Robert Wyatt

I check the Robert Wyatt sections in record stores from time to time, because deep down I know there's some great secret stash of Robert Wyatt music that I haven't heard yet, and it turns out I'm right because last week I found an album called Theatre Royal Drury Lane Sunday 8th September 1974, put out by Hannibal. It's the one-off show of the Rock Bottom material with the usual Robert Wyatt players: Hugh Hopper, Fred Frith, Mike Oldfield, Nick Mason and even Ivor Cutler doing “For me is the life of the highwayman, yum yum". It sounds like Matching Mole or 801 doing that material, much more fusion than psychedelic. Of course I prefer the latter. I always heard the Zappa connection in early 70s Soft Machine, but was actually quite surprised, when I really listened to late-60s Miles Davis, at how much End of an Ear borrowed from that sound.

The live album includes to its detriment that unfortunate fusion staple, the Fender Rhodes with its horrid bell-like tones and also has too many funny-mouth-sounds for my taste. Mike Oldfield’s playing, however, is sort of a rediscovered treasure. But the main benefit of the album, I suspect, will be to send every Robert Wyatt-loving listener back to the inexhaustible Rock Bottom in search of an answer to that musical question, What's a baloley when it's a gafoley?