Customer Reviews

Bananamour

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4 star:		(1)
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Here's another great, overlooked art-school-rock classic finally released on CD. It's full of Ayers' odd lyrics and twisted tunes, and features a host of former Soft Machine mates and Island Records chums getting together to make some loopy, off-kilter rock'n'roll. Ayers' dark vision might be mistaken for depression in songs like "Don't Let It Get You Down" and "Shouting In a Bucket Blues," but it's always redeemed by a sense of humor and wit ("When Your Parents Go To Sleep" and "Interview."). The bonus tracks include "Caribbean Moon," which had been available on the 1973 U.S. vinyl release. Fans of Soft Machine may be disappointed; this is rock, not jazz. Along with his marvelous 1974 album "Confessions of Doctor Dream," this is some of the Seventies' most chic and sophisticated pop, as well as its most underrated.

Kevin Ayers and the band 747 toured the Bananamour album in 1973 as Banana Follies and I was fortunate to see them at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on May 26th. The sleeve notes to this release mention that the preceding night's QEH gig on the 25th was recorded for a possible live LP "but Ayers' performance proved lacklustre and the overall result proved too disappointing to release". Perhaps they recorded the wrong night as I remember no such shortcomings and it seemed as if Kevin Ayers was on the verge of major stardom.
Although both the band and the material lacked the eccentricity and inspiration of his former outfit, the Whole World, it seemed that these concessions had made him and the band into more of a commercial proposition.
This is also true of this album. The whole affair is very restrained in a rather deliberate and British fashion, and this works to good advantage on some of the numbers, such as the excellent Shouting In A Bucket Blues, which features Steve Hillage on guitar, though at times there are lyrical weaknesses, and whimsical tributes to Syd Barrett and Nico both fail to show real insight into their subjects. Overall, though, this is still a strong and idiosyncratic album. Archie Leggett is allowed a lead vocal on the soully mock-sinister When Your Parents Go To Sleep, with a horn section featuring Howie Casey, and Soft Machine buddy organist Mike Ratledge solos on Interview.
Stardom failed to follow and Kevin's next release was on the Island label.
Of the bonus tracks, the highlight is a reggae reworking of old favourite Clarence In Wonderland, recorded with the band Greyhound, under the title Connie On A Rubber Band.

I got this album in 1973-74 from a friend who worked at a radio station. It is the best free record I ever had, and is still one of my favorite records of all time. No two songs sound alike, yet there is no doubt that they are all the work of the same slightly off-kilter mind. "Don't Let It Get You Down" is a slightly bluesy ballad with a comforting, upbeat message. "When Your Parents Go To Sleep" is a paean to to teen romance on the sly, with an absolutely divine horn arrangement, almost but not quite sloppy, as if a New Orleans brass band accompanied lustful encounters instead of funeral marches.

Ayers was a contemporary of the early British Prog-rock scene. He was a founding member of Soft Machine, and a friend of Pink Floyd founder Syd Barret. Those influences are best heard on "Decadence", a slow, moody tribute to avant-garde chanteuse Nico. It sounds vaguely like a Velvet Underground song, if Lou Reed had been a world-weary baritone instead of a nasally whiner. The instrumentation on this song, as throughout the album, is quirky and anthemic at the same time. Impeccable musicians back up Ayers, and even when it sounds silly, as on "O! wot a Dream" one gets the feeling that all the players are taking it seriously. There are some great solos on the record, but every note is part of a greater whole.

The record has a better-focused San Francisco-Summer-of-Love vibe, psychedelic with an unmistakably British point of view. And it sounds as fresh today as the first time I heard it.

This music epitomises 1973, optimistic, hairy, innocent. Superb harmonics are supplements to lucid lyric. Kevin was at his absolute best!

From the days when music was music and not of a particular genre. The photo inside says it all: a chess game played with banana slices.