I think you're right, though the Germans were pretty good at recording all sorts of out-there music on "Beat Club". I'm not sure if they had Soft Machine on though, I'll have to check. Anyways, this video is incredible. The sinister, bone crunching fuzz bass, the massively distorted organ and super experimental keyboards of Mike Ratledge, and the frenetic, hard swinging free jazz space rock drumming of Robert Wyatt.
Voilà ce que proposait la télévision à l'époque,...Quelle qualité ! Inventivité, des musiciens exceptionnrls, une richesse rythmique et harmonique de dingue, c'etait il y à 54 ans, 1969. 2023, cette musique est à des années - lumière de ce l'on nous gave actuellement......
@@greengenie7063 He's underrated because you never hear him mentioned anywhere, soft machine in general is a seldom talked about band. Obviously to fellow soft machine fans he's not underrated.
Totalmente vero. Infatti, quando si parla di Soft Machine, si parla di Wyatt, Hopper, Dean, Ayers. Il ruolo di Ratledge, importante, anzi preminente dal 1969 al 1972/73, è stato molto trascurato dalla critica musicale.
Volume Two was one of my first Canterbury albums, I was delighted by Wyatt's sense of humor. He's been such an inspiration to me, I really hope to become a jazz drummer some day.
But don't forget about the music. Don't get pretentious or use technique just for its own sake lest you want to bore your listener to death. I don't listen to Elvin Jones for a lecture.
And you will be a great jazz drummer some day! It's not an easy instrument though... I can play slower rhythms, but drumming requires not only both arms but also both legs to be co-ordinated, drums are among the most difficult instruments I've played! I'm sure you can do it though Soft Machine as a whole had a huge influence on my own musical style though, hugely underrated band
in some passages ,with that keyboard ,sounds like a proto E.L.& P. .Ratledge was a pioneer of prog rock and S.F. one of the foundations of all that came after.Thanks to the people who film this
Used to dance my head off to these guys live, luverly, twas a beautiful free unique creative down the rabbit hole era, thanks for all the carrots !!!!??
@@schizoidman4646 i still like it in the background... long as Mike was involved it always had a bizarre beautiful angular sorta compositional bent. you're right though, the heart and wildness seemed to chill down over the years. "4" has wyatt's drumming at what i consider to be his absolute apex though, the opening track "teeth" is what a human in full ability and flow taste sounds like on the drums
Brian Hopper played sax on Vol.2 (recorded around this time) as well as the early BBC Session version of Facelift, and occasionally live too. A little surprised he's not on this...
The three are really fantastic: Mike Ratledge very brilliant on organ , Robert Wyatt on drums and vocals, (his voice is so particular) , and Hugh Hopper on this astonishing bass, whose fuzz makes it sound near like a saturated 6 strings guitar, maybe with a little less power...
Soft machine has always been an underrated group, but by listening to this, you can easily understand why! I just liked the first album with Kevin Ayers, then thereafter, Hatfield and the North and Henry Cow by evolution :)
Way off up yonder, people will look back and see, despite the ever increasing sophistication of albums 'Three' and 'Four', that Soft Machine's 1969 BBC Radio recording of 'Moon In June' was quite possibly the highpoint of 'prog rock'........sad in a way that the excitement of this music - and of those times - seems, from today's standpoint, to be gone for ever ? I hope not..........we await something glorious, from some as yet unknown band, in the future...........
Im still in debate that this Formation of Soft Machine(in early 1969) was perhaps the real first "birthplace"/"sighting" of (Jazz) Fusion. It came right before In a Silent Way(and ofc Bitches Brew) and already was WAY heavier than that or anything that was around up until King Crimson. Everybody classifies it as prog aswell but it just sounds already more like fusion and not prog.
This predates King Crimson's debut, but it's just as proggy (if not more so.) Which is why using ITCotCK as the starting point of progressive rock can be problematic. In places you can also hear where Egg lifted sections straight out for their early albums.
This indt prog, it's psychidelic, experimental, but certainly not prog at all - just master musicians going all out full of acid making music. King Crimson isn't prog either.....up tharrr
@@dylanhoke8991 they aren't. Not at all. It would be like saying Arthur Brown or Matching Mole is prog., they're all just psych. Or here's another good example - Os Mutantes - was and will never be prog. either. People throw that word around at any polyphonic exploration these days. Another good example is Gorguts - some people would say it's progressive metal. It's just creative - Pink Floyd also just creative. There's alot of Gothenberg progressive blackmetal, and Opeth, Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer. But not Caravan or The Millennium, though it seems like it - dig?
Gotta love English audiences: staring the band down like it's some sort of contest and they're hoping to win something. The idea that one is under some obligation to impersonate an oil painting when attending rock concerts is altogether mysterious to me.
I'm guessing this is in France. The French loved this stuff way more than anyone else. It's why Daevid Allen used France as the launching pad for Gong.
I just wrote that in the comments, then I saw yours, maybe it will get more people to read Pynchon - he didn't write everything under his/or her name - but did most certainly write V.
@@dneville3874 not sure, but a few of his books (actually nobody knows who he really is so he can be a she) people have come forth claiming to know him, but people, well, I don't trust people - the association of American authors, writers has no information - I read in a college book about the crying of lot 49, that a few of his books were written by either a woman or an inner circle of friends, and were proven to be written by others later, recently. But I do know he wrote the crying of lot 49, V, gravity's rainbow, all the main ones - I do have reservations about the movie Joakim Phoenix was in - the book, "inherent vice". It's not his style - but I could be wrong..... V. is a masterpiece
As the later "The soft weed factor" was a take on the John Barth novel, "The Sot Weed Factor". Awesome writers, TP & JB, and important counterculture writers in the '60s who were doing to literature what SM was doing for music.
Maybe it wasnt a nose job but a nasal corrective surgery where something wasnt working properly? I couldnt tell from the lyrics if she had the surgery or not?
Actually it is from the self-titled passage, or rather chapter, "Esther gets a nose job", from the debuting novel of Thomas Pynchon, V.. I am rather surprised to find no relevant mentions in any of the comments.
He did a couple more albums with The Soft Machine, I think up to #4, did 2 more with Machine Mole, fell out of a window, lost the use of his legs. Came back in 1974-75 with his first solo album Rock Bottom, still makes albums and sings.
Potted Rodent I'm pretty sure the others members were pushing for a more jazzy sound and vetoed the use of vocals after Third. From what I heard they refused to play the first half of Moon In June leaving Robert to record it himself until the keyboard solo part.
***** Sounds about right. He still say Moon in June at the Amougies, Actuel thing in Oct' 69 so that must have been the end then. Then just the vocalisations. Shame really.
I don't see how Robert Wyatt was the face of this band, Mike Ratledge is way more of a phenomenal person musically and deserves much more credit than Robert Wyatt does. The only good thing about Wyatt is his drumming, which he lost when he was paralyzed.
All entitled to opinions, but frankly you make yourself out to be a toad with such a statement. Wyatt is hugely beloved figure in British music, and his drumming was just first page of a lengthy volume. Do approach his work with an open mind and hopefully you'll reach same conclusion. Cheers, mate.
@@douggray8557 I tried really hard to appreciate him but I can't bring myself to a point where I even tolerate him for anything other than his drumming. In my opinion his drumming was excellent but I won't get past how little I like his singing. It comes off as him not quite knowing how to use the human voice as an instrument. I understand that he's loved but my point is; Mike Ratledge was incredible and is largely overlooked.
@@dreamerlaurent8291 I'm not sure ratelidge really wanted to be the face of the band, I dont think I've ever really heard him talk, or even smile. Some people are content to be in the background
Partly psych, partly prog, and partly an attempt to play jazz by guys who didn't quite know how to - but who managed to create something else, something new in the process of trying. And almost punk in its frantic scraggliness.
If it wasn’t for all the French film crews lurking around in the sixties none this would ever have been recorded ,
you have a fair point, sir.
Let's not forget the German TV companies who also filmed a lot of this stuff.
I think you're right, though the Germans were pretty good at recording all sorts of out-there music on "Beat Club". I'm not sure if they had Soft Machine on though, I'll have to check.
Anyways, this video is incredible. The sinister, bone crunching fuzz bass, the massively distorted organ and super experimental keyboards of Mike Ratledge, and the frenetic, hard swinging free jazz space rock drumming of Robert Wyatt.
These guys were a musical force. So cool.
in englan' the tape would have been ERASED
Voilà ce que proposait la télévision à l'époque,...Quelle qualité ! Inventivité, des musiciens exceptionnrls, une richesse rythmique et harmonique de dingue, c'etait il y à 54 ans, 1969.
2023, cette musique est à des années - lumière de ce l'on nous gave actuellement......
Mike Ratledge is the most underrated musician of the multiverse... what a genius
Mike Ratledge a totally underrated keyboard player.....
Underrated by who? He's an integral part of this incredible band...
@@greengenie7063 He's underrated because you never hear him mentioned anywhere, soft machine in general is a seldom talked about band. Obviously to fellow soft machine fans he's not underrated.
Totalmente vero. Infatti, quando si parla di Soft Machine, si parla di Wyatt, Hopper, Dean, Ayers. Il ruolo di Ratledge, importante, anzi preminente dal 1969 al 1972/73, è stato molto trascurato dalla critica musicale.
As much as I adore Keith Emerson and ELP, his spot light should've been Mike's
You aren't kidding. He is incredible.
Robert Wyatt is such an amazing wizard here!
Quelle créativité pour l'époque ! 53 ans après, j'en suis toujours fan. Ratledge, Wyatt, Hooper, un trio qui a marqué l'histoire du jazz rock. Amazing
Great band - very underrated this trio for me was the best line up
Volume Two was one of my first Canterbury albums, I was delighted by Wyatt's sense of humor. He's been such an inspiration to me, I really hope to become a jazz drummer some day.
From the moment you begin to improvise, you are a Jazz drummer. After that it's technique, knowledge and experience.
But don't forget about the music. Don't get pretentious or use technique just for its own sake lest you want to bore your listener to death. I don't listen to Elvin Jones for a lecture.
Read Wyatt's biography - you'll find it on Amazon. It's a great, sometimes sad, sometimes awe-inspiring story.
And you will be a great jazz drummer some day! It's not an easy instrument though... I can play slower rhythms, but drumming requires not only both arms but also both legs to be co-ordinated, drums are among the most difficult instruments I've played! I'm sure you can do it though
Soft Machine as a whole had a huge influence on my own musical style though, hugely underrated band
Frantic drum work and haunting vocals...Thunderbolt bass chops....And a maniac keyboardist
This line up was a roadroller!!!
In 2020, still hits just as hard
true pioneers of prog rock jazz. .
Their playing is so surreal it makes me feel like I'm in another worls, that's how great they are.
Wyatt had such a small kit and got so much sound out of it.
Kit was a gift from Mitch Mitchell
@davidmarshall8201 thank you Noel an' Mitchtchtchch
1:22 that's what makes him such a good/great drummer, at least that's what I think. Even Elvin Jones could not compete in my humble opinion 😎
Wyatt was THE BEST for a split-second in time.
Love the Vol 2 lineup..
I have no doubt that robert wyatt, mike ratledge and Hugh hopper give us the best of them
Soft machine best era, psychedelic masterpiece!
in some passages ,with that keyboard ,sounds like a proto E.L.& P. .Ratledge was a pioneer of prog rock and S.F. one of the foundations of all that came after.Thanks to the people who film this
SM were much better than ELP though..
Wonderful! The great technique united with the authentic insanity and freedom of the spirit! Love Soft Machine at least for the spirit of freedom.
Used to dance my head off to these guys live, luverly, twas a beautiful free unique creative down the rabbit hole era, thanks for all the carrots !!!!??
Machine in full flight !!!
Incredible footage. Thanks so much. Like nothing before or since.
What a glorious racket!
thank you so much for uploading this.
first 4 albums Soft Machine is the greatest band ever.
you mean first 3! afterwards it becomes a non psychedelic jazz band.
@@schizoidman4646 i still like it in the background... long as Mike was involved it always had a bizarre beautiful angular sorta compositional bent. you're right though, the heart and wildness seemed to chill down over the years. "4" has wyatt's drumming at what i consider to be his absolute apex though, the opening track "teeth" is what a human in full ability and flow taste sounds like on the drums
ahh and the rest also. try moonjune records
You're absolutely right !
No SM without RW !
Totally brilliant!! Great footage and good camera angles. Pretty much at the top of their game..
In this period, The Soft Machine was composed of only three members : Wyatt, Hopper and Ratledge.
Previous to that it was Wyatt, Ratledge and Kevin Ayers, another great lineup.
Brian Hopper played sax on Vol.2 (recorded around this time) as well as the early BBC Session version of Facelift, and occasionally live too. A little surprised he's not on this...
Well I never!
The three are really fantastic: Mike Ratledge very brilliant on organ , Robert Wyatt on drums and vocals, (his voice is so particular) , and Hugh Hopper on this astonishing bass, whose fuzz makes it sound near like a saturated 6 strings guitar, maybe with a little less power...
@@Marc-lq2qf Ha! Listening to Hopper's buzz saw fuzz tone, think he, Jack Bruce and John Wetton might all have been fans of each other back then?
You are truly doing God's work, my friend!
masters already. love robert's jimi h style hat.
These Boy's were born Brilliant !!
Soft machine has always been an underrated group, but by listening to this, you can easily understand why! I just liked the first album with Kevin Ayers, then thereafter, Hatfield and the North and Henry Cow by evolution :)
Simply FANTASTIC! I wasn't aware of this! Truly inspiring!
Oh to be back in this era ,great stuff.
Amazing that Wyatt could sing and drum Pig
not Wyatt it's Ayers
@@alexanderkomov2951 you're mistaken! ayers wasn't present after soft machine's first album, this video doesn't include ayers.
In 7/8 too!
Complete seperation of body and mind.... never seen anything like him getting the words out during drumming like that!! Beyond mental
@@alexanderkomov2951 Ayers ha lasciato i Soft Machine subito dopo "The Soft Machine".
Huge THANKS for uploading this piece of History.Wow this is pure gold !
Thanks for posting this.
3:42 drum n bass in 1969
HAHA that's my favorite part too! So glad someone else pointed to that exact spot. Grooves so hard
@@alexludeman7613 truly great and way ahead of their time!!
I just read that chapter of Thomas Pynchon novel "V" :')
Way off up yonder, people will look back and see, despite the ever increasing sophistication of albums 'Three' and 'Four', that Soft Machine's 1969 BBC Radio recording of 'Moon In June' was quite possibly the highpoint of 'prog rock'........sad in a way that the excitement of this music - and of those times - seems, from today's standpoint, to be gone for ever ? I hope not..........we await something glorious, from some as yet unknown band, in the future...........
Check out the band 'Magic Bus' -- the UK one not the US one.
The cultural milieu is not conducive to this type of freedom and experimentation.
Many thanks for reposting this as it seems to get deleted a lot 😀! Footage like this is why I have a TH-cam account! Thanks again!!!
meetings with remarkable music.
Amazing
Che fenomeni! La mia band preferita insieme ai Pink Floyd 💚
Nel 1967, il timbro degli organi di Ratledge e Wright era identico.
EXCELLENT!! superbe document, un bon son et de belles images, merci à vous 🙏🙏
Merci à vous
vive la france means only french tv captured soft machine at their peak !
Fantastic. Thank You for uploading this one!
BassLudeman
Gracias por compartir esta joya desde Argentina te mando saludos
I used to look on the personnel back cover to see who was playing lead fuzz guitar and its the keyboards and bass shared😮
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🖤🇧🇷
Volumes 1 and 2,good grief was it 50 years ago, were sold relatively cheap as a double album in a gatefold sleeve.
Great and in real time,,not spliced sound over video that always ends up outta time!!..
Im still in debate that this Formation of Soft Machine(in early 1969) was perhaps the real first "birthplace"/"sighting" of (Jazz) Fusion.
It came right before In a Silent Way(and ofc Bitches Brew)
and already was WAY heavier than that or anything that was around up until King Crimson.
Everybody classifies it as prog aswell but it just sounds already more like fusion and not prog.
And Wow again!!!
this is fucking crazy
!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow, that was enjoyable...
Love Michaels organ bending...
Fricken Awesome
Wooww, thank you ! ! !
Wonderful sound on this. I'm just amazed at how tight they are, and on it. Meanwhile, the audience are in cerebral mode.
I know right, this is dansable music...
100 commentaires…. exceptionnel !!!
Even the advert in the middle can't spoil it!
Прекрасная группа!
Part of a film featuring Lemmy in a band before hawkwind! Excellent!
What, Hugh hopper, hahaha
In Soft Machine that is. Bar vocalisations.
GREAT :):):)
Wow!!!
Hugh Hopperくん「福寿」と書かれた半纏着てる〜！色付きの映像で見たかった
Power
Pretty heavy for their time ...
Best cosa ever!
GO!
This predates King Crimson's debut, but it's just as proggy (if not more so.) Which is why using ITCotCK as the starting point of progressive rock can be problematic. In places you can also hear where Egg lifted sections straight out for their early albums.
This indt prog, it's psychidelic, experimental, but certainly not prog at all - just master musicians going all out full of acid making music. King Crimson isn't prog either.....up tharrr
@@JSTNtheWZRD You just tainted your credibility when you said king crimson aren't prog.
@@dylanhoke8991 they aren't. Not at all. It would be like saying Arthur Brown or Matching Mole is prog., they're all just psych. Or here's another good example - Os Mutantes - was and will never be prog. either. People throw that word around at any polyphonic exploration these days. Another good example is Gorguts - some people would say it's progressive metal. It's just creative - Pink Floyd also just creative. There's alot of Gothenberg progressive blackmetal, and Opeth, Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer. But not Caravan or The Millennium, though it seems like it - dig?
7!!!!!!!
Gotta love English audiences: staring the band down like it's some sort of contest and they're hoping to win something. The idea that one is under some obligation to impersonate an oil painting when attending rock concerts is altogether mysterious to me.
I'm guessing this is in France. The French loved this stuff way more than anyone else. It's why Daevid Allen used France as the launching pad for Gong.
I like Wyatt's drum solo here better than the one on the record, which is almost an anti-solo.
This song title must be a reference to Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel V. Chapter Four: "In Which Esther Gets a Nose Job"
I just wrote that in the comments, then I saw yours, maybe it will get more people to read Pynchon - he didn't write everything under his/or her name - but did most certainly write V.
@@JSTNtheWZRD really? i didn't know that... what was written by another author?
@@dneville3874 not sure, but a few of his books (actually nobody knows who he really is so he can be a she) people have come forth claiming to know him, but people, well, I don't trust people - the association of American authors, writers has no information - I read in a college book about the crying of lot 49, that a few of his books were written by either a woman or an inner circle of friends, and were proven to be written by others later, recently. But I do know he wrote the crying of lot 49, V, gravity's rainbow, all the main ones - I do have reservations about the movie Joakim Phoenix was in - the book, "inherent vice". It's not his style - but I could be wrong..... V. is a masterpiece
As the later "The soft weed factor" was a take on the John Barth novel, "The Sot Weed Factor". Awesome writers, TP & JB, and important counterculture writers in the '60s who were doing to literature what SM was doing for music.
mi grupo favorito ,yo con 16 años,flipaba porque no sonaba a lo que me habían educado....esto iba a ir a mejor?al parecer no,ahora hay regueton,etc.
Zajebiste.
vive la france!
I Soft Machine erano inglesi.
😂😂🤣🤣
Maybe it wasnt a nose job but a nasal corrective surgery where something wasnt working properly? I couldnt tell from the lyrics if she had the surgery or not?
Actually it is from the self-titled passage, or rather chapter, "Esther gets a nose job", from the debuting novel of Thomas Pynchon, V.. I am rather surprised to find no relevant mentions in any of the comments.
Who would of thought.
Distortion and WaWa on Organ..
Brian Auger would
Was this the original lineup?
the earliest grunge band ,..but mixed with prog and jazz and zappa
It's not prog, man, jazz rock psych feeeuuusssiiiooonnn
And to the devil with zappa
Didn't Robert Wyatt more or less stop singing not long after this?
He did a couple more albums with The Soft Machine, I think up to #4, did 2 more with Machine Mole, fell out of a window, lost the use of his legs. Came back in 1974-75 with his first solo album Rock Bottom, still makes albums and sings.
Potted Rodent I'm pretty sure the others members were pushing for a more jazzy sound and vetoed the use of vocals after Third. From what I heard they refused to play the first half of Moon In June leaving Robert to record it himself until the keyboard solo part.
***** Sounds about right. He still say Moon in June at the Amougies, Actuel thing in Oct' 69 so that must have been the end then. Then just the vocalisations. Shame really.
lewlew67 sang!
Hopper and Ratledge told him to shut up ! Big mistake ! Soft machine died a short time later and this band turn to nothing
Heavy Metal recomendations...
This commercial is annoying. Why does he snap his finger's. Just a tip:
It's not necessary...!
Love the performance but Wyatt's vocals while drumming were kinda awful.
I don't see how Robert Wyatt was the face of this band, Mike Ratledge is way more of a phenomenal person musically and deserves much more credit than Robert Wyatt does. The only good thing about Wyatt is his drumming, which he lost when he was paralyzed.
@@dreamerlaurent8291 Honestly, had Kevin stayed in the band, he would have been the face of the group
All entitled to opinions, but frankly you make yourself out to be a toad with such a statement. Wyatt is hugely beloved figure in British music, and his drumming was just first page of a lengthy volume. Do approach his work with an open mind and hopefully you'll reach same conclusion. Cheers, mate.
@@douggray8557 I tried really hard to appreciate him but I can't bring myself to a point where I even tolerate him for anything other than his drumming. In my opinion his drumming was excellent but I won't get past how little I like his singing. It comes off as him not quite knowing how to use the human voice as an instrument. I understand that he's loved but my point is; Mike Ratledge was incredible and is largely overlooked.
@@dreamerlaurent8291 I'm not sure ratelidge really wanted to be the face of the band, I dont think I've ever really heard him talk, or even smile. Some people are content to be in the background
It was so obvious why Hugh and Mike kicked Robert out of the band ; not because of his drumming but because of his awful singing
Plenty of room for the Electric Guitar stylings of ...JIMI HENDRIX..
.
...
A collaboration could have easily happened. He was a fan.
the drum kit kit was actually the thermogloss kit that mitch mitchell had in 1968, he gave the kit over sometime in 1969
@@milomeliora7271 yeah, but Hendrix would have to have filled the shoes of the remarkable Daevid Allen, the Softs original guitar player!
@Jeff Sylvester Sounds amazing! Where did you find that jewel, and how could I get access to it? :)
Shit .
Partly psych, partly prog, and partly an attempt to play jazz by guys who didn't quite know how to - but who managed to create something else, something new in the process of trying. And almost punk in its frantic scraggliness.