incrediblestringband

dathi1

Incredible String Band 2003
The Village
Sunday May 18th Adm: 23Euro (inc.booking fee)
Tickets available from Ticketmaster, Road Records and Soundcellar
Web: www.incrediblestringband.com / www.thevillagevenue.com

Never say never! At a time when reunions and reformations were à la mode in
the world of popular music, Sixties legends The Incredible String Band
seemed destined to remain no more than a fond memory to their many loyal
fans. ISB mainmen Mike Heron, Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer had
steadfastly resisted the temptation to trade on their past achievements,
preferring to pursue their respective solo careers. But a renewed awareness
in recent years of the ISB's importance in the history development of 20th
century popular music amplified the calls for some sort of reunion.

Way back in the 1960's, Heron and Williamson laid the foundations for the
band's kaleidoscopic eight-year career, which took them out of Scotland's
folk clubs and ultimately to Woodstock. On that long, strange trip they
profoundly influenced the development of popular music: the Beatles, the
Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and many others drew inspiration from the ISB's
unique eclecticism and instinctive originality.

At the turn of the Millennium Heron, Williamson and Palmer finally bowed to
the clamour of Stringfandom worldwide and renewed their partnership. The
Incredible String Band were reborn, and this time round included Welsh
keyboard wizard Lawson Dando as well as Bina Williamson. Between 2000 and
2002 they toured a show generously stocked with classics from the band's
high summer but also featuring some less identifiably "string band"
material.

After these concerts fans increasingly demanded that the band renew full
time gigging and sought the return of the multi-instrumentalist approach
core to the band's ethos. The decision to meet this demand and become a
full-time touring band was incompatible with the demands of Robin Williamson
's varied solo projects and therefore it was felt best that the band would
change its line-up reflecting the renewed commitment to touring. The
remaining line-up of Heron, Palmer and Dando has been augmented by the
singer and multi-instrumentalist Fluff, and, respecting Williamson's
absence, the band name has been changed to incrediblestringband2003. The
centrepiece of the new repertoire is likely to be Heron's 13-minute epic A
Very Cellular Song, unperformed in its entirety since 1968 and regarded by
many as the finest flowering of the ISB's genius, the rest of the material
performed will mostly come from the much loved first 5 albums.

Incredible String Band 2003 -- Biography

The Incredible String Band were popular music's ultimate chameleons. They
began in the mid Sixties as a folky trio comprising fiddler Robin
Williamson, banjoist Clive Palmer and guitarist Mike Heron, perambulating
the Scottish club circuit with their skewed mixture of bluegrass and Celtic
folk. Their first album release, however, was largely made up of original
songs by Heron and Williamson. Their producer, Joe Boyd, spotted their
potential as songwriters and figured they could appeal beyond the folk
constituency. After the release of the first album, however, the band
promptly split. Palmer headed east, and Williamson "followed the Tarot to
Fez" to study oud and Berber flute playing, intending never to return. His
money ran out, however, and he was repatriated, returning to Scotland
clutching an oud, a gimbri, assorted flutes and ethnic drums. He and Heron
regrouped in the autumn in a rambling cottage north of Glasgow with a
sackful of seriously strange and beautiful songs. Boyd, now their manager as
well as their producer, booked them into London's UFO and Middle Earth clubs
alongside the likes of Pink Floyd, and the emerging counter-culture
instantly clutched them to its bead-hung bosom.

Six months after 5000 Spirits, the band's acknowledged masterpiece, The
Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, hit the shops. To play it was to cross the
threshold into a different world. The hallucinatory clarity of childhood
memories mingled with mythic tableaux and pantheistic prayers, all infused
with the logic of dream. The album propelled them into the Top 5 of the
British album charts-they were the fourth best-selling band on the scene,
behind The Beatles, Cream and The Rolling Stones. Luminaries such as John
Lennon, Mick Jagger and Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant openly acknowledged
their influence. Round about this time, film-maker Peter Neal began to
follow the band around, sensing that their approach to music-making and
communal living offered a sort of counter-cultural blueprint to a generation
casting eagerly around for alternatives. Neal's film, Be Glad For The Song
Has No Ending, was over a year in the making, as funding came in dribs and
drabs. The BBC slated it for their Omnibus arts programme but got cold feet,
deeming it "too advanced" for viewing sensibilities. The reels lay forgotten
in a barn in the West Country for decades before finally being transferred
to videotape for commercial distribution in the mid-Nineties. (It's just
been reissued by Weinerworld to a chorus of admiring reviews.) By the time
filming was completed, the band had released a double album, Wee Tam And The
Big Huge, that consolidated the achievements of its predecessors.
"Williamson and Heron are writing better songs than the Beatles," one critic
frothed admiringly.

1969 was perhaps the ISB's high water mark. Their appearance at the
legendary Woodstock festival acknowledged their status as brand leaders in
the field of cerebral acoustic-based music. The following year they
collaborated with the dance troupe Stone Monkey on a multimedia extravaganza
called U, playing a week in London before touring the States with it. It was
innovatory, but lost money, and thereafter the ISB contented themselves with
incorporating pantomimic interludes into their concerts.

Though Heron and Williamson remained the hub of the ISB, other members came
and went, bringing new musical elements with them. By the early Seventies
the band were drawing upon just about every musical style and idiom under
the sun, and continued to release albums with indecent regularity.
Ultimately, the ISB made the jump to full-blown rock band: their final
and-it's generally agreed-their least successful phase. But in eight years
they'd produced some extraordinary and inimitable music, and added greatly
to the gaiety of the nation. Their best work deservedly stands with the
finest that era has produced.

Following the split, Williamson and Heron promptly "reverted to type", to
quote Williamson. He himself relocated to California and immersed himself in
poetic divigations, antiquarian studies and the traditional music of the
Celtic lands. This led to his development of a "Bardic" form of performance,
incorporating song, harp music and storytelling. Heron, meanwhile, took the
hard-rockin' nucleus of the String Band and set out his stall as a sort of
thinking-man's Bruce Springsteen, later forging a career as a songwriter,
penning hits for Bonnie Tyler and Manfred Mann.

After languishing among the footnotes of rock for almost two decades, the
ISB were suddenly rediscovered by the music press around the 25th
anniversary of Woodstock. By a curious and entertaining coincidence, it
turned out that their former bassist and second fiddler Rose Simpson was now
(1994) Lady Mayoress of the Welsh resort of Aberystwyth. "Incredible! Hippy
queen's the Mayoress!" ran a not-untypical headline.

Celebrities suddenly appeared from the wainscoting who remembered the band
not as a hippy-dippy rizla-rustling harlequinade but as (in the words of Led
Zeppelin's Robert Plant) "an inspiration and a sign". Neil Tennant, Bill
Drummond and Crispian Mills queued up to testify to their influence on a
newer generation of popsters. Recently the Simpsons creator Matt Groening
confirmed in an interview how he based his new series Futurama on the ISB's
song Robot Blues from their U album. Their classic Elektra albums
opportunely reappeared on CD and outsold the rest of the Elektra catalogue.
Could a reunion be far behind? In 1997, Heron and Williamson took to the
boards together for a couple of toe-in-the-water concerts in Glasgow and
London. Devotees travelled from as far afield as Argentina and Australia to
attend, and were there again in 2000 when the officially-reformed Incredible
String Band-which by this time had recruited the long-lost Clive Palmer,
Welsh keyboard wizard Lawson Dando and Bina Williamson-did a short
concert-and-festival tour, playing to wildly enthusiastic sell-out crowds at
every venue. By happy happenstance, Mojo ran an eight-page retrospective on
the band the same month; and there were also substantial features in the
Daily Telegraph and Independent, and the band were booked for a session on
Radio One's Peel Show-their first in 27 years. The concert repertoire
consisted almost entirely of String Band standards, but with all
Stevo Berube
Berube Communications
24 Wexford Street
Dublin 2
Ireland
Telephone +353 (01) 476 3603 Mobile +353 (0)87 244 2695
E-Mail stevo@berubecommunications.com
www.berubecommunications.com
"De gustibus non est dispuntandum"

Martan

Did you go see them?

dathi1

no...and I wish I had but other commitments got in the way.