All you lot already have all the Henry Cow albums right?...bit of a shit band name really innit?
Never liked portrayals of socks either.
Just the name 'enry cow invokes within me the whiff of patchouli oil joss sticks and ethnic art objects;not because 'Enry were a bunch of smelly hippies,quite the opposite...almost.....the basement shop that i first encountered album sleeves with unpleasant reimaginings of socks aboard was situated underneath the most unashamedly Hippie apothecary in post-punk Leicester....the "Very Bazaar"...geddit?....Underneath the whiffy smokey atmosphere of street level Very Bazaar,lay the only place in Leicester you could buy Whitehouse records,Recommended Records, Half Japanese, reggae Dub 10 inchers,The Residents ,and Henry Cow!?.... When i got my first Dole Giro, to the value of 32 quid...I cashed it in, got on my Bike and went to the subterranean Very Bazaar record shop,with its matt black painted brick decor and homemade record racks.(the upstairs bit still exists!?)A bit as i imagine a gift shop run by Crass would have looked. The record bit was ran by an amiable mustachioed chap called Steve,and Lydon's mate ,Jock MacDonald's brother Martin,who loved Lynard Skynard previously, before he encountered johnny Rotten in the Pub next door to the shop (the Globe),then suddenly he became a Punk Rocker overnight.The record shop also became a one room Bollock Brothers tribute ,as brother Jock was a member.Last i heard of Martin he was wanted in Greece for drug offences,and was running away to hideout in Ireland.
Anyway, I digress;on giro(my benefits cheque) day,I came away with, the Cravats In Toytown, This Heat's Deceit, Metabolist "Hansten Klork","Whitehouse's Dedicated to Peter Kurten in yellow vinyl, and Henry Cow's "In Praise Of Learning". I think there may have been a Pink Military 12inch in there too.....ah blood and lipstick.And i still had two quid left for a lemon split bun and an ice cream soda,how punk rock is that(?) from Brucciani's....RIP!
So,as you lot have already got everything by 'Enry, here's that limited edition bonus disc from the 50th anniversary box set thingy, which you've already got of course. If you haven't i might upload the box set with an iTunes style bit rate of 192k,'cus it's massive and i'm running out of storage space.
Here's a 1972 style review of the album to finish:
"Track one sounds like Soft Machine,but the rest doesn't."
Notes:
Tracks 1 & 2: recorded in our rehearsal place probably in 1972
Tracks 3, 4, 5 & 6: extracted from a forgotten tape I gave to Steve Feigenbaum in 1978. The original recordings were presumably made on cassettes run from the mixing desk.
Track 7: out-take from "In Praise Of Learning" mixed by Tim Hodgkinson at Cold Storage in 1984.
Tracks 8, 9 & 10: recorded at a public concert for NDR Jazz Workshop, Hamburg on 26th March, 1976
Track 11: recorded at a public concert at the Sendesaal, Studio F, Radio Bremen, on 22nd of March, 1978, for New Jazz Live.
Track 12: extract from an Unrest out-take mixed by Tim Hodgkinson at Cold Storage in 1984.
Tracklist:
1 Pre Virgin Demo 1 3:55
2 Pre Virgin Demo 2 1:02
3 Unidentified Improvisation 1 1:30
4 Unidentified Improvisation 2 5:37
5 Unidentified Late Composition 2:04
6 Exploded Amygdala / Teen Introduction 3:37
7 Lovers Of Gold 6:29
8 Hamburg 6 5:33
9 Ruins Extract 8:24
10 Hamburg 7 9:44
11 Half The Sky 5:03
12 Extract From The Glove 2:19
