Information AboutHenry Cow |
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Henry Cow was an English Avant-garde Rock Group , founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson . An inherent anti-commercial bias kept them at arm's length from the mainstream Music Business , enabling them to experiment at will. They remained in existence for 10 years and produced a body of music that was challenging, provocative and influential for years to come. While it was generally thought that Henry Cow took their name from Twentieth Century American composer Henry Cowell , this has been repeatedly denied by band members. According to Tim Hodgkinson, the name was "in the air" in 1968 , and it seemed like a good name for the band. It had no connection to anything. HISTORY The beginning Henry Cow began as a " Dada " Blues band in May 1968 , but exposure to a variety of new music from bands and musicians like Soft Machine , Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa caused a radical shift in direction. Their first concert was to support Pink Floyd at the Architects Ball at Homerton College in Cambridge in June 1968. Over the next few years the band line-up fluctuated. In October 1969 Bassist John Greaves joined, followed by a succession of drummers. In early 1971, Henry Cow recorded a John Peel session, after having entered Peel's "Rockortunity Knocks" contest, and performed at several events in June that year, including the Glastonbury Festival alongside Gong and others. It wasn't until September 1971, when drummer Chris Cutler joined, that Henry Cow settled into a permanent core of Frith, Hodgkinson, Cutler and Greaves. The band then relocated to London where they began an aggressive rehearsal schedule. In April 1972 Henry Cow wrote and performed the music for Robert Walker 's production of Euripides ' ''The Bacchae''. This involved an intense and demanding three week period of concentrated work that changed the band completely. It was during this time that Geoff Leigh on Woodwind s joined and Henry Cow became a Quintet . In July 1972 , the band performed at the Edinburgh Festival and wrote and performed music for a ballet with artist Ray Smith and the Cambridge Contemporary Dance Group at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe . It was Smith who later did the "paint sock" art work on three of Henry Cow's LP covers. Back in London , they started to organise a series of concerts and events under the names Cabaret Voltaire and Explorers' Club at Kensington Town Hall with invited guests, including Derek Bailey , Lol Coxhill , Ivor Cutler , Ron Geesin , David Toop and Ray Smith. For the first time, Henry Cow started getting some attention from the Rock press and the then emerging Virgin Records label. After much negotiations and deliberation, in May 1973 Henry Cow signed a contract with Virgin. Unrest Within two weeks of signing the contract, Henry Cow began recording their debut album '' Leg End '' (a.k.a. '' Legend '') at Virgin's Manor studios in Oxfordshire . It took three weeks of hard work, but at the end they knew how to handle the studio themselves, which would prove to be invaluable later in their career. The track "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King", sung by the whole group, was Henry Cow's first overt political statement. To promote its new signing, Virgin organised a UK tour for Henry Cow and Faust , who had also just signed to the label. During this tour, Henry Cow began preparing music for an unorthodox and provocative play, based on Shakespeare 's The Tempest . Some of this music was used on their next record '' Unrest ''. During a tour of The Netherlands in December 1973 , Geoff Leigh left the group. Looking for more unusual instruments to draw them further away from standard Rock and Jazz , Henry Cow asked Classically trained Lindsay Cooper ( Oboe , Bassoon ) to join. With hardly any time to rehearse, and Cooper having just had all four wisdom teeth extracted, they returned to The Manor in early 1974 to begin recording ''Unrest''. It was during this time that they became acquainted with Slapp Happy , a quirky avant-pop trio of Peter Blegvad (guitar), Anthony Moore (keyboards) and Dagmar Krause (vocals), who had just completed their first LP for Virgin. Recording ''Unrest'' was another intense experience, and the strongest period of collective learning since ''The Bacchae''. They only had enough material to fill one side of the LP, and so were forced to spend a good deal of time developing the Studio Composition process that produced Side 2. The recording session brought out a lot of tensions in the band, and it reflected in the music, but in the end they were pleased with the result and this re-united the group. In May , playing the same thing night after night. Life was no longer a challenge and they were becoming complacent. After some serious thinking they decided to ask Lindsay Cooper to leave and fulfil their last outstanding concert obligations (a tour of the Netherlands ) as a Quartet . Without Cooper they were forced to abandon much of their learned material and worked up a 35-40 minute piece unlike anything else they had done before (this later became "Living in the Heart of the Beast" on '' In Praise Of Learning ''). In November 1974 , Slapp Happy invited Henry Cow to be their band on their second LP for Virgin. The result was '' Desperate Straights '', an almost entirely Slapp Happy composed album that surprised everyone, considering how dissimilar the two groups were. The success of this venture prompted a merger of the two bands. In early 1975 the merged group began rehearsing for ''In Praise of Learning'' in a freezing gymnasium. It was an arduous and extremely demanding time, something Slapp Happy was not prepared for, and it soon became apparent that the merger might not work. Nevertheless, they still went to The Manor and made ''In Praise of Learning'' together. But it was only after they started rehearsing with a view to performing live together that it became clear that their approaches were incompatible. Anthony Moore quit and Peter Blegvad was asked to leave, but Dagmar Krause, whose contribution added another dimension to Henry Cow's sound, elected to remain. Having guested on both the Henry Cow/Slapp Happy albums, Lindsay Cooper rejoined in April . Europe Henry Cow's music was challenging and uncompromising and this often lead to them being accused of deliberately making their music inaccessible. As a result they were virtually ignored in their own country. Even Virgin Records, who had started dropping experimental groups in favour of commercial ones, was now showing little to no interest in Henry Cow. This led to the group having to continuously make decisions as to whether to continue or not (there certainly were no economic inducements). To continue required political decisions to survive, and these decisions often reflected in their music. Henry Cow's Anti-capitalist stance was brought on partly out of necessity rather than choice. They began working outside the Music Industry and doing everything for themselves. They abandoned agencies and managers and stopped looking for approval from the music press. Henry Cow quickly became self-sufficient and self-reliant. Virtual exiles from their own country, they made mainland Europe their second home where they (and their music) were well received. After a concert in Rome in July 1975 , Henry Cow remained behind with their truck/bus/mobile home and began meeting local musicians, organisers and the PCI ( Italian Communist Party ). It was the PCI that offered them concerts at Festa D'Unita (large open-air fairs that run every summer all over Italy ). Each contact they made lead to more contacts and soon doors opened for Henry Cow all over Europe . While rehearsing for an upcoming tour of Scandinavia in March 1976 , John Greaves left the band to start working on a project with Peter Blegvad, and Dagmar Krause withdrew due to ill-health. Committed to the tour, Henry Cow had to perform as a Quartet (Hodgkinson, Frith, Cooper and Cutler) and adjust their music accordingly. They took the radical option and abandoned composed material completely in favour of pure Improvisation . In May in 1975 . Still without a Bass player, Henry Cow auditioned until they found Georgie Born , a classically trained Cellist and Improviser . Their new compositions grew even more complex. They returned to London in early 1977 to set up Music For Socialism and its May Festival. It had been three years since Henry Cow had performed more than one concert a year in their own country. In an attempt to break the apathy that seemed to be discouraging anyone from wanting to put them on, they tried to organise a small alternative tour themselves, but abandoned it after 11 concerts when they started losing money: clearly nothing had changed. Their contract with Virgin Records had now become a burden to both Henry Cow and Virgin: none of Henry Cow's records were licensed or distributed in the countries in which they spent all their time playing, and Henry Cow was not making any money for Virgin. Henry Cow needed to record again but Virgin (understandably) refused to give them studio time at The Manor. When Henry Cow referred to the contract ("one month at a first class studio"), Virgin Records (in October 1977 ) agreed to cancel it. By now Krause's health had deteriorated to such an extent that touring became impossible for her and she decided to leave the group, although she still wanted to sing on Henry Cow's next album, to be recorded in January 1978 at the Sunrise studios in Kirchberg, Switzerland . However, in the weeks leading to the sessions, strong musical differences emerged between band members: Frith and Cutler were in favour of song-oriented material, while Cooper and Hodgkinson wanted purely instrumental compositions. As a compromise, two separate albums were made. The songs were recorded as ''Hopes and Fears'' under the name of a new group Art Bears , consisting of Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause with the rest of Henry Cow credited as guests, and the instrumental material was released, with additional recordings made later that year, as the final Henry Cow album '' Western Culture ''. However, this decision effectively meant the end of the band. Rock in Opposition Henry Cow agreed to disband as a permanent group, but did not announce the fact immediately. They continued for another six months, creating a new set of material (recorded later to complete ''Western Culture'') and revisited for the last time, all the places that had supported them over the years. In March ; and (2) a determination to pursue their own work regardless. After the festival, RIO was formalised as an organisation with a Charter whose aim was to represent and promote its members. RIO thus became a collective of bands united in their opposition to the Music Industry and the pressures to compromise their music. Henry Cow's last concert was held in Milan on 25th July 1978 . In August they returned to the Sunrise studios to compete ''Western Culture'' after which the band officially announced their break-up in the press, stating that "… although the group as a commodity, as a name, ceases to exist the work of the group will go on …" {Link without Title} . ''Western Culture'' was released on Henry Cow's own Broadcast label. Shortly afterwards, Chris Cutler launched Recommended Records , his own independent label and non-commercial record distribution network. Legacy The legacy of Henry Cow and its work continues to live on long after its demise. It was a groundbreaking group that launched the careers of many of its members, and they have kept in touch, collaborating in numerous projects over the years, including (to name a few):
THE MUSIC Henry Cow's repertoire included elaborately scored pieces (often with complex Time Signatures ), tape manipulations, Free Improvisation and Songs . It incorporated elements of Jazz , Rock , Classical Music and the Avant-garde . Dagmar Krause 's vocals added another dimension to their sound, giving it a dramatic, almost Brecht ian flair. Their music was often Experimental , making classification all but impossible. However, the following styles (amongst others) are often associated with Henry Cow:
Some of these styles may come closer to describing their music than others, and often it contained elements of all of the above, but in reality, Henry Cow simply remains one of those unclassifiable groups. Henry Cow's music was challenging, not only to the listener, but also to the band themselves. They often composed pieces to challenge their own capabilities. Some of their music was scored beyond the conventional ranges of their music instruments necessitating that they "reinvent their instruments", learn how to play them in completely new ways. And yet their music may not have been as good as it could have been. Henry Cow conducted their affairs as a committee, having regular, minuted meetings with no decisions being made unless approved by the group. This included their music. Band members brought their ideas to the table but often they ended up being watered down as a result of the collective process, rather than strengthened, and many of their best ideas may not have been fully realised. Who knows what Henry Cow might have produced had individual members been given more free reign. While their music is a decided "acquired taste", there is much to recommend in it, for as it is often dissonant and challenging, it is also rich and exciting, and yields more insights upon repeated listening. THE PERSONNEL A number of people passed through Henry Cow over the years:
THE RECORDINGS These are the albums Henry Cow made (excluding bootlegs) showing the year they were first released:
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