Grides
by Ian Simmons
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Hmmm... The Soft Machine. Easily one of the most perplexing bands ever, and one of the most time-locked. They are redolent of a certain period in the Seventies, when they were probably one of the driving forces behind the origin of punk.
On one hand, they started out with a line-up containing some of the most eccentric and original musicians ever - Daevid Allen (later of Gong), Kevin Ayers (loopy solo albums) and Robert Wyatt (say no more) - and made some of the late Sixties' most imaginative psychedelia. On the other, as attrition and passport hassles forced these originators out, the Softs slid relentlessly towards a highly accomplished jazz-rock fusion that emphasised technical brilliance over entertainment, until by about 1976 they were about the most arse-achingly dull band on the planet - baldy session musos with mutton-chops, polonecks and OU lecturer specs playing long, noodly work-outs, numbered albums with unicoloured sleeves... You get the picture. In those days, during school holidays we all used to gather round each other's houses playing records, and you knew it was time to duck out and go flick through the racks in Beano's when the Beefheart and Faust albums were forced off with a cry of "get rid of that f***ing noise crap" and a Softs' album was slid on, allowing the perpetrators to sit reverently on the floor in a circle in front of the speakers passing a joint round and go "Mmm... Yeah, cool..." at particularly twiddly bits. It is bands like this (and let's namecheck Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra while we're at it) that were probably responsible for jazz almost dying in the Seventies. A generation grew up thinking that it was about sterile fret-wanking by unfashionable white guys, because this is what they got to hear, not Ornette Coleman or Sun Ra. The Soft Machine were marked for death. It was for this reason, I'm sure, that the Clash were invented.
Anyway, that brings us to Grides, recorded live in Amsterdam in 1971. It catches a band just about to go over the precipice. Robert Wyatt is still there, just, getting disgruntled by the overt jazziness and lack of vocal pieces, complaining that he "preferred to work within the rock context"; the lead here is almost entirely Elton Dean's sax, and there are indeed no vocals. Though Wyatt's tight drumming keeps the whole from lapsing into tedium, you can certainly see what is coming. None the less, it is still a Soft Machine on the right side of the fence and their skill has not yet lapsed into sterile technicalism.
Accompanying the CD is an unintentionally amusing DVD of the band live later in the tour on Germany's Beat Club TV show. Given that they were one of the ugliest bands on the planet, ever, and not much given to theatricality, this is only really of interest if you are amused by horribly dressed Seventies blokes gurning over bass guitars, enjoy the naff "special effects" hosed on to spice it up a bit, or take pleasure in Robert Wyatt's supremely pleasing "rock context" oversized furry peaked cap.
