Stackridge played the first note at the first ever Glastonbury Festival in 1970. Thirty-seven years later, some might say there are more ideas and risks taken on this single album than will be exhibited at the entire festival this year. But don’t let that put you off…
While the band remain customarily consigned to that vast swirly bran-tub of styles and influences marked ‘prog’, there was much more to this jesterly West Country bunch than an anarchic stretching of the boundaries of folk into Old Grey Whistle Test territory. This is lateperiod Stackridge, an impossible hybrid of jazz-rock and folk, though the CD retains much of the festival-friendly frolics that came as part of the original package. As surprising as it may sound, here are comedy character vignettes worthy (and reminiscent) of Ian Dury, and a bouncy playfulness that blends music-hall tinkling, cod reggae brass and easy interludes to bring to mind The Blockheads, Zappa and even Madness.
Still, a couple of years after its genuinely optimistic release on Elton John’s Rocket label in 1974, the band was no more. Oh, and did we mention the fiddles and Mellotrons on Benjamin’s Giant Onion?
