Review: John Greaves & Peter Blegvad: Kew. Rhone. (1977)

Kew. Rhone. is the first album by John Greaves and Peter Blegvad.

(Alongside John Greaves and Peter Blegvad, the album is sometimes also credited to Lisa Herman, but as, in practice, Greaves composed all the music, Blegvad wrote the lyrics and Herman ‘simply sang what she was asked to’, it seems fair to regard Greaves and Blegvad as the album’s true creators.)

Bassist/composer John Greaves and songwriter Peter Blegvad met in 1975 when Blegvad’s band Slapp Happy recorded the album Desperate Straights with the assistance of Henry Cow. Greaves and Blegvad hit it off straight away and together composed the brilliant and intricate art-pop track “Bad Alchemy” for that album.

Following Desperate Straights, Slapp Happy merged with Henry Cow, and this combined line-up recorded the album In Praise Of Learning (1975). After that album, however, cracks began to appear in the band’s ranks. Slapp Happy’s keyboardist Anthony Moore left the band, and shortly afterwards Peter Blegvad was sacked because Henry Cow’s music was simply too complex for his musical abilities. Thus, only Slapp Happy’s vocalist Dagmar Krause remained a permanent member of Henry Cow.

Greaves was sorry to see Blegvad leave and found the very serious atmosphere within Henry Cow oppressive. Greaves himself left Henry Cow in 1976, partly because he was interested in making music that was somewhat simpler and, on the other hand, more vocal-oriented than that of Henry Cow, whose music had become increasingly challenging with each passing year. And Greaves’s decision to leave was certainly not made any harder by his wife’s affair with guitarist Fred Frith.

”The guitar-player was fucking my wife.”

John Greaves

After leaving Henry Cow, Blegvad had returned to America and was pursuing a career as an illustrator and comic artist in New York. Greaves travelled to meet Blegvad, and together they set about putting together an album based on rough sketches composed by Greaves, which he had been working on for some time. Some of these pieces had already been performed at Henry Cow gigs years earlier. Dagmar Krause was originally supposed to be the project’s vocalist, but for some unknown reason she ultimately pulled out at the last minute. What a shame! Krause’s distinctive and charismatic style would certainly have made this masterful album even more magnificent. A lesser-known American singer, Lisa Herman, was brought in to replace her.

(The 2004 CD release features an interesting bonus track in which Greaves and Blegvad, apparently as part of an audition, put Herman through her paces by getting her to sing the tricky ‘Bad Alchemya’.)

Although Greaves left Henry Cow partly because he wanted to make simpler music, the compositions on Kew. Rhone. are in fact devilishly complex. They are harmonically rich, but particularly rhythmically intricate, as they proceed almost constantly in irregular time signatures. The changes in time signature are not quite as frequent as in Henry Cow’s most challenging music, but Greaves’s music can by no means be described as simple.

Blegvad found writing lyrics to Greaves’s music a difficult yet fascinating challenge. Ultimately, he came to the conclusion that complex music also requires complex lyrics. Blegvad’s final lyrics are, in fact, truly cryptic. They are full of wordplay, lists, riddles and palindromes. To complement the lyrics, Blegvad created a collection of strange drawings and diagrams to be included with the album cover. Some of the lyrics were deliberately written in such a way that understanding them requires looking at the drawings.

Together, Greaves’ compositions and Blegvad’s lyrics form a playful labyrinth that tickles the brain. Kew. Rhone. cannot really be considered a particularly emotional experience. On the other hand, the lyrics are full of humour. Admittedly, you do have to be prepared to make a bit of an effort to unearth it.

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Once the material for Kew. Rhone. was ready (and it certainly was ready, as everything had been meticulously notated and planned in advance) for recording, the composer/musician couple Michael Mantler and Carla Bley – both highly regarded in those circles – offered their Grog Kill studio in Woodstock as the recording venue. Mantler also handled the recording (the sound quality could have been better…) and plays the trumpet and trombone here and there on the album. Bley, for her part, plays a little saxophone (the piano is her main instrument), sings backing vocals and served as a general source of inspiration throughout. Greaves has indeed said that Bley’s own music, which navigates between jazz and art music, has been a key influence on him.

John Greaves himself plays not only his main instrument, the bass guitar, on the album, but also all the keyboards (mainly piano and organ) and some percussion. The backing vocals – and even the occasional lead vocals – are shared between Greaves and Blegvad, as Lisa Herman certainly does not sing them all on her own. The whole trio also sings powerfully in unison at times, as in the magnificent ‘Twenty-Two Proverbs’. Blegvad played all the guitar parts on the album, which caused him great distress, even though there were no actual solo sections. Once again, following his time with Henry Cow, Blegvad found himself in a situation where he had to struggle with overly complex compositions whilst lacking sufficient technical skill.

Alongside Mantler’s trumpet, the spotlight is shared in particular with Vito Rendace’s saxophones (and, at times, the flute), as well as – in a few passages – Michael A. Levin’s violin and viola, which are particularly delightful. The violin is also heard at times played pizzicato, as in the rather laboriously titled track ‘Seven Scenes from the Painting “Exhuming the First American Mastodon” by C. W. Pealessa’.

Thanks, presumably, to Mantler and Bley’s connections, the band managed to secure a long-standing jazz drummer for the drum stool: Andrew Cyrille, who has played extensively with Cecil Taylor, amongst others. Cyrille’s drumming on the album is lively, almost hyperactive, yet delightfully light-handed. Just as one would, of course, expect from a jazz drummer. His style is somewhat reminiscent of Jack DeJohnette, but sounds a little sharper and more rock-influenced. Having worked mainly in free jazz, Cyrille was unaccustomed to the challenging, irregular time signatures composed by Greaves, and the curious book Kew. Rhone., published in 2004, humorously recounts how, during the most difficult passages, Greaves had to keep Cyrille in time by poking him in the back with a stick whilst he was playing. Fortunately, these challenges are not apparent in the final result – at least not to my ears – and Cyrille’s drumming sounds like a seamless part of the whole.

Kew. Rhone.’s music can clearly be categorised as progressive rock, but its tight tracks also have an art-rock feel, whilst the arrangements, with their abundant wind instruments, take one’s thoughts in the direction of avant-garde jazz. Many of the tracks manage to be both incredibly catchy and devilishly complex at the same time. It’s a combination that few composers ever manage to achieve. Most often, Kew. Rhone. is probably categorised as avant-prog due to its angularity and challenging nature, but on the other hand, its song-like quality and a certain accessibility also challenge that definition.

In the music, and particularly in Herman’s vocals, there is at times a certain theatricality that strangely takes one’s thoughts in one direction – towards the glitz of Broadway – and in another – towards the detached everyday realism of Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler. But it is precisely because of these multifaceted influences that Kew. Rhone. is, of course, such an intriguing album. It intriguingly eludes all kinds of categorisation and, depending on your perspective, is easy to see (or hear!) in a completely different light.

”The Song ’Kew Rhone.’ is an epistemological study in 7/4 with a rhumba beat.”

John Greaves

One of the most inspiring tracks on this consistently high-quality album is its cryptic and far too short title track. “Kew. Rhone” begins with Herman’s wordless vocalisation and an intricate piano pattern, before confidently bringing in the honking brass section. The lyrics kick in at the one-and-a-half-minute mark, with Herman singing them in an intriguing manner, in a much lower register than usual. In the intricate chorus—sung in harmony by the trio of vocalists and featuring a long palindrome—Herman returns to her more characteristic high register, whilst Greaves and Blegvad respond by singing from a lower register. A truly magnificent moment. Unfortunately, the three-minute track ends far too quickly.

The track that follows, the offbeat bossa nova ‘Pipeline’ – whose tempo seems to shift constantly – flows on so naturally, however, that these tracks could almost be considered a sort of mini-suite. In a way, this applies to the whole album as well. The short tracks don’t necessarily make the best possible impression when taken separately, but the whole that emerges when listened to in succession is what really counts. Kew. Rhone. is like a jigsaw puzzle where the picture it forms isn’t necessarily entirely clear, but which nevertheless makes a greater impression when viewed as a whole than when simply glancing at individual pieces.

Laminates a tone of a set animal, animal, laminates
A set animal, animal, laminates
Laminates a tone of sleep, a tone of sleep
Peel’s foe, not a set animal, laminates a tone of sleep
Not a set animal, not a set animal, animal, laminates

The chorus of the song ‘Kew. Rhone.’

A frequently repeated legend has it that Kew. Rhone. was released on the same day as the Sex Pistols’ punk album Never Mind The Bollocks. Like many legends, however, this one is not entirely true. Kew. Rhone. was released in March 1977, whilst Never Mind The Bollocks was not released until half a year later, in October of the same year. However, as both albums were released by the same record label, Virgin – which had previously been a standard-bearer for progressive music – it is easy to interpret the release of these albums as marking the end of one era and the beginning of another.

Especially as Virgin had carried out a major ”purging” at the end of 1976 and sacked most of its prog bands. All that remained were essentially just their cash cow, Mike Oldfield, and the German band Tangerine Dream, who were rapidly rising to fame. And, for some strange reason, Greaves and Blegvad’s odd Kew. Rhone. Perhaps the contract had been drawn up before the purge – I’m not sure – but Greaves and Blegvad’s album nevertheless had the strange honour of being Virgin’s last ‘new signing’ prog album of the 1970s.

Kew. Rhone. and Never Mind The Bollocks are, of course, an interesting contrast in that the highly sophisticated and intellectually ambitious Kew. Rhone. sought, for its part, to take progressive rock to a new level, whilst the mission of Never Mind The Bollocks was, at least to some extent, to take rock music back ten or twenty years in time. Taking rock music back to its ‘authentic’ basics, such as three-chord progressions, energetic aggression and catchy choruses. Well, we know which album won the public’s overwhelming favour. Never Mind The Bollocks sold a couple of million copies. Kew. Rhone.’s original sales figures are probably counted in the thousands, not tens of thousands. So it’s no wonder that now, over 40 years later, following a continuous cultural decline, we’re living in an idiocracy led by populist fools…

Despite its cultural decline, Kew. Rhone has, over the decades, achieved the status of a highly regarded cult album and has fans even beyond the small circle of progressive rock enthusiasts. One of the album’s biggest advocates has been Robert Wyatt, who has praised the record on numerous occasions and has, for example, stated that he quickly bought a second copy to back up his original vinyl, just in case the first one wore out.

Read also: Review: North Sea Radio Orchestra / John Greaves / Annie Barbazza – Folly Bololey: Songs From Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom (2019)

Kew. Rhone. is a highly original album. Its kindred spirits might be considered to be Michael Mantler’s The Hapless Child and Other Inscrutable Stories (1976) and Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports (1981), composed and written by Carla Bley but ultimately released under the name of Pink Floyd– drummer Nick Mason. The joint Henry Cow and Slapp Happy album Desperate Straights, which marked the beginning of the collaboration between Greaves and Blegvad, certainly also pointed in the direction of the Kew. Rhone. album.

And what does the album title ‘Kew. Rhone.’ mean? Although I’ve read the nearly 200-page book about the album (Uniform Books, 2014), I honestly can’t answer that question. Kew. Rhone is an utterly fascinating musical mystery that hasn’t fully revealed itself to me even after years of listening, but perhaps that’s precisely why it’s so bloody intriguing.

Best tracks: ”Twenty-Two Proverbs”, ”Kew. Rhone.”, ”Pipeline”, ”Catalogue Of Fifteen Objects And Their Titles”, ”Nine Minaral Enblems”

Rating: 5 out of 5.
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Tracks

Side A

  1. Good Evening” – 0:33
  2. ”Twenty-Two Proverbs” – 4:06
  3. ”Seven Scenes from the Painting ’Exhuming the First American Mastodon’ by C. W. Peale” – 3:32
  4. ”Kew. Rhone.” – 3:04
  5. ”Pipeline” – 3:39
  6. ”Catalogue of Fifteen Objects and Their Titles” – 3:35

Side B

  1. ”One Footnote (to Kew. Rhone.)” – 1:29
  2. ”Three Tenses Onanism” – 4:06
  3. ”Nine Mineral Emblems” – 5:51
  4. ”Apricot” – 3:04
  5. ”Gegenstand” – 3:44

Musicians:

John Greaves: piano, organ, bass guitar, vocals, percussion (“One Footnote”) Peter Blegvad: vocals, guitars, tenor saxophone (“Pipeline”) Lisa Herman: vocals Andrew Cyrille: drums, percussion Michael Mantler: trumpet, trombone Carla Bley: vocals, tenor saxophone (“One Footnote”, “Good Evening”) Michael A. Levine: violin, viola, vocals (“Nine Mineral Emblems”) Vito Rendace: alto and tenor saxophones, flute April Lang: vocals (“Pipeline”, “Three Tenses Onanism”) Dana Johnson: vocals (“Twenty Two Proverbs”) Boris Kinberg: rhythm sticks (“Pipeline”)

Producer: John Greaves
Label: Virgin

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