Pink Floyd - Let There Be More Light / Matilda Mother / Paintbox

 Pink Floyd - Let There Be More Light

 

 Pink Floyd - Matilda Mother

 

 Pink Floyd - Paintbox

 

Syd Barrett had some strange titles for his songs. “Terrapin” is a love song that doesn’t even mention any reptiles, much less terrapins. “Dark Globe” doesn’t mention globes at all, much less a dark one. After more than a decade of being a fan, I still have no idea what a “Gigolo Aunt” is even supposed to be. But the one that’s vexed me the most is “Matilda Mother.” The “mother” part is straightforward enough; it’s a song about a child being read fairy stories, and the song actually mentions the mother is telling them. But who’s Matilda? Is she the mother? What does her name have to do with anything? Or is it just something I can’t explain, like Lucifer Sam?
As it turns out, there is an answer, and it’s a long story, and one Edward Paule in his article “Syd’s Fractured Fairy Tales” tells quite ably, but with some serious problems.
Before I get to the answer, I have to talk about Hilaire Belloc. He was born in France, and emigrated to England at an early age. Eventually, he became an associate of English writer G.K. Chesterton, and along with H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, became the most famous writers of the Edwardian Era. He wrote in a great number of genres, from travel writing to essays on the history of the Catholic Church to poetry. One volume in particular, Cautionary Tales For Children, has remained popular long after his death, and was recently republished with Edward Gorey’s illustrations.
It’s a book I highly recommend, especially for someone who likes Roald Dahl books. One of the many people who enjoyed the book was a young boy named Roger Keith Barrett. He would later call himself Syd.
Early on, Pink Floyd was a blues band, mostly doing covers, but, eventually, their guitarist Syd Barrett decided he wanted to write a few songs himself. Many of them would appear on their first album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and Matilda Mother was one of them. However, the version of “Matilda Mother” Syd originally wrote wasn’t the one that made it on the album.
In Paule’s article, “Syd’s Fractured Fairy Tales”, he details a version of “Matilda Mother” whose lyrics are made up almost entirely of lyrics from Cautionary Tales for Children. In order, they make up the first Stanzas of Matilda, Jim, and Henry King’s poems, with a chorus taken from Matilda,

Finding she was left alone
Went tiptoe to the telephone — Ringing!
Summoned the immediate aid
Of London’s Noble Fire Brigade

The only original lyrics were “Oh what a drag./Out with a bang”  For the record, this isn’t the only early Pink Floyd song with lifted lyrics; “Chapter 24” comes directly from the I Ching, and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’s” lyrics are basically a mash-up of several poems from A.C. Graham’s Poems of the late T’Ang. Unfortunately, while Paule implies he transcribed the lyrics from some other recording, I cannot, for the life of me, find a recording with the lyrics he specifies. But, before you write this off as an urban myth, I was able to find another version.
On February 21, they recorded “Matilda Mother” with the original lyrics, but, while Syd does lift several passages wholesale from Belloc, it still had more embellishment from Syd Barrett.

There was a boy whose name was Jim
His friends, they were very good to him
They gave him tea, and cakes and jam
And slices of delicious ham
Oh Mother tell me more

Why’d’you have to leave me there
Hanging in my infant air, waiting
You only have to read the lines of
Scribbly black and everything shines

The chief defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of string
At last he swallowed some which tied
Itself in ugly knots inside

Wondering and dreaming
The words have different meanings
Yes they did

Finding she was left alone
Went tiptoe to the telephone, 999
Summoned the immediate aid
Of London’s Noble Fire Brigade

For all the time spent in that room
The doll’s house darkness old perfume
And fairy stories held me high
On clouds of sunlight floating by
Oh Mother tell me more
Tell me more

t was this version the band recorded on February 21. While they recorded this, the song was in a state of limbo; when Pink Floyd were just some amateurs, there was no reason for them to seek permission from the Belloc estate. When they signed the contract with EMI and there was a good chance they’d have to release the song, they realised they would need to get permission. Assuming this was a done deal, they recorded it.
Unfortunately, the Belloc estate denied Pink Floyd permission to record. They never explained exactly why. Maybe it was because the Belloc family didn’t approve of rock and roll. Maybe it was because they didn’t like the fact that the poems were cut off from their original context. Maybe it was just because they asked too much for the rights. Either way, Syd needed to change the lyrics. On June 7, the band returned to “Matilda Mother,” and wrote a new set of lyrics, one that didn’t infringe on anyone’s copyrights.

From: https://anglotopia.net/british-music-british-entertainment/brit-music-barrett-vs-belloc-true-story-behind-matilda-mother/

47 years ago today, Pink Floyd issued the one and only single from their sophomore album, 1968's A Saucerful of Secrets, and failed to secure any chart action with it.
Of course, given the goings-on within the band as a result of Syd Barrett's departure, the fact that “Let There Be More Light” wasn't making much of an impact on the airwaves was the least of Pink Floyd's worries. Plus, for what it's worth, at least the limited commercial response to the song was only a problem for the band in America, as that's the only country where the song was even issued as a single. But as a song, “Let There Be More Light” definitely finds Roger Waters - who wrote the track - mining the same general sonic template that he and Barrett had forged during the making of the band's debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Based on what we've read in Andy Mabbett's invaluable tome The Complete Guide to the Music of Pink Floyd, “Let There Be More Light” - which features vocal contributions from Waters, Richard Wright, and David Gilmour before finally fading to a close - would seem to be about a UFO landing at the Royal Air Force base in Mildenhall, England. (Between this and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” it seems that Waters was having some seriously sci-fi thoughts in the late '60s.) Beatles fans will also note that there's a reference to “Lucy in the Sky,” and if you're a scholar of English history, then you might also nod knowingly at the namedropping of Hereward the Wake, an 11th-century resistance leader famous for battling back when the Normans invaded England.
As a single, “Let There Be More Light” may not have done much to sell A Saucerful of Secrets, but it serves as a great opener for the album that Nick Mason has called his favorite among Pink Floyd's discography.
“I think there are ideas contained there that we have continued to use all the way through our career,” Mason told Newsweek in 2014. “I think [it] was a quite good way of marking Syd's departure and Dave's arrival. It's rather nice to have it on one record, where you get both things. It's a cross-fade rather than a cut.”  From: https://www.rhino.com/article/happy-anniversary-pink-floyd-let-there-be-more-light

By November of 1967, Pink Floyd had definitely reached an erratic phase in their career, and trips to the studio to record became less and less frequent as Syd was less frequently in a condition to cope with recording. However, a B-side for Apples and Oranges was finally cut on 2 November, and the single was released later that month.
Paintbox was Rick Wright's first sole writing credit with the band. As more of Syd's songs were marked 'unacceptable' for release, other members of the band began writing more material to take up the slack (Roger's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun had been written by this time as well). Certainly an under-rated song musically, Paintbox starts out strong lyrically but meanders to a non-conclusion. The first two verses touch on the shallowness of superficial socializing, when everyone plays the game of trying to impress (including the singer), and no one seems willing to break the rules, or shake the empty feeling inside created by that falseness (a theme further explored in 1975's Welcome to the Machine). The singer's disgust with that social scene expresses itself in the lyric 'What a way to spend that evening... I should have been/Far away.' And yet, when his significant other rings to arrange other plans, he seems reluctant to leave the club. Or has he already left?  From: https://floydlyrics.blogspot.com/2010/03/paintbox.html 

 

Mates of State - Fraud in the 80's

It’s always been easy to just talk about the Mates as mates, to focus on the precious, youthful sense of True Love that dripped from the jewel case. That’s exactly what I’d be writing about now, if only this album didn't falter so badly in its attempt to exude adulthood and maturity, something Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel blissfully managed to avoid for their first three albums. Mates of State have always been all Skittles and stomach aches, but their creative vocal arrangements and mouth-watering hooks made the music go down easy, even if it also made you harbor some secret hatred for their perfect union. Those first albums, especially Team Boo, seemed to borrow from all of my favorite boy-girl groups. They had the quirkiness of the B-52's, the flair of the Sugarcubes, and the melodic sense of the Carpenters. Their vocal arrangements were chaotic, real-time entanglements that avoided the call-and-response and he said/she said clichés of the pop duet. They were guitarless and fancy-free, and their vocal presence made the occasional in-joke lyrics palatable.
Then they grew up. Bring it Back is "the group evolving" (or something), which pretty much just means that their sound is bigger. Rather than the simple three-part-appeal that marked earlier albums (vocals, drums, and keys), the production here makes them sound like they are fronting a bona fide rock and roll band. This is a bad thing: this new complexity undermines their giddy, naïve appeal, and it drowns the vocals, making them street-corner shouts instead of the boisterous, heartfelt conversations they once were. The extra frills and heavy polish strive to give the album an anthemic feel, but, with the exception of “Running Out,” all the flair is ineffective to this end.
Rather than two and three minute flavor bursts, the Mates make us marinate on no less than four tracks longer than 4:30 — veritable epics by Mates standards, the four longest tracks in their discography to date. The last track, for example, ends with a drawling incantation of the mantra, "I'm tired of singing,” that lasts longer than most of the other songs on the album. Either I’m missing something, or this is just a very unfunny joke. The most flagrant and terrible example of all this "maturity" business is the last 10 seconds of "Nature and the Wreck," which literally made me cringe. An otherwise poignant two minute tribute to a child closes with actual baby noises. Straight from the bedside monitor to the studio, this super-literal sound effect seems clumsy, if not downright ridiculous. It cheapens one of Kori's most emotionally moving vocal performances. Sing about the baby, don't dangle him from the balcony for Christ's sake.
In a few instances, the Mates’ newfound sophistication suits them. "For the Actor" has the album's standout chorus, and the music nicely reflects the refrain of being "on a fantasy." "Fraud in the 80's" maximizes the nod to that glorious decade with just the right blend of synth, sass and handclaps. These songs are among the best that the band has recorded, still exuding the breezy jubilance that made them famous but with a slightly updated aesthetic. It’s too little, though — indie’s favorite couple is now in bed by nine, tired of singing and paying for babysitters. While still containing some of the cavity-inducing goodness that dominated their earlier work, Bring it Back proves that the honeymoon is over.  From: https://cokemachineglow.com/records/mates-of-state/ 

 

The Fatima Mansions - The Loyaliser

I had originally prepared this piece a couple of weeks ago with the sole intention of re-visiting and reappraising the magnificently bilious 1992 album Valhalla Avenue by Cathal Coughlan’s Fatima Mansions as it was one of my all time favourite records of the year, and, after Viva Dead Ponies (1990), the second most essential of FM’s five albums they issued during their short explosive existence between 1988 and 1995, as one of the most exciting and adventurously brilliant bands of the decade.
Sadly, I found out only today (23rd May) as I was readying this article for the editorial, through colleague John Robb at LTW, the untimely tragic news that Cathal Coughlan had passed away after an period of [undisclosed] illness. This has totally knocked me sideways and I am reeling from this such that my immediate emotions are of numbed disbelief, devastation and total shock.
Cathal was one of my all time favourite Irish songwriters – ever – and despite only getting to appreciate his output passionately through his Fatima Mansions incarnation from 1988 onwards, I then inevitably started to backtrack and revisit his former band – critic’s favourites (and Peel staples) Microdisney, and found that they were largely excellent too.
Nobody wrote words quite like Coughlan. Nobody. He was a true unique singular maverick talent with an uncanny knack for clever phrasing and scabrous wit of the best kind. Possessed of a rich baritone singing voice that was so impossibly versatile, he often drew comparisons with (his idol) Scott Walker on the more mellifluous compositions. Yet he could also turn on a sixpence and rage like a ferocious hurricane, spewing fire and brimstone on the more aggressive and violently atonal, visceral numbers that the band were also so celebrated for, sometimes within the space of the same song.
Even his speaking voice was exceptionally satisfying on the ear, possessed of that unmistakable Cork brogue which never fully deserted him despite spending much of his musical life encamped outside his home county. Put it like this, I could happily listen to Coughlan recite the ingredients on the back of a box of cereal and he would somehow still manage to make it sound gripping.
He took no prisoners in his written and verbal outlook on life. Indeed, Mark E. Smith – arguably one of his only true contemporaries – was slightly in awe of him to the extent that he famously tried to wind Coughlan up by calling him ‘an Englishman’ in an attempt to try and undermine his unflappable and stoical Irish pride.
It didn’t work, and, amusingly enough, it was Smith who came out of it as the losing side in this otherwise insignificant little spat. Only because Coughlan was so dignified he rose above it all in his usual magnanimous way. And it is because of that that some folks harbour deep love, respect and adoration for him as an artist. Including myself.
His work transcended any simple pigeonholing. Not for him the trivialities of futile compartmentalisation or dumb unit-shifting to meekly appease the record companies’ bank balances. If, during their time together as a recording band, Microdisney had nothing to offer other than pretty melodies, they would have been seen as an innocuous pop-rock act. But the words issuing from Coughlan’s pen were what made them a defiantly individual concern. His intense, raging, soul-bearing presence when they played live meant that people forgot what the rest of the band’s members looked like…all eyes were focused and trained on his mighty commanding presence.
This was carried on when Coughlan formed his next band after the first dissolution of Microdisney in 1988 when both he and other main man Sean O’ Hagan pursued wildly divergent paths – the latter crafting beautifully opulent and pastoral acoustic/electronic-soundscapes as the Beach Boys / Van Dyke Parks-influenced High Llamas, and Coughlan continuing to stamp his indelible commanding presence with the far more confrontational and uncompromisingly eclectic Fatima Mansions.
A band who were so wilfully perverse, but nevertheless utterly ferocious and gripping when witnessed live, they even ended up memorably desecrating a Bryan Adams number one hit for a charity album and then scoring a top ten UK hit with it on the back of another cover (Theme From M*A*S*H) by the notably more celebrated Manic Street Preachers!
The Mansions’ fire burned very brightly and fiercely for less than 5 years before they too were done….and since then Coughlan’s several solo ventures that have taken place on and off in the 20 years since have been nothing short of fascinating – touching on all imaginable bases such as puerile satirical sketches, stately Scott Walker-esque balladry, sonic experimentation, song/spoken word pieces, and intriguing concept albums about ‘an alternative history of the British Isles’, collaborating with other artists as diverse as late comedian Sean Hughes, renowned songwriter Luke Haines, French composer François Ribac, cellist Audrey Riley and more recently producer Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee under the name Telefís.  From: https://louderthanwar.com/the-fatima-mansions-valhalla-avenue-1992-2022-30-years-on/

Throwing Muses - Dark Blue

With the release of their 10th album Sun Racket looming closer, the Throwing Muses today debut an illustrated, cut-and-pasted music video for “Dark Blue,” the churning lead single off the college-rock veterans’ first record in seven years.
The video was created and directed by John-Mark Lapham for Split Constellation, a design studio that specializes in cut-and-paste, stop-motion graphics.
The 10-song Sun Racket originally had been due out May 22 on Fire Records, but the label delayed the release to Sept. 4 “given the situation in our industry” brought on by the coronavirus.
The band — singer/guitarist Kristin Hersh, drummer David Narcizo and bassist Bernard Georges — were in the studio making Sun Racket last summer when they played their first shows in five years, a handful of concerts and a slot handpicked by Robert Smith at The Cure’s Pasadena Daydream Festival.
Of the song “Dark Blue,” Herh says: “Dark Blue” starts in California, drives to New Orleans, then flies to Reykjavik. I think it ends in dark New England at a blue table covered in blue flowers; my kitchen by the ocean last year. Sorta grim, kinda pretty.
I had to mimic the feedback of my favorite old effects pedal, which had been drowned and melted. This wasn’t a bad thing; in fact, I haven’t been able to recreate the perfect combination of drowning and melting this thing went through in new pedals, which is why I had to fake it. So the guitar feedback and harmonics are an approximation of what water and fire do to a soul, I guess. To the soul of a machine, anyway.
Ultimately, “Dark Blue” says that in running from black holes, you only increase their density and drawing power. They will cross time zones to hunt you down in dreams and songs to tell you that you’re loved, whether or not you wanna know that.  From: https://slicingupeyeballs.com/2020/07/23/throwing-muses-dark-blue-video/

The Rowan Amber Mill - Into the Waves

Stephen from the Rowan Amber Mill joins us today to talk a little about his music, and what he's been up to since the release of Heartwood. Lots of music to look forward to from him by the sounds of it.

The Active Listener : Hi Stephen - would you care to tell us a little bit about yourself?

Stephen : Daydreamer. Landscape lover. Music obsessive. Writer and maker of music. Runner of miniscule bespoke cottage record label.

The Active Listener : When did you start playing music? What sort of stuff were you playing?

Stephen : In my teenage years I bought myself a fizzy WASP synth and used an old Commodore Amiga with a very rudimentary “sequencer” to make acid house tracks. I then bought a cheap electric guitar - an Epiphone SG copy and tiny amp out of a catalogue. I learned to play the guitar by murdering covers of everything from the Beatles to Brit-pop.

The Active Listener : When did you start to write your own stuff, and what did it sound like?

Stephen : I bought myself a cheap 2nd hand Yamaha electro-acoustic with the aim of learning to play the kind of music I was actually listening to (Nick Drake, The Lilac Time, Donovan). I had never been able to write anything on the electric guitar and put this down to the fact I couldn’t write a song, but I found that with an acoustic guitar I could write. The songs I began writing were pretty much in the singer- songwriter / storyteller vein, and at a time when there was very little acoustic music being heard, it couldn’t have been much more out of step. I first started writing songs that I was relatively happy with in 2002. I joined up with a good friend (and a great songwriter) I had known from school and we then started a band (Miller) together with a few other friends. We subsequently released a couple of albums that straddled Dark-folk, Americana and Pastoral-psychedelia. We always found it difficult to explain what we sounded like - luckily not many people were interested anyway. After five years I left the band in order to make music more focussed in the area I was most interested - psych-folk.

The Active Listener : Midsummers was the Rowan Amber Mill's debut. Is this all of your early material or was there other stuff recorded that didn't make it onto the E.P?

Stephen : Midsummers was the first CD we released, but previously in 2008 we had released 6 track download only e.p. “Folk Devils and Moral Panics” that was effectively a collection of extended demo’s songs that I had written mostly whilst Miller was falling apart. I had originally recorded the demos and posted a few of them on Myspace, and with the small amount of interest began to assemble a new band that included Terry Stacey (the drummer from Miller) and Kim Guy. We were asked by Candidate if we’d like to provide an e.p. of material for the launch of Indmill in August 2008– an ethically run answer to iTunes (way ahead of its time as it happens). I knocked the demos into shape and Kim added some vocals and recorder to half of the tracks. Last year we made the “Folk Devils..” e.p. available again to download on Bandcamp. So to answer your question, we were rehearsing and working on lots of new material ready to record a “proper CD”. Recording anything always took a great deal of time and organisation (mainly because it was 150 mile round trip to get us together), so everything we had recorded and finished at that time went on Midsummers. There were a number of tracks (8 or so) that I had partially recorded for Midsummers that didn’t get finished mainly because they didn’t fit the concept, most of these were then either carried over to the Heartwood album or were politely ignored.

The Active Listener : As good as Midsummers was, Heartwood sounds like a much more confident collection of songs. What's your view on this and what can you tell us about the recording of the album? Any interesting or funny anecdotes?

Stephen : Actually I am never confident about any of the songs. Midsummers was a concept (mini) album, and in parts could be regarded as style over content, or perhaps more accurately atmosphere over content. Heartwood was an album of self-contained songs and relied on using instrumentation to convey a warm woodland atmosphere, as opposed to the dark spooky atmosphere that carried the songs on Midsummers. Much of the feel of the Heartwood album was shaped by the fact that very late on in the process, (with most of the instrumental backing complete but only a couple of basic vocal tracks recorded) Kim was suffering from some big problems with her throat which meant she wouldn’t be able to sing on the album. Our recently recruited recorder player (Sharon Eastwood) stepped up to provide the vocals for the majority of the album. We had recorded the whole album with Kim’s unique vocal tunings in mind (mellow low end bass –with some smooth middle), Sharon’s vocals are at the opposite end of the spectrum, a delicate, natural sweet voice an octave higher than Kim’s. So we ended up changing a fair bit of the instrumentation on the album to suit Sharon’s vocal range, and had we had the time available we would have re-recorded it in a more suitable key too. Sharon’s singing voice provided a different (and welcome) dynamic to the album.

The Active Listener : The Rowan Amber Mill has been through a few personell changes. Can you tell us a little about the various line-ups? Are you currently working solo?

Stephen : I have been lucky with The Rowan Amber Mill in that everyone involved has been amiable, generous and very patient. When I started The Rowan Amber Mill I knew that I needed the right type of singer for the songs, and, after a couple of false starts with others, I was contacted by Kim Guy. When I heard her sing I knew immediately that her voice would be perfect for the songs (she also played a mean recorder and guitar). I then contacted Terry Stacey who had been the drummer in Miller and who had been a great sounding-board in developing songs, and he joined the band as bass player and percussionist. We really got into our stride prior to the recording of Midsummers, and it felt like we were moulding the sound into something quite unique. We also gained a further band member for a few months around this time – Donna Whitlock - a wonderful person and a stunning percussionist, who brought a whole new rhythmic dynamic which was a lasting influence on our music. We recorded Midsummer’s as a three piece and looked to add another member to the band for our debut album and for playing live. Sharon Eastwood joined the band as recorder player and backing singer during the early recording of Heartwood. During the recording of Heartwood it became clear that something had to give. The 150mile round trip for the band to get together was proving very difficult to organise and even more difficult to achieve. Kim’s throat problems meant that she couldn’t sing with us for the foreseeable future, which meant the subsequent cancellation of live dates and reworking the album for a different vocalist, and everything seemed to conspire against the band being able to continue. Sharon subsequently completed the vocals on the album. It became clear that due to lack of time and geographical constraints we’d no longer be able to get together sufficiently for the band to continue. I went back to my day job and mixed the album in the spare time I had available. Since then The Rowan Amber Mill has gone back to being my solo project, but with some collaborations planned along the way.

From: https://active-listener.blogspot.com/2012/06/interview-with-rowan-amber-mill.html 

PJ Harvey - Live Pinkpop Festival 1992 / Later With Jools Holland 1993

 PJ Harvey - Live Pinkpop Festival 1992

 

 PJ Harvey - Later With Jools Holland 1993

 

In the year one after "Nevermind", grunge was already looking pretty old to those who had stumbled upon the vibrant Seattle scene a few years earlier, with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in heavy rotation on MTV. At least the young genre had started to smell funny pretty quickly, to speak with Frank Zappa. Some (Yo La Tengo, Chris Cacavas, Galaxie 500, for example) had already moved away from the overbidding gestures of the Sub-Pop bands (louder, sicker, more fucked up), had set out in the direction of "Quiet is the new loud" (where Kings of Convenience then picked up the counter-trend of the time as the "next big thing" ten years later). In short: Paradigm shifting air was blowing through the Alternative States of Indie Rock at the beginning of 1992.
Then, almost exactly 30 years ago, in March and without warning to most, came "Dry". On it, a voice reared its head in which seduction and hurt, lust and despair, courage and anger fell into one in a way that was as shocking as it was fascinating. Polly Jean Harvey, daughter of a quarry owner and his folk-rock-loving wife, had just gotten over her first relationship – on "Dry" she doesn’t simply review all the phases of disappointed love, but suffers through them anew in all the intensity of their body-consuming, shredding torment from within. The mood of the record is 110 percent blues, the music a form of rock that had the guts to counter the slick, showy gesture of the grunge bands with something, that has been covered with the attribute "raw" in every review since then: Eleven songs straight from the quarry of adolescence, in sum the war diary of a foot soldier in the army of lovers. Unexpectedly, "Dry" hit the back of the head, a shrapnel bullet in the battle of the sexes. What then lay before you turned out to be a colossal instant monument of bloodcurdling urgency. What has happened? Had Captain Beefheart and Patti Smith managed to hide a daughter from the public?
Some had already caught wind of a woman in white who was haunting the nightly formats of the music television channels: "Dress", the first single by PJ Harvey, had already been released in December of the previous year on the indie label Too Pure and was a song like none heard in a long time. Instead of staging her self-empowerment in the same phallocentric rocker gestures that her male counterparts have been using since time immemorial like the Riot Grrrls of the U.S. Pacific Coast, Polly Jean Harvey, born in Bridport in southwest England in 1969 and raised in rural Dorset, ripped open the curtain on the emotional life of a woman who wants to impress a man: "Must be a way that I can dress to please him", she murmurs in a voice full of seduction and hurt, of lust and despair, of courage and anger, literally altogether falling into one; an imploding vamp who sums up the impositions of sex life with razor-sharp observation and peaks like this: "It’s hard to walk in the dress, it’s not easy / I’m spilling over like a heavily loaded fruit tree". The manic refrain obsessively chants the motif: "If you put it on".
"Sheela-Na-Gig", the second single from "Dry", also deals with toxicity in a relationship between a man and a woman. The female protagonist first tells him about her merits and then lays them at his feet (sarcastic self-irony is also part of Harvey’s poetological program here). The rejection follows promptly, as a refrain in the form of an ass-kicking: "Sheela-na-gig / You exhibitionist", the disgusted guy draws on grotesque medieval depictions of women with oversized vaginas for comparison, followed by the nasty bridge: "Put money in your idle hole". Speech act theory galore: "He said ‘wash your breasts, I don’t want to be unclean’". Yet she had tried everything to keep him: "Oh, my lover / Don’t you know it’s all right? / You can love her / And you can love me at the same time", are the first lines on "Dry". With lyrics that are truly lyricism, Harvey left no doubt from the start that a real song poet is at work here (a later liaison with Nick Cave seems almost inevitable; almost as much as the fact that it did not last). "Happy and Bleeding" seems to cross the experience of deflowering with that of menstruation, condensed in the image of a "fig fruit", "long overdue" and picked "too soon" simultaneously, withering from "inside out".
Musically, too, PJ Harvey seemed rather anachronistic compared to the grunge bands; "relatives in distance" is perhaps the best way to put it. But Harvey’s synthesis of rumbling, pounding noise and outrageously catchy hooks, her power chords that bury listeners beneath them instead of soaring to anthemic heights, plus the tremendously muscular, gristly bass of Steven Vaughan, similar to what could be heard from DC bands like Fugazi a few years earlier, and the massive drums of Rob Ellis resulted in a very unique mixture, which in terms of dynamics and instrumentation – in addition to the standard rock set-up, strings can be heard here from time to time, Harvey herself on the violin; the deconstructive string arrangement of "Plants and Rags" is simply breathtaking – refers more to The Pixies than to Seattle. Sometimes, however, for example in the frenzied prayer "O Stella", they are just the BETTER Nirvana for a moment.  From: https://www.hhv-mag.com/feature/records-revisited-pj-harvey-dry-1992-2/?lang=en

 

 

Gentle Giant - S/T - Full album

01. Giant
02. Funny Ways
03. Alucard
04. Isn´t It Quiet and Cold
05. Nothing At All
06. Why Not

Gentle Giant was formed when brothers Derek Shulman (vocals), Phil Shulman (vocals, saxophone, trumpet), and Ray Shulman (guitar, violin, trumpet, vocals) wanted out of the pop music market that trapped their band Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. Although the band had hits, including the #8 UK single Kites in 1967, they did not represent the siblings’ aspirations to create more ambitious music, the kind not driven by radio plays and single sales. Derek Shulman remembers: “It was 1970. King Crimson were happening, Yes were just coming up and we were into the same sort of thing.” Their conviction was strong enough to decline an offer from Elton John to join the band and contribute songs that later became hits for him, Your Song being one of them.
Adding keyboardist Kerry Minnear, guitarist Gary Green and drummer Martin Smith, a new sextet was formed. They named themselves Gentle Giant after François Rabelais’s 16th-century pentalogy of novels Gargantua and Pantagruel, a telling of the adventures of two giants. In 1970, with Tony Visconti in the producer’s seat, the band recorded their self-titled debut album. Visconti, who went on to become one of the most revered art-rock producers in history, was quite enthusiastic about recording Gentle Giant: “I was a very optimistic young man in 1970. I thought music like theirs would save the world from mediocrity. I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth in it. I championed their cause by becoming sympathetic to the point where I temporarily joined the band. I modified their arrangements and pulled off some stunning audio effects that gave their sound more depth and immediacy.”
Working closely with a producer who believed in their art and was well-versed in studio recording was a new experience for the band. Ray Shulman adds: “With Simon Dupree, we would typically go into the studio, record a single in three hours and it was done. Making a record with Tony was a godsend. The whole process of how you record a band by first doing the basic tracks and getting the right feel, then doing overdubs and experimental things on top of those was so important for the album.”
Guitarist Gerry Green was also impressed by the producer: “Tony was an eye-opener for me. Neither Kerry nor I had ever done any professional recording previously. Tony was incredibly encouraging and positive towards us. Rather than just record things like my guitar flat and then mix them, he would incorporate added touches like octave effects and double-tracking. It all seemed magical and somehow normal at the same time.”
Gentle Giant’s self-title debut was released in November 1970. In the best tradition of progressive music albums of the period, the album was adorned by a wonderful cover art, created by George Underwood. Over the next couple of years Underwood would create the iconic album covers for David Bowie’s Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust.
A standout track on the album is Nothing At All. The vocal harmonies are reminiscent of Crosby, Stills and Nash, who were at their peak of popularity at the time. Kerry Minnear, who wrote the opening guitar intro, commented: “Structurally, you can tell it’s a keyboardist playing the guitar. It was one of my earlier contributions. The Black Sabbath-like riff that starts two-and-a-half minutes into it came from the Shulman brothers. I recall we all had to go to the pub and take a break while making it, because it wasn’t going very well initially.”
The song is unique in Gentle Giant’s studio albums discography for featuring a drum solo, fed into a phaser effect. Gary Green remembers: “When we did the drum solo on ‘Nothing At All’, that was real chaos. I remember Martin and Kerry and Ray all playing on Martin’s drum kit and shouting as they were doing it. I think they did several takes. Most of them ended with everybody just lying on the floor laughing, not able to believe they were producing this cacophonous sound.” The drum solo remained a favorite part of the band’s live performances, known as the ‘Drum Bash’. In the studio recording, Kerry Minnear plays on top of the drum solo, a beautiful piano melody quoting ‘Liebestraum No. 3’ by Franz Liszt.  From: https://musicaficionado.blog/2025/02/02/1970-vertigo-records-part-4-gentle-giant/

Marekvist - Sjellaus

Marekvist is the soundtrack of Norwegian folklore.  Stories of the myling, the dark forests, the ominous draug, and the mare that rides you into sleep come to life through hard-hitting, beautiful, and atmospheric music. Their distinct ‘70s prog-rock influences shine through in bold riffs and vivid dialect-driven lyrics, while the dual drummers and gritty, distorted bass firmly root their sound in the 21st century.
Their 2021 debut album, Solrenning, was hailed by Norway Rock Magazine as “probably the best Norwegian debut album of the year.” In the spring of 2023, they released their second album, Varde—a love letter to Norwegian rock, ‘70s psychedelia, and folk. Since their debut, Marekvist has toured across Norway, from the smallest stages in Kristiansand to the biggest festival venues at Midgardsblot, leaving no audience unshaken.  From: https://jervbooking.no/en/marekvist

Traffic - Dealer

Jim Capaldi came into Traffic a hell of a lead vocalist. Once in that band however, he moved to the back, sat down, and pretty much clammed up. But ask anyone who’d ever seen the Hellions or Deep Feeling, and they’d give it to you straight – Jim was as much a front man as a drummer – a soul shouter with power, gravel and a little menace in his voice. The alliance with Steve Winwood would change things of course; as Traffic got rolling, Jim’s singing seemed destined for a more supporting role…
But he did get to the front now and again – twice in fact on ‘The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys’, and once before that, on the debut album. But that turned out to be a mere prelude to the next phase. Once he started cranking out his own albums in the 1970’s,  Jim Capaldi was, by far, the most prolific ex-Traffic singer/songwriter.
But here we go back to earlier, simpler days. A typically overlooked track from the Mr. Fantasy album, ‘Dealer’ is really cool – very atmospheric, with a Spanish inflected acoustic guitar and melodic double-tracked flutes. Often mistaken for a ‘drug song’ – roulette and playing cards are the currency here. In fact, the song may actually have been inspired by Traffic’s manager, Chris Blackwell – a well-known lover (and master) of the game.  From: https://possibilitiesofzero.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/traffic-looking-for-the-dealer-bbc-late-67/

Gone Cosmic - For Sabotage

Music – sometimes it makes you think, and sometimes it comes with sweet drum fills. It’s a testament to the continued creativity of humanity that in rare cases, we get both. Stationed in Calgary, the Canadian heavy psych rock group Gone Cosmic are poised to launch their sophomore album Send for a Warning, the Future’s Calling this week, and as previously mentioned it explores the human psyche, but also delves deep into the realms of heavy progressive music. On top of the drum fills, vocalist Abbie Thurgood belts out impassioned, ear-catching lyrics while the rest of the band executes both roaring stoner rock and contemplative psychedelia. 
Though it bursts out of the gate in aggressive, punchy form, Send for a Warning, the Future’s Calling very quickly reveals a bluesy underbelly where Thurgood’s vocals can stretch out and resonate further, and where the band’s considerable instrumental talents lend themselves to stretched-out jams. Big, loud riffs are just one of the many tools in Gone Cosmic’s toolkit, and employed with an artisan’s precision.
Final track “The Future’s Calling” pushes the band’s formula beyond its previously-determined limits, asking a question in chilling clarity: “Why is it programmed that we are not good enough?” Delivered in an uncomfortable almost-vacuum and quickly escalating into a screamed chorus (and then back to a quiet lament), this is one of those questions that’s blunt enough to sort of stun, at first, and in that dazed state the album’s gradually growing, eventually thunderous resolution comes crashing down with renewed intensity. It’s a surprisingly provocative track that caps off a record full of deep thoughts and swirling moods.  From: https://www.invisibleoranges.com/gone-cosmic-premiere

Humble Pie - 30 Days In The Hole

Written by Humble Pie lead singer Steve Marriott, 30 Days In The Hole is about getting busted for drugs and getting sent to jail. Marriott got the idea after playing a show in Kentucky, where he learned that getting caught with drugs earned you 30 days in jail. He was also thinking about a friend of the band's who had been sent to jail for having a joint.
Marriott was making the point that drugs were a part of culture (just as alcohol was a generation earlier) and there was nothing wrong with it. In many ways, the song is a call for legalization.
Marriott has said that inspiration for the title came from a Humphrey Bogart/James Cagney movie he saw on TV, where Bogart plays a prisoner who gets sent to "30 days in the hole."
Marriott may have been referring to the 1938 movie Angels With Dirty Faces, although that line is never uttered in the film. It's also possible that the film was Somebody Up There Likes Me, a 1956 movie where Paul Newman is threatened with the "30 days in the hole."
This wasn't released as a single in the group's native UK. It was only released in the US a year after the album came out. Dave Clempson, formerly of Colosseum, had recently joined the band as guitarist. This was one of the first Humble Pie songs he contributed to.
There are several drug and alcohol references in this song: "Red Lebanese" and "Black Napalese" are forms of hash, and Newcastle Brown is a kind of ale. 
Mr. Big and Gov't Mule are among the acts to cover this song. Ace Frehley and Robin Zander (Cheap Trick lead singer) covered it for Frehley's album Origins Vol. 2. Said Frehley: "I'm a big Humble Pie fan, but there's no way I could reproduce a Steve Marriott vocal. He's just too good of a vocalist – may he rest in peace. I thought of Robin Zander because we used to tour together in the '70s. Cheap Trick used to open for Kiss, and we became good friends during that period."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/humble-pie/30-days-in-the-hole

Malinky - Thaney

Malinky were formed in 1998 for a one off gig at the Edinburgh Folk Club, by four musicians who knew each other from local pub sessions. This might have been the end of the story, if Malinky would not have decided to play at the Danny Kyle's Open Stage at Celtic Connections 1999. They directly won the prestigious Danny Award, and that's quite how the whole story started. In the audience was Ian Green, who decided to sign them for Greentrax. A year later at Celtic Connections the Malinky debut album was launched with many festival and press people around, and the band was immediately booked for some of the great festivals of the summer 2000 season. One of these organisers was Carsten Panduro, who booked them to play at his Tønder Festival, probably the most important showcase for Celtic Music on the European mainland. Karine summs up: "The whole thing has been a bit out of control. But it's great. Normally it takes years to get to do any great festivals, but we got there in more or less the first year of proper gigging."
One of the reasons why they are so successful is without doubt their strong emphasis on songs, something which only very few young musicians can offer. All the reviewers loved their debut album "Autumn leaves", including FolkWorld. "To have the emphasis on songs is quite deliberate, because there are not many bands alike, there are the Old Blind Dogs and a few bands which have like 50 % songs, 50 % tunes. But there is quite nobody at our age doing primarily songs, so it's a niche market. We are quite lucky because that is kind of what made us known. And also we are having two singers instead of only one, and having a man and a woman, which is kind of unusual. It's good for us, because we are not competing with anybody."
Those songs are for a big part traditional, but some of the highlights of the Malinky repertoire are those written by Karine Polwart herself. Two of the songs on the Malinky CD are hers. "It's great to write a song and have people singing along to it, that is a great honour. And "Where do ya lie" is going to be on Roy Baileys next CD - I have never had any song covered by anyone before - it's great. Partly he sings it as his encore when he goes to festivals; it's like wow - that's been a real kind of shock, it's great."
Karine always loved singing since being a kid, singing in school groups and things like that. She only got to folk music and in particular Scottish music when she moved to Edinburgh 5 years ago. "I joined an evening class in folk songs, and that brought me in going to sessions and meeting people there. So that's how it came about. But I have always been singing since I was small, so it is great to get to do it for your living. I love Scottish traditional songs because they have got great stories and history behind it." She regularly goes to libraries to find out more about the history behind the songs, but also to find new songs. Other sources for songs are singers she meets and the modern medium to pass on songs - CDs. The other important source for songs in Malinky is the second singer, Steve, who has been singing since he was little as well, knowing a lot of songs. He studied also at the School of Scottish Studies, which means that he has access to a lot of songs that aren't widely known.
The two instrumentalists of Malinky are not Scottish, though they live now in Edinburgh: Mark is from Antrim in Northern Ireland, and Kit is from Plymouth in England. "The songs that we do are almost all Scottish, but most of the tunes are Irish tunes, so we kind of combine the two traditions. And we are hoping to be writing more stuff in the future, Mark and Kit are beginning to write tunes, so hopefully when we make our next CD, we have more stuff of ourselves."  From: https://www.folkworld.eu/16/e/malinky.html

Marcy Playground - Spoonfed

Five years would come and go before Marcy Playground would release a follow-up effort to their 1999 album, “Shapeshifter.”  Marcy Playground’s 3rd studio album, titled “MP3,” was highly anticipated by fans, despite the fact that the band would not deliver a tour to support or hype the album’s release. Couple that with the fact that there was virtually no radio air time for any of the four released singles and it’s easy to see why this album is almost virtually unknown to anyone who isn’t a die-hard Marcy fan.
“MP3” delivered a radical evolution in the band’s overall sound when it was released. The quirky, mellow, often psychedelic acoustic rock with the occasional children’s song undertone was replaced with an almost entirely electric, far more poppy sound with a hint of punk rock or grunge.
While that may sound like a drastic change on paper, when you listen to and compare the albums the change feels natural. This is because lead singer John Wozniak’s voice is an extremely versatile tool he uses to present every song with a unique feel.
Aside from simply becoming more aggressive in sound, the music gains new layers of depth in “MP3.” More instruments such as beautifully composed piano and stringed instrument sections are incorporated more often to give songs a more melodic and higher quality feel than we heard in previous efforts. Guitar solos are another thing rarely heard in past Marcy songs, and they are definitely a welcome addition. These additions give “MP3” a much more professional sound and a higher quality than is found in the previous releases.
The thing that is definitely missed, however, is the mellow charm and vast diversity found in the other two albums. The entire album has a set style that can be easily recognized as American Rock with undertones of punk or post-grunge. The thing that made me fall in love with Marcy Playground was their ability to mash genres together and contain a vast amount of styles into a single album, all while being easily distinguishable from any other band. All tracks have their own personalities at least, which is something Wozniak has always been able to accomplish with his songwriting.
The four singles the album spawned were “Deadly Handsome Man,” “Punk Rock Superstar,” “No One’s Boy,” and “Blood in Alphabet Soup.” Some people may have heard “Deadly Handome Man” from it’s role in “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” under it’s original name of “The Devil’s Song.” But arguably to most popular song on the album was “Punk Rock Superstar,” which was featured on the re-released Xbox 360’s playlist.
All-in-all, Marcy Playground’s third album is definitely it’s own creature. It defied the mold that was previously crafted by the band and presented its own unique sound and style. It carried no successful singles and failed to outsell either of the band’s previous albums, but it is nothing short of a successful effort in the eyes of those who know it exists.  From: https://www.everyview.com/2009/07/06/music-review-marcy-playground-mp3/

Namgar - Green Grass

Because in the past Elsewhere has gone to the remote Pamir Mountains, Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Native American musics and elsewhere, we are quite comfortable with a venture to the territory of the nomadic Buryats, an ethnic minority in Southern Siberia and Mongolia.
But here – rather than some ethnomusicologist's approach – we are welcomed by the Moscow-based Namgar group around singer Namgar Lkhasaranova who mix traditional throat singing, songs and instruments (the yataga, chanza and jaw harp) with contemporary electronica, samples, guitars, strings and sonic treatments.
So this is very much music from ancient to the future across an album of sometimes disorienting psychedelic trance-rock and folk (with an excellent explanatory booklet of lyrics, and translations, and information about those traditional instruments).
Lkhasaranova might not be the “Mongolian Bjork” as the New York Times had it, but a British writer is slightly closer to the point when describing this as “like China meets the Brian Jonestown Massacre” (if you know that American band's recent ethno-psychedelic albums, and set aside the “China” reference).
Clearly wedding songs are different for the Buryat if the traditional Urda Uula/South Mountain here is anything to go by: it has a vibrant, swirling current of rhythms over which Lkhasaranova starts quietly and progressively unleashes her astonishing vocal power in high keening melodies.
A later wedding song Ailshaluulaarai (“if you want to ride an unbridled horse let him go to the herd sometimes, if you want to be a good husband let me visit my mother sometimes”) is a more intimate folk ballad with guest Tuvan throat singer Radik Tyulyush.
There are ritual dance songs here (the hypnotic Tokhoi Zandan Emeelee – Yokhor/Round Song of Steppe Buryats), a compelling almost folk-rock reconfiguration of a traditional piece (Geree Sheneen Gazarta – Yokhor/Popular Round Dance in Buryatia) and the hands-down winner in subtle trad-psych-folk-rock with Unagan Boriim Khatarin/Running Horse.
The title track (aka Land of the Ancestors) right at the end is a hypnotic piece of memory and culture distilled into a piece which seems to bring together Enya, Daniel Lanois, Asiatic ballads (yes, you could mistake it for Yoko in ballad voice) and acoustic funk.
Not an album which might have an immediate recognition factor but one which knows exactly what it wants to do and does it magnificently.   From: https://www.elsewhere.co.nz/world-music/9915/namgar-nayan-navaa-arc-music-digital-outlets/ 

 

Rival Sons - Darkfighter

Turn it up loud for Darkfighter with its raw energy and hard rock bluesy sound soars to greatness when you play it at rocking volume levels. Trust me on this, something was missing upon the first listen but as soon as I turned the volume up, the album’s intent and overall presentation became immediately apparent; a clarity that results in Darkfighter being one of the best releases in 2023. 
Darkfighter will appeal to fans and newcomers alike but Darkfighter is not Feral Roots. Nor is it Hollow Bones. It’s the culmination of all their previous albums meaning that Darkfighter is an evolution; one that is so well done that I can’t help but form correlations to the artistry of Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Bad Company et al. Importantly, however, Rival Sons are anything but a cover band. They’re not even imitators. They have a unique style and while nostalgic, for those of us who appreciate the classic artists of yesteryear, Rival Sons is ensuring that classic-styled rock and roll remains alive in the modern zeitgeist. 
Of course, to reach classic status one can’t simply rely on the music as it’s the overall presentation that results in an album being instantly iconic. Yes, streaming music has spoilt us for we no longer need to consider the album artwork prior to, or while, listening. It’s almost a lost element in music appreciation for album artwork used to be the doorway to finding something new and interesting. Yes, there are numerous examples where the music didn’t live up to the artwork but this release is certainly not one of them as the audible and visual components offer the perfect complementary counterpart to each other. 
Naturally, the music is the most important element and with that in mind, the eight tracks of Darkfighter blend classic rock elements with a modern and addictive twist. The result, as we’ll find out, is a captivating listening experience full of hard-hitting guitar riffs, groovy bass lines, and infectious rhythms with some of the very best vocals you’re likely to hear this century.  From: https://www.subjectivesounds.com/musicblog/rival-sons-darkfighter-album-review

Tim Hart & Maddy Prior - The False Knight On The Road

Bella Higgins sang The False Knight Upon the Road to Hamish Henderson in 1955, This recording was included on the Prestige anthology Folksongs & Music From the Berryfields of Blair. Duncan MacPhee sang it to Hamish Henderson in 1955 too, and Nellie MacGregor a one-verse fragment of The False Knight Upon the Road in 1954. All three versions were included in 1974 on the Tangent anthology The Muckle Sangs (Scottish Tradition 5). Hamish Henderson and Ailie Munro noted:

When Professor Child drafted his article on ‘this singular ballad’ he had two versions only to go on—both printed by Motherwell in his Minstrelsy. The first of these was the famous Fause Knight of the anthologies, and the second no more than a one-verse fragment, plus a time. By the time he came to compile Additions and Corrections to Vol. 1, however, there was a third version to be added; this had been contributed by the indefatigable William Macmath of Edinburgh, who got it from the recitation of his Aunt, Miss Jane Webster, formerly of Airds of Kells, 
We are dealing, therefore, with what is, and what always seems to have been, a comparatively rare ballad. There is no version in Greig’s Last Leaves, and all the versions tape-recorded by the School are, to a greater or lesser extent, fragmentary.
Referring to the ballads in which riddles and tricks serve as the material for the narrative, Professor G.H. Gerould says: “Perhaps the strangest of all such ballads is the Fause Knight Upon the Road, in which a young boy has to find ready replies to the questions put to him, or be carried off, presumably by the devil.” The identity of the ‘False Knight’ is never explicitly stated in the Scots variants, but the singers nearly all, when asked to talk about the song, and its meaning, explain that he is meant to be the devil. In the Irish version mentioned above, the homiletic character of the ballad is heavily underlined.

Frank Quinn of Coalisland, Co. Tyrone, sang False Knight on the Road in a recording made in 1958 by Sean O’Boyle on the anthology The Child Ballads 1. The album’s booklet noted:

An old fisherman told Quinn that “the knight was some kind of emissary of the devil, some sort of a spectre or ghost like, that inhabited a certain part of the road. It was fatal for a person to move confrontin’ this thing and this dialogue was a test of the child, to see if he was well fortified for the ultimate end.” This story of encountering the Devil, of defying him, and often of routing him by saying God’s name, is an old one. Bronson feels that the tune has a common ancestor, probably rooted in Scotland; thence it has spread to the United States and, in this case, to Northern Ireland. Indeed, Quinn had this song from his grandfather who came to live on Coal-Island in Lough Neagh, when he was a boy. Robbie Burns was the favourite poet of the district and his grandfather, who read Ovid among other good literature, taught him other ballads, such as Lord Randall and Edward, also imported from Scotland. Perhaps the most interesting American version appears on the record, Folk Music of Nova Scotia.

Tim Hart and Maddy Prior recorded False Knight on the Road in 1971 for their third duo album Summer Solstice. Their version comes quite indirectly from the singing of Maud Long, whose mother, Jane Gentry, was one of the singers from whom Cecil Sharp gathered songs in North Carolina in 1916. It is considerably modified from the version recorded for the Library of Congress in 1947 by Maud Long. Two other versions are available by Joe Hickerson and Betty Smith.

Steeleye Span sang False Knight on the Road in 1971 on their second album Please to See the King. Martin Carthy’s low, sneaky vocals and the driving bass and percussion makes one nearly forget that this is a drummer-less band. Steeleye Span performed the song live on the BBC radio programme “Peel’s Sunday Concert” on 15 September 1971. This programme was included as bonus CD on the 2006 reissue of Ten Man Mop or Mr Reservoir Butler Rides Again.
A live recording of this song from 7 March 1978 at Winter Gardens, Bournemouth, can be found on Steeleye’s album Live at Last!. Martin Carthy sings the first four verses, then there is a long coda with the tune Monck’s March, and Maddy Prior finishes with the last three verses. This track was included in 2001 on the Martin Carthy anthology The Carthy Chronicles. The latter album’s sleeve notes state:

Riddle-solving forms the base of this most ancient ballad. The child who wittily answers the false knight’s questions is actually saving his soul from the devil (in disguise?). One wrong answer and you’re whipped away to hell, which as a format is far more gripping than any TV show-quiz.

From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/steeleye.span/songs/falseknightontheroad.html