Rocket blasting through the stratosphere or train wreck back down on earth? Truth be told,
Drop
is probably somewhere in the middle; no reasonably well-recorded live
Soft Machine
CD featuring
Mike Ratledge
,
Hugh Hopper
, and
Elton Dean
-- and that's what
is -- will be an unmitigated disaster. But as might be expected,
Steve Lake
's liner notes for this set, recorded on a German tour in fall 1971 and released on the
Moonjune
label nearly four decades later in the waning days of 2008, suggest that the version of the band heard here, featuring
Phil Howard
as a replacement for
Robert Wyatt
on drums, streaked across the sky rather than tumbled off the tracks.
Howard
was retained in the drummer's chair for only half a studio album back then (
Fifth
, recorded a short while after the music heard here), and
Lake
seems to feel that a potential exciting direction went unrealized due to
's early departure. Well, perhaps with
as drummer for a while longer,
could have realized a wilder and freer form of expression instead of "the shelter of compositional structure and arrangements," as
puts it. A tornado of activity to be sure,
crashes and bashes nearly nonstop here, his omnipresent ride cymbal washing across nearly everything. The versions of
"All White,"
"Drop,"
"M.C.,"
"As If,"
and
"Pigling Bland"
(which would later appear in more restrained fashion on
) and
"Slightly All the Time"
"Out-Bloody-Rageous"
(from
Third
) are filled with fiery energy and some of the most committed playing
the Softs
ever put on tape (some particularly ear-shattering, note-bending stuff coming from keyboardist
Ratledge
), if "committed" means essentially the same thing as "intense." By that measure,
is a resounding success.
is to be commended for its archival
efforts, not to mention many stellar releases in the post-Canterbury era by both old heroes and new artists who continue to brighten up the music world well into the 21st century. And completists may very well want to plug in a gap in their
shelves by snapping up
, the one and only
album featuring
on drums from beginning to end. ~ Dave Lynch