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La suite et fin,
Pretty Things: Decade Of Dues Now Pays Off
Jonh Ingham, Rolling Stone, 1 February 1973
THE ENGLISH BANDS that have survived since the first days of the British Invasion can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The Stones, the Who, the Kinks, and paradoxically, the Pretty Things.
"Did you see the Pretty Things on telly last night?" asked the mother next door, years ago when I lived in the States.
"No," I replied jealously:
"Are they ever ugly!" I smirked my best superior twelve year old smile. Of course they were. Everyone except the Beatles were to them.
The fanzine Fabulous' best feature was vast quantities of pin-up pix of the groups, particularly the Beatles. Occasionally the Pretty Things graced the four colour wood pulp, and boy, they really were ugly. Hair longer even than Brian Jones, and probably not washed either. Half closed eyes, grim expressions, dressed in black. You knew these weren't guys to mess with. But somehow, over the years, the group hasn't been able to punch its way to the fore.
Recently, however, Warner Brothers signed the group, and are reportedly promoting their new album, Freeway Madness, to the tune of £6,000. Obviously, there are forces that do not intend the Pretties to remain inconspicuous any longer.
Phil May, the group's vocalist and only remaining original member, lives in a section of Notting Hill Gate which has yet to feel the paint and plaster of the refurbisher. His flat is a strange contrast; Chippendale furniture and a Chagall lithograph, yet a $50 stereo. Phil is remarkably youthful for the years of trudging through obscurity, softly spoken and not at all reluctant to delve into the maze of serpentine years which make up the Pretty Things story.
Prior to the Rolling Stones it was impossible to hear rhythm and blues on English radio. The minority who wanted to, hear it had to buy imports at great expense from America, a near impossible outlay to a student on a government grant. The practise, therefore, was for one person to buy one record, someone else another, and then tape each other's
records.
"Dick Taylor and I were in Art School together. He had just left the Stones for reasons like he had to finish his course or give it up altogether, and I don't think he really wanted to play bass. But he was still into that music, and we continued it. Bits and pieces in the lunch break, buying and swapping tapes of Slim Harpo and Jimmy Reed. I don't think the Pretty Things was intentional – the Stones were probably more intentional in the idea that they were going to be a group. We were just filling in this gap with the fact that we all dug rhythm and blues. Mainly it was just gathering round in the front room after school. We had tiny amps, maybe 15 watts, put into a record player, and we'd just play. It was purely for pleasure. The fact that it became a group was to some extent an accident. We thought, 'Well, we might as well do one gig, but we're not going to do many, because there just isn't a market for it.' It just spread."
A year behind Keith Richards and Dick at Art School, Phil was more into work than music, and never expected to perform it. "I got the job of singing because I was the only one who didn't have a guitar. I enjoyed it once I did it, but the thought of actually standing up and singing...When we did start playing, it was to a crowd of about fifty, and thirty of those were friends. Our manager was a student at school, who also happened to manage the Bonzo Dog Band. We'd play a dance for one Art School in London, then go to the next one about a month later, and there would be about 300 people there. Suddenly R & B just started to grow. It wasn't a planned attempt to introduce a form of music into English pop, it just happened.
"I was waiting for exam results, still on a government grant. Playing gigs in the evening and getting home at six o'clock in the morning. I was in my final year, with examinations for Royal College of Art, still very much into painting. I can't understand when it crossed over, apart from the fact that I failed Royal College. The funny thing was that we played our Art School dance the night before and I turned up late, none of my work mounted, and immediately the onus was on the fact that I was fucking around with a rock band, so they were going to kick me out.
"Later, we were playing at the Royal College, doing one of our bi-monthly stints, and a guy staggered up the steps at the end of the set, out of his brain, in a suit, and said, 'Would you be interested in signing a record contract?'
"We said, aah, here we go...Sure Love To...'
"No I'm serious. I'm very drunk at the moment, can you meet me Monday?'
"We half listened to him, and Dick was in town anyway, so he went down to the cafe this guy had asked him to meet at, and he was sitting there with all the record people. A couple of weeks later we were on Ready, Steady, Go. Our eighth or ninth gig was national television."
Because the group was so green, the company gave them Viv Prince, an old professional, and one of the best drummers in England at the time. "It was felt he would be a good influence, which he was. He had the business down, because he'd been kicked up the arse so many times.
"We cut our first single, which only reached Number 30, but it made quite a difference. We were turning up to gigs and there would be two or three thousand; six hundred jammed into a tiny cafe-cum-coffee house, and a thousand more on the street that couldn't get In. The first time we thought it was some kind of political rally that just happened to be in the proximity of where we were playing!
"The next single got to Number 5, but the BBC banned it for the lyrics, and kept bleeping it. It started out with about five bleeps, and every time it was played someone would ask for another word to be taken out, and in the end it got ridiculous.
"We didn't particularly care about making it in America to start off with, because we were doing so well here and in Europe. It didn't seem necessary. We were offered tours on those Dick Clark caravans, but we heard frightening reports from people like the Searchers about seven shows a day, tossed in the back of a Greyhound, wake up, and you're on stage again. Our manager was holding out for better money, and of course, it never was better. Not going was a bad move; that's where we showed green. Our manager was learning the business, we didn't know anything about the business, weren't into the business really. We did American television; Shindig and Jack Parr. He came over to interview us in our Belgravia mansion. There are strange scenes of us getting out of a Mini, which we never had – he'd brought it with him because that was part of the English scene.
"We had about seven hit singles, but there was a lot of pressure to make a more commercial sound. The whole R & B flush died, and everybody had to readjust. Soul was creeping in, and there was a tendency to adjust into a white soul band, which we wouldn't do. We never catered to the audience, and felt the financial crush finally, though we were selling well on the Continent, which in those days was a few years behind. We were going to Europe for big money and going down well, while here we were turning up before crowds of screaming cropped Mods wanting Geno Washington or Otis Reading, and we just didn't do ‘Midnight Hour’.
"Eventually we created a problem whereby the group had changed because of financial pressures. We went to New Zealand, from where we're banned for life, and we were banned from Australia before we even arrived. In those days it was really middle class, narrow minded, bigoted people, especially the press. They'd ask things like whether we wore make-up, and when you get questions like that you usually say, 'Oh sure, all the time. I put it on first thing in the morning.' They would write it down and suddenly you would realise this guy believed it. But if you denied it, they believed it even more."
Viv was thrown off the plane as they were leaving New Zealand, and didn't come back for two weeks, so Mitch Mitchell replaced him until Phil found Skip Allen, who managed to repeat Viv's performance on a tour of France, so the immortal Twink, later of the Pink Fairies, took over.
"That the band changed so much was a good thing, because we were constantly getting new ideas, which kept the band living. With R & B, first it's enough to do it, then it's enough to do it your way, but then you want more personal clay to work with, so you go through all sorts of musical experimentations, trying on new things. Luckily, most of our experimentation was in private."
By 1968 there were three Pretties, the contract with their first label, Fontana, was running out, it was known they weren't going to renew, so the band was hustled into an album, Emotions. "We didn't even have a musical standpoint at the time. We were going through a period wondering what to play and who to get into the band, and we had to write an album. We cut the basic tracks, then somebody else came in and laid on all these lush strings, and it was quite evident when we came face to face in our first session that we had no control over it at all. They liked what they were doing, but felt that since we had done our bit, there was no more dialogue left. They certainly weren't going to let us tell them what to do, and it ended up like two incompatible elements trying to be fused together. The new band came together after I got a friend I grew up with, and John Povey and Wally Allen from the Fenmen, who I'd been getting into harmonies with, and then we were on the run into S.F. Sorrow."
A concept album recorded a year before Tommy was even started, S.F. Sorrow was released in the States four months after Tommy as part of Tamla's Rare Earth Label.
"Tamla was doing good business with EMI, to whom we were signed, and a guy flew over from America and said, 'We want that group.'
Poorly distributed and even more poorly advertised, the band was soundly criticised for jumping on the Tommy bandwagon. "The idea for a concept album arose from not wanting to put six singles and six B sides together as an album. Wanting, probably, a little more out of what I was doing. I felt myself more of a writer than a songwriter, and it came from a short story I wrote."
Norman Smith, engineer on the early Beatles' records, and producer of Pink Floyd's psychedelic classic, Saucerful of Secrets, was assigned as producer an assignment Phil describes as very fortunate. "When we were first introduced we were both very cagey, but as soon as we got down to making music he was amazing. He spent as much time down on the floor as in the box. It was done in hundreds of layers, and nobody had any idea what the end result would be until we sat down and played the whole thing back."
Hardly advertised even in England, it of course didn't sell. Then the band was sold to NEMS as one of a number of bands, including T. Rex. "We were without a manager for eight or nine months, and we weren't so much doing it ourselves as waiting to see what NEMS would do. They couldn't make up their minds because they suddenly realised they'd bought all these groups and didn't know what to do with them. We were going through so many fuckups the band ceased to function. We were just existing, meeting with solicitors instead of rehearsing. Fighting for survival. Finally, Dick left. He'd just got married, and I think he'd had enough of the road. He enjoyed playing, but the hassles proved too much. He would have preferred to withdraw to a safer distance and still carry on, but that was impossible."
Out of the fighting and tangling with harsh reality evolved Parachute, one of the best rock album of the 60s. "It was less of a concept album than S.F. Sorrow, but I still felt the same about my writing. It had amazing reviews, and we had high hopes for it. It didn't sell badly here, but in America Cashbox voted it one of the six best albums of the year to come out of England, and it did nothing, because Tamla spent six months telling us it was out when it wasn't. Eventually it leaked out. To be fucked around like that is really a drag. EMI tried to buy us off, and the next thing, we got a telegram saying, 'We feel the Pretty Things are an integral part of our label and refuse to sell them.'
"Parachute was a technical album rather then just enjoying it musically. We were going through musical gymnastics. Obviously we believed in what we were doing, but on reflection it does seem a bit doomy.
"At that time we were really down, and it looked like the band was going to break up. I've only thought seriously about killing the band three or four times in the eight years. The most serious time was last year when we split up. It didn't look like we'd get off Tamla for the rest of our naturals, so we told EMI we didn't want to make albums just for them and England. Skip joined another band, John joined EMI as a producer, I fucked off to Greece. The whole thing just blew up. But I got to Greece and started songwriting, and thought, 'This is silly. If it gets to you that much, you can't jack it in.'
"Back in London, I got a phone call from the manager of Skip's group. He heard Parachute by chance on Skip's car, and didn't know who it was.
" 'That's amazing, who's that.' Skip said it was us. 'Why did you stop? You made that? Why did you stop?'
" 'Well, things were getting too heavy, so we jacked it in.'
"He rang me up and asked if I could put the band back together if I wanted to. John, Pete Tolson and I were thinking of putting something together anyway, and I mentioned that.
" 'No, I want the band that made Parachute, which I can do something with. With two good records like that behind you, I feel I can build on it.'
"We got together, rehearsed a month, went on the road for six months, and recorded Freeway Madness the statement of which I felt was a band playing its music, rather than something behind the music. This band is very tight; it's probably the best band I've been in as the Pretty Things and the rest of the group dig the fact they're in a band with history. It's probably the hardest band. There have been rougher, cruder versions, but obviously you don't work on something for eight years without refining it."
New Pretty Things Get a Led Zep Uplift
Steve Turner, Rolling Stone, 10 April 1975
LONDON – The Pretty Things were there at the beginning. Phil May, the band’s lead singer and only original member, followed Keith Richard out of England’s Kent Art School a year after Richard formed the Rolling Stones. With original Stones guitarist Dick (not Mick) Taylor, the Pretty Things’ raunchy R&B sound made them one of Britain’s top mid-'60s bands before various problems turned the last eleven years into a struggle for recognition. Now, after more than a decade of laboring and changes, the Prettys, who have just released a more metallic Silk Torpedo for Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song label and begun a tour in the States, may finally be climbing up from the depths.
"Depths" was the proper image last Halloween, when Swan Song celebrated the album’s European release with a rave in a cave. Guests traveled the dozen or so miles from London via special coaches to enjoy five hours of music, wine and a spontaneous jelly fight at the normally touristy Chiselhurst Caves. Odder entertainment was also presented, in the form of an escapologist, a fire-eater and some naked models.
Almost anonymous among the crowd assembled to celebrate his good fortune, a velvet-suited May noted that the last time he’d been down in the caves was back in the early sixties, when they were being used as a nightclub and he was performing. Less anonymous was Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, who’d personally brought the Pretty Things onto Swan Song.
"I saw Phil May in a club one night," Plant recalled. "I told him how great I thought his band’s albums were. He was quite amazed that I’d heard of them."
What had impressed Plant so deeply were the three albums recorded by the Pretty Things between 1968 and 1973, all of them received with considerable critical warmth, all of them commercial failures. S.F. Sorrow, released in ’68, was an authentic forerunner of what later became known as "rock opera". It was the tale of a soldier, based on a short story by May. The album was recorded eighteen months before the Who’s Tommy was released, but appeared in the US three months after Tommy. The Pretty Things were accused of trend-jumping, a circumstance which May described as "a bit of pain in the arse".
Parachute (a Rolling Stone Album of the Year) was released a year later. It too failed to break commercially. May blamed this misfortune on a lack of promotion.
"We got great reviews," May said, "but the company put quarter-inch ads on the back pages of the music papers for about two weeks and that was their total contribution."
Suffering from inertia, the Pretty Things went through fourteen personnel changes since first recording in 1964. And when the release of Freeway Madness and a brief 1973 tour of the US failed to build the band’s support, the group took a vacation upon returning.
"I think people have at times lost the feeling that there’d ever be a breakthrough," he exclaimed. "People will work only so long as they feel there’s some justification for it. It’s really funny: almost everyone who’s been in the group and then quit stopped playing altogether.
"If you’re in a band, you work very hard and you get wrapped up in it, so that if you feel you’re possibly getting an elbow from the record-buying public, then it’s very hard to carry on. You know I sometimes expect to wake up one morning and think: ‘Well, that’s it!’ But I enjoy it still and I’ll do it until I stop enjoying it."
It was Plant who kept the spark alive. "So I said to Phil," he recounted, " ‘Listen, one day I’d love to come to you and make you an offer and help you move it along a bit.’ I only smiled when he looked at me quizzically because I knew that we [Led Zeppelin] were only tossing around the idea of starting a record label at that time. What we didn’t want to do was from a label with all the right intentions, have some successes, but have no one to carry them through. I didn’t want it to end up as Led Zeppelin’s label with only Led Zeppelin on it."
Plant’s reluctance evaporated when the first new band they signed, Bad Company, gave them a million-seller debut album. But another difficulty may remain. "The Pretty Things conjure up something from the past to people my age," Plant continued. "And yet, they’re certainly not a nostalgia trip or anything like that. Most of the time when you don’t hear of anyone for ten years it’s the Neil Sedaka thing – you know, the Sha-la-la days are back! But the Pretty Things have got this tomorrow’s-just-around-the-corner feel about what they do."
For once, May himself has high hopes. "At least America is fresh for us. In England it’s such hard work to prove that this is a new band and that what we’re playing now is something from now. I don’t say we have more chance of breaking through this time. But we’ve got more opportunity."
The Pretty Things: Greatest Hits 1964-1967
Mick Farren, NME, 6 December 1975
FOR A SHORT time, around the London clubs and art school dances, back in 1964, it seemed as though the Pretty Things might just unseat the Stones from the position as the south of England's primo R&B band.
They were certainly rougher, uglier, less couth and generally more all round nasty than the Stones. Watch Committees banned them from provincial towns. Where the Stones pissed on gas station walls, the Pretties pissed in ornamental fountains. Even their attitude to their black R&B roots seemed tougher and less compromising than the stones'.
People might talk about the stones being Cro-Magnon, but the Pretty Things were definitely Neanderthal. They lacked even the vestigial show business polish of the Stones. This was both their strength and, in terms of reaching the dizzy heights of a first division of rock and roll band, their undoing.
They amassed a following that would kill rather than hear a word said against them.
Unfortunately they were just too much for that large, more staid sector of the record buying market that they needed actually to push them right into the big time. They didn't have a cute Brian Jones figure, the teen appeal that could suck in all those little girl punters. The Pretties never really conquered anything beyond the oaf market.
Not that they did all that badly. Hits like 'Rosalyn', 'Don't Bring Me Down', 'Honey I Need' and the slightly later 'Midnight To Six Man' (all of which are included on the compilation) left an indelible mark on the history of British R&B.
It may be a coincidence that this Pretty Things collection has been released at almost the same time as the Stones' Rolled Gold anthology. Between them, the two double albums trace the somewhat confused mixture of influences that so typified that important formative period in British rock.
Coming from almost identical backgrounds, and even having a virtual link man in Dick Taylor who transferred from the embryonic Stones to fall in with May, Stax, Pendleton and the legendary Viv Prince to form the Pretties, the two bands seem to almost sum up the choices that faced English bands who were crazy enough to launch themselves into a world of secondhand black rhythm and blues.
Where the stones experimented, adapted and developed, in the end, a mighty sophistication the Pretty Things stuck to their raw R & B guns all the way through to 1967 when a new lineup including Wally Allen, John Povey and Twink (the Pretties seem to have had a fatal attraction for lunatic drummers) started a whole rethink in the shimmering light of psychedelic '67.
The Pretties' faith in essential R&B meant they never produced anything as crass as the Stones' 'Come On'. Their sticking to Reed, Diddley, Berry and Hooker, however, when the Stones were busily monitoring Dylan and The Beatles, meant they were never able to come out with 'Satisfaction'.
This album, containing all their major singles plus some of the best tracks from their first three albums, represents a considerable slice of rock history. It's the music that influenced, on their own admission, Iggy, the MC5, and the New York Dolls.
Whether you're old enough to remember what went down at the time, or you're just discovering this kind of music via the noble work of Dr. Feelgood, there can be no doubt that this collection is a handy package to have around.
The Pretty Things: Savage Eye
Tom Nolan, Phonograph Record, March 1976
NOT AS, NOT AT all as, not nearly as, doesn't even come close to being anything at all as good as their last one, Silk Torpedo, which impressed throngs from San Francisco to Philly. Still, there's something endearing about this band.
'Under the Volcano', the leadoff title, has nothing to do with the Malcolm Lowry novel but does have a passing resemblance, through a recurring secondary riff, to Steely Dan's 'Show Biz Kids'. It's saying something about Chuck Berry and James Dean as parental surrogates. The P.T.s seem to have refined the lyric-as-an-excuse-for-opening-your-throat to familiar levels this time. On 'My Song', they're doing a song about a guy trying to write a song. It's not a bad song, as such songs go. It reminds you of Brian Wilson, lyrically and harmonically, as well as Barry Manilow (ditto & ditto); Beach Boys mini-symphony, and 'I Write the Tunes'. It's another long piece, typical of the sort these fellows build, sustaining their multi-layered and alpha-wave-inducing threnodies like, as Jared Johnson of the Denver Post put it, "heavy-metal Hollies."
'Sad Eye' (title track?) is a Led Zeppelinish ballad. Echo-chambered acoustic guitar underscores Gregorian choristers lamenting the loss of a special one, "like the setting of a sun," rhymes with "telephone." Unlike the Zeps, the P.T.s don't explode with screams on this one; they have a knack instead of making thundering riffs homey, of turning spacey voids into nostalgic reference points. They've incorporated roaring power into a romantic tradition; it's that necessary power that makes love songs up-to-date.
'It Isn't Rock 'n' Roll' evokes '50s raunch while continually pulling back to survey it from a lilting counterpoint of view. It's a tribute disguised as God-knows-what higher statement. I think they're saying rock is dead but we can't help dancing on its grave. No, it's that whatever lifestyle the narrator is into, it differs from good old R&R.
'I'm Keeping', the best track on the album, is a slice of lowlife, a hunk of anger, a chunky rocking putdown with the venom quotient of 'Dead Flowers'. It's an attractive cut, accessible to those expert at the Kingston Hustle. 'It's Been So Long' has more rudimentary lyrics, with black mass chants and Floyd Crameresque piano adding grace notes to be or not to be. I take it back, this is the best track. 'Drowned Man' has more of that "long ago" nostalgia. "Take what you need, give the rest back, give it to the drowned man, he needs the water." What could it all mean?
As hinted, Silk Torpedo had strong, stirring melodies and catchy choruses to sing, and this LP has neither, but still it's all right, okay, you win, I'm in love with you. I can't help liking this group. They're grasping at straws, they're building little rafts with them, and then they're setting them on fire!
The Pretty Things: Savage Eye
Robot A. Hull, Creem, May 1976
ANGLOID DROOLERS can breathe a sigh of relief (toot, toot). Although the twittering (sometimes hairy, often comical) falsettos of 10cc and Sparks are cracking under the strain, the Pretty Things remain consistently intact, immune to the castrated trendiness of other anglopoid crybabies.
Along with English bands like Nazareth and Status Quo, the Pretty Things sacrifice flash for mediocrity (keeps them away from the dump-heap). At one time THE UGLIEST BAND IN THE WORLD (see 'Midnight to Six Man'), the Pretty Things have evolved from frantic punkers to progressive evangelists, their best work patterned on their recently reissued early-70s cult faves of S.F. Sorrow and Parachute. The miracle is that their guitars are still in tune.
The eye on the album cover denotes the contents (no Murine needed). The Freak Scene put an eye on the cover of their Psychedelic Psoul album (signified the mesmerizing folk-rock contained within), the Mesmerizing Eye did too (psycho-orchestration for the handicapped), and let's not forget them bloodshot 13th Floor Elevator peepers (hypnotic trash for the mind and body). Likewise, the Pretty Things' Savage Eye equally holds the senses. 'Under the Volcano' rips into Led Zep hurtling and smashing, 'My Song' possesses the acoustics and the harmonies of the Who, 'Remember That Boy' dry heaves like Bad Co., and 'Drowned Man' repeats the patterns so apparent on 'Joey' from the Pretty Things' own Silk Torpedo (last year's quality release).
This whole album, in fact, creates a trance. It's like watching the fuzz on the teevee screen for X-hours straight. Blue splotches appear before your eyes, and your ears hum. Not implying the boys are bland, nosirree, just restful: they ease the tensions.
Readers of the Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press will not be disappointed. Neither will any staunch Angloid supporter. For the truth is that the Pretty Things are strong third basemen for the Swan Song label (holding fort for Bad Co. and Led Zep). Remaining in the background, their records are always good for a spin of two. Unlike the sliced eye in Un Chien Andalou or the eye of Janet Leigh's cadaver in Psycho, the Savage Eye here does not represent a destructive force. More like Lautreamont's ambivalent eye, perhaps, peeping into the dark corners of the universe. Obviously for that intense or serious, but the music on the Savage Eye does remain that hypnotic and certainly as controlled as previous Pretty Things efforts.
Uriah Heep/Pretty Things: Empire Pool, Wembley
Jonh Ingham, Sounds, 19 June 1976
THE PRETTY Things can, on occasion, succumb to being ordinary, but usually they're great. This night was no exception. Using the cavern of Wembley Empire Pool to their advantage they poured themselves over the audience with finesse, elan and panache. That means they worked like a sledgehammer on your brains and every second felt great.
But the major surprise was the absence of Phil May, now a member emeritus. The strange thing was that he wasn't really missed. Oh, there was the odd moment when a flying mane of hair and joyous smile would have fitted in well, but Gordon Edwards and Jack Green filled the vacancy admirably. At least half the audience agreed to the point of rising to their feet. It's about time the Pretties received a standing ovation.
Uriah Heep was a different kettle of fish. What they do is okay, but it's so limited within the realms of what's possible. It seems that a lot of people agree, as the place was only two-thirds full, and the band's attempts to inject a sense of occasion, even to showing a 15 minute film of themselves over album tracks, fell flat on their face.
Four years ago I found Heep okay, mainly because of Ken Hensley's obscenely loud Bach ripoffs. Unfortunately, he seems to have transcended that.
They were dreadful. I'd expected to be bored, but this was horrific. The sound was an unending dribble of mashed potatoes, the lyrics inaudible and the bass indistinct. Whoever heard of heavy rock without a freight train bass?
To everyone concerned about John Wetton, the thinking man's bassist, he seemed to be enjoying himself, and who wouldn't, being able to plough through all that mindless rhythm after a discipline like King Crimson. I just wish I could have heard him. At one point he took over the lead vocals, the song sounding like a variation of his contribution to Diamond Head.
To their credit, Dave Byron was excellent in his ability to involve the audience in the proceedings, and even had the humour to make disparaging comments about the dry ice. He was dressed in a combination of Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart and moved the same.
The audience were, of course, diehard fans. The louder and faster they got it, the louder and faster they responded.
I resolved to stay at least two songs beyond terminal boredom, if only for duty's sake. But somewhere in the second hour or so of 'July Morning' – which was quite a number four years ago – the terminal volume, unending roar and incredible musical emptiness became too much. As I joined the slow trickle of like-thinkers aiming for the parking lot – where, oddly enough, the sound was good to the point of easily discernable lyrics – a steward in his 40s stopped me.
"I don't know why music has to be so loud," he said, "But if it does it can still be good. This is horrible. Emerson, Lake and Palmer now – now that's good music."
Eric
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