The Soft Machine (1968)

Just in case you thought this was turning into a classic rock rehash blog, here's one you don't see every day. The Soft Machine, despite initial early promise, never exceeded cult-following status in the States and was probably just too weird for the rest of the world. Nowadays they are considered the keystone band of the "Canterbury Scene", an off-the-beaten-path subgenre of prog rock, but way back around 1967 they were often mentioned in the same breath as much better know (today) bands like the Pink Floyd. They also opened for the Jimi Hendrix Experience during an early American tour, an experience (no pun intended) that would alter the band's direction early on.

The early Soft Machine had two strong band members: Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers. Due to circumstances I can't fully claim to understand, Allen left the band and formed the Continental-based Gong and all of its myriad related bands. This happened before the first Soft Machine album. Meanwhile, the band forged on, but the Hendrix tour wrecked Ayers to the point of contemplating quitting music altogether. Thanks to a personal appeal from Hendrix himself he would alter course into his own solo career, but still sever his connections with Soft Machine. However, he is present on this album, largely in a bass-playing role. Once Allen had quit, the band veered into a guitarless direction and became one of the very few guitarless trios that predated ELP.

The songs of the first album are undoubtedly weird, but still mostly grounding in 1960's rock. Ayers is the principal songwriter, and, as is solo career would later demonstrate, his tended to bundle his strangeness into groupings, so you get very weird ethereal stuff next to straight-ahead stuff. The "stable" feeling of the first album may also have something to do with the unlikely connection to Animals alumni Chas Chandler and Tom Wilson handling production duties.

The next album, which I found packaged with this one, is much different, with the Ayer-less band under the full sway of Frank Zappa. That fad in turn would give way to instrumental jazz, pushing the band far, far away from the mainstream. Eventually new band members would replace every single original member, giving Soft Machine the rare distinction of shedding its entire original membership (dating back to the first album anyway). Honestly, I've got bigger fish to fry than to try to hunt down the ten or so Soft Machine albums of the 1970's, but certain folks may find a strange appeal in them. For now, best to stick to the first album, and perhaps the early Kevin Ayers solo albums.

By the way, that's the British cover you see above. The American one airbrushed on a bikini. The human form has always been...challenging for us Americans.