| Henry Cow Concerts | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Live album by Henry Cow | ||||
| Released | 1976 | |||
| Recorded | London, Italy, Netherlands and Norway between September 1974 and October 1975 | |||
| Genre | Avant-rock, free improvisation | |||
| Length | 103:43 | |||
| Label | Compendium (Norway) Caroline (UK) |
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| Producer | Henry Cow | |||
| Henry Cow chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [1] |
| All About Jazz | (favorable)[2] |
| Piero Scaruffi | (6/10)[3] |
Henry Cow Concerts is a live double album by English avant-rock group Henry Cow, recorded at concerts in London, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway between September 1974 and October 1975. Sides one and two of the LP record consist of composed material while sides three and four contain improvised pieces.
The album includes Henry Cow's last John Peel Session, recorded in September 1975 and extracts from a concert with Robert Wyatt at the New London Theatre in May 1975. "Groningen" (recorded in September 1974) is part of an instrumental suite where the band improvised around fragments of an early version of Tim Hodgkinson's "Living in the Heart of the Beast" from In Praise of Learning (1975). Another performance of this suite (in full) later appeared in Halsteren on Volume 2: 1974–5 of The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set (2009).
CD reissues of the album include Henry Cow's tracks on Greasy Truckers Live at Dingwalls Dance Hall (1974), a double LP of an October 1973 concert, featuring Camel, Henry Cow, Global Village Trucking Company and Gong.
Contents |
Side one – 22:50
Side two – 25:36
Side three – 29:02
Side four – 26:15
CD one
CD two
1–8. "Oslo" (Henry Cow) – 28:59
* CD releases only, Henry Cow's set on Greasy Truckers Live at Dingwalls Dance Hall.
The composed material (with the exception of "Ottawa Song") originally appeared on the following albums:
In 1995, East Side Digital reissued Henry Cow Concerts as a double CD with four extra tracks. The extra tracks came from Greasy Truckers Live at Dingwalls Dance Hall (1974), a double LP of an October 1973 concert performed by Camel, Henry Cow, Global Village Trucking Company and Gong, each band contributing to one side of the double album. Henry Cow's contribution, however, was actually recorded a week later at The Manor Studios because a power failure at the event had delayed the start of the concert and a 2am curfew reduced Henry Cow's set (billed last) to ten minutes. At the Manor, Henry Cow improvised their Greasy Truckers set to tape and mixed the tracks in a single session.[5] An outtake from this recording session, "Bellycan" was released on the 1991 CD-release of Legend.[6]
In October 2006, Recommended Records released a remastered version of Henry Cow Concerts, which included the Greasy Truckers set, on a double CD. The original dynamics of "Oslo" was restored, which had been compromised to fit it onto side three of the double LP.[7] The remastering was done by Bob Drake in March 2006. An accompanying booklet included an interview with Henry Cow in Sweden in 1977, and a seven day extract from the November/December 1977 Road Diary by Chris Cutler.
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