Arches of Canterbury

Way before you had to wait forever for one of their trains or when you received the worst customer service experience travelling cattle class on one of their planes, Virgin used to be on point. The image above is of the band Hatfield and the North who released two albums under Richard Branson’s first business venture. They were part of the Canterbury sound scene, and like most other bands in the scene they had the whole incestuous band member swapping thing going on which I have never really been able to get my head around – eminent members of the band included Pip Pyle from Gong, Dave Sinclair from Matching mole and Caravan and Dave Stewart from Egg.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with a history of the band or my obsession with the Canterbuy scene. I do however want to highlight the second album from the group (The Rotters Club) dropped 1975 on Virgin – the better one of the two in my humble opinion. The album is typical of the prog sound of the era with plenty of heavy synth action and Pip Pyle tearing it up on the drums, Jimmy Hastings also flipping it on the sax plus you can’t ignore nor forget the Northettes - the backing singers in the band.

(listen to clip below)

The album is a total mish mash -more of a Jazz album than anything else. While I hate to cheapen the quality of the music by saying it’s a Roland S-10’s dream, it really is.

It took me a while – about a year - to find a copy of this album. There are stacks of the self titled first lp floating around on e-bay this lp however is slightly harder to come across (on cd not so tricky) and when you do come across it’s not cheap - Music Stack has a few.

...you could probably find it cheaper somewhere else.

Trust me though without a doubt worth every single penny.

(Click the play button below to listen)

Hatfield and the North - Mumps Pt2 

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