More about Pip

One of the things on my unwritten "to do" list was to burn a DVD from a downloaded session of "Canterbury" bands: two tracks from Caravan, one long Hatfield medley and one National Health appearance. The drummer in the last two segments was none other than Pip Pyle, RIP. Today I found the time to create the dvd, and I've watched the whole thing (about 25 minutes) twice.

I don't know whether it's the quality of the captured picture or whether the original video was trying to be "far out", but the first Caravan song, "Magic Man", is simply weird, visually. Audio is fine. Very youthful and innocent psychodelia. The second song, "Golf girl", is much better, featuring a Richard Sinclair vocal (very straight, showing none of the vocal mannerisms that were yet to come) and Dave Sinclair on Hammond. Pye Hastings looks bored out of his mind. Richard makes an interesting lyrical change towards the end -

And later on the golf course

After drinking tea

It started raining H-bombs

She protected me

The Hatfield medley apparently comes from the late Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park; the footage comes from Japanese TV, complete with announcer. This includes part of "Somewhere between Heaven and Hell", "The yes/no interlude", "Fitter Stokes" and "Didn't matter anywhere". Classic material from "The Rotters' club" album. Dave Stewart is hirstute and rocking about on his chair, fingers moving from keyboard to keyboard. Phil Miller is hiding at the back, playing somewhat normal guitar (although he is always out of focus and smudged in the video - poor lighting resolution), Richard looks a bit older than the Caravan video, and Pip is ... Pip. Very strange watching him; he looks pudgier than his photos. He's also playing quite a bit with his eyes closed - surely an unusual thing to do.

The National Health performance is of "The Collapso", sourced from The Old Grey Whistle Test. This starts off exceedingly strange - part of the "Weird Musician of the month" competition, which John Greaves steals without competition. He is very much the star of the visual performance, whereas Phil Miller - who plays the tune - is hiding at the back again. Dave Stewart is shorn of his long hair and looks even weirder in his movements. Pip is still Pip, plumper than I thought, tapping his cymbals and playing with his eyes closed.

After 30 years of only hearing this music, it's fascinating to watch it being made. And of course, it is a fitting memorial for The Man Of Zinc (as DS's sleeve notes to "The Complete National Health") refer to him.

I've been thinking of recording one of Pip's songs: it's either "Share it" (music by Richard Sinclair), "Fitter Stokes" or "Binoculars". I would most like to do FS, but it sounds like I'm going to have problems singing it as it requires a huge range. I've worked out most of the music (quite weird, but what would you expect from a drummer?) and it would be fun to play. "Share it" also has quite a range, somewhere around 15 semitones, but that's just about manageable. The chords were very easy to pin down; they play it in B, but that's going to be too high for me. "Binoculars" can wait as a third option, if I even decide to go through with this. Of course, I'm so used to hearing the original of SI that it's going to be difficult at first to find a new musical approach, although I know that once I decide on a basic feel, the arrangement will turn out to be quite different from the original.