the wrong side of the “s.”

Reposting the Andy Summers Ollie Halsall guitar duel from the Patto thread. Hadn’t even realized that was Kevin in the middle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJIDNkha_M4

^ love the cars interpolation!

amazing revive all around.

speaking of vair british accents:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPyUr_TkT74

he has a lovely voice, of course, one of my very favorites! shame he didn't seem to think much of it

Clemenza's news about an Ayers box nice-priced on Amazon has led me back to other good stuff on this thread I'd forgotten: Kevin Ayers - The First Four LPS - Whatevershebringswepoll

Good conversations here w new albumists Paul and Galen (who have released an advance track of "Lonely Town," following those of Dylan and MacCartney, according to James Blechh, and I recently heard the good 2022 version by Richie Furay), and also

Aside from this collaboration, what else do you have planned?

GA: February was the 10th anniversary of Kevin’s passing and I manage his catalogue, so I’ve joined up with Cherry Red to re-release Joy Of A Toy [Ayers’ 1969 solo debut] on vinyl. That’s happening in August and we’re super-excited about it. We’re also re-releasing Falling Up [1988] and there’s a box set coming too.

Aptly enough Keven Ayers left Soft Machine because the music was getting too complex.

all fine and good, but it's long overdue for a vinyl reissue of The Unfairground.

Did anyone save that Charles Marlow deia blog post? It’s a dead link now and I missed it.

http://web.archive.org/web/20220815065734/https://www.charlesmarlow.com/blog/2017/02/14/kevin-ayers-and-deia-all-that-crazy-gift-of-time/

I listened his 2007 record and he still got it.