Album: Joy Of A Toy
Artist: Kevin Ayers
Born: Herne Bay, Kent
Released: October 1969
Genre: Psychedelia
Influenced: T Rex, Teenage Fanclub, Super Furry Animals, Blur
Few people compare with Syd Barrett, but for me Kevin Ayers deserves a nod. Both Barrett and Ayers emerged from two of the more innovative psychedelic bands of the Sixties, Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, and share a very quintessential Englishness about them. Ayers, like Barrett, wrote songs full of whimsy and childlike wonder, complemented by odd arrangements and strange musical effects. In the late 60s, both were signed up by the emerging label Harvest, which produced some of my favourite music of that era. Though I'm a fan of Soft Machine, especially Moon In June, I prefer the more focused solo work of Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt, the band's two most prominent members. Soft Machine were more guilty than anyone of inspiring the extended, self-indulgent song structures of prog rock, but were always more interesting lyrically and musically than some of the genre's worst culprits like Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In the sessions for Joy Of A Toy, Ayers and Barrett actually played together on one recording of Religious Experience (Singing A Song In The Morning), which is available on the 2003 reissue and is worth seeking out. This album is the most accessible of Ayers' solo work and is a good place to start before his more experimental follow-up, Shooting At The Moon, which mixes the avant garde with ballads such as May I?, one of the politest love songs ever written.
After the singalong start to Joy Of A Toy, Town Feeling provides one of the highlights on side 1, combining Ayers' baritone voice with an intricate arrangement of woodwind instruments masterminded by David Bedford (my closest namesake in pop history). I love the simplicity of Girl On A Swing, Ayers' otherworldly singing interspersed with backwards tape loops and the flutter of the mellotron. Song For Insane Times marks another sharp change in style, boosted by the backing of the psychedelic jazz talents of Soft Machine, creating a spaced out jam that has the best random insertion of a word ("banana") that I've encountered in psychedelia. On Stop This Train, Ayers channels the rhythm of the railways long before Kraftwerk got there, but the desired effect here is the feeling of coming down from a bad LSD trip. Eleanor's Cake is more mellow and sounds like Nick Drake on acid. My favourite song on side 2 is Lady Rachel which (and I've fruitlessly checked the internet to find any sense of agreement) sounds like it was a huge inspiration on Marc Bolan's sound, especially the "what will you dream of tonight?" chorus. Oleh Oleh Bandu Bandong points to the more experimental nature of Ayers' follow-up album, a psychedelic zombie march full of jazz dissonance. Compared to this, album closer All This Crazy Gift Of Time feels quite conventional, too obviously indebted to Dylan. This is one of the rare gems of British psychedelia and deserves a few more plaudits.
Few people compare with Syd Barrett, but for me Kevin Ayers deserves a nod. Both Barrett and Ayers emerged from two of the more innovative psychedelic bands of the Sixties, Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, and share a very quintessential Englishness about them. Ayers, like Barrett, wrote songs full of whimsy and childlike wonder, complemented by odd arrangements and strange musical effects. In the late 60s, both were signed up by the emerging label Harvest, which produced some of my favourite music of that era. Though I'm a fan of Soft Machine, especially Moon In June, I prefer the more focused solo work of Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt, the band's two most prominent members. Soft Machine were more guilty than anyone of inspiring the extended, self-indulgent song structures of prog rock, but were always more interesting lyrically and musically than some of the genre's worst culprits like Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In the sessions for Joy Of A Toy, Ayers and Barrett actually played together on one recording of Religious Experience (Singing A Song In The Morning), which is available on the 2003 reissue and is worth seeking out. This album is the most accessible of Ayers' solo work and is a good place to start before his more experimental follow-up, Shooting At The Moon, which mixes the avant garde with ballads such as May I?, one of the politest love songs ever written.
After the singalong start to Joy Of A Toy, Town Feeling provides one of the highlights on side 1, combining Ayers' baritone voice with an intricate arrangement of woodwind instruments masterminded by David Bedford (my closest namesake in pop history). I love the simplicity of Girl On A Swing, Ayers' otherworldly singing interspersed with backwards tape loops and the flutter of the mellotron. Song For Insane Times marks another sharp change in style, boosted by the backing of the psychedelic jazz talents of Soft Machine, creating a spaced out jam that has the best random insertion of a word ("banana") that I've encountered in psychedelia. On Stop This Train, Ayers channels the rhythm of the railways long before Kraftwerk got there, but the desired effect here is the feeling of coming down from a bad LSD trip. Eleanor's Cake is more mellow and sounds like Nick Drake on acid. My favourite song on side 2 is Lady Rachel which (and I've fruitlessly checked the internet to find any sense of agreement) sounds like it was a huge inspiration on Marc Bolan's sound, especially the "what will you dream of tonight?" chorus. Oleh Oleh Bandu Bandong points to the more experimental nature of Ayers' follow-up album, a psychedelic zombie march full of jazz dissonance. Compared to this, album closer All This Crazy Gift Of Time feels quite conventional, too obviously indebted to Dylan. This is one of the rare gems of British psychedelia and deserves a few more plaudits.
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