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Wednesday, October 10, 2018

INCREDIBLE STRING BAND

- God's Holiday

A new megapost of The Incredible String Band material from Big O lately. Yesterday the first two of 16 (yes sixteen!) discs of the history of ISB. Now we loved ISB back in the day, as popular idiom would have it, and saw them a few times latterly at Leicester in 73 at college there. I have pretty much everything official release wise down in the vaults here at Swappers mansions down past the keep and dungeon and turn left at the ha-ha!

Incredible String Band - 'God's Holiday CD 1/2 of 16

Today they post volumes 3/4

Incredible String Band - God's Holiday 3/4 of 16

Now I will let you know if and when they post the rest but this 'history' is from mixed sources and therefore likely to vary quite a bit in quality but I will leave you to judge as it is worth posting the full set if you can bear with me.

It is difficult to stress the influence and range thereof for the ISB but that they were influences upon bands as varied as Led Zeppelin (go figure!?) and folk fellows like John Martin and Nick Drake to name but a few they did more than most to popularise a unique folk song tradition brought into the 20thC

Now one of the advantages of Big O is they don't police the comments much (if at all judging by the desperate & filthy juvenile trolling - ED) and a colleague there has posted a link this morning to two other ISB gems one from 1973 and one from twenty years later from 1993 which is a more Mike Heron project as he has done quite a few solo projects since the split and is still playing and touring.

These are truly fascinating short EP like sets a live one from the band in 73 but apparently very different from the four piece band we saw in Leicester Poly all those years ago now. The picture with the set shows a six piece and apparently includes Licorice who had definitely left by the time we saw them as Malcolm Le Maistre was back in the fold by then.

Here from the frankly extraordinary Roots and Traces blog (German)

who have a set published by Oh Boy and say it is Spring or Late winter of 1973, whatever it is well worth it for fans