Full Description
In its open improvisations, lapidary lyrics, errant melodies, and relentless pursuit of spontaneity, the British experimental band Henry Cow pushed rock music to its limits. Its rotating personnel, sprung from rock, free jazz, and orchestral worlds, synthesized a distinct sound that troubled genre lines, and with this musical diversity came a mixed politics, including Maoism, communism, feminism, and Italian Marxism. In Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem Benjamin Piekut tells the band's story-from its founding in Cambridge in 1968 and later affiliation with Virgin Records to its demise ten years later-and analyzes its varied efforts to link aesthetics with politics. Drawing on ninety interviews with Henry Cow musicians and crew, letters, notebooks, scores, journals, and meeting notes, Piekut traces the group's pursuit of a political and musical collectivism, offering up its history as but one example of the vernacular avant-garde that emerged in the decades after World War II. Henry Cow's story resonates far beyond its inimitable music; it speaks to the avant-garde's unpredictable potential to transform the world.
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. Feral Experimentalism 1
1. You Can't Play This Music at Cambridge 1968-73 29
2. Faust and the Virgins 1973 76
3. Contentment Is Hopeless, Unrest Is Progress 1974 119
4. Death to the Individual: Slapp Happy 1974-75 157
5. Europa 1975-76 199
6. The Roads Leading to Rome 1976-77 242
7. No Joy Anymore London 1977 293
8. Henry Cow Always Had to Be Henry Cow 1978 345
Afterword. The Vernacular Avant-Garde 387
Notes 409
Bibliography 455
Index 479
