I'm the originally discriminating buffalo man - I'll do what's wrong as long as I can

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

23/06/68 : The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter - The Incredible String Band

I'm vaguely aware of TISB in a "I'm gonna hate them, aren't I?" kinda way - so let's see if my wildly unfair preconceptions are accurate.

Well, I didn't hate them (although I can assure you the lovely Mrs Reed would) - a lot of it is actually quite funny.  Whether it's supposed to be funny is somewhat less clear - I think they're intending more to challenge musical stereotypes (which they certainly do) than actually raise a chuckle.  I think it's fair to say the singing isn't exactly top notch, but there appears to be a reasonable amount of skill applied on the instruments, even if most of them sound rather medieval.  I'd also say some of it does feel a bit Monty Python and if they had broken out into "I'm A Lumberjack" I wouldn't have been overly surprised - although, since that didn't come out until 1969 it's fair to argue that the Pythons were simply copying TISB.  I also have to say the choice of lyrics for the blog title was endless - there is just so much nonsense to choose from!  The album feels very much of its time and so I'm glad I listened to it but a whole album (a lengthy 49 minutes for the time) is definitely far too much, as was "A Very Cellular Song" (which is, as Wikipedia puts it, "a 13-minute reflection on life, love, and amoebas").

We're at an astonishingly high #9 in the charts this week on its thirteenth week of an incredible 21 week run, with it having peaked at #5.  All very peculiar!  The top five this week were The Small Faces, Otis, TSOM, Andy and The Jungle Book, the highest new entry was Canned Heat (#27) and we have (I think) one more woman featured in the charts - on this very album, and I should have picked up on her earlier (sorry!), so let's give her a slightly bigger moment in the spotlight (and it's fair to say her life merits it).

Licorice McKechnie (real name Christina) sang and played the finger cymbals on this album and was a member of TISB from '68-'72.  She left home in her teens to marry Bert Jansch (from Pentangle) but that never quite happened, so she ended up in this and various other bands over the years - until some time in the late 80s when she completely disappeared and hasn't been seen or heard from since.  As one of her bandmates put it "there is a possibility she may be dead" - but her name lives on here, taking the running totals to 8 named and 8 featured.

Wikipedia actually gives us THREE more women associated with this album (how very progressive of them), but the level of their involvement is unclear - Dolly Collins played the flute organ, Judy Dyble sang on one track and Rose Simpson was a band member in '68 (but isn't credited on this album) - I apologise to them if they deserve to be included in the "featured" count, but Wikipedia doesn't big up their roles quite enough to suggest I should.  Wikipedia also amusingly "explains" the album title to us, via Mike Wood - "The hangman is death and the beautiful daughter is what comes after. Or you might say that the hangman is the past twenty years of our life and the beautiful daughter is now, what we are able to do after all these years. Or you can make up your own meaning – your interpretation is probably just as good as ours".  And I suspect that's true for a lot of TISB's work.

There are also some fascinating instruments played on this album - with gimbri, oud, jaw harp, chananai, sitar, dulcimer, harpsichord and water pipe appearing alongside some slightly more recognisable names.  The album was very well received both critically, both at the time and in retrospect and commercially, with John Peel very much helping it gain exposure.

"Customers also listened to" Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny and Roy Harper - not my area of expertise to say the least.  Which is doubly true for The Incredible String Band and things are very much going to stay that way, but I'd have to say this was an interesting listen from a strange time.  But I'd struggle to describe it as a particularly enjoyable one, if I'm being honest.

16/06/68 - Some more sixties nonsense
30/06/68 - A disappointment