we all live at the baked potato

 

So... I just had some nuanced feelings so nuanced it's almost going too far to call them feelings, about the above. I take my hat off to the person who wrote the three sentences/paragraphs, who totally knew what they were doing/saying and seriously, if you know what you're getting into you know, so I don't think anyone should cavil at this product, presumably all the original members are getting some kind of cream off the top at the use of the name, or at least signed a contract/release in 1973 or whatever saying 'I'll take fifty quid now and never think about Soft Machine again'. But also, there is a case that the most Soft Machine thing that Soft Machine 2020 could do is change their name to something else (though clearly they skirted around it for a long time before just going with it). 

John Marshall is the group's third drummer I think, and first played with them in 1972. It goes without saying he is good, he also played on a personal favourite of mine, Jack Bruce's Harmony Row. Kudos. Babbington played with them in 1972 as an additional member (according to wikipedia, which irritatingly does not have one of those irritating graphs showing you who played when). Etheridge came in in '76. Travis is a total newbie and indeed the poor fool is barely older than me i.e. he is about as old as Soft Machine (he was born in mid-64, it was born in mid-66). So, none of them played with the classic line-up and only Marshall ever played with Hugh Hopper but all except Travis played with Mike Ratledge. The group has had no founder members since Ratledge left in 1976. 

That's why I love the last line, 'absolutely at the top of their game'. The top of whose game? The Soft Machine were last at the top of their game (on record, anyway) with the release of Volume Two, with its truly vile cover and  entirely brilliant contents. That was, um, 1969. (A 'soft machine' is a woman's body, you see, and the band were in no way gay like William Burroughs). 

Since that time (or the time of Third) as far as I'm concerned, and I have not looked into it deeply at all, and nor am I qualified to judge the content and I am very biased by prejudice/prejudiced by bias, the musicians under the umbrella have just not cared enough about bourgeois things like what the band's called this time around, etc. I have been in the same boat tbh, with at least one band (I've mentioned this before and won't go through it again) where key members left and we were like - well - do we just keep going with the old name and cling to the raft of a little bit of product recognition amongst an otherwise uncaring public - or - do we strike out with a new one. I think (though I'm not sure, hard to remember now) on some level we had confidence in the next record, but perhaps given that confidence we should have pressed the reset button. 

I don't even know why I've made such a thing about this. It's not important if this record is called Soft Machine  Live at the Baked Potato or Amy Winehouse Live at the Baked Potato. We'll all survive and if consumers are lackadaisical enough to purchase a product like this expecting Mike to be there playing a solo somehow then more fool them.