Friday, July 11, 2008

National Health


I'm still trying to become a Canterbury man, and the time has come to listen to National Health. Since I'm mainly a fan of Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, early Soft Machine, Matching Mole and Gong, some of the other stuff is a bit too much prog rock for my taste, but I'll keep on trying.
National Health was started by Dave Stewart from Hatfield and the North and Alan Gowen from Gilgamesh, and a short story of the band members (copied from Calyx) look like this: "The band's original line-up consisted of Dave Stewart and Alan Gowen on keyboards, Phil Miller and Phil Lee on guitars, Amanda Parsons on vocals and Mont Campbell on bass. A fulltime drummer, Bill Bruford, wasn't found until a couple of months later. In the meantime, Pip Pyle helped out, until finally replacing Bruford in 1977. The final regular line-up included original members Phil Miller and Alan Gowen, with John Greaves on bass and vocals and Pip Pyle on drums. When the band briefly re-formed in 1981 and 1983, the late Gowen was replaced by the returning Dave Stewart."
Peter Blegvad is on the album "Of Ques and Cures".
Watch this recording from YouTube if you have got the nerves! You get National Health with John Greaves "crawling" on the floor.

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