While none of the Canterbury artists tore up the charts on either side of the Atlantic, a few hit records have been made. More importantly, these artists have attracted an extremely loyal cult following throughout the world, supported by a number of fanzines, Internet web pages, and progressive independent record labels. This article presents the history of the quintessential Canterbury group, the Soft Machine, the band that first brought Canterbury international prominence and continues to be most frequently associated with the "Canterbury Scene."

Vocalist and drummer Robert Wyatt Ellidge was born on January 28, 1945, in Bristol, England. He grew up in West Dulwich, London, until his father George Ellidge contracted multiple sclerosis, at which point the family moved to Lydden, ten miles south of Canterbury. At an early age, he inherited a free-thinking mind from both his parents, something that has shaped his career to the present. In Wrong Movements: A Robert Wyatt History, Wyatt explains, "A characteristic which I've inherited from my mother and father is ... iconoclasm. But if you have this consensus, that we are an iconoclastic home, how does a child react to that with their parents? For example, my mother comes from a generation that rejected material wealth and so on, in favour of culture with a capital C. My iconoclasm seems to have manifested itself in even rejecting the aristocracy of high culture. What this means is that I don't believe in Beethoven, and this really shocks people, although it even shocks my mother, but nevertheless I've inherited the desire to say that, I think, from my mother. That's the irony."

Wyatt's childhood home was filled with music. His father played classics by Shostakovich, Hindemith. and Bartok on the piano, his mother played Monteverdi, and his brother Mark introduced him to jazz artists from Duke Ellington to Cecil Taylor. Don Ellis with Jaki Byard to Charles Mingus. Wyatt attended the Simon Langton Grammar School For Boys; among his schoolmates were the Hopper brothers, Hugh and Brian, Mike Ratledge, and the Sinclair cousins, Richard and David, all future members of the Wilde Flowers.

During this early period, Mike Ratledge and the elder Hopper, Brian, performed music, wrote poetry, and experimented with avant-garde photography. Brian described an occasion in Tales of Canterbury: Brian's Tale where they heard a piece of music on the radio in tune with their sensibilities, "I remember one time we both became very excited over a half-heard jazz piece on a foreign radio station, with reception so bad that it kept fading in and out and other stations breaking in. However, what we could hear sounded so much in tune with what was in our own heads and at the same time heart-stirring. It turned out to be Eric Dolphy's "245" - a wonderfully evocative and soaring theme.

Meanwhile, Hugh Hopper and Wyatt, along with other school friends, were spending their time at Wellington House, Wyatt's parents' mansion, reading poetry and listening to Cecil Taylor, Charles Mingus, and Stockhausen. The Wyatts took boarders; the most significant was Australian Daevid Allen. Despite being six years older, Daevid got along well with Wyatt through a mutual love of jazz and similar iconoclastic spirits.

"He used to get stoned, so he was my introduction to all that," recalled Wyatt in a 1992 Ptolemaic Terrascope interview. He also had a dog which he used to take for walks with him - it was actually a tin can on the end of a bit of string which he would trail some yards behind him. To an impressionable lad of my age, that was pretty far out!"

Allen was forced to leave Wellington when, at the end of high school, Wyatt attempted suicide with sleeping pills. Unable to pass his A-levels to go on to the university and feeling that he lost his childlike vision, he argued with Allen about suicide. Allen was unable to counter young Wyatt's arguments; although Wyatt's attempt failed, enough friends witnessed the argument to convince Wyatt not to kill himself to cause Allen to be blamed for the attempt, and therefore become unwelcome at Wellington House. The poignant "Song For Robert" from Daevid Allen & Kramer's 1992 album Who's Afraid is about this series of events. Allen headed to London, Wyatt to visit family friend and poet Robert Graves in Majorca before moving to London to work with Allen.

Early in 1963, Mike Ratledge was attending Oxford and Brian Hopper, was discovering rock and roll and rhythm and blues. In London, Allen formed a trio playing detuned guitar with Wyatt drumming and Hugh Hopper playing bass, occasionally augmented by Ratledge on piano. Their three month residency at the Establishment Club lasted a day and a half, so they moved on to the Marquee Club as part of Mike Horowitz's Live New Departures series. The Daevid Allen Trio Live 1963, recorded on June 3 and released in 1993 on Voiceprint is the first recording by any of the future Canterbury legends; it is anything but a polished performance, though Allen's between-song banter is very witty. Parts of songs from this performance would resurface later, such as "Ya Sunne Wot" which was adapted to become "Tropical Fish Selene" on Gong's 1971 album Camembert Electrique. The Trio soon dissolved for lack of work; Daevid went to Paris, Robert and Hugh back to Canterbury.

Around this time, a longhaired dropout named Kevin Ayers was the newest addition to the circle of friends convening at Wellington. Born in Herne Bay, Kent, Ayers was raised in Malaya where his father was a district officer. Ayers left home as a teenager, and, lacking a family, fell in with Wyatt and company. They were in the process of forming a band, and while it wasn't Ayer's first ambition to become a musician, he enjoyed the company of the Wellington regulars enough to learn some guitar chords and sing a few numbers. The band named itself "The Wild Flowers" after that volume of the Observers Pocket Book series; Ayers added the "e" to make them Wilde in tribute to Oscar Wilde. Guitarist Richard Sinclair also joined the fold, as his father was a friend of Hugh's father. The group began playing around, alternating originals with covers of popular songs to please the punters.

"I don't remember exactly what I was listening to during the Wilde Flowers period, but all the weird and wonderful stuff I heard at Robert's home: blues, bossa nova, classical, and the most modern jazz was obviously relevant to any music I subsequently produced," Ayers said of his musical influences.

"Hugh Hopper's influences were more rock-oriented. As far as I remember, the main influences on me during the Wilde Flowers in 1965 and 1966 were bands like the Kinks, Yardbirds, Zombies, Small Faces, Hollies, Beatles, of course, and particularly, the Birds. Not the U.S. Byrds - this was the English band that had Ron Wood on guitar before he went on to join the Faces and later the Stones. The Birds were tremendous! Loud, lots of chunky chord parts on the guitars and a demon drummer called Pete McDaniels. There is an EP worth searching for called These Birds Are Dangerous."

The Wilde Flowers did not record commercially, however, they did record lots of demos. In 1994, Voiceprint released a self-titled 22-track CD of recordings from 1965 to 1969. Discs of this nature tend to be of strictly archival value; this one is an exception. The Wilde Flowers is essential listening for enthusiasts of 60s garage bands and beat groups; most of these songs would sound perfect on an Archive International Productions compilation.

There are few cover songs on The Wilde Flowers, and the songwriting is very articulate, notably Hugh Hopper's Canterbury standard "Memories".

"In the early days we were like kids with a new toy whenever one of us wrote something," Ayers said of the band members' songwriting process. "It was a family thing, we sought each other's approval and acceptance - well, I did anyway! The arrangements were usually group arrangements. For me writing an acceptable song was initially a quest for approval from my friends. Later it extended to the rest of the world."

Nineteen sixty-six was a year of turnaround of Wilde Flowers members, included the brief addition of vocalist Graham Flight from another local band. Upon his departure, Richard Coughlin, drummer for a local dance hand joined, enabling Wyatt to concentrate on singing. Ever the drifter, Ayers could have been in or out of the Flowers at any given time. The Wilde Flowers played local clubs like the Beehive, and recorded demos frequently.

On Easter weekend in 1966, Ayers was in Majorca with Daevid Allen. Wes Brunson, a wealthy nightclub owner from Texas was among the partygoers there; not of sound mind by several accounts, voices in his head convinced Wes to give his money to people who would broadcast the New Age.

"Wes Brunson materialized in Deya, Majorca when I was staying there with Daevid Allen," Ayers recalls. "We had discussed the idea of forming a group and it might have remained a possibility had Daevid not successfully convinced Wcs that we were important spokesmen for the things that matter: cosmic vibes, universal mind etc. He offered to finance the group and we were very pleased to accept his helping hand. Daevid immortalized Brunson in song ["Stoned Innocent Frankenstein"] on his 1971 solo album Banana Moon.

Allen and Ayers returned to Canterbury to begin rehearsals for their new group, tentatively named Mister Head. Wyatt's departure from the increasingly commercial-sounding Wilde Flowers and the return of Michael Ratledge on keyboards cemented Allen's new band's lineup: guitarist Allen, vocalist and drummer Robert Wyatt, bassist and vocalist Kevin Ayers, and keyboardist Mike Ratledge. The name "Soft Machine," after the William S. Burroughs novel, was suggested, and the author gave his consent. Ratledge equipped his Vox Continental organ with a fuzzbox to make it sound more aggressive, and Ayers acquired a songwriting contract with the Animals' Anim Publishing, which got the band signed to Animals bassist Chas Chandler's management company. The band moved into Wyatt's mother's house and began rehearsing.

Living in the same neighborhood as the Soft Machine was Bill MacCormick, future Quiet Sun bassist who would collaborate with Robert in the future. MacCormick visited the Softs frequently.

"They transformed the way I listened to music," he recalled. "Quiet Sun says it all really. But hanging out with them, Robert in particular, was also crucial. Every time I went 'round to his mum's house on the way home from school there was something new to hear. It might have been John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Pharoah Sanders. Equally though, Robert told us about Frank Zappa and the Mothers, Spirit, and the first Chicago album (it's odd to think of that now)."

Among the Soft Machine's first gigs was a week's residency at the Star Club in Hamburg. The Soft Machine also played many of the legendary "happenings" like the All-Night Rave at the Roundhouse in London and the Spontaneous Underground at the Marquee. At this time, it wasn't uncommon for the band to have a motorcycle on stage with a microphone on the cylinder head!

"Those were big events, where every band that was anybody at all performed," MacCormick recalls. "When I saw them a lot, they attracted a hard core of support that grew steadily, so they went from small clubs like the Country Club in Hampstead - a tiny place, you almost sat on the stage, brilliant atmosphere - to the Roundhouse and Lyceum, then concert halls. The audience was full of headbangers, except we gave ourselves headaches thrashing around in 9/8 or 11/4 time!"

Early in 1967, the Soft Machine recorded tracks for its first single, "Fred the Fish"b/w "Feelin' Reelin' Squealin'." Management rejected the A-side in favor of the more commercial "Love Makes Sweet Music." The ubiquitous Kim Fowley produced the B-side. The single is one of the Softs' best releases; it reflects the Wilde Flowers' pop smarts and year's of performing, yet is just different enough to set it apart from other records of the era. Unsurprisingly, on the B-side, Kim Fowley encourages the band to pull out all the "bizarre" stops. Jimi Hendrix is rumored to have participated on this session, but those rumors have since been refuted by both Daevid and Kevin. Rumors that members of the Soft Machine participated in recording sessions by the Fowley associates The Belfast Gypsies are also not true.

Released by Polydor in England, "Love Makes Sweet Music" failed to chart nationally, though it reached #28 on the Radio London Fast Forty. Psychedelia hadn't caught on outside of London, so the band came up with a device to counter the sometimes hostile audience response. Ratledge and Wyatt would improvise links between songs to avoid the silence of confused spectators. Sometimes the audience wasn't the only indifferent party; management would occasionally forget the Soft Machine's paychecks.

Throughout l967, the Softs along with their projectionist Mark Boyle, had a residency at the Speakeasy Club in London, and played regularly at the conical metal Roundhouse. They frequently shared the bill with Pink Floyd. Allen, watching Syd Barrett playing eerie slide guitar, was inspired to create his own "glissando guitar" technique, which he still utilizes. Playing underground venues gave the Soft Machine hip credibility.

"We felt like suburban fakes dressed up on Saturday and visiting the city, I never dared take LSD... Just because we played long solos people assumed we were stoned, which was great for our credibility. I didn't know much about it," Wyatt reflected in Wrong Movements.




Spring, 1967 the Soft Machine recorded demos at De Lane Lea Studios in London with Yardbirds associate Georgio Gomelsky producing. Manager Mike Jeffries refused to pay the studio costs, so Gomelsky kept the tapes; he released them on his BYG label in 1971 as Rock Generation Volumes 7 & 8, and they have been repackaged extensively since. Two of those songs, "She's Gone" and "I Should've Known" were re-recorded in June with Witchseason producer Joe Boyd (soon to launch the Fairport Convention and other folk-rock artists) for a proposed second single. Polydor dropped the band, however, and the tracks were left to languish until the 1977 compilation Triple Echo.

"The Soft Machine reached the same audience as Pink Floyd, in the same way, with songs as a basis for extended improvisation," Boyd recalls of the Soft Machine. "Daevid Allen was the leader as I saw it, but they were quite democratic. I didn't see them as hitmakers. but some songs were very good - "She's Gone' for example."

On July 1, the band went to St. Tropez in the south of France to play a variety of parties and happenings, including the Discotheque Interplay, the Festival of Free Theatre opening of the Picasso play "Desire Caught By the Tail," the Town Square of Si. Tropez Happening, and the Voom Voom Club, where the band members played in the nude above a large swimming pool, These events would bring the Soft Machine as well as later Canterbury bands a loyal following throughout the Continent. Wyatt recalls the time fondly, and reflects upon the difference between French and English audiences.

"There is just a great tradition in France of listening to music and dealing with the arts that is completely conducive to the creation of and the appreciation of, the sort of avant garde set-ups that we dealt in... It's quite different from [Britain], there's no sense of having to deal with the hit parade.,. You could really stretch out in front of a French audience, [but] you almost had to apologize for it in England."

Returning to England in August, Allen was refused re-entry due to visa problems. Relations between he and the rest of the band were becoming strained, so this just made the break official. The Soft Machine continued as a trio; Allen, with wife Gilli Smyth stayed in Paris to form Gong, the first Soft Machine offshoot. Within a few years, Allen would create a whimsical world of radio gnomes riding flying teapots between the Planet Gong and Earth, dispensing peaceful vibrations through music. Gong's music is an amalgamation of John Coltrane influenced hard hop, rock, and borrowings from various ethnic musics. Essential works include Camembert Electrique (1971), Angel's Egg (1973), Live At Sheffield 1974, and PreModernist Wireless: The Peel Sessions. Gong is still going strong with its latest disc Shapeshifter.

Meanwhile, the French Pataphysical Society named the Softs its official orchestra. Kevin Ayers explained pataphysics to Trouser Press in 1977, as "an extension of Dada and surrealism; basically, completely blowing out any kind of given values at any given time...by exploring all the other possibilities. The banana was a symbol for introducing the element of absurdity into conventionally serious situations...[including] - taking yourself too seriously. It's easy to start throwing bananas into society, but with yourself it's really difficult."

From February to April of 1968, the Soft Machine traveled to America for the first time supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In mid-April, the group recorded its self-titled debut album on ABC-Probe Records; Tom Wilson (producer of the Mothers of Invention and Velvet Underground) is credited as producer, but reportedly was not present for much of the recording sessions. For contractual reasons it wasn't released in Britain for several years. The Soft Machine became its sole American chart placing, reaching #160.

The album was a replication of the band's live set, and most of the tracks were first takes with few overdubs. "Hope For Happiness" and "A Certain Kind" were written by the Hopper brothers and date back to the Wilde Flowers days, while other songs like "Why Am I So Short" and "Save Yourself" were reworked from the Rock Generation demos. The keyboard-driven sound resembled a more avant-garde Zombies at this point; the overall ambiance of the first album is futuristic. The only detraction is the clumsy stereo panning added in post-production.

Upon returning to England, the Soft Machine briefly expanded to a quartet with future Police guitarist Andy Summers.

Bill MacCormick reminisces fondly about his friendship with the Soft Machine members in those days, "They were a tremendously open and friendly bunch. When Kevin was still in the band and they had all their equipment in Robert's mum's front room, myself and my brother would stop off and listen and sometimes they'd let us mess around with the stuff. We were always 'round there drinking tea, listening to records, and just hanging out. It was a real blow when they went off to the States on the Hendrix tour. But I remember being around the house with Robert's mum when Julian Glover (Robert's actor brother) arrived clutching a copy of the first album. Everyone rushed indoors to hear it, Amazing!"




After a second American tour with Jimi Hendrix, the Soft Machine temporarily disbanded from the strain of touring. Each band member's account elucidates:

"The first tour I was completely drunk with the life. Girls lining up outside the door, free drink everywhere, so I was drunk every night, with enormous quantities of girls at my disposal" said Ayers, from Why Are We Sleeping?, July, 1993.

"By the second tour, I had changed completely. I went on a very strict macrobiotic diet and didn't go out to parties. I became alienated from everything that was going on around me because of the violence and extremity of it. At its worst it was literally plane, hotel, gig, plane, hotel, gig. Mike and I used to go around banging on doors shouting, 'I'm cracking up! I'm cracking up!' Mike would read books while I used to lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling."

"Travel in the States with a pop group is like a luxury purgatory," Ratledge said, from Wrong Movements. "You stay in Hiltons, then a Cadillac Fleetwood takes you to the airport first thing in the morning. Another Cadillac Fleetwood meets you, takes you to the hotel. You wash, the Cadillac Fleetwood takes you to the gig and back to the Hilton. You sleep. In the end, it completely destroys your sense of geography. You're manipulated like a piece of baggage. You have no control over the direction your life takes. It's like those experiments where they deprive rats of control over their bodies."

"I know 1968 wasn't an easy time to be in America; I saw a lot of horrible things that make you think a bit," recalled Wyatt in Ptolemaic Terrascope, January 1992. "You read articles (in England] sometimes about racism and of course we have a right to talk about it, but unless you've spent some time in the States where the streets smell of racism, you have no idea. I saw the kind of things that a sheltered English lad had never seen, the hostility between the police and any kids with hair... the police would ride through crowds on motorcycles without even waiting for them to clear. I saw them pick up a kid, hold him horizontally and run him into a wall like a battering ram. We were pretty much sheltered as a group going from hotel to hotel, but you could see that life on the streets was sticky."

The Soft Machines break-up ended when ABC-Probe demanded fulfillment of the band's two album contract. Ratledge and Wyatt got back together, but Ayers was nowhere to be found. His logical replacement was roadie, and former Wilde Flowers bassist Hugh Hopper. For Volume Two, Wyatt added lyrics to a backlog of material Hugh had written before joining the Softs. If Volume Two wasn't as whimsical as its predecessor, it was more cohesive. The humor is still there, its just drier or more subtle.

A high point of the disc is Wyatt singing "A Concise British Alphabet parts I and II," forward on the former, backward for the latter. Hugh's fat, chunky, distorted bass tones became an integral part of the group's sound. Kevin Ayers' spirit was represented by "As Long As He Lies Perfectly Still," a droll account of the effect touring with Jimi Hendrix had on him.

Ratledge, Wyatt, and Hopper decided to produce Volume Two themselves considering their experiences from the first album. Lack of technical knowledge plagued them this time, dulling the impact of the final product. Bill MacCormick commented that "nothing has caught the true feel of the Hopper/Ratledge/Wyatt trio in their pomp. The recording studio took the edge off the sound, particularly the Ratledge solo organ. The nearest I've heard it is the live organ solo on Third from their Fairfield Hall gig. Live, it made your ears hurt, but it was great!"

As the second Softs album was released, Ayers was recording his first solo album, Joy of A Toy, for Harvest Records. His backing group was, for the most part, the Soft Machine, but it wasn't the dream reunion that it looks like on the record sleeve, as Ayers reveals.

"I did the tracks on my little recorder when I lived in Ibiza. They indeed did their parts later in the studio in London. [But] it wasn't strange at all...we were still good friends."

Despite the separation, Joy of A Toy is a charming collection of Ayers originals, and one of his best works. Ratledge, Hopper, and Wyatt performed similar post-production recording duties for two tracks on Syd Barretts debut The Madcap Laughs.

Meanwhile, back in the Wilde Flowers camp, following Wyatt's departure, a new singer was found in Julian "Pye" Hastings, the brother of one of Kevin Ayers's girlfriends. The Flowers went through a period of playing soul covers until Brian Hopper left for a job in the insurance business (although he would occasionally play with the Soft Machine).

The remaining Wilde Flowers spent a few years woodshedding until re-emerging as Caravan in 1969. While Caravan has a story of its own, it should be noted that its second single "If I Could Do It All Over Again (I'd Do It All Over You)" bears uncanny resemblance to "Lullaby Letter" and "We Did It Again" from The Soft Machine. It also features a brilliant organ solo by David Sinclair, who would later collaborate with Robert Wyatt. Canterbury Tales, released in 1994 by Polygram Chronicles, is an excellent Caravan primer.

The Soft Machine continued touring to promote Volume Two. Once its ABC-Probe contract expired, the band signed with CBS. In light of the band's feelings following the American Hendrix tours, it seemed a strange decision.

"The band built up a momentum after doing some gigs to promote the second album," Hopper explained. "A management machine took over and it was a pleasant enough life most of the time. Robert in particular was very ambitious to make the band successful."




In 1969, between Volume Two and Third, the Soft Machine's music began to radically change character. Simply listening to those albums would overshadow the gradual nature of the shift. Spaced, a forgotten chapter in the Soft Machine's history, was recently unearthed by Cuneiform Records. The reissue documents a piece of music Wyatt, Hopper, and Ratledge created for Peter Dockley's happening "Spaced" at the Roundhouse. The music for "Spaced" was assembled from live performance tapes and tape loops, with help from Brian Hopper and soundman Bob Woolford, between the release of the second and third Soft Machine albums. "Spaced" was a ballet where dancers wore rubber suits with suction cups and were choreographed to the Softs' droning sonic tapestry. While it's not recommended as a first purchase to newcomers, many fans will appreciate this piece of ephemera that hints at the ambient flavor of the upcoming Third album.

Also of interest is Live At the Paradiso 1969 on Voiceprint. This is a recording of the Softs playing Volume Two live in Amsterdam on March 29. The band members were approached about releasing it. They declined permission, but it appeared soon after as a bootleg album. The official edition of this fine performance has excellent sound quality and liner notes by Hugh Hopper.

Two factors influenced the changes in the band's material. First, Hugh Hopper's writing was no longer centered around lyrics and second, four new members were added to the band.

"Around the time of Volume Two, I lost interest in songs as opposed to instrumental stuff," Hugh says about his writing. "I felt that having a lyric tied the piece of music down to one feeling or subject, whereas an instrumental piece can carry many different connotations for different listeners. I am more interested in writing a good piece of music than a set of words. This may be because I don't sing and therefore don't automatically set out to write the words."

Ratledge invited a horn section from Keith Tippett's band - saxophonists Elton Dean and Lyn Dobson, trombonist Nick Evans, and cornetist Mark Charig - to join the Soft Machine.

"Every time we write something," explained Ratledge in Facelift, "we have to kind of cut it down to limit it, because there is a finite amount that three people can do. So we felt the need to have other instruments to be able to carry other lines, to give sufficient complexity to what we have written."

"I didn't know of the Softs when I joined," Elton Dean recalls. "I joined when Ratledge wanted to expand his writing to include horns. He saw the Keith Tippett Sextet at a festival and invited the front line of Charig, Evans, and me to join."

"I took up clarinet at 16 inspired by Dixieland," explains Dean about his musical influences. "Pee Wee Russell, Archie Semple, Acker Bilk, and Tony Coe were favorites. I took up tenor sax inspired by Bud Freeman and Stanley Turrentine, then soul bands like James Brown, Otis Redding, and Ray Charles, on to Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, and John Coltrane."

"When I joined the Softs, compositions were presented by the individuals - they weren't collaborative. Playing with the Soft Machine spread my name further afield than the jazz scene would have. A "career" did not exist for me, as a concept.

Trombonist Nick Evans also listened to Dixieland as a youngster. A significant event to his musical development occurred "around the age of 20, when I signed up for a Summer School Jazz Course in a Welsh town called Barry," Evans recalled. "That course attracted players from all over Britain, and it was there that I met Graham Collier, Keith Tippett, Elton Dean, and Mark Charig."

"The group that was formed during the summer school with Keith, Elton, Mark, and myself was magic," Evans continued. "Keith's charts were unique and the group hit it off musically and socially. The course was, unfortunately, only two weeks long but it was probably the most important weeks musically to me."

After the course, Nick Evans went to London to join Keith Tippett's sextet.

"That group' held down a residency at the 100 Club in London and became highly regarded by jazz fans," said Evans. "Keith's tunes were so different from the normal that we attracted listeners from other fields. It was at the 100 Club that Mike Ratledge heard us. He offered Elton, Mark, and me the chance to join the Softs, and although we knew little about them, went ahead as we enjoyed each other's playing so much and the Softs simply provided another outlet."

"Mike Ratledge was the main composer of the Soft Machine, although Hugh and Robert also wrote quite a bit of the material. The charts would be rehearsed endless times, and any bits that didn't work were modified rather than rewritten. The set we played was about 58 minutes, so there was little improvisation apart from the solos that each member had. Even so, the soloist had a set number of choruses and therefore the overall time remained the same for each gig performed. I remember that this used to amuse me because Keith's band could play the same tunes at two gigs and the length of each gig would be totally different."

Nick Evans remembers his Soft Machine days fondly.

"The Softs had a fine following. The audience was young and, compared to today, educated. We went down well everywhere and were given star status at most venues. It was a heady time - good players, exciting music, popularity, and lots of work - an effective combination! The music was progressing through vision rather than mimicry which I believe is the case with current pop music."

The only recordings to feature the full septet were for the BBC; they appear on The Peel Sessions, released in 1990. Seven members proved too expensive and impractical. Nick Evans, Mark Charig, and Lyn Dobson left the band a few months later.

In August of 1969, Hugh and Brian Hopper recorded four publishing demos; it was a Wilde Flowers reunion, with the Soft Machine and Caravan guitarist Pye Hastings participating. The tracks were released on The Wilde Flowers.

"I hoped to get rich by having pop singers to my songs," Hugh confided. "But it didn't happen, although royalties from "Memories" continue to trickle in."

The Soft Machine's Third was released in 1970 to great critical acclaim. The double album consists of four side-long tracks, two by Ratledge and one each by Hopper and Wyatt. By taking up an LP side, each piece is allowed space to evolve slowly and build dynamics. This contrasted with versions of the same tracks on The Peel Sessions, where the band has less time to explore its musical possibilities; the jazzier side of the Softs is more apparent on the BBC tracks. Robert Wyatt's improvised vocal on the BBC version of Third's "Moon In June," as well as the quotes from "Hope For Happiness" and "We Did It Again" from the first album makes this an essential Soft Machine recording.

The BBC provided an outlet for a Soft Machine dream reunion when the seven-piece Softs lineup was the backing band for Kevin Ayers' February 17, 1970 appearance on Top Gear for a rousing unrehearsed ten-minute version of "Why Are We Sleeping," Kevin's tour-de-force from the first Softs album. This performance is available on the recent Ayers release Singing the Bruise: The BBC Sessions 1970-1972 on Band of Joy Records. This disc also features other Ayers material that is more off-the-wall than the original album versions. First Show In The Appearance Business: The BBC Sessions 1973-1976 makes more Ayers radio archives available.

Acquaintance with composer Tim Souster got the Soft Machine an appearance on the annual Royal Albert Hall Promenade Concerts on August 16, 1970, released in 1988 as Live at the Proms 1970. Although the late arrival of equipment cut into rehearsal time, the performance was critically acclaimed.

The London Times raved, "Labels no longer have much meaning in the world of progressive rock or jazz and the four man group moved fluently from savage sheets of sound to delicate phrasing. Robert Wyatt demonstrated that excellence in drumming is not. as so many rock drummers believe today, an exact reflection of a solo's duration." Playing this prestigious event propelled Third to #18 on the British album chart.




By this time, The Soft Machine members' camaraderie was waning. Mike Ratledge remarked in 1971 that "although there might be personality conflicts sometimes, it works out for the music. It's because we are different people that it somehow works."

Robert Wyatt was feeling alienated from his bandmates during the recording of the jazzier and vocal-less Fourth (the second Soft Machine album to reach the UK album charts, attaining position #32). Where he craved more simplicity in the music, the others preferred more complex arrangements. The other band members also wanted to switch to an all-instrumental format.

Luckily, Robert had plenty of side projects to pursue at this time. He was drummer for former Soft Kevin Ayers' touring band and sang harmony vocals on tracks from the albums Shooting For the Moon, Whatevershebrigswesing, and Bananamour. He drummed for Centipede, Keith Tippett's group featuring fifty members, and Gary Windo's Symbiosis, and sang in the one-off Top Gear Choral Society (also featuring Rod Stewart, Ronnie Lane, Marc Bolan, and Sonja Kristina from Curved Air) for John Peel's Christmas 1970 show.

Another recent Cuneiform archive release. Virtually, reissues a March 1971 performance on Radio Bremen in Germany. On this album, the dissension in the Softs' camp does not show, as the band plays some of the loosest, funkiest versions of its repertoire of the day.

After recording a solo album. End of An Ear, Wyatt quit the Soft Machine. His replacement was Australian drummer Phil Howard. Mike Ratledge commented to Melody Maker, "It's hard to work out exactly what the differences were, but they existed for quite a long time. For instance, Robert has always preferred playing straight 4/4 - he's never really enjoyed or accepted working in complex time signatures. But I never got a specific picture of what he does want to do."

Wyatt's departure created a dividing line between some factions of the Soft Machine's fandom. Many consider the Wyatt years the group's halcyon days, while others prefer the fusion sound of later years. Discussions rage over the Canterbury Internet newsgroup What's Rattlin'.

After leaving the Soft Machine, Wyatt formed a new band with former Caravan keyboardist David Sinclair, guitarist Phil Miller, and childhood friend and Quiet Sun bassist Bill MacCormick. He called it Matching Mole, a phonetic pun on the French phrase Machine Molle, or, Soft Machine.

The Soft Machine soon switched drummers again to John Marshall. The band continued the sequential series of album titles with 5 in 1972. Facelift succinctly summed up this album's sound, "plenty of atmospherics, but of a type much cleaner than the psychedelic muddle of Third." One Way Records recently released the archival Live In France from the days of the 5 line-up.

"The music also grooves like no other Soft Machine line-up," said Howitt, "and if you wanted to introduce someone to Elton Dean's music, this is the era you'd probably turn to. With wonderful off-the-cuff but soulful soloing, never straying from Hugh Hopper's bass lines, Elton Dean is never too far from the heart of the music." After 5, Elton Dean departed the Softs, replaced by Karl Jenkins.

Matching Mole soldiered on as the increasingly more soulful cousin of the Softs. On its self-titled debut, Matching Mole alternated pop songs like "O Caroline" with extended workouts such as "Part of the Dance." While the band was able to play technically complex music, it did in a tuneful and engaging manner.

The Mole had its share of technical problems recording the album. Wyatt relates some war stories in Matching Mole's liner notes.

"We recorded in a studio so cold that Dave Sinclair could hardly bear to take his gloves off to play the Hammond. Astute listeners will detect the merry fizz and tingle of frost melting on rusty electrics throughout, a distinct textural effect I hope you'll all agree: that Rough sound, dead authentic and all that."

Matching Mole's second album, Little Red Record, was produced by King Crimson's Robert Fripp and featured Roxy Music member Brian Eno playing synthesizers. It's more of a group effort than the debut, and copious amounts of touring tightened the band considerably. Between albums, David Sinclair, who left Matching Mole to return to Caravan, was replaced by Dave MacRae. Less than a month after completing Little Red Record, Wyatt disbanded Matching Mole, tiring of the extramusical responsibilities of leading a band.

Back in the Softs camp, Hugh Hopper left following the live set Six, to be replaced by Roy Babbington. This left Mike Ratledge as the only original member of the band. Hugh embarked on a solo career, releasing albums 1984, Hopper Tunity Box, Rogue Element, and Monster Band. Those albums, or the recent Mantra compilation, Best Soft, drawn from them, demonstrate what a significant contribution Hugh's bass sound and compositional technique was to the Soft Machine.

Critics began to viciously attack the Soft Machine, as during a 1973 Melody Maker interview coinciding with the release of Seven. Writer Steve Lake first suggested to Karl Jenkins that the band didn't have the right to the name Soft Machine, then describes the new album in terms of its "relative dullness" and remarked that "the old crusading spirit has disappeared." Jenkins countered that the rhythm section was "far better now than it has ever been."

New guitarist Alan Holdsworth's brief membership in the Soft Machine in 1975 gave the music a rock-oriented sound for the Bundles album. In 1975, the Soft Machine held a Musician's Union workshop in Newcastle, which participant Sid Smith recalled fondly to What's Rattlin'.

"The Softs' Seven was one of my favorite albums of the time, and the opportunity to meet heroes like Roy Babbington was a chance of a lifetime. It was very informal and the band members look players off into separate areas - pianists went off with Mike Ratledge, [and] wind players with Jenkins."

"I went off with Babbington who was courteous, pleasant, and very patient. I had only just started to play the |bass] and was very poor - by far the worst player there. Roy. however, made me feel accepted and valued."

"Looking back, I can honestly say that those two days very formative and important to my understanding of music, improvisation, and my own playing. It also taught me a lot about listening. I am also amazed how open, friendly, and approachable they all were. Does this kind of thing happen today?"

Former Softs timekeeper Robert Wyatt was planning a new line-up of Matching Mole when, during a party on June 1, 1973, he fell five stories from an open window and broke his back, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. When Rolling Stone asked which controlled substance caused him to fall, Wyatt dryly remarked, "Good old alcohol, you know, the legal one."

While Robert was at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine held a benefit concert at the Rainbow Theatre in London and raised £10,000 for Wyatt's medical bills.

Upon his release from the hospital. Wyatt's peers involved him in their projects. He performed a vocal cameo on Hatfield and the North, the self-titled debut album of a group comprised of former Wilde Flowers and Caravan bassist and vocalist Richard Sinclair, Phil Miller from Matching Mole, former Gong drummer Pip Pyle, and keyboardist Dave Stewart. Kevin Ayers enlisted Robert for percussion duties on an album he was producing for singer Lady June, Linguistic Leprosy.

His drumming days over, Robert Wyatt turned to keyboards and singing, as well as some percussion. His second solo album Rock Bottom, one of the essential albums of the seventies, was composed prior to his accident. Wyatt is assisted by a stellar cast of progressive rockers, including Mike Oldfield, Hugh Hopper, Richard Sinclair, and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.

In contrast to previous efforts, Rock Bottom's arrangements are given plenty of breathing space, and possess a clarity rarely heard before in his music. The sleeve was illustrated by Robert's new wife, Alfreda Benge. Rock Bottom won France's prestigious Grand Prix Charles Cros for album of the year 1974. In addition, the non-album single, a cover of the Monkees' "I'm A Believer" became his first British hit, reaching #29.

A solo piano take of "I'm A Believer" is available on the Robert Wyatt Peel Sessions EP. The EP also features a stripped-down version of "Soup Song" from Wyatt's next album Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard. "Soup Song" is the melody of the Wilde Flowers' "Slow Walkin' Talk" with, typically clever lyrics. Following a single rejected by Virgin, "Yesterday Man," Robert guested on albums by Phil Manzanera, Carla Bley, Brian Eno, and Michael Mantler (The Hapless Child, an album of the poetry of Edward Gorey).

A project Robert contributed to in 1976 was saxophonist Gary Windo's Steam Radio Tapes The album was produced by Pink Floyd's Nick Mason to test the Floyd's new Britannia Row Studio. Though unreleased at the time, several tracks are on His Master's Bones, a recent collection of unreleased Windo material from 1972-1985. The Cuneiform collection features a who's who of progressive music: Hugh Hopper, Steve Hillage, Carla Bley, Bill MacCormick, and Julie Driscoll-Tippett, among others.

Wyatt became disillusioned by the music industry during the late seventies; he later recollected to Creem:

"Well, during the 70s, something happened to my feeling, being in the rock world. There seemed to be this consensus, which was that it was a new and semi-legitimate art form, and it was a natural vehicle for new and rebellious ideas. And during the 70s, it became quite clear to me that we were, as rock musicians, were in fact members of the establishment. That it was an establishment, and perhaps always had been.

"You were getting to funny stages, where people who deliberately maimed themselves on-stage were selling themselves as brave and courageous, whereas you had someone like Victor Jara in Chile, who, because he sang for democracy in Chile, was tortured to death. If we're going to talk about brave rebels in the music business, let's talk about Victor Jara, not people who mutilate themselves on groovy videos."

Wyatt finished the decade in semi retirement, writing letters to political prisoners, writing guest columns in various publications, and listening to short-wave radio broadcasts from other countries. Wyatt's final concert appearances were made in May and June, 1975 with Henry Cow, the progressive rock group featuring frequent Wyatt contributor Fred Frith. Part of the May 21 performance was released on the Henry Cow album Concerts.

Mike Ratledge was also becoming disillusioned by the music industry. Being the last original Soft Machine member became a burden to him, so he left the band in 1976. In an interview reprinted by Facelift, Ratledge explained that "music is always more than the persons involved in it: probably that's why it's all right to go on playing the way [The Soft Machine] do... By this time, to be in the Soft Machine was a drudgery, and playing music should never be like that. You see, there never was a leader (if so, everything would be different) totally responsible for the music played by others, and one of the reasons that drove me to stop composing was that I felt trapped in the whole Soft Machine's legendary image...

"To be the only original member is horrible: this is probably the main reason for quitting and losing interest in it."

Ratledge went on to form a production company with Soft Machine member Karl Jenkins, Jenkins-Ratledge. Their company composed commercial music for Pepsi and Delta Airlines among others. The two collaborated on Adiemus' 1995 Songs of Sanctuary, performed with the London Symphony Orchestra. The work is very un-Canterburyesque mood piece, at times resembling the score to an epic film with lots of panoramic scenery. Songs of Sanctuary has been a big hit throughout Europe, and on the British and American classical charts. Ratledge recently quit the music business; Jenkins is continuing to release Adiemus albums.

In addition to releasing solo albums through the seventies, Hugh Hopper played with the groups Isotope and Gilgamesh before forming Soft Heap. "Soft" identifies the band as a living branch of the Soft Machine, "Heap" is an acronym of the four original members' names: Hugh, Elton Dean, Alan Gowen, former Gilgamesh keyboardist, and Pip Pyle, former Gong and Hatfield and the North drummer. Alan Gowen died on leukemia in 1981, shortly after collaborating with Hugh on the magnificent Two Rainbows Daily, recently reissued by Cuneiform. Rainbows is a series of bass and mini-Moog duets that boils down Hopper's unique improvising and playing approach. The reissue features six live bonus tracks with drummer Nigel Morris.

Gowen's replacement in Soft Heap is guitarist Mark Hewins, one of the next generation of Canterbury musicians. His professional career began in 1972 when he began working with Richard Sinclair.

During a Calyx interview, he told Aymeric Leroy, "My main goal in my musical life has been to strive not only for personal "expression" but also excellence in technique. The musicians connected with the "Canterbury legend" are, quite simply, the best and most inventive of their generation. I had to work with these guys."

Hewins runs the MusArt label; its website features information, photographs, and amusing anecdotes about many of the Canterbury musicians.

Following Holdsworth's departure from the Soft Machine in 1976, the band, with replacement John Etheridge, recorded tracks for the DeWolfe Production Music Company, the British equivalent to Muzak. The tracks were collected on the Voiceprint release Rubber Riff. Riff is a surprisingly appealing collection; though not an essential release, and a far cry from the Soft Machine's '60s and early '70s innovative heyday, the music is more engaging than the increasingly technical and virtuosic "real" Soft Machine releases of that period.

In contrast, 1976's Cruel But Fair, by Hopper/Dean/[Keith] Tippett/[Joe] Gallivan, reissued by One Way, is a jazzy, at times turbulent collection in the mold of the Softs' Fourth with electronic touches. That year also saw the release of Yes We Have No Mananas from Kevin Ayers. Although his most commercial-sounding work to date, the strong songwriting and fluid guitar work of 'Ollie Halsall, as well as Ayers' distinctive baritone voice prevented it from sounding like run-of-the-mill AOR product. Ayers toured Britain with a band that included Halsall, Zoot Money, and former Softs and future Police guitarist Andy Summers. His first American tour in almost a decade prompted stateside release on ABC Records as well.

The original Soft Machine lineup of Kevin Ayers, Mike Ratledge, and Robert Wyatt, along with Hugh Hopper, reunited in 1977, not to play music, but to program a3-LP retrospective of their work to be released on Harvest Records. The Triple Echo includes features selections from the band's entire back catalog with the exception of Third and Fourth which are represented by live BBC tracks. Both sides of the debut single, "Love Makes Sweet Music" and "Feelin' Reelin' Squealin', as well as "She's Gone," the A-side of a the shelved second single, and "Memories" from the De Lane Lea demo sessions are on the set. Neither Triple Echo nor the Polydor single have yet been released on CD.

Robert Wyatt returned to the public eye in 1980 with the release of four singles on Rough Trade. All eight sides are cover versions of songs of a personal or political nature, thematically paired. One of the songs was a version of "Strange Fruit," originally recorded by Billie Holiday in 1938. Regarding his choice to record that song, Wyatt told Melody Maker, "Yes, it's a bit inappropriate... Cross cultural references, it's not my song... I thought it was relevant now, but instead of talking about southern America, we're talking about South Africa. And I thought, we're just going to go on doing this - we were doing it before I was born, and. it's going to go on after I die, and there's nothing I can do about it. But you can't help noticing."

Inspired by those singles, Elvis Costello wrote an anti-war song about the Falkland Islands conflict, "Shipbuilding," which he thought would be the perfect vehicle for Wyatt. Costello produced Wyatt, backed by his band the Attractions, and the result was Wyatt's second UK-charting single, this one reaching #35.

Costello was later quoted in Wrong Movements, "It's been the happiest experience I've had as a songwriter/producer. The song has been realized perfectly. It sounds completely like the intent of the lyric and melody. I think people have been so overwhelmed by the melancholy of Robert's singing that the political comment in "Shipbuilding" hasn't been immediately spotted. The lyric seems to filter through afterwards; the BBC probably wouldn't like it otherwise."

The four singles, with two extra tracks were compiled on Nothing Can Stop Us; the American release omits Peter Blackman's poem "Stalingrad" and adds "Shipbuilding" and the b-sides from its 12" release, the jazz standards "Round About Midnight" and "Memories of You." The album's title refers to a quote from America Conquers Britain by Ludwell Denny in 1930: "We shall not make Britain's mistake. Too wise to try to govern the world, we shall merely own it. Nothing can stop us."

The last Soft Machine record released was Land of Cockayne, in 1981. Karl Jenkins, John Marshall, and Allan Holdsworth are joined by Jack Bruce for a collection that sounds like a Third-era inspired production-music band on its off-time. Land of Cockayne has its adherents, and is one of the most hotly-debated topics of "What's Rattlin'," the weekly on-line digest of Canterbury-related music.

In 1985, Robert Wyatt participated in a project with the South-West African People's Organization, the SWAPO Singers, and the Repression and Political Prisoners Campaign. "Winds of Change," produced by ex-Specials member Jerry Dammers and sung by Wyatt with the SWAPO Singers, was released to bring attention to the liberation movement of Namibia, which had been illegally occupied by South Africa.

"I want to show you something which is my finger pointing. That's my finger pointing," Wyatt commented about the political nature of his recent work in Wrong Movements.

"Now there are two interesting things about a pointing finger. First of all, you can look at the finger, and secondly, you can look at where the finger is pointing. The problem I have as a musician is that I'm a pointing finger but it's not enough for me if people only look at my pointing finger. I would only be happy if people looked at what I was pointing at, because otherwise it's just a totally subjective game we're playing with the artist and the person looking at the artist."

Following his 1991 recording Dondestan, Robert Wyatt was largely absent from the music business aside from cameo appearances on numerous releases. Wyatt scatsings on four tracks from Fish Out of Water's debut CD Lucky Scars on Stream Records, a label dedicated to the work of disabled artists. Robert takes several vocal turns on former Henry Cow bassist John Greaves's magnificent Songs, on Resurgence Records. Songs is an exquisitely wrought tapestry of predominantly acoustic pieces that have chamber-music-like qualities. Wyatt also contributed lyrics and vocals to "Free Will and Testament" on Hugh Hopper and Kramer's A Remark Hugh Made.

A Remark Hugh Made on Shimmy-Disc is one of numerous recent Hugh Hopper discs released recently. (Remark was, unfortunately, the last album Hugh and Wyatt's friend and collaborator Gary Windo would play on; he died of a heart attack on July 25, 1992.) Shimmy-Disc founder Kramer became familiar with the Soft Machine while studying the work of Jimi Hendrix as a youth. Kramer, a former Gong member who has also recorded two albums with Daevid Allen, Who's Afraid and Hit Men, discusses his work with both former Softs.

"Daevid and Hugh are artists. Most kids I work with are musicians, and art rarely enters into it," said Kramer. "Hugh and Daevid differ greatly in that Hugh is a musician, or rather an artist who paints with his guitar; although he usually works instrumentally, let us not forget that his lyrics for "Memories" are among the most poignant ever written. Daevid wants people to be moved by his words, Hugh wants people to be moved by his bass guitar and the sounds he emotes from it. Daevid cares about environmental issues and sings about them. Hugh cares about environmental issues and does not sing about them."

"Hugh was familiar only with my collaboration with Daevid before we worked together," said Kramer, describing how he got together with Hugh Hopper. "I wrote [a letter telling him] that I felt Hopper Tunity Box was one of the finest works of the era. I told him that if he was at all interested in making a continuation of that idea, I wanted to make a collaborative record. He wrote back saying 'no problem,' and a couple of months later he was at my home recording what turned out to be A Remark Hugh Made."

According to Kramer, the collaboration with Wyatt on "Free Will and Testament" came about when "Hugh suggested that a piano piece I did would sound great with Robert's voice on it. We sent him a tape, and he simply sent back another tape with his voice added to the piano. Somehow, miraculously, I managed to synchronize the two tapes and re-edit back onto 24-track in order to have a decent sounding final product although the flaws are legible if you listen hard."




Hugh Hopper and Kramer released a second album in early 1997, entitled Huge; according to Kramer, "[it] is more strictly from improvisations which I then built upon after Hugh went home to Canterbury." Hugh has also recently collaborated with the Portland, Oregon based group Caveman Shoestore on the Caveman Hughscore disc, on Tim/Kerr Records. The collaboration came about when bassist Fred Chalenor called Hugh for the sheet music to his song "Sliding Dogs" for Caveman Shoestore to play. Eventually after enough sheet music and Caveman demo tapes crossed the Atlantic, plans were made to record an album together.

Regarding his influence on and invitations to participate in projects with younger generations of "progressive" musicians, Hugh said he is "happy to have people like Kramer or the Cavemen call me up in awe. Joke is, [Caveman Shoestore bassist] Fred Chalenor tries to leave all the soloing to me, one of his heroes, when in fact he's ten times the bassist I'll ever be!"

Other projects Hugh is involved with include the Hugh Hopper Band, known as the Franglo-Dutch band, a jazz band featuring French and Dutch musicians. This group has released Hooligan Romantics on Ponk Records and Carousel on Cuneiform. Hugh is also a member of Mashu, a trio of himself, guitarist Mark Hewins, Gong tabla player and percussionist Shyamal Maitra.

Elton Dean frequently makes guest appearances or plays with many of his Soft Machine cohorts. His most recent album is Silent Knowledge, with his current quartet, a jazz band on the free side. He also released an album of duos and trios, Twos and Threes, originally released on his tape only ED Tapes label, recently reissued on a Voiceprint CD. Mark Hewins, Keith Tippett, and former Softs guitarist John Etheridge are among the musicians who join him. Dean also played on John Greaves' highly-recommended Songs.

With the help of numerous associates, like Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, and Paul Weller, Wyatt returned with full force to the music business, releasing one of his finest albums, Shleep on the Thirsty Ear label in the United States and Hannibal elsewhere. Wyatt continues to pursue lyrical themes present throughout his thirty-year career in popular music - individualism to the point of alienation from society, the concept of freedom, and a surrealistic sense of humor. The rights to six of his classic albums, from 1975's Rock Bottom to 1991's Dondestan also reverted to him and will be reissued throughout 1998 by his new record companies.

Former Soft Machine and Wilde Flowers members have mixed feelings about the "Canterbury" label that has been placed on their music over the years. Robert Wyatt remarked in Ptolemaic Terrascope that "I didn't even know it meant me until interviewers started asking me about it.

"As I say, because I'd bussed in from outside to go to school there I didn't really consider myself a Canterbury person. I think it really means people like Hugh Hopper and Richard Sinclair, who are generally based in that area."

"I met them there and am eternally graceful that I met someone like Hugh who provided something I dont think anyone else could have provided. My mind doesn't dwell on it as a place though, if I recall a former fantasy world upon which I draw, it was Harlem in the Forties and not Canterbury in the Fifties."

Elton Dean does not consider the Canterbury label useful. "Canterbury scene' is a myth that outsiders like to perpetuate. It puts a convenient, is somewhat meaningless label on very diverse musics."

Hugh Hopper and Kevin Ayers, though they don't particularly advocate the Canterbury label, use it to their advantage. Hugh, who once quipped that the only person in Canterbury who recognized him was his mother, "personally [uses] the 'Canterbury Scene' umbrella now that it exists, to foster interest in my current musical projects, but in fact it was a journalistic label given to a very disparate group of musicians (most of whom had never been near Canterbury in their lives), long after the original few Canterbury musicians from the Wilde Flowers had divided into Caravan and the Soft Machine."

Kevin Ayers maintains that "on one side, it has helped me in the sense of being part of a bigger entity. On the other hand, I did some stuff not very related to the Canterbury scene. So?"

Richard Sinclair takes much pride in the town of Canterbury and the music that he had an active role in shaping. He was quoted in Facelift: "I think it has got a particular sound, Kent. We've sung it in our schools here, we were all at school in this sort of area. I was part of the C of E choir: up to the age of sixteen I was singing tonalities that are very English. Over the last three hundred years, four hundred years, maybe, and even earlier than that, some of the tonalities go back... A very historical centre of activity is Canterbury for the last hundred years. So it's quite an important sort of stepping stone of whatever this thousand years have covered, I think it's not to be mocked, because it's a centre of communication here and it's a meeting point - many nations come here to visit the cathedral, so you get a very unique situation happening, you know?... People say 'what is the Canterbury scene?' I think you have to come to Canterbury and see and hear it..."

From humble beginnings, a local beat group from the sixties with esoteric tastes in music has blossomed into a grass-roots musical movement whose members have branched out into the realms of psychedelia, jazz, pop, and progressive rock, for a devoted bunch of enthusiasts around the world. Although Hugh Hopper said "so-called progressive music is a dirty word for most promoters - here in the U.K. there were only a few years in the late sixties and early seventies when it wasn't," the Canterbury music fans know better. Like Chaucer's classic novel, a varied group of characters has embarked upon a journey, each bringing his or her own voice."

Jim Powers