Thursday, September 18, 2008

stormcock



surfing
an ill wind. with flagrant disregard for omens.



"The judge sits on his great assize
Twelve men wise with swollen thighs
Who never ever told no lies
Whose minds were ever such a size
Whose lives were ever such a prize
Whose brains bred answers just like flies
Whose answers stalked their thoughts like spies
Whose lead ball through the courtroom flies
To rip a hole clean between two eyes
That never ever wore disguise
And never ever saw blue skies
Who quickly lived now slowly dies
Who closed unopened otherwise."

- Roy Harper.

' The album's title, Stormcock, is an old English name for the Mistle Thrush. The male of this species "...sings its loud melodious song from a tree, rooftop or other elevated perch, often during bad weather or at night" '

Produced by Peter Jenner. Engineered by John Barrett; Peter Bown; John Leckie; Phil McDonald; Alan Parsons; Nick Webb.

ROY HARPER: HORS D'OEUVRES from "Stormcock" LP (Harvest EMI) 1971 (UK)

PURCHASE STORMCOCK

ROY HARPER OFFICIAL WEBSITE

4 comments:

Peewit said...

A friend taped Flashes from the Archives of Oblivion for me when I was at Uni. It has always been heavily played. When I first got Broadband and discovered Mp3 blogs I tried to find a copy on some of the whole album blogs that can be found around the ether. Instead I ended up getting a ssh! "torrent" of all of RH's albums to date. I still haven't listened to all of them bit Stormcock has been played a few times to date. After a while of heavy rotation his voice grates but when a mp3 comes round on random I rarely skip over it

ib said...

I have to agree with you with the "heavy rotation" irritation factor. Cool that you got all the albums to date. Must have taken up a lot of HD space; I'm running low now, and my disc burner's packed in so I'm very aware now how much of a premium space is... Like you, I really enjoy listening to RH in moderate doses. I was torn between one or two selections from "Stormcock" and "Hallucinating Light" from "HQ".

Anonymous said...

In fact on Stormcock in a couple of songs Jimmy Page takes over on guitar under some invented name... Good stuff. Thanks for posting and for your excellent blog

Douglas from Luxembourg

ib said...

Cheers, Douglas.

I didn't know that Jimmy Page played on Stormcock, although it makes sense now you mention it. After reading this comment I posted "Hallucinating Light". It seemed like a perfect bridge between "Stormcock" and the Magnolia Electric Co.'s "Trouble In Mind", and had been nagging at me all afternoon.

I see, too, that John Paul Jones played on "HQ".

;)