Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
O, I REMEMBER IT ALL FROM BEFORE..., November 15, 2002
When Elektra's US division released this recording in America in late spring/early summer of 1968, they were unsure that it would be marketable as a two-record set, so it was issued as two separate lps. Given the unpredictability of the music market, this was probably a prudent decision -- but I'm glad to see that Hannibal has honored the ISB's original intent and made it available as a reasonably-priced double cd. The two albums should definitely be considered as a whole.This was the first release I bought by the ISB -- and I was hooked immediately on the exotic melodies, the instruments gathered from all corners of the earth...and the lyrics. I was attending college at the time, and I showed some of the lyrics to my English professor -- he instantly recognized them as songs, but he was very impressed with the quality and depth of the poetry. The songs address a wide variety of topics -- life, love, spirituality, mankind's place in the scheme of things -- and do so with intelligence, insight and gentle wit. The arrangements on this set are decidedly less complex -- but, I think, just as adventurous -- as those on the preceding recording THE HANGMAN'S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER (which came out just 4-5 months earlier). They are perfectly suited to the season of the year -- lighter, less complicated than the darker mood of the prvious album. The lyrics are allowed to dominate. I think I was a fan from the opening bars of 'Job's tears', the first track. I was mesmerized by the beauty and depth of these songs. Yes, I was at an impressionable age (I was 18) -- but as the years have passed under the bridge, I've found that I can return to these recordings (and, indeed, most of the ISB's work) again and again, still spellbound by the wonder of the music found here. The work has aged well. Later in their career, the ISB ventured more into electric instruments -- being pushed there, I suspect, by folks at their new label, Island, thinking that perhaps a more electric sound might be more marketable (Island was the home stable to period stalwarts such as Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, John Martyn and Richard Thompson). Some of these later experiments came off well, some less successfully -- but throughout their career, until their demise in the 1970s, the ISB were always interesting. Williamson and Heron remained individually active after the band split -- Williamson being extremely prolific -- and I was happy to see last year that they're working together again, that the ISB has been reformed. There are tours and new recordings in the works -- I'll look forward to both eagerly. Meanwhile, I know I'll continue to enjoy their catalogue -- especially this set, which is probably my favorite of their many releases.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Wee Tam/Big Huge" Endures, September 15, 2003
A short 10 years ago, none of the ISB's catalog was available in the compact disc format. We should be greatful that a number of boutique labels have seen fit to release the music of this talented, but magnificently unsucessful band. There are now about 30 releases including the studio records, the live albums and the anthologies. "Wee Tam" and the "Big Huge" is the beginning of the most enduring and sucessful partnership in the band's history: Robin Williamson, Mike Heron, Licorice McKenzie and Rose Simpson. To say that "Wee Tam/Big Huge" is a personal favorite of mine, goes against the convential wisdom that "Hangman's Beautiful Daugher" or "5000 Spirits" is the ISB's best work. Orginally, a double album was chopped as two separate releases, in the United States: "Wee Tam" was released in 1967 and "Big Huge" was released in 1968. Sandwiched between those release dates, in late 1967 was the release of "Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" which chronologically was released in the UK in 1966. It's confusing but germaine, because no one in the United States heard the unified "Wee Tam/Big Huge" double disc until nearly 25 years after it's initial release. It is the equivalent of chopping Bob Dylan's "Blonde On Blonde" into two separate albums and releasing the second album one year after the release of "John Wesley Harding." The point I'm trying to make with all of this labored chronology, is a marketing decision took precedence over the ISB's creative vision. In Europe, where the unified release coincided with the so-called "summer of love", ISB were hailed with Hendrix, the Beatles and Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, as innovators in a new music consciouness. In the USA the were regarded as an idosyncratic Scottish group who didn't even have a drummer. The pastoral feel of "Wee Tam/Big Huge" was a summons to return to Mother Nature, that was tremendously influential in the UK and Europe at the time. In 1968, they were viewed as musical anomalies when the performed at Woodstock, and no one even thought to record their performance for posterity. ISB was regarded, on this side of the Atlantic, as a strange group of musicians from Scotland who wore antique costumes, ate microbiotic food and persued arcane philosophies. In hindsight, the simple well crafted music and the pantheistic mysticism of "Wee Tam/Big Huge" may have been one of the most enduring musical statements from that era.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The ISB at their very, very best in this SINGLE album, June 3, 2005
`The Big Huge' and the `Wee Tam' are nominally two different albums by The Incredible String Band (TISB) when actually; they were released simultaneously in 1968 as if they were a double album where you could buy the two disks independently. The sense with which the two titles can be combined as `The Big Huge Wee Tam' is one small sign of how these two albums were always supposed to be seen as a single work, in much the same way as Dylan's `Blond on Blond' and the Beatles' `white album' are two phonographs in a single album.
It is due to this title combination that I always considered `The Big Huge' as the first of the two recordings. The second reason is because the first cut on this album, Williamson's `Maya' so completely captures the style and spirit of both albums. It also clearly connects TISB with the style of Donovan Leitch as exemplified in his song `Atlantis'. There must be some name for this kind of song in song writing circles, and I wish I knew it, as it is so distinctive in construction. Basically, it enumerates between eight and twelve things, generally people, in a group where each type serves a particular person or fits a role in the whole. The simplest example of such a song might be the `Do-Re-Mi Song' from `The Sound of Music'. Both `Maya' and `Atlantis' are much more complicated, but fit the same basic pattern.
`Maya' is doubly interesting in that it is almost certainly based on the famous illustration on the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes' great work `Leviathan' on political philosophy, where the head of the sovereign sits on a body composed of smaller bodies.
This pair of albums may have been the high point of the TISB recording career. At the very least, together with `The 5000 Spirits or The Layers of the Onion' and `The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter', it created a body of work which at the very least insured the durability of the groups modest popularity well into the 21st century. And, I believe it is the last set of recordings they did in the style of original writing they established in `5000 Spirits...' With their next works, I detect definite changes in style and more independence from Mike Heron, as he released a solo album around this time.
I made the observation in a review of `The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter' that many of the songs can be heard as evening entertainment for children on their way to bed. I can strengthen this analogy with this album with the references to Tolkien's fiction in one or two of these songs. Add to this references to A. A. Milne's `Winnie the Pooh' and songs about caterpillars and I rest my case. Very few of their songs relate to that most favorite song subject, romantic love. Much more time is spent on adventure, discovery, tall tales, and nonsense rhymes.
For those of you who may be coming to TISB from encounters with Fairport Convention and The Pentangle, I suggest that TISB is the gold standard of original writing based on Celtic and other world folk traditions. Fairport Convention, especially Sandy Denny may have written some great songs and Jansch and Renbourn of `The Pentangle' are probably greater instrumentalists, but TISB conveys a folkish charm that is truer to the great 1960's counterculture spirit than any other band.
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