KEVIN AYERS : SWEET DREAMER

KEVIN AYERS : SWEET DREAMER

Lay Lady Lay
Mangel/Wurzel
May I
Shouting In A Bucket Blues
Animals
Champagne And Vallium
Everybody's Sometime And Some People's All The Time Blues
Howlin' Man
Why Are We Sleeping ?
Star
Sad And Lonely Faces

Label : Kiss Deluxe

Time : 51:06

Venue : Prins Van Oranje, Venlo, Holland

Date : April 6th, 1982

Quality : Soundboard Recording (A-)

Review (Why Are We Sleeping) : There is always a certain ambivalence reviewing one of these things. Sweet Dreamer is a boot CD originating from the Oh Boy headquarters in Luxembourg and widely available in Europe and on the UK record fair circuits. Many readers will already be familiar with the copious Soft Machine and Caravan boots from the same stable and will know what to expect. If this first Ayers release is going to signal some kind of flood then let's hope they unearth some genuinely interesting stuff for the future rather than sessions like this which is all from either radio or record. So there's an ambivalence in that most Ayers fans will already possess it on top of the usual wrestling with the principles as to buying it or not. I would much rather a system existed whereby we could all send Kevin Ayers a tenner and gave him the money up front to run off a couple of hundred tapes of a show he was proud of. Money direct to the artist and music direct to the fans. I'm sure there's a reason somewhere why it's not that simple, but here's dreaming sweetly..... Clocking in at a total 51 mins, the meat of this release is a show from the Prins van Oranje at Venlo in Holland on the 6th April 1982 which was broadcast live, though not in its totality, on VARA radio. As such, the sound quality of the 7 Venlo tracks is very reasonable though this has to be relative to the fact that the original concert sound balance, mix and performance would not rank amongst Ayers' greatest. 'May I' is lacklustre with a disappointing vocal, a mid-Atlantic 'uff the street' slurring the pristine vocalic accuracy that should be the hallmark of a Kevin classic. Ollie's guitar spirals to the rescue of course but Pedro Colon's bass ( misspelt Cologne on the sleeve) can't match that day in 1970 when the angels smiled down on the Whole World and guided young Mike Oldfield's fingers up the fretboard.... A bit unfair to Pedro who's really competent enough, along with the remainder of the band of Zanna Gregmar on keyboards and backing vocals and Bolle Gregmar on drums. ( I've not been able to trace whether Bolle is Zanna's brother or what. 'Shooting In A Bucket Blues' throws up more brio and verve, always a song that really kickstarts things because of that guitar break in the opening bars. 'Animals', introduced as Spanish/English reggae, would have been a relatively new song to the audience at the time and was on the verge of being released as a single in Spain. ( In theory the single version is likely to have come from the Dec 1980 Deia Vu sessions but that's another story...) 'Too Old To Die Young' also known of course as 'Champagne And Valium', is next, with more conviction and care in Ayers' voice and there's a rather loaded 'generation gap' remark to the audience to emphasise the point. 'Everybody's Sometime Bla Bla Bla Blues' showcases the sublime tone of Ollie's guitar. The really criminal act of this bootleg is that the next song on the original radio broadcast is missed off - 'Super Salesman' wouldn't necessarily be amongst my personal top 20 Ayers songs but somehow the 7 minute version at Venlo became an artists palette for Halsall to lay down some fabulously superfast jazz phrasing of transformational quality. Instead we are 'treated' to 'Howling Man'. Sorry, I've tried hard with this one - in nobler moments I've nodded sagely at the lyrics and thought of it as a metaphor for the Human Conscience screaming to be free; then I get this mental picture that it could equally be an image of gross flatulence crying for an Alka-Seltzer. Hhhhoooowwww!!!!!!!!! The sound quality deteriorates in 'Why Are We Sleeping' which is a shame. The radio show was then to continue with a couple of minutes of 'Africa' ( aka 'Budget Tours' ) before the announcers cut in to close the transmission. It's likely the band continued with 'Stop This Train' and 'Stranger In Blue Suede Shoes' if the set were to continue along the lines of the Nijmegen show of the 3rd April. As for the CD, the poor quality 'Star' is definitely not from Venlo but I'm 99% certain it's 'borrowed' from the BBC In Concert session of 23.10.76 when the band was Ayers, Andy Summers, Zoot Money, Charlie McCracken and Rob Townsend. The remaining other three tracks are equally scurrilously misrepresented. None of course is 'live'. Only 'Lay Lady Lay' is actually from the claimed December 1980 and is a straight lift from 'Deia Vu'. A nice version, but you'll have heard it before. 'Mangel Wurzel' is nicked verbatim from Lady June's 'Linguistic Leprosy' which was reissued on CD ( official ) last summer. 'Sad And Lonely Faces' is an edit of the closing track from David Bedford's 1972 'Nurses Song With Elephants'. Written as a piece for six pianos, flute, clarinet, trumpets and trombones and played by Bedford himself, the words spoken and sung by Ayers are from a poem by Kenneth Patchen ( whose work was to be utilised more heavily on Bedford's later 1977 'Instructions for Angels ). About 4 minutes of frenzied multilayered piano intro has been cut from the track. Did I hear somewhere that 'Nurses Song' is now on CD? A strange, ill-conceived mish mash of odds and sods in the final analysis. The irony is that 'Sweet Dreamer' stands at present as the most extant testament on Compact Disc of Ollie Halsall's prowess as a live performer and I am sure that for that reason alone the CD will acquire a cult collectability status. I can only express on behalf of all of us what a tragedy it would be if that were to remain the case and let us all hope that someone, somewhere, who understands the mysteries of putting records together reaches into the vaults and produces a more fitting and dignified monument worthy of such a genius.