As Mick Jagger said if you can remember the 1960s you weren't there.

The period when Matching Mole was performing at the Kings Cross Cinema was complicated. I missed the concert on 17/06/72 but my friends were there. The previous night the concert started and they had problems with the equipment and Robert Wyatt cried being such a perfectionist and the concert was postponed until the following night or soon afterwards. It's a long time ago and the people who were there are all dead now. But I missed the concert because I had gone to Amsterdam and traveled around Europe for the summer. So much was going on that summer with Matching Mole I adored them and so did my friends living close by on Swindon Street in Kings Cross. I was a great fan of Robert Wyatt after seeing him at the Washington Hilton Hotel with Soft Machine the support band to Jimi Hendrix. The first Matching Mole record was the anthem of my youth and graduating from high school in 1972. Matching Mole was supposed to return to the Kings Cross Cinema at the end of the summer but it never happened because the group got busy with recording "My Little Red Record" and it's grand subsequent premier at the Royal Festival Hall Southbank London. Before the concert happened I met Lol Coxhill busking on Tottenham court Road, we became friends and he put me on the guest list, centre front row for the concert at the hifi palace of the Royal Festival hall!. Can you imagine how relieved Robert Wyatt was to be playing in a venue where the sonics of this sophisticated music could be heard properly. Matching Mole played at the Kings Cross Cinema with equipment borrowed from the Pink Floyd, they had the most advanced and plentiful equipment in a storage unit somewhere in central London, who knows where perhaps Kings Cross?

Robert Wyatt was living in his native Dulwich South London, close to Southbank where the second album was premiered but the Pink Floyd were living around north London near the Kings Cross Cinema.

For the Royal Festival hall concert Brian Eno was there with his synthesisers sounding fantastic! That summertime was truly a blessing to be around Matching Mole and their contemporaries for their concerts and it was the greatest musical experiences of my life. Experiencing the fabulous singing and drumming of Robert Wyatt, the improvisation of Lol Coxhill known and beloved by all there, Robert Fripp was there that night as the producer of the Little Red Record, Mike Oldfield was there that night because he was in the band on Kevin Ayers second record "Shooting at the Moon" with Lol Coxhill.

Glen Sweeney was there of the Third Ear Band that had just completed the soundtrack to Roman Polanski's Macbeth. Peter Sinfield was there with Roxy Music Sinfield had just produced their first album. That night was a stark contrast to the small concert at the King's cross Cinema. The premier night of Matching Mole was a who's who of British progressive music and a sign of things to come so much creativity, inspiration and hope abounded everywhere that night.

And anything and everything seemed possible.

But underneath it all Robert Wyatt wasn't happy about the pressures he was being put under as the manager of a group, the struggles with the record companies.

Soft Machine were world famous and respected by their CBS label but Robert Wyatt got second class treatment and yet the new personnel that replaced Robert and Kevin Ayers got better treatment than Robert Wyatt did because of being connected to the famous name of Soft Machine. That translated into money. The Matching Mole were poor as church mice and the band was subsidised partially by Bill McCormick's girlfriend Julie Christie. This all culminated into a night when Robert was drinking heavily and had his tragic accident and suddenly Matching Mole was abruptly over!

Contrary to what you may believe, a great deal of the best and most creative rock music comes from without the Anglo-American axis. Bands like Can, Amon Duul II, Faust and Neu from Germany, Komintern from France, Supersister and Focus from Holland are experimenting to a greater or lesser degree with a whole new range of sounds and experiences.
Because of their experiments they seldom achieve much popular stature in their own countries and the same fate may well befall Matching Mole in this country - and for the same reasons. As with nearly all experimental records this LP is not without flaws, but the successes that there are are remarkable - and they are not academic and unapproachable successes either. There's power, wit and skill involved throughout and drummer Robert Wyatt, keyboards man Dave McRae, guitarist Phil Miller and bass player Bill MacCormick have, with producer Robert Fripp of King Crimson and synthesizer star Eno, of Roxy Music, made an LP which is more accessible than a lot of the fashionable nonsense that makes the album charts.