c o n r a d

This is an album I wish I had discovered when I was a teenager. Not particularly for the music but the lyrics. It's the sort of stuff I'd have lapped up as a teenager but is now a bit ho-hum. I also suspect that it will drive those people who hate "English bands with their stupid sense of humour" absolutely batty. To give you an idea, the album opens up with the lines "Standing on the golf course, dressed in PVC", and the title track starts with "In the land of grey and pink, where only boyscouts stop to think, they'll be coming back again, those nasty grumbly grimblies...". You get the idea. Lyrics aside, I have to admit that I am a bit baffled by the cult status of this album. Of the first four tracks only "Winter Wine" is anything other than ordinary. Even then, "Winter Wine" does not age as gracefully as it might, and starts to get tired after relatively few listens. The twenty-two minute epic "Nine Feet Underground" is extremely good, but it seems odd to me that an album should be so highly regarded on the basis of only one good side. The concept of "Nine Feet Underground", or "Dave's Thing" as it was known to the band in rehearsal, was a collection of four songs with musical links between them. This sort of thing can either flow beautifully together or sound like a clumsy bunch of songs played one after the other, depending on the execution. Here, the execution is very good. The mood ranges from jazzy to atmospheric to rock without the connecting pieces ever seeming too contrived. While other bands have created side long epics which have soared to greater heights, this is still a fine effort and has rightly become a favourite among fans of Caravan. Of the bonus tracks that appear here, "Aristocracy" and "I Don't Know Its Name" are probably the best of the short pieces on the CD. The last three tracks are merely alternate recordings of things earlier on the album, and could probably have been left off the CD without diminishing my enjoyment of it. While I am not a great fan of this album, I will concede that it contains twenty continuous minutes of fine music which makes it worth the purchase price. If you really like quirky lyrics and can get used to the deepish English vocals that put me off a little, then this will probably contain enough entertainment to make it one of your favourite CD's. review by Conrad Leviston — 2-18-03 —

j o e

In the Land of Grey and Pink is often recommended as the starting point for Caravan, one of the main so-called Canterbury bands. The band commenced to writing and recording this album in the fall of 1970, coming off two successful festival performances that year that gave them wider audience exposure. It was released in April 1971. This album finds Caravan's sound firmly grounded in the British rock scene directly coming off the heels of the psychedelic era and moving into the progressive rock explosion. When the band performs instrumentals largely given to David Sinclair's laid-back keyboard solos amidst moderate-tempo jamming (e.g., the middle to "Winter Wine," various sections to "Nine Feet Underground"), one hears a strong precursor particularly to sister band Camel's classic albums that were soon to emerge from the pipeline. Like Soft Machine and National Health, so too will you find on here, as near as a common Canterbury denominators as you are likely to get: the fuzzy Hammond and the whimsical, very British lyrics. I've made it known elsewhere that the whimsical lyrics of the Canterbury bands are hit and miss, and usually miss, for me. Richard Sinclair's "Golf Girl" is nice enough, but these lines make me definitively groan: "And later on the golf course, after drinking tea/ It started raining golf balls and she protected me" and "On the golf course/We talk in Morse." Ditto the title track's "nasty grumbly grimblies...climbing down your chimney." I guess I shouldn't complain, in that the included earlier version of "Golf Girl"'s more embarrassing "Kissed me three kisses [kissing sounds]/And this is what bliss is/She became a missus/We had a son/He's named Ja-Son/He's only one" thankfully didn't make the final cut. The music on these tracks deserves better. Overall, though, that does little to prevent In the Land of Grey and Pink from being a very consistent and enjoyable album, bolstered additionally from Decca's considerable care in remastering and reissuing the CD in 2001. Richard Sinclair's introspective and sublime "Winter Wine" is the standout and a prime example of what this band could do. Pye Hasting's main contribution "Love to Love You," is one of the catchiest pop tunes I've yet heard to emerge from a prog-related band out of this era. The liner notes indicate that this was released as a single. From a musical perspective, I am somewhat amiss as to why this ostensibly failed to make a dent in the British charts: an infectious I-IV-V riff, an uncommonly natural sounding 7/4 beat, and superb ride-out flute provided by Jimmy Hastings as the icing on the cake. What I suspect, though, is that it was because someone read the lyrics. Finally, the album closes with "100% Proof," the final movement of "Nine Feet Underground" consisting of one of those excellent rock riffs in the grand tradition (and for me, on the same level as) "Sunshine of Your Love" or "Inna Gadda da Vida." review by Joe McGlinchey — 2-13-05 —

m a t t

The first half of this, Caravan's best-known album, sounds almost like a different band from the one that released If I Could Do It All Over Again. David Sinclair's organ is pushed into the background and the songs are tightened up. It's folksier. There is also an overall feel of fantastical whimsy to these songs that hadn't been a large part of the Caravan sound previous to this. While this contributes to the overall otherworldly air of the album (one look at the Tolkien-esque album cover ought to be clear enough about what direction these guys were headed) it also dates it, rendering it more of an artifact from a bygone era than a still-vibrant, pulsing piece of work that the previous album remains. The album is divided between shorter songs and a 23-minute suite. The songs are, for the most part, conventionally structured and have pop hooks. Good ones, too. I feel uncomfortable calling this music "prog," although there are some different time signatures and the arrangements are kept fairly busy. According to the liner notes, drummer Pye Hastings - the man responsible for most of the material on the previous two albums -- contributed only one song for this one (the irrepressibly catchy "Love to Love You (And Pigs Will Fly Tonight)"), leaving the writing and composing to the other members. This hurts the album a bit in the vocals, as I prefer the buttery warmth of Hasting's voice (almost a dead ringer for Robert Wyatt) to the less distinctive Richard Sinclair. No matter — the shorter songs are all really good, with the Richard Sinclair opus "Winter Wine" being the standout. "Nine Feet Underground" is a 23-minute excursion that is somewhat more reminiscent of Caravan's past. Surprisingly, then, it doesn't measure up to the quality of the songs on the first half of the record. Not that this would be an easy thing to do considering the very high quality of those songs, but it would be reasonable for one to suppose that, at this point, Caravan would have the melodic jazzy jam thing damn near perfected. In any event, while the tune definitely has its highpoints, it's not exactly "With an Ear to the Ground." Good enough, though, to keep this one a very solid Caravan outing overall. review by Matt P. — 2-3-05 —