Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
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Progressive Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Canterbury Scene | Decca / Universal Music #772 281-2
EAC Rip | WavPack (Img) + Cue + Log ~ 3,72 Gb | MP3 CBR320 ~ 1,45 Gb
Full Scans ~ 1,49 Gb | RAR 5% Recovery
Progressive Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Canterbury Scene | Decca / Universal Music #772 281-2
Nine-CD box set featuring expanded editions of the albums recorded for Decca and Deram by the English progressive rock band between 1970 and 1975. Also included are a selection of BBC performances and a live album. Contents: Disc 1: 'If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You' (1970); Disc 2: 'In the Land of Grey and Pink' (1971); Disc 3: 'Waterloo Lily' (1972); Disc 4: 'For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night' (1973); Disc 5: 'Caravan & The New Symphonia: The Complete Concert' (1974); Disc 6: 'Cunning Stunts' (1975); Disc 7: 'Live At the Fairfield Halls, 1974'; Discs 8 and 9: 'The Show of Our Lives: Live At the BBC 1970-1975'.
The English city of Canterbury is home to two highly respected universities, one of the oldest public schools in Britain and, thanks to its cathedral and being the seat of the Church of England, is at the very heart of English history. It was therefore something of a surprise when a group of musicians associated with progressive and avant-garde music came to define the sound of the city in the late 1960s.
The “Canterbury Sound” first came to prominence with the arrival of Soft Machine in 1967, but they would soon be joined by a fellow band whose roots lay in the same soul-influenced group from where Soft Machine came from, and whose music would be some of the most original of their contemporaries. In the truest sense of the word, Caravan was the sound of Canterbury, born out of the band Wilde Flowers, a group subject to many line-up changes. At various times the outfit featured Kevin Ayers (guitar), Richard Sinclair (guitar), Robert Wyatt (drums), Hugh Hopper (bass) and Brian Hopper (saxophone). The band was augmented in 1965 when Hugh Hopper invited trainee dental technician and drummer Richard Coughlan into the band after Robert Wyatt decided he would rather sing than play drums. Shortly afterwards a new guitarist was also recruited to the ranks.
Pye Hastings was born in Banffshire, Scotland and moved to Canterbury when he was twelve years old. He knew members of The Wilde Flowers through his friendship with Kevin Ayers and later recalled: “I was abroad with Kevin who taught me my first guitar chords. I came back to England and the rhythm guitar spot was vacant in the band. Richard Sinclair had gone to art college, so I filled the vacancy. Wilde Flowers were changing from an R&B act into a soul band, which I was really into. Dave Sinclair then joined at that point. He was originally our bass player, but after a week he said he wasn’t happy in that role and he turned up with a keyboard, a Vox Continental organ I think. Kevin Ayers then went to Spain and that left Dave Sinclair, Brian and Hugh Hopper, Richard Coughlan, Robert Wyatt and myself. Then Robert left and later on appeared back on the scene with Kevin Ayers in Soft Machine”.
Wyatt and Ayers were enjoying notoriety with Soft Machine, who having released their first single in February 1967, had become darlings of the emerging British underground scene. The remaining musicians in Wilde Flowers soldiered on, settling by January 1968 with a line-up of Pye Hastings on guitar and vocals, Richard Sinclair on bass guitar and vocals, Dave Sinclair on keyboards and Richard Coughlan on drums. Discovering that musical tastes were beginning to change in favour of psychedelia the band decided to rethink their musical direction. “We found that all the gigs were running out as no one wanted a soul band any more”, reflected Hastings, “so we decided to write our own material and Caravan was really born at that point.”
By now Soft Machine had travelled to the USA to support the Jimi Hendrix Experience on tour and were to record their debut album in New York City in April 1968. As a result of Soft Machine’s initial success, the newly formed Caravan soon had thoughts of emulating their contemporaries by securing live work in London in the hope of gaining a record contract. In May 1968 this was realised when they performed at the legendary underground club, Middle Earth.
“We made a demo using one microphone and a little Philips reel to reel tape recorder, which wasn’t really that good”, Pye Hastings later explained. “I decided that Island Records were a good company to target first and so I went to their offices in Oxford Street and dropped the tape into their receptionist. I’d originally wanted to see Chris Blackwell, but he was busy and so I left the tape for him to listen to. A week later I got a call from a chap called Tony Cox. He was a songwriter who wanted to get into production and was linked up with a chap called Ian Ralfini at Robbins Music. Tony had seen us at the Middle Earth Club in London and liked what he had heard. He asked me if I had a demo tape and I told him that the only one in existence was with Chris Blackwell at Island Records.”
With Hastings’ permission to obtain the tape from Island, Tony Cox promptly called Island Records to obtain the tape. This sudden interest in Caravan from a music business rival caused Island to re-appraise the situation. “Island decided not to release the tape to Tony and so I went around to their offices the next week to get it back myself. Chris Blackwell saw me and said that he had heard the tape. He told me that he liked the band but asked Who is the crap singer?’ to which I replied, It s me, actually.’ Blackwell proposed that we record as an instrumental band instead. The Nice were very popular at the time and he thought that we could go down the same road as them, but I wasn’t interested in doing that so he gave the tape back to me”.
With the only demo tape now back in his possession Hastings duly delivered it to Tony Cox, who persuaded Ian Ralfini and Martin Wyatt of Robbins Music to journey down to Canterbury to hear the band perform at The Beehive Club. Both Wyatt and Ralfini were impressed, especially with Hastings’ song “Place of My Own”. A contract was signed in the back of Ian Ralfmi’s car. Through Robbins Music a recording deal was struck with MGM offshoot Verve Records who had recently established a London office and boasted American acts such as Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, The Velvet Underground and Janis Ian on their roster. Caravan was one of the first signings to Verve’s newly established A&R office in London. But the publishing and recording deals did not bring forth riches to messers Hastings, Coughlan, Sinclair and Sinclair.
As Hastings would later explain: “We were paid seven pounds a week each by Robbins Music as a retainer and in addition they offered to pay for a place to rehearse. At the time we were looking for a place to live and couldn’t find anywhere to rent at all. We’d just left a house in Whitstable, where we lived and rehearsed, and discovered that nobody wanted to let a property to a group of longhaired musicians. We did find somewhere to rehearse, a village hall in Graveney in Kent. Both Dave and Richard Sinclair were keen campers and so they turned up with a couple of tents and pitched them outside the village hall. We managed to get two more from somewhere else and so we all lived there. When it got a bit colder we pitched our tents inside the hall and turned the heating on. We were in there for three months before it got far too cold to stay”.
Caravan entered Advision Studios in Bond Street at the end of the summer of 1968 with producer Tony Cox to record their debut album. Pye Hastings later looked back on those sessions with fondness. “Most of the material had been performed live previously and was all rehearsed before we got to the studio. When sessions were completed Tony Cox wouldn’t let us attend the mixing on the grounds that if there were five people in the control room it would take five times as long to mix, which isn’t strictly true. I think he wanted total control.”
“The album had quite a distinctive sound”, commented Hastings, “but it wasn’t representative of how Caravan sounded at the time because Tony Cox added a lot of echo”. Released in October 1968, “Caravan” was only in the shops for a matter of months before MGM / Verve ceased their operations in the UK and the band suddenly found themselves without a label. Pye Hastings later recalled: “That situation really left us in limbo. We were just getting started when we had to find another label.
Whilst all this was going on we played at The Speakeasy Club in London and Ian Ralfini, who had signed us to our first publishing deal with Robbins Music, came up to us afterwards and told us he thought we needed a manager. He introduced us to an agent called Terry King who subsequently represented us as both manager and agent”.
King immediately began negotiations with Decca Records to secure a long-term contract for his new charges. “I originally wanted to go with Ian Ralfini to Warner Brothers Records, where he had just started work as an A&R manager” Hastings would later reflect. “Unfortunately Ian didn’t feel he had been with Warner long enough to commit to signing us. Terry King had been offered a good deal with Decca and so we ended up there”.
The deal with Decca Records was forged mainly through the enthusiasm for Caravan shown by an aspiring young producer, who was then working in Decca’s art department called David Hitchcock. Upon seeing the band perform at a midnight concert a London’s Lyceum Theatre, Hitchcock went to his boss, Hugh Mendl insisting that Decca Records sign the band. “David was in the process of graduating from the art department to productions”, recalled Pye. “He really wanted to produce us, and I think that was his motivation. We were reluctant to have him produce our first album for Decca as we had never met him and he didn’t have a track record, so we decided to produce the next album ourselves.”
The first Caravan sessions for Decca Records took place at Tangerine Studios on Balls Pond Road, London in September 1969 with Robin Sylvester as engineer. Richard Coughlan would later reflect: “Tangerine Studios was a dingy back street studio, but Robin did a good job for us. We had a very hands-on approach. Everybody had a hand in the recording and mixing, which is probably why the album doesn’t sound as clear as it should. Everyone wanted THEIR instrument to be the loudest, apart from me!”
The initial sessions produced first attempts at “Why?” (later renamed “And I Wish I Were Stoned”), “Clipping the 8th” (later called “Hello Hello”) and an early take of “As I Feel I Die”. Sessions were then put on hold whilst Caravan fulfilled their numerous live commitments, as, by this point, the band were becoming popular on the university circuit in both Britain and Europe. October 1969 saw Caravan’s largest performance to date at the Actuel Festival at Mont de l’Englus, Amougies, Belgium - a significant inroad into a wider European audience. Taking place in a giant circus tent, Caravan shared the bill with acts such as Pink Floyd, Yes, The Nice, Captain Beefheart, Colosseum, Soft Machine, East of Eden and many others. The show was also to have featured Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, but due to work permit problems, only Zappa could perform at the concert. Without his band and opting to act instead as compere between the acts. Zappa also jammed with many of the bands during their set. He would join Caravan in a performance of 'If I Could Do It All Over Again’ - a memorable experience for the group.
Important live commitments meant that the band didn’t return to Tangerine Studios until February 1970, where new versions were taped of original demos made the previous year. A song that was to remain unreleased for thirty years also surfaced at these sessions, “A Day In The Life of Maurice Haylett”. Dedicated to their sound engineer, “A Day In The Life…” underwent various titles and incarnations. It was only performed live for a few months, but was recorded for a BBC Radio One session in August 1969 under the title “An Excerpt from the Daily Routine of Maurice Haylett”, yet the session tape was subsequently wiped from the BBC archive. By the time of the Tangerine Studio session, the title was shortened to “A Day in the Life of Maurice Haylett”. The resulting album, “If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You”, had a much less “produced” feel, which possibly lay in the manner in which the material was recorded, with each track on the album being essentially a live performance in the studio with the minimal amount of over over-dubbing being employed. Laced with lyrical wit and melody, the album produced many classic tracks such as “And I Wish I Were Stoned”, “As I Feel I Die”, “Hello Hello”, and the album’s title track and the song that would come to be recognised as THE Caravan piece, “For Richard”. A show closer to this day, “For Richard” highlighted everything that was exceptional about the Caravan sound, being a fourteen minute opus building from a serene opening into a jazz-rock excursion.
Pye Hastings would later recall: “At that time, although we shared compositional credits, we didn’t write together as such, although we shared each others ideas to certain extent. ‘For Richard’ was composed by Dave Sinclair, but the riff which the main tune goes into was the idea of Richard Sinclair. Then as a band we would develop the song further, expanding on the ideas and so on until it became the long track heard on the album”. Pye’s brother, Jimmy Hastings made his second appearance for the band on record, playing both saxophone and flute on the album. The album artwork for “If I Could Do It All Over Again.” was designed and photographed by David Jupe and shot in London’s Holland Park. Aside from featuring the band themselves, Terry King, Robin Sylvester, Jimmy Hastings and Maurice Haylett also had their faces featured on the sleeve.
The album was preceded by the release of a single, “If I Could Do It All Over Again I’d Do It All Over You” b/w “Hello Hello”, issued as Decca F13063 on August 7th 1970. Although not making an appearance in the “Record Retailer” chart, the single did feature in the lower reaches of the top twenty in several British music papers. This activity resulted in a surprise appearance on the BBC TV show “Top of the Pops”.
The album of the same name was released in September 1970 to great acclaim as Decca SKL-R 5052. In the USA it was to appear on Decca’s sister label, London Records in March 1971 as London PS 582. Prior to the album’s release, Caravan had been busy on the European concert circuit. Notable concerts included a performance at Ewell Technical College on May 23rd where an up and coming young band called Black Sabbath were the support act. At the end of June 1970 Caravan performed at the Kralingen Pop Festival at Kralinge Bos, Rotterdam in Holland. Taking place on the same weekend as the Bath Festival of Blues & Progressive Music back in England, Caravan were on a bill that featured Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Flock, Frank Zappa, Santana, Quintessence, Skin Alley and many more. Richard Sinclair later recalled, “The festival over in Holland was the biggest gig we did at that time. We played to an audience of about 250,000. Although, only 10,000 of them were awake, because we were the first act on stage on the second day and it had been raining all night and that sort of stuff! Nevertheless, a lot of people got to see the band.”
This performance coupled with an appearance on August 9th at the 10th National Jazz, Pop, Ballad and Blues Festival at Plumpton (with Van Der Graaf Generator, Yes, Colosseum and Juicy Lucy) and the release of “If I Could Do It All Over Again…” enabled Caravan to develop their following still further. Despite an unrelenting workload, Caravan began writing new material that would make up the bulk of their next vinyl outing. Amassing enough material to enter the studio, they agreed that this time they would hand over the production duties to an outside individual. In the autumn of 1970 Caravan began sessions at Decca Studios in West Hampstead, London, for an album that would come to be regarded as one of their finest hours, “In The Land of Grey and Pink”. Having successfully produced label-mates East of Eden on their album “Snafu” and the single “Jig-a-Jig”, David Hitchcock was finally given the chance to produce the band that he had been instrumental in getting signed to Decca.
Pye Hastings later remembered: “After ‘If I Could Do It All Over Again…’ came out we finally all met David and got on really well with him. He came up with lots of interesting ideas, so we were happy that he should produce our next album”. Recording began in September 1970. Initially Caravan worked on the first versions of what were to become legendary songs in their repertoire. On this occasion, Pye Hastings was only to offer “Love to Love You” as his songwriting contribution to the album. He would later explain; “For the first two albums I wrote most of the material, and Dave also wrote a lot. When it came to “Grey & Pink” the others had a big backlog of material. Dave especially was advancing way ahead of the rest of us in terms of musical development, so he had a lot of say on the album. Richard Sinclair also had a pile of good material. I only contributed one track and bits to some others, which was only fair because I had written the bulk of the previous two. It made no difference to us at that time because we shared our publishing credits anyway.”
The first song to be recorded was Richard Sinclair’s “Group Girl”, later to be known as “Golf Girl”. “Richard was, and remains, a very endearing writer” Hastings later commented. “He writes about things that are very close to him, like his friends and family and so on. When a song reached its final stage, he would change the lyrics to become less personal. The original version of “Golf Girl” was a very personal song about him and Trisha, his wife to be. It was also about his son, Jason. All of that was happening in his life at the time. Of course Trisha became Pat and the rest is history!”
Another Richard Sinclair composition to grace the album was “Winter Wine”, a song of fairy tales and dreams. Originally worked out in the studio during these initial sessions, this song went under the working title of “It’s Likely To Have A Name Next Week”. “We tended to come up with the music first and the lyrics were usually the last thing to be finished. I think that Winter Wine’ is probably the finest song Richard Sinclair has every written” Hastings would later reflect.
The remaining sessions in September were dedicated to a track provisionally entitled “Dave’s Thing”, a major composition that would eventually take the name of “Nine Feet Underground”. Hastings would later assert: “Dave had written four different pieces which were joined together by musical links that the rest of us devised. One of the linking riffs was mine and Richard Goughlan came up with ideas too. We all helped by changing a few words here and there and suggesting different chord changes”.
The 22 minute opus was recorded in five distinct sections and skillfully edited by David Hitchcock and Decca engineer Dave Grinsted. Taking up a whole side of vinyl and chosen to close the album, the “Nine Feet Underground” suite provided a worthy successor to “For Richard”, proving to be one of the most popular tracks on the album and a concert favourite. The bizarre names given to each movement such as “Dance of the Seven Paper Hankies” and “Hold Granddad by the Nose” added to the albums mystique. By December 1970 the band moved to the newly opened Air London studios in Oxford Street. These AIR sessions saw “Golf Girl” re-recorded, with a superb piccolo solo from Pye’s brother, Jimmy Hastings. The work at Air London also produced two further Richard Sinclair compositions. “In The Land of Grey & Pink” featured some of Richard’s most surreal lyrics and featured a bubble blowing solo by its creator.
“In The Land of Grey & Pink” was released in April 1971, on Decca’s progressive rock label Deram. The album packaging was the most lavish to grace a Caravan release to date, being the inaugural release in Deram’s “deluxe” series. Featuring a striking Tolkien-esque illustration by Anne-Marie Anderson, the gatefold sleeve revealed a glorious picture silhouette of the band larking around, marching single file in a field. Overall both the music within and the album sleeve created a stunning impression.
Despite failing to register on the official UK album chart, “In the Land of Grey & Pink” has remained on catalogue since its 1971 release and remains Caravan’s biggest selling album. It’s splendid fusion of folk, jazz and rock created an album that, nearly fifty years later, is still highly regarded. The album remains Caravan’s finest moment and the ideal introduction to the music of a wonderful band. To promote their latest opus Caravan undertook an extensive UK tour in late April 1971 and performed a live session for BBC Radio One’s “John Peel Sunday Concert” programme in May which saw a selection of material from the new album performed, along with a splendid rendition of the Soft Machine song “Feelin’, Reelin’, Squealin’ ”, written by Kevin Ayers.
Pye Hastings later reflected: “I think the reason “Grey & Pink” stands out is mainly due to the timing of everything. We began to peak in many ways at that time. Our production had peaked, thanks to David Hitchcock, and Dave Sinclair’s writing and playing had begun to peak. We were playing very well as a band and things looked as though they were going to happen in a big way for us. Unfortunately we should have had increased attention from both management and record company at that point. For some reason it didn’t happen. We all knew that we had made a good album and the lack of progress caused some internal tension.”
This tension manifested itself on August 7th 1971 when Dave Sinclair announced his departure from Caravan. Lured away by ex-Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt, Dave contributed keyboard parts to Wyatt’s first solo album, “End Of An Ear” and went on to join his new outfit, Matching Mole (a re-interpretation of Soft Machine’s French translation ‘machine molle’). He would later recall: “I felt the whole thing in Caravan was going a bit stagnant and that I needed inspiration from other musicians. I wanted to play with other people, but had to accept that with Caravan it was either all or nothing. Previously I’d had a few talks with Robert Wyatt, who left Soft Machine at the time I left Caravan. I was in Portugal and Robert wrote to me to ask me to come back to England but I got stuck in Lisbon and had to be repatriated. When I finally got back to England we slowly got Matching Mole together”.
Dave’s departure was a serious blow to the band. “He was a very hard member to replace”, Hastings would later reflect. “He was way ahead of most other keyboard players in Britain, apart from Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman.” Determined to carry on and looking to fellow Canterbury musicians for a replacement, Richard Sinclair invited Steve Miller from jazz-rock band Delivery into the fold to replace his cousin. This new line-up made its debut live performance at the Weely Rock Festival, Clacton-on-Sea over the August Bank Holiday weekend. By the late Autumn of 1971 Caravan found themselves in Decca’s Tollington Park Studios recording a follow up to “In The Land Of Grey & Pink” with David Hitchcock once again in the role of producer. It was apparent from the first rehearsals that the new incarnation of Caravan was going to head in a new musical direction - a direction in which Pye Hastings and Richard Coughlan were reluctant to go. “Richard Sinclair wanted to move away from the previous Caravan whimsical style and go into a jazzier direction” he later recalled. “Richard invited Steve to join because he was a very jazz-based musician. It was virtually impossible to get him to do the things that Dave Sinclair used to do. Steve wasn’t interested in playing in that way. The only way forward seemed to be if we changed our musical style to suit his.” Indeed, the first sessions revealed the new jazzier Caravan, especially on the pieces “Nothing At All” (featuring saxophonist Lol Coxhill and Phil Miller (brother of Steve) on lead guitar) and “Songs and Signs”. Although excellent jazz-rock, these pieces were untypical Caravan music and pointed further to the direction Richard Sinclair would take with the band Hatfield and the North. However, “Waterloo Lily” was to feature one of the most ambitious recordings Pye had attempted up to that date: a Hastings tune entitled “The Love in Your Eye”. He would later explain: “That was my answer to For Richard’. I thought that I had to write another song along those lines as a worthy successor. The basic tune came first and then I came up with the various riffs that carried the song along”.
Initially recorded on the 28th October 1971, “The Love in Your Eye” would undergo further changes before being completed. “David Hitchcock felt that the song needed a string section and so he appealed to Decca for the budget to bring in an orchestra, which they agreed to. They were supportive to our ideas at that time. I asked my brother Jimmy to score a part for an oboe player, as I couldn’t do it. He worked for the BBC Radio Orchestra at the time and knew an awful lot of good players. He got them all to come down for the session, and right lot of boozy old buggers they were too! In between takes they would all vanish and go down the pub. When we had to do another take we had to drag them away from the bar, but they were great fun and we had a lot of laughs! It was one of the best sessions I’ve ever done.
At the time the idea of using an orchestra seemed to be the right way to go. A lot of bands were doing that with varying degrees of success and I was very keen to try it with one of my own songs. I think the strings compliment ‘The Love in Your Eye’ very well.” The song became a highlight of future Caravan performances and is still regarded as one of their finest works.
Among the other material featured on the album, “Waterloo Lily” (a tale of a rather large lady of ill repute) revealed that, in spite of the more serious musical approach, Caravan still had a sense of humour and “The World Is Yours”, a more traditional Hastings song, provided a charming and effective closing track to the album. The finishing touches were put to the sessions in the early months of 1972, with a new recording session taking place at Decca studios on 1st March. The piece recorded had a working title of “Any Advance on Carpet?” and was another instrumental excursion into jazz-rock. Destined to remain locked in the Decca archives, this tune was based on a Richard Sinclair riff that would finally resurface as the song “Bossa Nochance” on the first Hatfield and the North album. “Waterloo Lily” finally appeared as Deram SDL-R 8 on May 19th 1972.
The gatefold sleeve featured the tavern scene from William Hogarth’s satirical work “Rake’s Progress” as an outer cover. Although eagerly awaited, the album was not as well received as Caravan’s previous work. Most comments were targeted at the mixture of styles present on the album. “As far as our fans were concerned, it was a very different approach and a lot of them didn’t like it very much”, Pye Hastings later commented. “By attempting to break new ground and trying something different we attracted some new fans but also lost some too.”
During a UK tour of June 1972, the discussions about musical direction came to a head. Pye would later remember: “It became quite clear after a while that the new line-up of the band wasn’t working at all. I had a lot of conversations with Richard Sinclair about this, but he wanted us to become even more jazz based in our approach. I wanted to go back into a more traditional direction and unfortunately we clashed.”
Unable to resolve their differences the line-up of Coughlan, Hastings, Miller and Sinclair played their last concert on July 25th 1972 at Solihull Civic Hall, sharing the bill with Genesis. Steve Miller left the band shortly after and within days Richard Sinclair also departed. Sinclair later recalled his reasons for leaving thus: “It didn’t quite work with Steve in the band, because the music started to go a bit too loose for the way that Pye and Richard Coughlan played. Whilst we were extending ourselves in a blues and jazz vein, I think Pye’s idea was to be centered upon what our traditional following would like to hear. So things eventually split. I was also doing a lot more music with the people that I eventually ended up in Hatfield and The North with. First of all I worked with Steve Miller who knew a lot of very good musicians, and I then got introduced to his brother Phil who was playing guitar with Robert Wyatt at the time in Matching Mole. In a short time Hatfield and The North got together.”
Reflecting on the extent of Caravan’s following at that time, Sinclair would comment: “I don’t think Caravan’s success really started to build until after I left. The music kept on selling steadily. “In The Land of Grey and Pink” kept doing its thing. Up until 1972 there were hundreds of people in the audience, and sometimes thousands when we played festivals, but a lot of the time it was just a few hundred at gigs around England. Those people were very dedicated to us, as they were to people like Genesis who were also becoming fashionable. By the time I thought about leaving, Caravan started to get noticed: after four years of working, and three albums. We were touring Europe and England quite a lot in those days. I think the following got going from then on. Caravan went on to a more rock-orientated way of doing things, but still with the quirkiness of Pye’s tunes. They then attracted an audience that was slightly different to the early following. I think the people who liked that new incarnation of Caravan a lot better preferred it because there was more of a rock element.”
Although suffering what some thought would be the final body blow, Caravan was destined to continue. “I spoke to Richard Coughlan after Steve Miller and Richard Sinclair had departed and told him that I was determined to continue with the band. He agreed and so I went to Terry King, our manager, to tell him of our intention to carry on” Hastings would later explain. “Terry organised some auditions for a new keyboard player and bassist. I’d never done auditions before and it was quite a new experience to have strangers play in the band.”
From these auditions came Stuart Evans (ex-Thank You) on bass and Derek Austin (ex-Keef Hartley Band) on keyboards. Prior to finding these replacements Pye Hastings had been introduced to an outstanding young viola player, recently resident in Canterbury, by the name of Geoffrey Richardson. Hastings would later recount: “A friend of mine told me about him. He told me that a friend of his had an ex-Winchester Art College student called Geoff Richardson staying with him.
Doug had heard him play and thought he was the best blues influenced viola player he had ever heard. Geoff was staying with a chap called Steve Borrill who was bass player in a band called Spirogyra. When I originally auditioned for a bass player to replace Richard Sinclair I asked Steve to come along and suggested that he bring Geoffrey as well. After the rehearsal at Graveney Village Hall it was obvious that there was no chemistry between Steve Borrill and myself, but I was very impressed with Geoffrey and asked him to join the band straight away.”
Richardson’s viola playing immediately added a new dimension to Caravan s sound, extending their musical possibilities. Within two months this new incarnation of Hastings, Coughlan, Richardson, Austin and Evans was on the road, performing its first concert in Montbeliard, France on September 10th. Initial audience reaction to Richardson was mixed. He was at times subjected to heckling from the fickle Caravan audience, but he persisted, allowing his virtuosity on both viola and flute to shine through on stage. Within a year this initial resistance had waned and Richardson became an audience favourite and the bands’ main focal point on stage. Following a tour of Britain and France from October to December 1972, (during which the band had begun to work on writing new material during sound checks), Caravan entered the recording studio for the first time in nearly nine months.
Producer David Hitchcock accompanied the band to Chipping Norton Studios in rural Oxfordshire for the week leading up to Christmas. These sessions were intended to commit Pye Hastings’ instrumental ideas on tape. “I always write lyrics at the last minute when it comes to recording”, explained Pye in a contemporary interview. “I only come up with lyrics when it becomes time to record a vocal track. Before then I hum any old nonsense just to develop a vocal melody”.
The December sessions at Chipping Norton studios produced demos of “Memory Lain, Hugh”, “Headloss”, “Chance Of A Lifetime” and “C’Thlu Thulu”. After a break for Christmas, the band returned to Chipping Norton in January to work on more new material, but at this point, further musical issues began to arise. Pye would later explain; “Derek Austin’s keyboard playing style was very much based around the Hammond Organ and pedals. The problem was that it didn’t sound like Caravan and so he began to clash musically with Richard, Geoffrey and myself”.
Caravan played four dates in the UK later in January to warm up before embarking on a tour of Australia with one of the most bizarre line-ups ever assembled. In February 1973 Caravan joined Slade, Lindisfarne and Status Quo on a tour of the Antipodes. “That happened because an Australian promoter was over in London and he called in to Terry King’s office to see if he could get those acts together for a tour of Australia. Terry was also a leading agent at the time, so he was able to arrange the tour on the condition that we went along as well!” Hastings later recalled. “It’s quite funny, because we were just about to tell Terry that as our contract had expired we were going to go elsewhere for representation. We were playing at the Montreux Festival and I’d got myself all psyched up to tell him we were leaving. Terry arrived in our dressing room and before I could say anything he announced he had arranged for us to go on tour to Australia. We weren’t the right type of band for that tour. We were performing songs like ‘For Richard’ in open-air stadia at mid-day in the blazing hot Australian sun. In some places we went down very well, but in other towns nobody took much notice of us. Even so, it was a great experience. It was interesting to work with bands that had reached such huge levels of success. Status Quo were phenomenal. They really knew how to work an audience and I learnt a lot from them. All the bands were good fun.”
Upon their return to England Pye Hastings decided that another line-up change was called for. He remembered: “Before we got Stuart Evans in on bass I had been in touch with a superb bass player called John Perry who was in a band called Spreadeagle. They were in the process of breaking up and he came to see us at the Marquee. He told me that he would like to join Caravan but had other commitments at that time. When I came back from Australia he wrote to me saying that he would be free to join us from the beginning of March and so I asked him to come onboard straight away and disbanded that line-up as it wasn’t really going anywhere.”
Evans and Austin duly departed leaving Hastings, Coughlan, Richardson and Perry to search for a new keyboard player who was found in Dave Sinclair. “I had done a stint with Matching Mole and Hatfield and The North and Pye asked me if I would like to come back to the band for a forthcoming tour of France” Sinclair later recalled. “I agreed to do it for session fees, as at that point I didn’t want to become part of the band on a full time basis again. I was happy to come back to Caravan at that time because I needed the money apart from anything else. After the French tour we went into the studio and I just sort of stayed in the band. The new band was incredibly tight. John Perry was such a good player; he drove the band along making us all work hard as a unit”.
Encouraged by the success of their French excursion, Caravan entered the studio once again in April 1973. Pye explained: “We came back from France and went straight back into the studio to re-record the songs and within a week the backing tracks were all done, because we had rehearsed everything on the road. We recorded the whole thing live in the studio, near enough. We went back to correct any mistakes, but there weren’t many as we had got things so tight by playing them live every night over the past few weeks.”
Backing track sessions were recorded at Chipping Norton Studios, after which the band undertook overdub sessions at Decca’s Studios in West Hampstead and Tollington Park. The opening track of the album continues to serve as a Caravan live set opener. “Memory Lain, Hugh” featured superb viola sections from Geoff Richardson and a woodwind and brass arrangement by Pye’s brother, Jimmy Hastings, who also took the flute solo. Rupert Hine, a friend of John Perry’s, played ARP synthesizer along with Dave Sinclair as the track neatly segued into “Headloss”.
On the track “C’thlu Thulu” Pye Hastings experimented with complex timings and riffs more associated with bands like King Crimson, whilst “The Dog, The Dog, He’s At It Again” was a humorous tale of lechery and was chosen by Decca to be the subject of a promotional film featuring the band performing the track in Decca’s Broadhurst Gardens Studio. This even gained a screening on BBC 2’s influential “Old Grey Whistle Test” TV programme. The album’s closing track demonstrates just how tight and inspired a musical unit Caravan was. “A Hunting We Shall Go” was an instrumental track that had built up gradually over the last few months’ live work. It was introduced by a section featuring acoustic guitar and viola called “L’Auberge Du Sanglier”, named after a guesthouse frequented by the band on their French visits. “…Hunting” was divided into further sections, namely “Pengola”, a short contribution from John Perry, and “Backwards”, a Soft Machine piece originally featured on the album “Third” written by Mike Ratledge. Pye later explained: “I wrote all of 'A Hunting We Shall Go’ and got stuck when I reached the middle section. I had originally written another chord progression but I wasn’t happy with it. Dave Sinclair was very fond of a melody written by Mike Ratledge and suggested we try that instead. It worked a treat.”
The track also featured a splendid orchestral arrangement by Martyn Ford and John Bell (who had previously worked with Barclay James Harvest). It provided a stunning climax to what many consider to be one of Caravan’s finest albums. “For Girls Who Grow Plump In the Night” was released as Deram SDL-R 12 on October 5th 1973. It also gained a US release as London Records PS 627. The album cover featured a slumbering heavily pregnant woman and was designed by Mark Lawrence. The original plan was to depict a nude, pregnant lady on the gatefold sleeve, but Decca records were less than enthusiastic about this proposed artwork and vetoed the idea. Even though no singles were taken from the album, the release of “For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night” was the beginning of Caravan’s wider success.
The sessions for their new album also provided the inspiration for a concert that would also do much to enhance Caravan’s reputation and build on their following. The use of an orchestra in the studio for the recording of “A Hunting We Shall Go” had proven inspirational for both the band and the orchestra’s conductor, Martyn Ford. “Martyn told us that as he enjoyed the experience so much he would like to do a concert with us, using the same orchestra” Hastings later explained. “This got back to Terry King our manager, our producer David Hitchcock and Decca Records. They all thought it was an excellent idea and between the three of them they arranged the concert very quickly.”
The idea hatched between Hitchcock, King and Decca Records was not only to stage a concert with the New Symphonia, but also to bring a mobile recording studio to the selected venue, the Theatre Royal in London’s Drury Lane, to capture the concert for posterity. A date of October 28th was selected whilst Caravan travelled up and down the UK on a short tour to promote “…Plump In The Night”. Pye recalled: “I had two weeks warning that the concert was going to happen and I was also told at that point that I had to come up with a couple of new songs for the concert and album!”
With adverts immediately placed in the music press, the concert sold out very quickly. The prospect of playing to a full house with an orchestra was a nerve-wracking one, but as Hastings explains, it was exacerbated by the short rehearsal time. ‘We had only two four hour sessions with the orchestra to rehearse all the material, one in the studio on the day before the concert and one on the stage of the Theatre Royal on the afternoon of the performance. We had all kinds of problems. It was a very awkward concert to perform because we had to play behind the orchestra and they sat in front of us. The string section were complaining that we were too loud so we had to angle our amplifiers up in the air to prevent the sound and volume from being directed straight at them!” he later reflected.
The selection of orchestrated material was chosen by Pye Hastings, Martyn Ford and his arranger, Simon Jeffes. The concert was to be divided into two sections. For the first half of the show Caravan performed songs from “…Plump In The Night”. Radio One DJ Alan Black introduced the proceedings, being an ardent supporter of Caravan. Having come fresh from the studio, the vigour with which songs like “Memory Lain, Hugh”, “Headloss”, “The Dog, The Dog, He’s At It Again” and “Hoedown” were played was impressive. Hastings’ jovial banter with the audience also eased both audience and band into the concert, warming up for the second half of the show with the New Symphonia.
The orchestrated part of the performance began with a superb introduction piece by Simon Jeffes, appropriately entitled “Introduction”. This was followed by a breathtaking performance of “The Love in Your Eye”; the new orchestration adding a new dimension to what was already a Caravan classic. Two new Hastings’ compositions followed. “A Mirror for the Day”, was a piece so new the Pye had written the lyrics only that morning and had to perform the song with lyrics in front of him on a music stand. “Virgin on the Ridiculous” was the second new composition to be aired, again with lyrics on a music stand in evidence. The closing part of the concert was to feature what is perhaps the definitive version of Caravan’s usual ending number, “For Richard”, complete with orchestral climax.
Geoffrey Richardson would later remember a precarious situation involving microphones during the concert. “The people from the mobile studio had to set up two microphones, which were taped together, on each microphone stand. During the sound check there was an earth difference and sparks started flying between all the pairs of microphones!”
Hastings would later remark: “It all came good in the end, but the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane is a very large venue with a deep stage. Because of that and the fact that we were behind the orchestra, it meant that the audience was quite far away from us. It took a while for the band to settle in, but the place was packed and we went down very well.”
Despite the potential hazards of electric shocks and misgivings by some band members about ever repeating the experience, the concert was indeed both a critical and artistic success. Lindsay Boyd in New Musical Express wrote: “Caravan are one of my all time favourites and in terms of audience response, the concert could not have been better.”
Paul Weir of rival publication Sounds was even more enthusiastic. He wrote “A few bands have dabbled with orchestras, but few can match Caravan in the field. Caravan deserve an orchestra. It was a rare treat for those who managed to see the show, but Decca will save the world when they release the live album of the concert.”
Caravan did not have time to rest on their laurels following the concert. For them it was business as usual, recording a session for John Peel’s Radio One show only two days after the concert and then embarking on a series of British and French concerts that would keep them busy up to the end of the year. 1974 did not see any let up in pace, with a further ten date French tour in January, a concert at London’s prestigious Rainbow Theatre in February and concerts in Poitiers, Toulouse and Barcelona in March.
“Caravan and The New Symphonia” was released in the UK as Deram SML-R 1110 on April 19th 1974, and as London Records PS 650 in the USA, but the acclaim the band were receiving failed to materialise into a placing on the UK album chart. This did not deter Caravan from undertaking a further two months of touring in Britain and France. However, the spectre of line-up changes was once more rearing its ugly head. In between touring with Caravan, John Perry had been playing sessions for Rupert Hine, a producer who also in the process of forming the group Quantum Jump. Hine was building a studio in Chalfont St. Giles and John Perry had begun to spend an increasing amount of time working with Rupert Hine which in turn began to impact on Caravan’s schedule of recording and touring. As a result, John Perry performed his last concert with Caravan at the London Lyceum on July 3rd 1974. At that concert, his newly found replacement took to the stage to join the band playing congas. Mike Wedgwood had an established track record as a bass player and arranger, having previously played with both Curved Air and Kiki Dee. “Mike came down to Kent to audition at the suggestion of David Hitchcock”, Pye Hastings later remembered. “He was a different player to John Perry and because of that our new approach wasn’t quite so hard. Mike had a different singing voice and a different style of writing, but he was a very good bass player”. Caravan had barely two weeks to settle in with their newest recruit before they were off to Tunisia to perform at the Tabarka Festival, concerts followed in Belgium and Holland in August. On the 22nd August, Caravan entered the studio with Mike Wedgwood for the first time. At Decca’s Tollington park studio they recorded a Pye Hastings composition, “Keeping Back My Love”. The song was completely finished with a view to adding it to the band’s next vinyl outing, but for one reason was consigned to Decca’s tape vaults. The track was later re-written by Hastings in 1977 with new lyrics and slightly different music, appearing on the “Better By Far” album (Arista SPARTY 1008) as “Behind You”. Also in August, Caravan left manager Terry King to team up with Miles Copeland and his British Talent Management (BTM) company, joining a roster that included Curved Air and Renaissance.
The son of a senior figure in the CIA, Copeland was an American who was based in London and was enjoying a degree of success touring his acts in the USA. Within two months of signing with Copeland, Caravan were booked on their first American tour. Prior to their departure, the band performed a memorable show at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon, which was taped by the Pye Mobile Studio. The complete recordings remained un-issued on CD until February 2002. On the 27th September 1974, Caravan played the first of fifty dates that would make up their debut US and Canadian tour, performing at the Pel Plateau in Montreal. For the next nine weeks Caravan visited just about every corner of the USA supporting acts as diverse as Weather Report, Wishbone Ash, Fairport Convention and The Climax Blues Band. To assist in the promotion of Caravan’s first US visit, London Records issued a single on October 27th, (London 20080), coupling “The World Is Yours” (from “Waterloo Lily”), with a remixed “Memory Lain, Hugh” / “Headloss” (from “For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night”). Although failing to make an impression on the US charts, the single did succeed in gaining radio exposure for the band. Pye Hastings later recalled; “The US tour went very well. We seemed to have developed a strong cult following there, particularly in colleges and universities, much like Britain. The tour was great fun, but in retrospect it was far too long to be on the road. I felt that we peaked halfway through and by the end all I wanted to do was to get back home.”
Returning to Britain in December 1974, Caravan found themselves having an enforced holiday courtesy of HM Customs, who had impounded their equipment on its return from America. The band used this break to write material for their next album, especially Dave Sinclair. Dave would later reflect; “I had been planning to leave Caravan as soon as I had the time to develop my song writing with my friend John Murphy. That attitude stuck for a very long time, even after our first US tour, and in a way that separated me from the rest of the band. The main problem was that I hadn’t written any of the material we were performing at that time and I felt like a session musician. Once I returned from America I began to feel differently. Because our equipment was impounded by the Customs I found myself with two months free time, and I spent that writing with John. It was accepted as far as I was concerned that any lyrics John wrote would go with my music. That caused some initial problems within the band, but we sorted things out eventually.” Sessions for the next album were squeezed in at Air London and Decca’s studios in Tollington Park and Broadhurst Gardens between a very heavy touring schedule, (with Renaissance), which lasted from February through to April 1975. This time Pye Hastings’ song writing was not so much in evidence, with only two of the album’s compositions, “Stuck In A Hole” (ajaunty up-beat affair) and “No Backstage Pass” (a ballad of outstanding merit) emanating from his pen. In a contemporary interview he mused; “The reason I didn’t write much of the album is due to touring. All writers need time to reflect on music they’ve heard elsewhere, and I simply didn’t have the time to stop and write new material. Dave hadn’t written anything for a long time and as he had good material lying around we decided to use it.” Indeed, the partnership of Dave Sinclair and John Murphy would produce a major work in “The Dabsong Conshirtoe”, which was to dominate the second side of the album. The piece had similarities to Sinclair’s previous'work “Nine Feet Underground” in so much as it was a cycle of different songs joined by linking themes.
The Sinclair/Murphy team also produced the album’s majestic opening track, “The Show of Our Lives”. Mixing was completed on the album, tentatively entitled “Toys in the Attic”, in May. “That title was the suggestion of an American chap called Ken Kessler who was living in Canterbury at the time”, explained Hastings. “He was a friend of Geoffrey’s and he came up with that title. I didn’t understand what it meant, it being an American expression for madness. I wasn’t too keen on the title, but we decided to use it anyway.” However, prior to the albums’ release American band Aerosmith released an album of the same name necessitating the need for a new title. It was left to Richard Coughlan to devise a new album title, “Cunning Stunts” based on the punchline of a joke he was fond of telling. Following the recording of a BBC Radio One “In Concert” programme (which debuted “The Dabsong Conshirtoe”), Dave Sinclair announced his decision to leave Caravan once again, to form a new band with his cousin (and ex-Caravan member) Richard Sinclair on bass, John Murphy on guitar and Les Feast on drums.
A replacement was found in Liverpudlian Jan Schelhaas. Schelhaas had begun his career in soul groups in Liverpool in the mid-sixties, before joining The Scaffold briefly. In 1971 he was a member of the Progressive outfit National Head Band with future Uriah Heep drummer Lee Kerslake, before joining guitarist Gary Moore’s first band. This led to Schelhaas joining Thin Lizzy for sessions on the 1973 album “Vagabonds of the Western World” before he departed to undertake various musical projects. As a keyboard player, he was innovative and a more than able replacement for Dave Sinclair. His arrival in Caravan coincided with the release of “Cunning Stunts” as Decca SKL-R 5210 in the UK on July 25th. The album appeared in the USA on Miles Copeland’s BTM Label as BTM 5000. “Cunning Stunts” was to achieve chart placings on official listings in both the UK and the USA, reaching number 50 in the UK and number 124 on the Billboard chart in the USA. It also charted throughout Europe, sometimes with hilarious results. Geoffrey Richardson would later remember; “It went straight into the Belgian album chart at number 14 with the first letter of each word reversed! We had problems with that title in Europe. The same thing happened in Italy!”
In August, Caravan embarked on the infamous “Star Trucking” tour of festival sites in Europe. Organised by Miles Copeland, the tour also featured Soft Machine, Wishbone Ash, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Climax Blues Band and Renaissance on the bill. Lou Reed was also scheduled to appear but cancelled his appearances at the last minute. On September 5th Decca issued a remixed “Stuck In A Hole” and “Lover” as a single (Decca F-R 13599) in the UK only. This release fulfilled Caravan’s contractual obligations with Decca Records, ending a fruitful relationship that had lasted six years.
Caravan would record a further two album before the end of the l970s, “Blind Dog At St.Dunstans” and “Better By Far”, but by then the onset of punk had begun to affect sales and concert attendances. Two further albums, “The Album” and “Back To Front”, were released in the early 80’s for Terry King’s Kingdom label, but by then the band had really ceased to function. As such this box-set serves as the definitive collection of one of England’s greatest groups from the 60s and 70s and is a fitting tribute to their unique musical legacy.
~ Mark Powell
The “Canterbury Sound” first came to prominence with the arrival of Soft Machine in 1967, but they would soon be joined by a fellow band whose roots lay in the same soul-influenced group from where Soft Machine came from, and whose music would be some of the most original of their contemporaries. In the truest sense of the word, Caravan was the sound of Canterbury, born out of the band Wilde Flowers, a group subject to many line-up changes. At various times the outfit featured Kevin Ayers (guitar), Richard Sinclair (guitar), Robert Wyatt (drums), Hugh Hopper (bass) and Brian Hopper (saxophone). The band was augmented in 1965 when Hugh Hopper invited trainee dental technician and drummer Richard Coughlan into the band after Robert Wyatt decided he would rather sing than play drums. Shortly afterwards a new guitarist was also recruited to the ranks.
Pye Hastings was born in Banffshire, Scotland and moved to Canterbury when he was twelve years old. He knew members of The Wilde Flowers through his friendship with Kevin Ayers and later recalled: “I was abroad with Kevin who taught me my first guitar chords. I came back to England and the rhythm guitar spot was vacant in the band. Richard Sinclair had gone to art college, so I filled the vacancy. Wilde Flowers were changing from an R&B act into a soul band, which I was really into. Dave Sinclair then joined at that point. He was originally our bass player, but after a week he said he wasn’t happy in that role and he turned up with a keyboard, a Vox Continental organ I think. Kevin Ayers then went to Spain and that left Dave Sinclair, Brian and Hugh Hopper, Richard Coughlan, Robert Wyatt and myself. Then Robert left and later on appeared back on the scene with Kevin Ayers in Soft Machine”.
Wyatt and Ayers were enjoying notoriety with Soft Machine, who having released their first single in February 1967, had become darlings of the emerging British underground scene. The remaining musicians in Wilde Flowers soldiered on, settling by January 1968 with a line-up of Pye Hastings on guitar and vocals, Richard Sinclair on bass guitar and vocals, Dave Sinclair on keyboards and Richard Coughlan on drums. Discovering that musical tastes were beginning to change in favour of psychedelia the band decided to rethink their musical direction. “We found that all the gigs were running out as no one wanted a soul band any more”, reflected Hastings, “so we decided to write our own material and Caravan was really born at that point.”
By now Soft Machine had travelled to the USA to support the Jimi Hendrix Experience on tour and were to record their debut album in New York City in April 1968. As a result of Soft Machine’s initial success, the newly formed Caravan soon had thoughts of emulating their contemporaries by securing live work in London in the hope of gaining a record contract. In May 1968 this was realised when they performed at the legendary underground club, Middle Earth.
“We made a demo using one microphone and a little Philips reel to reel tape recorder, which wasn’t really that good”, Pye Hastings later explained. “I decided that Island Records were a good company to target first and so I went to their offices in Oxford Street and dropped the tape into their receptionist. I’d originally wanted to see Chris Blackwell, but he was busy and so I left the tape for him to listen to. A week later I got a call from a chap called Tony Cox. He was a songwriter who wanted to get into production and was linked up with a chap called Ian Ralfini at Robbins Music. Tony had seen us at the Middle Earth Club in London and liked what he had heard. He asked me if I had a demo tape and I told him that the only one in existence was with Chris Blackwell at Island Records.”
With Hastings’ permission to obtain the tape from Island, Tony Cox promptly called Island Records to obtain the tape. This sudden interest in Caravan from a music business rival caused Island to re-appraise the situation. “Island decided not to release the tape to Tony and so I went around to their offices the next week to get it back myself. Chris Blackwell saw me and said that he had heard the tape. He told me that he liked the band but asked Who is the crap singer?’ to which I replied, It s me, actually.’ Blackwell proposed that we record as an instrumental band instead. The Nice were very popular at the time and he thought that we could go down the same road as them, but I wasn’t interested in doing that so he gave the tape back to me”.
With the only demo tape now back in his possession Hastings duly delivered it to Tony Cox, who persuaded Ian Ralfini and Martin Wyatt of Robbins Music to journey down to Canterbury to hear the band perform at The Beehive Club. Both Wyatt and Ralfini were impressed, especially with Hastings’ song “Place of My Own”. A contract was signed in the back of Ian Ralfmi’s car. Through Robbins Music a recording deal was struck with MGM offshoot Verve Records who had recently established a London office and boasted American acts such as Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, The Velvet Underground and Janis Ian on their roster. Caravan was one of the first signings to Verve’s newly established A&R office in London. But the publishing and recording deals did not bring forth riches to messers Hastings, Coughlan, Sinclair and Sinclair.
As Hastings would later explain: “We were paid seven pounds a week each by Robbins Music as a retainer and in addition they offered to pay for a place to rehearse. At the time we were looking for a place to live and couldn’t find anywhere to rent at all. We’d just left a house in Whitstable, where we lived and rehearsed, and discovered that nobody wanted to let a property to a group of longhaired musicians. We did find somewhere to rehearse, a village hall in Graveney in Kent. Both Dave and Richard Sinclair were keen campers and so they turned up with a couple of tents and pitched them outside the village hall. We managed to get two more from somewhere else and so we all lived there. When it got a bit colder we pitched our tents inside the hall and turned the heating on. We were in there for three months before it got far too cold to stay”.
Caravan entered Advision Studios in Bond Street at the end of the summer of 1968 with producer Tony Cox to record their debut album. Pye Hastings later looked back on those sessions with fondness. “Most of the material had been performed live previously and was all rehearsed before we got to the studio. When sessions were completed Tony Cox wouldn’t let us attend the mixing on the grounds that if there were five people in the control room it would take five times as long to mix, which isn’t strictly true. I think he wanted total control.”
“The album had quite a distinctive sound”, commented Hastings, “but it wasn’t representative of how Caravan sounded at the time because Tony Cox added a lot of echo”. Released in October 1968, “Caravan” was only in the shops for a matter of months before MGM / Verve ceased their operations in the UK and the band suddenly found themselves without a label. Pye Hastings later recalled: “That situation really left us in limbo. We were just getting started when we had to find another label.
Whilst all this was going on we played at The Speakeasy Club in London and Ian Ralfini, who had signed us to our first publishing deal with Robbins Music, came up to us afterwards and told us he thought we needed a manager. He introduced us to an agent called Terry King who subsequently represented us as both manager and agent”.
King immediately began negotiations with Decca Records to secure a long-term contract for his new charges. “I originally wanted to go with Ian Ralfini to Warner Brothers Records, where he had just started work as an A&R manager” Hastings would later reflect. “Unfortunately Ian didn’t feel he had been with Warner long enough to commit to signing us. Terry King had been offered a good deal with Decca and so we ended up there”.
The deal with Decca Records was forged mainly through the enthusiasm for Caravan shown by an aspiring young producer, who was then working in Decca’s art department called David Hitchcock. Upon seeing the band perform at a midnight concert a London’s Lyceum Theatre, Hitchcock went to his boss, Hugh Mendl insisting that Decca Records sign the band. “David was in the process of graduating from the art department to productions”, recalled Pye. “He really wanted to produce us, and I think that was his motivation. We were reluctant to have him produce our first album for Decca as we had never met him and he didn’t have a track record, so we decided to produce the next album ourselves.”
The first Caravan sessions for Decca Records took place at Tangerine Studios on Balls Pond Road, London in September 1969 with Robin Sylvester as engineer. Richard Coughlan would later reflect: “Tangerine Studios was a dingy back street studio, but Robin did a good job for us. We had a very hands-on approach. Everybody had a hand in the recording and mixing, which is probably why the album doesn’t sound as clear as it should. Everyone wanted THEIR instrument to be the loudest, apart from me!”
The initial sessions produced first attempts at “Why?” (later renamed “And I Wish I Were Stoned”), “Clipping the 8th” (later called “Hello Hello”) and an early take of “As I Feel I Die”. Sessions were then put on hold whilst Caravan fulfilled their numerous live commitments, as, by this point, the band were becoming popular on the university circuit in both Britain and Europe. October 1969 saw Caravan’s largest performance to date at the Actuel Festival at Mont de l’Englus, Amougies, Belgium - a significant inroad into a wider European audience. Taking place in a giant circus tent, Caravan shared the bill with acts such as Pink Floyd, Yes, The Nice, Captain Beefheart, Colosseum, Soft Machine, East of Eden and many others. The show was also to have featured Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, but due to work permit problems, only Zappa could perform at the concert. Without his band and opting to act instead as compere between the acts. Zappa also jammed with many of the bands during their set. He would join Caravan in a performance of 'If I Could Do It All Over Again’ - a memorable experience for the group.
Important live commitments meant that the band didn’t return to Tangerine Studios until February 1970, where new versions were taped of original demos made the previous year. A song that was to remain unreleased for thirty years also surfaced at these sessions, “A Day In The Life of Maurice Haylett”. Dedicated to their sound engineer, “A Day In The Life…” underwent various titles and incarnations. It was only performed live for a few months, but was recorded for a BBC Radio One session in August 1969 under the title “An Excerpt from the Daily Routine of Maurice Haylett”, yet the session tape was subsequently wiped from the BBC archive. By the time of the Tangerine Studio session, the title was shortened to “A Day in the Life of Maurice Haylett”. The resulting album, “If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You”, had a much less “produced” feel, which possibly lay in the manner in which the material was recorded, with each track on the album being essentially a live performance in the studio with the minimal amount of over over-dubbing being employed. Laced with lyrical wit and melody, the album produced many classic tracks such as “And I Wish I Were Stoned”, “As I Feel I Die”, “Hello Hello”, and the album’s title track and the song that would come to be recognised as THE Caravan piece, “For Richard”. A show closer to this day, “For Richard” highlighted everything that was exceptional about the Caravan sound, being a fourteen minute opus building from a serene opening into a jazz-rock excursion.
Pye Hastings would later recall: “At that time, although we shared compositional credits, we didn’t write together as such, although we shared each others ideas to certain extent. ‘For Richard’ was composed by Dave Sinclair, but the riff which the main tune goes into was the idea of Richard Sinclair. Then as a band we would develop the song further, expanding on the ideas and so on until it became the long track heard on the album”. Pye’s brother, Jimmy Hastings made his second appearance for the band on record, playing both saxophone and flute on the album. The album artwork for “If I Could Do It All Over Again.” was designed and photographed by David Jupe and shot in London’s Holland Park. Aside from featuring the band themselves, Terry King, Robin Sylvester, Jimmy Hastings and Maurice Haylett also had their faces featured on the sleeve.
The album was preceded by the release of a single, “If I Could Do It All Over Again I’d Do It All Over You” b/w “Hello Hello”, issued as Decca F13063 on August 7th 1970. Although not making an appearance in the “Record Retailer” chart, the single did feature in the lower reaches of the top twenty in several British music papers. This activity resulted in a surprise appearance on the BBC TV show “Top of the Pops”.
The album of the same name was released in September 1970 to great acclaim as Decca SKL-R 5052. In the USA it was to appear on Decca’s sister label, London Records in March 1971 as London PS 582. Prior to the album’s release, Caravan had been busy on the European concert circuit. Notable concerts included a performance at Ewell Technical College on May 23rd where an up and coming young band called Black Sabbath were the support act. At the end of June 1970 Caravan performed at the Kralingen Pop Festival at Kralinge Bos, Rotterdam in Holland. Taking place on the same weekend as the Bath Festival of Blues & Progressive Music back in England, Caravan were on a bill that featured Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Flock, Frank Zappa, Santana, Quintessence, Skin Alley and many more. Richard Sinclair later recalled, “The festival over in Holland was the biggest gig we did at that time. We played to an audience of about 250,000. Although, only 10,000 of them were awake, because we were the first act on stage on the second day and it had been raining all night and that sort of stuff! Nevertheless, a lot of people got to see the band.”
This performance coupled with an appearance on August 9th at the 10th National Jazz, Pop, Ballad and Blues Festival at Plumpton (with Van Der Graaf Generator, Yes, Colosseum and Juicy Lucy) and the release of “If I Could Do It All Over Again…” enabled Caravan to develop their following still further. Despite an unrelenting workload, Caravan began writing new material that would make up the bulk of their next vinyl outing. Amassing enough material to enter the studio, they agreed that this time they would hand over the production duties to an outside individual. In the autumn of 1970 Caravan began sessions at Decca Studios in West Hampstead, London, for an album that would come to be regarded as one of their finest hours, “In The Land of Grey and Pink”. Having successfully produced label-mates East of Eden on their album “Snafu” and the single “Jig-a-Jig”, David Hitchcock was finally given the chance to produce the band that he had been instrumental in getting signed to Decca.
Pye Hastings later remembered: “After ‘If I Could Do It All Over Again…’ came out we finally all met David and got on really well with him. He came up with lots of interesting ideas, so we were happy that he should produce our next album”. Recording began in September 1970. Initially Caravan worked on the first versions of what were to become legendary songs in their repertoire. On this occasion, Pye Hastings was only to offer “Love to Love You” as his songwriting contribution to the album. He would later explain; “For the first two albums I wrote most of the material, and Dave also wrote a lot. When it came to “Grey & Pink” the others had a big backlog of material. Dave especially was advancing way ahead of the rest of us in terms of musical development, so he had a lot of say on the album. Richard Sinclair also had a pile of good material. I only contributed one track and bits to some others, which was only fair because I had written the bulk of the previous two. It made no difference to us at that time because we shared our publishing credits anyway.”
The first song to be recorded was Richard Sinclair’s “Group Girl”, later to be known as “Golf Girl”. “Richard was, and remains, a very endearing writer” Hastings later commented. “He writes about things that are very close to him, like his friends and family and so on. When a song reached its final stage, he would change the lyrics to become less personal. The original version of “Golf Girl” was a very personal song about him and Trisha, his wife to be. It was also about his son, Jason. All of that was happening in his life at the time. Of course Trisha became Pat and the rest is history!”
Another Richard Sinclair composition to grace the album was “Winter Wine”, a song of fairy tales and dreams. Originally worked out in the studio during these initial sessions, this song went under the working title of “It’s Likely To Have A Name Next Week”. “We tended to come up with the music first and the lyrics were usually the last thing to be finished. I think that Winter Wine’ is probably the finest song Richard Sinclair has every written” Hastings would later reflect.
The remaining sessions in September were dedicated to a track provisionally entitled “Dave’s Thing”, a major composition that would eventually take the name of “Nine Feet Underground”. Hastings would later assert: “Dave had written four different pieces which were joined together by musical links that the rest of us devised. One of the linking riffs was mine and Richard Goughlan came up with ideas too. We all helped by changing a few words here and there and suggesting different chord changes”.
The 22 minute opus was recorded in five distinct sections and skillfully edited by David Hitchcock and Decca engineer Dave Grinsted. Taking up a whole side of vinyl and chosen to close the album, the “Nine Feet Underground” suite provided a worthy successor to “For Richard”, proving to be one of the most popular tracks on the album and a concert favourite. The bizarre names given to each movement such as “Dance of the Seven Paper Hankies” and “Hold Granddad by the Nose” added to the albums mystique. By December 1970 the band moved to the newly opened Air London studios in Oxford Street. These AIR sessions saw “Golf Girl” re-recorded, with a superb piccolo solo from Pye’s brother, Jimmy Hastings. The work at Air London also produced two further Richard Sinclair compositions. “In The Land of Grey & Pink” featured some of Richard’s most surreal lyrics and featured a bubble blowing solo by its creator.
“In The Land of Grey & Pink” was released in April 1971, on Decca’s progressive rock label Deram. The album packaging was the most lavish to grace a Caravan release to date, being the inaugural release in Deram’s “deluxe” series. Featuring a striking Tolkien-esque illustration by Anne-Marie Anderson, the gatefold sleeve revealed a glorious picture silhouette of the band larking around, marching single file in a field. Overall both the music within and the album sleeve created a stunning impression.
Despite failing to register on the official UK album chart, “In the Land of Grey & Pink” has remained on catalogue since its 1971 release and remains Caravan’s biggest selling album. It’s splendid fusion of folk, jazz and rock created an album that, nearly fifty years later, is still highly regarded. The album remains Caravan’s finest moment and the ideal introduction to the music of a wonderful band. To promote their latest opus Caravan undertook an extensive UK tour in late April 1971 and performed a live session for BBC Radio One’s “John Peel Sunday Concert” programme in May which saw a selection of material from the new album performed, along with a splendid rendition of the Soft Machine song “Feelin’, Reelin’, Squealin’ ”, written by Kevin Ayers.
Pye Hastings later reflected: “I think the reason “Grey & Pink” stands out is mainly due to the timing of everything. We began to peak in many ways at that time. Our production had peaked, thanks to David Hitchcock, and Dave Sinclair’s writing and playing had begun to peak. We were playing very well as a band and things looked as though they were going to happen in a big way for us. Unfortunately we should have had increased attention from both management and record company at that point. For some reason it didn’t happen. We all knew that we had made a good album and the lack of progress caused some internal tension.”
This tension manifested itself on August 7th 1971 when Dave Sinclair announced his departure from Caravan. Lured away by ex-Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt, Dave contributed keyboard parts to Wyatt’s first solo album, “End Of An Ear” and went on to join his new outfit, Matching Mole (a re-interpretation of Soft Machine’s French translation ‘machine molle’). He would later recall: “I felt the whole thing in Caravan was going a bit stagnant and that I needed inspiration from other musicians. I wanted to play with other people, but had to accept that with Caravan it was either all or nothing. Previously I’d had a few talks with Robert Wyatt, who left Soft Machine at the time I left Caravan. I was in Portugal and Robert wrote to me to ask me to come back to England but I got stuck in Lisbon and had to be repatriated. When I finally got back to England we slowly got Matching Mole together”.
Dave’s departure was a serious blow to the band. “He was a very hard member to replace”, Hastings would later reflect. “He was way ahead of most other keyboard players in Britain, apart from Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman.” Determined to carry on and looking to fellow Canterbury musicians for a replacement, Richard Sinclair invited Steve Miller from jazz-rock band Delivery into the fold to replace his cousin. This new line-up made its debut live performance at the Weely Rock Festival, Clacton-on-Sea over the August Bank Holiday weekend. By the late Autumn of 1971 Caravan found themselves in Decca’s Tollington Park Studios recording a follow up to “In The Land Of Grey & Pink” with David Hitchcock once again in the role of producer. It was apparent from the first rehearsals that the new incarnation of Caravan was going to head in a new musical direction - a direction in which Pye Hastings and Richard Coughlan were reluctant to go. “Richard Sinclair wanted to move away from the previous Caravan whimsical style and go into a jazzier direction” he later recalled. “Richard invited Steve to join because he was a very jazz-based musician. It was virtually impossible to get him to do the things that Dave Sinclair used to do. Steve wasn’t interested in playing in that way. The only way forward seemed to be if we changed our musical style to suit his.” Indeed, the first sessions revealed the new jazzier Caravan, especially on the pieces “Nothing At All” (featuring saxophonist Lol Coxhill and Phil Miller (brother of Steve) on lead guitar) and “Songs and Signs”. Although excellent jazz-rock, these pieces were untypical Caravan music and pointed further to the direction Richard Sinclair would take with the band Hatfield and the North. However, “Waterloo Lily” was to feature one of the most ambitious recordings Pye had attempted up to that date: a Hastings tune entitled “The Love in Your Eye”. He would later explain: “That was my answer to For Richard’. I thought that I had to write another song along those lines as a worthy successor. The basic tune came first and then I came up with the various riffs that carried the song along”.
Initially recorded on the 28th October 1971, “The Love in Your Eye” would undergo further changes before being completed. “David Hitchcock felt that the song needed a string section and so he appealed to Decca for the budget to bring in an orchestra, which they agreed to. They were supportive to our ideas at that time. I asked my brother Jimmy to score a part for an oboe player, as I couldn’t do it. He worked for the BBC Radio Orchestra at the time and knew an awful lot of good players. He got them all to come down for the session, and right lot of boozy old buggers they were too! In between takes they would all vanish and go down the pub. When we had to do another take we had to drag them away from the bar, but they were great fun and we had a lot of laughs! It was one of the best sessions I’ve ever done.
At the time the idea of using an orchestra seemed to be the right way to go. A lot of bands were doing that with varying degrees of success and I was very keen to try it with one of my own songs. I think the strings compliment ‘The Love in Your Eye’ very well.” The song became a highlight of future Caravan performances and is still regarded as one of their finest works.
Among the other material featured on the album, “Waterloo Lily” (a tale of a rather large lady of ill repute) revealed that, in spite of the more serious musical approach, Caravan still had a sense of humour and “The World Is Yours”, a more traditional Hastings song, provided a charming and effective closing track to the album. The finishing touches were put to the sessions in the early months of 1972, with a new recording session taking place at Decca studios on 1st March. The piece recorded had a working title of “Any Advance on Carpet?” and was another instrumental excursion into jazz-rock. Destined to remain locked in the Decca archives, this tune was based on a Richard Sinclair riff that would finally resurface as the song “Bossa Nochance” on the first Hatfield and the North album. “Waterloo Lily” finally appeared as Deram SDL-R 8 on May 19th 1972.
The gatefold sleeve featured the tavern scene from William Hogarth’s satirical work “Rake’s Progress” as an outer cover. Although eagerly awaited, the album was not as well received as Caravan’s previous work. Most comments were targeted at the mixture of styles present on the album. “As far as our fans were concerned, it was a very different approach and a lot of them didn’t like it very much”, Pye Hastings later commented. “By attempting to break new ground and trying something different we attracted some new fans but also lost some too.”
During a UK tour of June 1972, the discussions about musical direction came to a head. Pye would later remember: “It became quite clear after a while that the new line-up of the band wasn’t working at all. I had a lot of conversations with Richard Sinclair about this, but he wanted us to become even more jazz based in our approach. I wanted to go back into a more traditional direction and unfortunately we clashed.”
Unable to resolve their differences the line-up of Coughlan, Hastings, Miller and Sinclair played their last concert on July 25th 1972 at Solihull Civic Hall, sharing the bill with Genesis. Steve Miller left the band shortly after and within days Richard Sinclair also departed. Sinclair later recalled his reasons for leaving thus: “It didn’t quite work with Steve in the band, because the music started to go a bit too loose for the way that Pye and Richard Coughlan played. Whilst we were extending ourselves in a blues and jazz vein, I think Pye’s idea was to be centered upon what our traditional following would like to hear. So things eventually split. I was also doing a lot more music with the people that I eventually ended up in Hatfield and The North with. First of all I worked with Steve Miller who knew a lot of very good musicians, and I then got introduced to his brother Phil who was playing guitar with Robert Wyatt at the time in Matching Mole. In a short time Hatfield and The North got together.”
Reflecting on the extent of Caravan’s following at that time, Sinclair would comment: “I don’t think Caravan’s success really started to build until after I left. The music kept on selling steadily. “In The Land of Grey and Pink” kept doing its thing. Up until 1972 there were hundreds of people in the audience, and sometimes thousands when we played festivals, but a lot of the time it was just a few hundred at gigs around England. Those people were very dedicated to us, as they were to people like Genesis who were also becoming fashionable. By the time I thought about leaving, Caravan started to get noticed: after four years of working, and three albums. We were touring Europe and England quite a lot in those days. I think the following got going from then on. Caravan went on to a more rock-orientated way of doing things, but still with the quirkiness of Pye’s tunes. They then attracted an audience that was slightly different to the early following. I think the people who liked that new incarnation of Caravan a lot better preferred it because there was more of a rock element.”
Although suffering what some thought would be the final body blow, Caravan was destined to continue. “I spoke to Richard Coughlan after Steve Miller and Richard Sinclair had departed and told him that I was determined to continue with the band. He agreed and so I went to Terry King, our manager, to tell him of our intention to carry on” Hastings would later explain. “Terry organised some auditions for a new keyboard player and bassist. I’d never done auditions before and it was quite a new experience to have strangers play in the band.”
From these auditions came Stuart Evans (ex-Thank You) on bass and Derek Austin (ex-Keef Hartley Band) on keyboards. Prior to finding these replacements Pye Hastings had been introduced to an outstanding young viola player, recently resident in Canterbury, by the name of Geoffrey Richardson. Hastings would later recount: “A friend of mine told me about him. He told me that a friend of his had an ex-Winchester Art College student called Geoff Richardson staying with him.
Doug had heard him play and thought he was the best blues influenced viola player he had ever heard. Geoff was staying with a chap called Steve Borrill who was bass player in a band called Spirogyra. When I originally auditioned for a bass player to replace Richard Sinclair I asked Steve to come along and suggested that he bring Geoffrey as well. After the rehearsal at Graveney Village Hall it was obvious that there was no chemistry between Steve Borrill and myself, but I was very impressed with Geoffrey and asked him to join the band straight away.”
Richardson’s viola playing immediately added a new dimension to Caravan s sound, extending their musical possibilities. Within two months this new incarnation of Hastings, Coughlan, Richardson, Austin and Evans was on the road, performing its first concert in Montbeliard, France on September 10th. Initial audience reaction to Richardson was mixed. He was at times subjected to heckling from the fickle Caravan audience, but he persisted, allowing his virtuosity on both viola and flute to shine through on stage. Within a year this initial resistance had waned and Richardson became an audience favourite and the bands’ main focal point on stage. Following a tour of Britain and France from October to December 1972, (during which the band had begun to work on writing new material during sound checks), Caravan entered the recording studio for the first time in nearly nine months.
Producer David Hitchcock accompanied the band to Chipping Norton Studios in rural Oxfordshire for the week leading up to Christmas. These sessions were intended to commit Pye Hastings’ instrumental ideas on tape. “I always write lyrics at the last minute when it comes to recording”, explained Pye in a contemporary interview. “I only come up with lyrics when it becomes time to record a vocal track. Before then I hum any old nonsense just to develop a vocal melody”.
The December sessions at Chipping Norton studios produced demos of “Memory Lain, Hugh”, “Headloss”, “Chance Of A Lifetime” and “C’Thlu Thulu”. After a break for Christmas, the band returned to Chipping Norton in January to work on more new material, but at this point, further musical issues began to arise. Pye would later explain; “Derek Austin’s keyboard playing style was very much based around the Hammond Organ and pedals. The problem was that it didn’t sound like Caravan and so he began to clash musically with Richard, Geoffrey and myself”.
Caravan played four dates in the UK later in January to warm up before embarking on a tour of Australia with one of the most bizarre line-ups ever assembled. In February 1973 Caravan joined Slade, Lindisfarne and Status Quo on a tour of the Antipodes. “That happened because an Australian promoter was over in London and he called in to Terry King’s office to see if he could get those acts together for a tour of Australia. Terry was also a leading agent at the time, so he was able to arrange the tour on the condition that we went along as well!” Hastings later recalled. “It’s quite funny, because we were just about to tell Terry that as our contract had expired we were going to go elsewhere for representation. We were playing at the Montreux Festival and I’d got myself all psyched up to tell him we were leaving. Terry arrived in our dressing room and before I could say anything he announced he had arranged for us to go on tour to Australia. We weren’t the right type of band for that tour. We were performing songs like ‘For Richard’ in open-air stadia at mid-day in the blazing hot Australian sun. In some places we went down very well, but in other towns nobody took much notice of us. Even so, it was a great experience. It was interesting to work with bands that had reached such huge levels of success. Status Quo were phenomenal. They really knew how to work an audience and I learnt a lot from them. All the bands were good fun.”
Upon their return to England Pye Hastings decided that another line-up change was called for. He remembered: “Before we got Stuart Evans in on bass I had been in touch with a superb bass player called John Perry who was in a band called Spreadeagle. They were in the process of breaking up and he came to see us at the Marquee. He told me that he would like to join Caravan but had other commitments at that time. When I came back from Australia he wrote to me saying that he would be free to join us from the beginning of March and so I asked him to come onboard straight away and disbanded that line-up as it wasn’t really going anywhere.”
Evans and Austin duly departed leaving Hastings, Coughlan, Richardson and Perry to search for a new keyboard player who was found in Dave Sinclair. “I had done a stint with Matching Mole and Hatfield and The North and Pye asked me if I would like to come back to the band for a forthcoming tour of France” Sinclair later recalled. “I agreed to do it for session fees, as at that point I didn’t want to become part of the band on a full time basis again. I was happy to come back to Caravan at that time because I needed the money apart from anything else. After the French tour we went into the studio and I just sort of stayed in the band. The new band was incredibly tight. John Perry was such a good player; he drove the band along making us all work hard as a unit”.
Encouraged by the success of their French excursion, Caravan entered the studio once again in April 1973. Pye explained: “We came back from France and went straight back into the studio to re-record the songs and within a week the backing tracks were all done, because we had rehearsed everything on the road. We recorded the whole thing live in the studio, near enough. We went back to correct any mistakes, but there weren’t many as we had got things so tight by playing them live every night over the past few weeks.”
Backing track sessions were recorded at Chipping Norton Studios, after which the band undertook overdub sessions at Decca’s Studios in West Hampstead and Tollington Park. The opening track of the album continues to serve as a Caravan live set opener. “Memory Lain, Hugh” featured superb viola sections from Geoff Richardson and a woodwind and brass arrangement by Pye’s brother, Jimmy Hastings, who also took the flute solo. Rupert Hine, a friend of John Perry’s, played ARP synthesizer along with Dave Sinclair as the track neatly segued into “Headloss”.
On the track “C’thlu Thulu” Pye Hastings experimented with complex timings and riffs more associated with bands like King Crimson, whilst “The Dog, The Dog, He’s At It Again” was a humorous tale of lechery and was chosen by Decca to be the subject of a promotional film featuring the band performing the track in Decca’s Broadhurst Gardens Studio. This even gained a screening on BBC 2’s influential “Old Grey Whistle Test” TV programme. The album’s closing track demonstrates just how tight and inspired a musical unit Caravan was. “A Hunting We Shall Go” was an instrumental track that had built up gradually over the last few months’ live work. It was introduced by a section featuring acoustic guitar and viola called “L’Auberge Du Sanglier”, named after a guesthouse frequented by the band on their French visits. “…Hunting” was divided into further sections, namely “Pengola”, a short contribution from John Perry, and “Backwards”, a Soft Machine piece originally featured on the album “Third” written by Mike Ratledge. Pye later explained: “I wrote all of 'A Hunting We Shall Go’ and got stuck when I reached the middle section. I had originally written another chord progression but I wasn’t happy with it. Dave Sinclair was very fond of a melody written by Mike Ratledge and suggested we try that instead. It worked a treat.”
The track also featured a splendid orchestral arrangement by Martyn Ford and John Bell (who had previously worked with Barclay James Harvest). It provided a stunning climax to what many consider to be one of Caravan’s finest albums. “For Girls Who Grow Plump In the Night” was released as Deram SDL-R 12 on October 5th 1973. It also gained a US release as London Records PS 627. The album cover featured a slumbering heavily pregnant woman and was designed by Mark Lawrence. The original plan was to depict a nude, pregnant lady on the gatefold sleeve, but Decca records were less than enthusiastic about this proposed artwork and vetoed the idea. Even though no singles were taken from the album, the release of “For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night” was the beginning of Caravan’s wider success.
The sessions for their new album also provided the inspiration for a concert that would also do much to enhance Caravan’s reputation and build on their following. The use of an orchestra in the studio for the recording of “A Hunting We Shall Go” had proven inspirational for both the band and the orchestra’s conductor, Martyn Ford. “Martyn told us that as he enjoyed the experience so much he would like to do a concert with us, using the same orchestra” Hastings later explained. “This got back to Terry King our manager, our producer David Hitchcock and Decca Records. They all thought it was an excellent idea and between the three of them they arranged the concert very quickly.”
The idea hatched between Hitchcock, King and Decca Records was not only to stage a concert with the New Symphonia, but also to bring a mobile recording studio to the selected venue, the Theatre Royal in London’s Drury Lane, to capture the concert for posterity. A date of October 28th was selected whilst Caravan travelled up and down the UK on a short tour to promote “…Plump In The Night”. Pye recalled: “I had two weeks warning that the concert was going to happen and I was also told at that point that I had to come up with a couple of new songs for the concert and album!”
With adverts immediately placed in the music press, the concert sold out very quickly. The prospect of playing to a full house with an orchestra was a nerve-wracking one, but as Hastings explains, it was exacerbated by the short rehearsal time. ‘We had only two four hour sessions with the orchestra to rehearse all the material, one in the studio on the day before the concert and one on the stage of the Theatre Royal on the afternoon of the performance. We had all kinds of problems. It was a very awkward concert to perform because we had to play behind the orchestra and they sat in front of us. The string section were complaining that we were too loud so we had to angle our amplifiers up in the air to prevent the sound and volume from being directed straight at them!” he later reflected.
The selection of orchestrated material was chosen by Pye Hastings, Martyn Ford and his arranger, Simon Jeffes. The concert was to be divided into two sections. For the first half of the show Caravan performed songs from “…Plump In The Night”. Radio One DJ Alan Black introduced the proceedings, being an ardent supporter of Caravan. Having come fresh from the studio, the vigour with which songs like “Memory Lain, Hugh”, “Headloss”, “The Dog, The Dog, He’s At It Again” and “Hoedown” were played was impressive. Hastings’ jovial banter with the audience also eased both audience and band into the concert, warming up for the second half of the show with the New Symphonia.
The orchestrated part of the performance began with a superb introduction piece by Simon Jeffes, appropriately entitled “Introduction”. This was followed by a breathtaking performance of “The Love in Your Eye”; the new orchestration adding a new dimension to what was already a Caravan classic. Two new Hastings’ compositions followed. “A Mirror for the Day”, was a piece so new the Pye had written the lyrics only that morning and had to perform the song with lyrics in front of him on a music stand. “Virgin on the Ridiculous” was the second new composition to be aired, again with lyrics on a music stand in evidence. The closing part of the concert was to feature what is perhaps the definitive version of Caravan’s usual ending number, “For Richard”, complete with orchestral climax.
Geoffrey Richardson would later remember a precarious situation involving microphones during the concert. “The people from the mobile studio had to set up two microphones, which were taped together, on each microphone stand. During the sound check there was an earth difference and sparks started flying between all the pairs of microphones!”
Hastings would later remark: “It all came good in the end, but the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane is a very large venue with a deep stage. Because of that and the fact that we were behind the orchestra, it meant that the audience was quite far away from us. It took a while for the band to settle in, but the place was packed and we went down very well.”
Despite the potential hazards of electric shocks and misgivings by some band members about ever repeating the experience, the concert was indeed both a critical and artistic success. Lindsay Boyd in New Musical Express wrote: “Caravan are one of my all time favourites and in terms of audience response, the concert could not have been better.”
Paul Weir of rival publication Sounds was even more enthusiastic. He wrote “A few bands have dabbled with orchestras, but few can match Caravan in the field. Caravan deserve an orchestra. It was a rare treat for those who managed to see the show, but Decca will save the world when they release the live album of the concert.”
Caravan did not have time to rest on their laurels following the concert. For them it was business as usual, recording a session for John Peel’s Radio One show only two days after the concert and then embarking on a series of British and French concerts that would keep them busy up to the end of the year. 1974 did not see any let up in pace, with a further ten date French tour in January, a concert at London’s prestigious Rainbow Theatre in February and concerts in Poitiers, Toulouse and Barcelona in March.
“Caravan and The New Symphonia” was released in the UK as Deram SML-R 1110 on April 19th 1974, and as London Records PS 650 in the USA, but the acclaim the band were receiving failed to materialise into a placing on the UK album chart. This did not deter Caravan from undertaking a further two months of touring in Britain and France. However, the spectre of line-up changes was once more rearing its ugly head. In between touring with Caravan, John Perry had been playing sessions for Rupert Hine, a producer who also in the process of forming the group Quantum Jump. Hine was building a studio in Chalfont St. Giles and John Perry had begun to spend an increasing amount of time working with Rupert Hine which in turn began to impact on Caravan’s schedule of recording and touring. As a result, John Perry performed his last concert with Caravan at the London Lyceum on July 3rd 1974. At that concert, his newly found replacement took to the stage to join the band playing congas. Mike Wedgwood had an established track record as a bass player and arranger, having previously played with both Curved Air and Kiki Dee. “Mike came down to Kent to audition at the suggestion of David Hitchcock”, Pye Hastings later remembered. “He was a different player to John Perry and because of that our new approach wasn’t quite so hard. Mike had a different singing voice and a different style of writing, but he was a very good bass player”. Caravan had barely two weeks to settle in with their newest recruit before they were off to Tunisia to perform at the Tabarka Festival, concerts followed in Belgium and Holland in August. On the 22nd August, Caravan entered the studio with Mike Wedgwood for the first time. At Decca’s Tollington park studio they recorded a Pye Hastings composition, “Keeping Back My Love”. The song was completely finished with a view to adding it to the band’s next vinyl outing, but for one reason was consigned to Decca’s tape vaults. The track was later re-written by Hastings in 1977 with new lyrics and slightly different music, appearing on the “Better By Far” album (Arista SPARTY 1008) as “Behind You”. Also in August, Caravan left manager Terry King to team up with Miles Copeland and his British Talent Management (BTM) company, joining a roster that included Curved Air and Renaissance.
The son of a senior figure in the CIA, Copeland was an American who was based in London and was enjoying a degree of success touring his acts in the USA. Within two months of signing with Copeland, Caravan were booked on their first American tour. Prior to their departure, the band performed a memorable show at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon, which was taped by the Pye Mobile Studio. The complete recordings remained un-issued on CD until February 2002. On the 27th September 1974, Caravan played the first of fifty dates that would make up their debut US and Canadian tour, performing at the Pel Plateau in Montreal. For the next nine weeks Caravan visited just about every corner of the USA supporting acts as diverse as Weather Report, Wishbone Ash, Fairport Convention and The Climax Blues Band. To assist in the promotion of Caravan’s first US visit, London Records issued a single on October 27th, (London 20080), coupling “The World Is Yours” (from “Waterloo Lily”), with a remixed “Memory Lain, Hugh” / “Headloss” (from “For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night”). Although failing to make an impression on the US charts, the single did succeed in gaining radio exposure for the band. Pye Hastings later recalled; “The US tour went very well. We seemed to have developed a strong cult following there, particularly in colleges and universities, much like Britain. The tour was great fun, but in retrospect it was far too long to be on the road. I felt that we peaked halfway through and by the end all I wanted to do was to get back home.”
Returning to Britain in December 1974, Caravan found themselves having an enforced holiday courtesy of HM Customs, who had impounded their equipment on its return from America. The band used this break to write material for their next album, especially Dave Sinclair. Dave would later reflect; “I had been planning to leave Caravan as soon as I had the time to develop my song writing with my friend John Murphy. That attitude stuck for a very long time, even after our first US tour, and in a way that separated me from the rest of the band. The main problem was that I hadn’t written any of the material we were performing at that time and I felt like a session musician. Once I returned from America I began to feel differently. Because our equipment was impounded by the Customs I found myself with two months free time, and I spent that writing with John. It was accepted as far as I was concerned that any lyrics John wrote would go with my music. That caused some initial problems within the band, but we sorted things out eventually.” Sessions for the next album were squeezed in at Air London and Decca’s studios in Tollington Park and Broadhurst Gardens between a very heavy touring schedule, (with Renaissance), which lasted from February through to April 1975. This time Pye Hastings’ song writing was not so much in evidence, with only two of the album’s compositions, “Stuck In A Hole” (ajaunty up-beat affair) and “No Backstage Pass” (a ballad of outstanding merit) emanating from his pen. In a contemporary interview he mused; “The reason I didn’t write much of the album is due to touring. All writers need time to reflect on music they’ve heard elsewhere, and I simply didn’t have the time to stop and write new material. Dave hadn’t written anything for a long time and as he had good material lying around we decided to use it.” Indeed, the partnership of Dave Sinclair and John Murphy would produce a major work in “The Dabsong Conshirtoe”, which was to dominate the second side of the album. The piece had similarities to Sinclair’s previous'work “Nine Feet Underground” in so much as it was a cycle of different songs joined by linking themes.
The Sinclair/Murphy team also produced the album’s majestic opening track, “The Show of Our Lives”. Mixing was completed on the album, tentatively entitled “Toys in the Attic”, in May. “That title was the suggestion of an American chap called Ken Kessler who was living in Canterbury at the time”, explained Hastings. “He was a friend of Geoffrey’s and he came up with that title. I didn’t understand what it meant, it being an American expression for madness. I wasn’t too keen on the title, but we decided to use it anyway.” However, prior to the albums’ release American band Aerosmith released an album of the same name necessitating the need for a new title. It was left to Richard Coughlan to devise a new album title, “Cunning Stunts” based on the punchline of a joke he was fond of telling. Following the recording of a BBC Radio One “In Concert” programme (which debuted “The Dabsong Conshirtoe”), Dave Sinclair announced his decision to leave Caravan once again, to form a new band with his cousin (and ex-Caravan member) Richard Sinclair on bass, John Murphy on guitar and Les Feast on drums.
A replacement was found in Liverpudlian Jan Schelhaas. Schelhaas had begun his career in soul groups in Liverpool in the mid-sixties, before joining The Scaffold briefly. In 1971 he was a member of the Progressive outfit National Head Band with future Uriah Heep drummer Lee Kerslake, before joining guitarist Gary Moore’s first band. This led to Schelhaas joining Thin Lizzy for sessions on the 1973 album “Vagabonds of the Western World” before he departed to undertake various musical projects. As a keyboard player, he was innovative and a more than able replacement for Dave Sinclair. His arrival in Caravan coincided with the release of “Cunning Stunts” as Decca SKL-R 5210 in the UK on July 25th. The album appeared in the USA on Miles Copeland’s BTM Label as BTM 5000. “Cunning Stunts” was to achieve chart placings on official listings in both the UK and the USA, reaching number 50 in the UK and number 124 on the Billboard chart in the USA. It also charted throughout Europe, sometimes with hilarious results. Geoffrey Richardson would later remember; “It went straight into the Belgian album chart at number 14 with the first letter of each word reversed! We had problems with that title in Europe. The same thing happened in Italy!”
In August, Caravan embarked on the infamous “Star Trucking” tour of festival sites in Europe. Organised by Miles Copeland, the tour also featured Soft Machine, Wishbone Ash, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Climax Blues Band and Renaissance on the bill. Lou Reed was also scheduled to appear but cancelled his appearances at the last minute. On September 5th Decca issued a remixed “Stuck In A Hole” and “Lover” as a single (Decca F-R 13599) in the UK only. This release fulfilled Caravan’s contractual obligations with Decca Records, ending a fruitful relationship that had lasted six years.
Caravan would record a further two album before the end of the l970s, “Blind Dog At St.Dunstans” and “Better By Far”, but by then the onset of punk had begun to affect sales and concert attendances. Two further albums, “The Album” and “Back To Front”, were released in the early 80’s for Terry King’s Kingdom label, but by then the band had really ceased to function. As such this box-set serves as the definitive collection of one of England’s greatest groups from the 60s and 70s and is a fitting tribute to their unique musical legacy.
~ Mark Powell
***************
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
Track List CD1 - If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You (1970):
01. If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You [3:07]
02. And I Wish I Were Stoned / Don't Worry [8:21]
03. As I Feel I Die [5:06]
04. With an Ear to the Ground You Can Make It / Martinian / Only Cox Reprise [9:54]
05. Hello Hello [3:46]
06. Asforteri [1:21]
07. Can't Be Long Now / Francoise / For Richard / Warlock [14:21]
08. Limits [1:36]
09. A Day in the Life of Maurice Haylett [5:07]
10. Why? (And I Wish I Were Stoned) [Demo Version] [4:22]
11. Clipping the 8th (Hello Hello) [Demo Version] [3:13]
12. As I Feel I Die [Demo Version] [4:40]
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 12:41
Caravan / If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 3:07.13 | 0 | 14037
2 | 3:07.13 | 8:20.66 | 14038 | 51603
3 | 11:28.04 | 5:06.09 | 51604 | 74562
4 | 16:34.13 | 9:54.00 | 74563 | 119112
5 | 26:28.13 | 3:46.09 | 119113 | 136071
6 | 30:14.22 | 1:21.11 | 136072 | 142157
7 | 31:35.33 | 14:21.05 | 142158 | 206737
8 | 45:56.38 | 1:35.70 | 206738 | 213932
9 | 47:32.33 | 5:07.00 | 213933 | 236957
10 | 52:39.33 | 4:21.70 | 236958 | 256602
11 | 57:01.28 | 3:12.65 | 256603 | 271067
12 | 60:14.18 | 4:39.51 | 271068 | 292043
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You.wav
Peak level 97.7 %
Extraction speed 3.6 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 0AE963A5
Copy CRC 0AE963A5
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
Track 11 not present in database
Track 12 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: A2ReD.AWiNGMHTvecNroU0wO4mk-] found
Submit result: A2ReD.AWiNGMHTvecNroU0wO4mk- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
10 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
11 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
12 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum 906E25594D07A39F0368A724832FADEF5EE74E63BA79B16483A0E81BC369363B ====
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 12:41
Caravan / If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 3:07.13 | 0 | 14037
2 | 3:07.13 | 8:20.66 | 14038 | 51603
3 | 11:28.04 | 5:06.09 | 51604 | 74562
4 | 16:34.13 | 9:54.00 | 74563 | 119112
5 | 26:28.13 | 3:46.09 | 119113 | 136071
6 | 30:14.22 | 1:21.11 | 136072 | 142157
7 | 31:35.33 | 14:21.05 | 142158 | 206737
8 | 45:56.38 | 1:35.70 | 206738 | 213932
9 | 47:32.33 | 5:07.00 | 213933 | 236957
10 | 52:39.33 | 4:21.70 | 236958 | 256602
11 | 57:01.28 | 3:12.65 | 256603 | 271067
12 | 60:14.18 | 4:39.51 | 271068 | 292043
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You.wav
Peak level 97.7 %
Extraction speed 3.6 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 0AE963A5
Copy CRC 0AE963A5
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
Track 11 not present in database
Track 12 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: A2ReD.AWiNGMHTvecNroU0wO4mk-] found
Submit result: A2ReD.AWiNGMHTvecNroU0wO4mk- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
10 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
11 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
12 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum 906E25594D07A39F0368A724832FADEF5EE74E63BA79B16483A0E81BC369363B ====
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
Track List CD2 - In The Land Of Grey And Pink (1971):
01. Golf Girl [5:01]
02. Winter Wine [7:37]
03. Love To Love You (And Tonight Pigs Will Fly) [3:04]
04. In The Land Of Grey And Pink [5:00]
05. Nine Feet Underground [22:44]
06. I Don't Know Its Name (Alias The Word)) [6:10]
07. Aristocracy [3:43]
08. It's Likely To Have A Name Next Week ('Winter Wine' Instrumental) [7:49]
09. Group Girl (First Version of 'Golf Girl') [5:03]
10. Dissassociation / 100% Proof (New Mix) [8:36]
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 8:53
Caravan / In The Land Of Grey And Pink
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:00.38 | 0 | 22537
2 | 5:00.38 | 7:36.55 | 22538 | 56792
3 | 12:37.18 | 3:04.00 | 56793 | 70592
4 | 15:41.18 | 5:00.05 | 70593 | 93097
5 | 20:41.23 | 22:44.00 | 93098 | 195397
6 | 43:25.23 | 6:10.10 | 195398 | 223157
7 | 49:35.33 | 3:42.70 | 223158 | 239877
8 | 53:18.28 | 7:48.65 | 239878 | 275042
9 | 61:07.18 | 5:03.05 | 275043 | 297772
10 | 66:10.23 | 8:36.31 | 297773 | 336503
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - In The Land Of Grey And Pink.wav
Peak level 97.1 %
Extraction speed 3.9 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 980417F1
Copy CRC 980417F1
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: 0BhrNC60yGX2iQu8e_bNqYmxV4c-] found
Submit result: already submitted
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
10 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum 6E8E7BC01F8760126C0CAACFE7C26FA1757C6924E2CE1AA19A1FC27EF3F3F18F ====
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 8:53
Caravan / In The Land Of Grey And Pink
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:00.38 | 0 | 22537
2 | 5:00.38 | 7:36.55 | 22538 | 56792
3 | 12:37.18 | 3:04.00 | 56793 | 70592
4 | 15:41.18 | 5:00.05 | 70593 | 93097
5 | 20:41.23 | 22:44.00 | 93098 | 195397
6 | 43:25.23 | 6:10.10 | 195398 | 223157
7 | 49:35.33 | 3:42.70 | 223158 | 239877
8 | 53:18.28 | 7:48.65 | 239878 | 275042
9 | 61:07.18 | 5:03.05 | 275043 | 297772
10 | 66:10.23 | 8:36.31 | 297773 | 336503
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - In The Land Of Grey And Pink.wav
Peak level 97.1 %
Extraction speed 3.9 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 980417F1
Copy CRC 980417F1
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: 0BhrNC60yGX2iQu8e_bNqYmxV4c-] found
Submit result: already submitted
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
10 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum 6E8E7BC01F8760126C0CAACFE7C26FA1757C6924E2CE1AA19A1FC27EF3F3F18F ====
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
Track List CD3 - Waterloo Lily (1972):
01. Waterloo Lily [6:48]
02. Nothing At All · It's Coming Soon · Nothing At All (Reprise) [10:23]
03. Songs & Signs [3:40]
04. Aristocracy [3:04]
05. The Love in Your Eye · To Catch Me a Brother · Subsultus · Debouchement · Til… [12:32]
06. The World Is Yours [3:41]
07. Pye's June Thing [2:58]
08. Ferdinand [2:57]
09. Looking Left, Looking Right · Pye's Loop [7:02]
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 14:27
Caravan / Waterloo Lily
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 6:47.68 | 0 | 30592
2 | 6:47.68 | 10:23.02 | 30593 | 77319
3 | 17:10.70 | 3:40.05 | 77320 | 93824
4 | 20:51.00 | 3:03.70 | 93825 | 107619
5 | 23:54.70 | 12:32.05 | 107620 | 164024
6 | 36:27.00 | 3:40.55 | 164025 | 180579
7 | 40:07.55 | 2:58.00 | 180580 | 193929
8 | 43:05.55 | 2:57.10 | 193930 | 207214
9 | 46:02.65 | 7:02.16 | 207215 | 238880
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - Waterloo Lily.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 5.0 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC E673F18E
Copy CRC E673F18E
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: e6FrcZxYSsTcy99wVZ4wpCA72wk-] disk not present in database
Submit result: e6FrcZxYSsTcy99wVZ4wpCA72wk- has been uploaded
==== Log checksum B6A26E43A9BB73EF1C9C62B34412EBA6D835728465472A20EFF14E1AD3965D25 ====
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 14:27
Caravan / Waterloo Lily
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 6:47.68 | 0 | 30592
2 | 6:47.68 | 10:23.02 | 30593 | 77319
3 | 17:10.70 | 3:40.05 | 77320 | 93824
4 | 20:51.00 | 3:03.70 | 93825 | 107619
5 | 23:54.70 | 12:32.05 | 107620 | 164024
6 | 36:27.00 | 3:40.55 | 164025 | 180579
7 | 40:07.55 | 2:58.00 | 180580 | 193929
8 | 43:05.55 | 2:57.10 | 193930 | 207214
9 | 46:02.65 | 7:02.16 | 207215 | 238880
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - Waterloo Lily.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 5.0 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC E673F18E
Copy CRC E673F18E
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: e6FrcZxYSsTcy99wVZ4wpCA72wk-] disk not present in database
Submit result: e6FrcZxYSsTcy99wVZ4wpCA72wk- has been uploaded
==== Log checksum B6A26E43A9BB73EF1C9C62B34412EBA6D835728465472A20EFF14E1AD3965D25 ====
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
Track List CD4 - For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night (1973):
01. Memory Lain, Hugh / Headloss [9:15]
02. Hoedown [3:19]
03. Surprise, Surprise [4:06]
04. C'thlu Thlu [6:12]
05. The Dog, The Dog, He's At It Again [5:56]
06. Be All Right / Chance of A Lifetime [6:34]
07. L'Auberge Du Sanglier / A Hunting We Shall Go / Pengola / Backwards / A Hunti… [10:04]
08. Memory Lain, Hugh / Headloss [us mix] [9:18]
09. No! ('Be Alright') / Waffle ('Chance of a Lifetime') [5:10]
10. He Who Smelt It Dealt It ('Memory Lain, Hugh') [4:42]
11. Surprise, Surprise [3:15]
12. Derek's Long Thing [11:02]
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 17:18
Caravan / For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 9:14.68 | 0 | 41617
2 | 9:14.68 | 3:18.65 | 41618 | 56532
3 | 12:33.58 | 4:06.00 | 56533 | 74982
4 | 16:39.58 | 6:12.00 | 74983 | 102882
5 | 22:51.58 | 5:56.20 | 102883 | 129602
6 | 28:48.03 | 6:33.65 | 129603 | 159142
7 | 35:21.68 | 10:04.03 | 159143 | 204445
8 | 45:25.71 | 9:17.67 | 204446 | 246287
9 | 54:43.63 | 5:10.00 | 246288 | 269537
10 | 59:53.63 | 4:42.05 | 269538 | 290692
11 | 64:35.68 | 3:15.00 | 290693 | 305317
12 | 67:50.68 | 11:01.51 | 305318 | 354943
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 3.9 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC CD3FE373
Copy CRC CD3FE373
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
Track 11 not present in database
Track 12 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: _PxZpDxLBweVgxis0GoDbBXQDJo-] disk not present in database
Submit result: _PxZpDxLBweVgxis0GoDbBXQDJo- has been uploaded
==== Log checksum AD42C83AE5E6AB2336F44D305015372E513E3F1995BBA12F96DBF9B24949B47F ====
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 17:18
Caravan / For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 9:14.68 | 0 | 41617
2 | 9:14.68 | 3:18.65 | 41618 | 56532
3 | 12:33.58 | 4:06.00 | 56533 | 74982
4 | 16:39.58 | 6:12.00 | 74983 | 102882
5 | 22:51.58 | 5:56.20 | 102883 | 129602
6 | 28:48.03 | 6:33.65 | 129603 | 159142
7 | 35:21.68 | 10:04.03 | 159143 | 204445
8 | 45:25.71 | 9:17.67 | 204446 | 246287
9 | 54:43.63 | 5:10.00 | 246288 | 269537
10 | 59:53.63 | 4:42.05 | 269538 | 290692
11 | 64:35.68 | 3:15.00 | 290693 | 305317
12 | 67:50.68 | 11:01.51 | 305318 | 354943
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 3.9 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC CD3FE373
Copy CRC CD3FE373
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
Track 11 not present in database
Track 12 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: _PxZpDxLBweVgxis0GoDbBXQDJo-] disk not present in database
Submit result: _PxZpDxLBweVgxis0GoDbBXQDJo- has been uploaded
==== Log checksum AD42C83AE5E6AB2336F44D305015372E513E3F1995BBA12F96DBF9B24949B47F ====
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
Track List CD5 - Caravan & The New Symphonia (1974):
01. Introduction by Alan Black / Memory Lain, Hugh / Headloss [10:59]
02. The Dog, The Dog, He's At It Again [6:36]
03. Hoedown [3:54]
04. Introduction [6:50]
05. The Love In Your Eye [12:50]
06. Mirror For The Day [4:29]
07. Virgin On The Ridiculous [7:58]
08. For Richard [14:18]
09. A Hunting We Shall Go [10:26]
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 8. September 2019, 8:50
Caravan / Caravan & The New Symphonia
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 10:59.20 | 0 | 49444
2 | 10:59.20 | 6:35.62 | 49445 | 79131
3 | 17:35.07 | 3:53.73 | 79132 | 96679
4 | 21:29.05 | 6:49.70 | 96680 | 127424
5 | 28:19.00 | 12:49.65 | 127425 | 185164
6 | 41:08.65 | 4:29.15 | 185165 | 205354
7 | 45:38.05 | 7:57.60 | 205355 | 241189
8 | 53:35.65 | 14:18.00 | 241190 | 305539
9 | 67:53.65 | 10:25.43 | 305540 | 352457
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - Caravan & The New Symphonia.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 4.3 X
Range quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 2234BD49
Copy CRC 2234BD49
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: TyhLhfLRJHgP98zIZ7jaY.soSS0-] found
Submit result: already submitted
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum B6FD8EC142E552D3158A2064736910615E6D6CA3EED25542A02E8AFA4DFAA396 ====
EAC extraction logfile from 8. September 2019, 8:50
Caravan / Caravan & The New Symphonia
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 10:59.20 | 0 | 49444
2 | 10:59.20 | 6:35.62 | 49445 | 79131
3 | 17:35.07 | 3:53.73 | 79132 | 96679
4 | 21:29.05 | 6:49.70 | 96680 | 127424
5 | 28:19.00 | 12:49.65 | 127425 | 185164
6 | 41:08.65 | 4:29.15 | 185165 | 205354
7 | 45:38.05 | 7:57.60 | 205355 | 241189
8 | 53:35.65 | 14:18.00 | 241190 | 305539
9 | 67:53.65 | 10:25.43 | 305540 | 352457
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - Caravan & The New Symphonia.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 4.3 X
Range quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 2234BD49
Copy CRC 2234BD49
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: TyhLhfLRJHgP98zIZ7jaY.soSS0-] found
Submit result: already submitted
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum B6FD8EC142E552D3158A2064736910615E6D6CA3EED25542A02E8AFA4DFAA396 ====
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
Track List CD6 - Cunning Stunts (1975):
01. The Show Of Our Lives [5:47]
02. Stuck In A Hole [3:10]
03. Lover [5:06]
04. No Backstage Pass [4:35]
05. Welcome The Day [4:01]
06. The Dabsong Conshirtoe [18:00]
07. Fear and Loathing in Tollington Park Rag [1:11]
08. Stuck In A Hole (Single Version) [3:11]
09. Keeping Back My Love [5:14]
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 8. September 2019, 9:21
Caravan / Cunning Stunts
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:47.04 | 0 | 26028
2 | 5:47.04 | 3:10.01 | 26029 | 40279
3 | 8:57.05 | 5:05.60 | 40280 | 63214
4 | 14:02.65 | 4:35.20 | 63215 | 83859
5 | 18:38.10 | 4:01.10 | 83860 | 101944
6 | 22:39.20 | 18:00.00 | 101945 | 182944
7 | 40:39.20 | 1:10.70 | 182945 | 188264
8 | 41:50.15 | 3:10.60 | 188265 | 202574
9 | 45:01.00 | 5:14.00 | 202575 | 226124
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - Cunning Stunts.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 3.4 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC CC5FD349
Copy CRC CC5FD349
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: 0FrEQ8y8Ek_vdQsr4l6AFoTj.s4-] disk not present in database
Submit result: 0FrEQ8y8Ek_vdQsr4l6AFoTj.s4- has been uploaded
==== Log checksum FCF4228C2AE57771F398292FF3F9D3BA8829B8D6C9999A4C6BE2C9A8614A589C ====
EAC extraction logfile from 8. September 2019, 9:21
Caravan / Cunning Stunts
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:47.04 | 0 | 26028
2 | 5:47.04 | 3:10.01 | 26029 | 40279
3 | 8:57.05 | 5:05.60 | 40280 | 63214
4 | 14:02.65 | 4:35.20 | 63215 | 83859
5 | 18:38.10 | 4:01.10 | 83860 | 101944
6 | 22:39.20 | 18:00.00 | 101945 | 182944
7 | 40:39.20 | 1:10.70 | 182945 | 188264
8 | 41:50.15 | 3:10.60 | 188265 | 202574
9 | 45:01.00 | 5:14.00 | 202575 | 226124
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - Cunning Stunts.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 3.4 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC CC5FD349
Copy CRC CC5FD349
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: 0FrEQ8y8Ek_vdQsr4l6AFoTj.s4-] disk not present in database
Submit result: 0FrEQ8y8Ek_vdQsr4l6AFoTj.s4- has been uploaded
==== Log checksum FCF4228C2AE57771F398292FF3F9D3BA8829B8D6C9999A4C6BE2C9A8614A589C ====
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
Track List CD7 - Live At The Fairfield Halls, 1974 (2002):
01. Memory Lain, Hugh / Headloss [9:27]
02. Virgin On The Ridiculous [7:14]
03. Be Alright / Chance Of A Lifetime [6:38]
04. The Love In Your Eye [15:01]
05. L'Auberge Du Sanglier / A Hunting We Shall Go / Pengola / Backwards / A Hunti… [8:32]
06. The Dog, The Dog, He's At It Again [6:24]
07. For Richard [16:54]
08. Hoedown [6:00]
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 13:46
Caravan / Live At The Fairfield Halls, 1974
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 9:26.69 | 0 | 42518
2 | 9:26.69 | 7:14.30 | 42519 | 75098
3 | 16:41.24 | 6:37.46 | 75099 | 104919
4 | 23:18.70 | 15:00.73 | 104920 | 172492
5 | 38:19.68 | 8:31.39 | 172493 | 210856
6 | 46:51.32 | 6:23.73 | 210857 | 239654
7 | 53:15.30 | 16:54.28 | 239655 | 315732
8 | 70:09.58 | 6:00.32 | 315733 | 342764
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - Live At The Fairfield Halls, 1974.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 4.0 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC F218B1A0
Copy CRC F218B1A0
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: MoE35JT7CAYSXftrZMTOWEr308k-] disk not present in database
Submit result: MoE35JT7CAYSXftrZMTOWEr308k- has been uploaded
==== Log checksum FD598BD1548CE120D115F6CB9D1E42CCE41C197BB0B0320E53F1C5DC66599EAE ====
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 13:46
Caravan / Live At The Fairfield Halls, 1974
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 9:26.69 | 0 | 42518
2 | 9:26.69 | 7:14.30 | 42519 | 75098
3 | 16:41.24 | 6:37.46 | 75099 | 104919
4 | 23:18.70 | 15:00.73 | 104920 | 172492
5 | 38:19.68 | 8:31.39 | 172493 | 210856
6 | 46:51.32 | 6:23.73 | 210857 | 239654
7 | 53:15.30 | 16:54.28 | 239655 | 315732
8 | 70:09.58 | 6:00.32 | 315733 | 342764
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - Live At The Fairfield Halls, 1974.wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 4.0 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC F218B1A0
Copy CRC F218B1A0
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: MoE35JT7CAYSXftrZMTOWEr308k-] disk not present in database
Submit result: MoE35JT7CAYSXftrZMTOWEr308k- has been uploaded
==== Log checksum FD598BD1548CE120D115F6CB9D1E42CCE41C197BB0B0320E53F1C5DC66599EAE ====
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
Track List CD8 - The Show Of Our Lives: Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD1) (2007):
01. If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You [2:46]
02. Hello, Hello [3:11]
03. As I Feel I Die [6:24]
04. Love to Love You [3:12]
05. Love Song Without Flute [3:34]
06. In The Land Of Grey And Pink [3:44]
07. Nine Feet Underground [14:27]
08. Feelin' Reelin' Squealin [9:30]
09. A Huntin' We Shall Go [9:15]
10. Waffle Part One: Be All Right / Chance Of A Lifetime [6:48]
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 8. September 2019, 8:07
Caravan / The Show Of Our Lives - Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD1)
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 2:46.34 | 0 | 12483
2 | 2:46.34 | 3:11.31 | 12484 | 26839
3 | 5:57.65 | 6:24.24 | 26840 | 55663
4 | 12:22.14 | 3:12.22 | 55664 | 70085
5 | 15:34.36 | 3:33.50 | 70086 | 86110
6 | 19:08.11 | 3:44.10 | 86111 | 102920
7 | 22:52.21 | 14:27.27 | 102921 | 167972
8 | 37:19.48 | 9:30.04 | 167973 | 210726
9 | 46:49.52 | 9:15.23 | 210727 | 252374
10 | 56:05.00 | 6:48.34 | 252375 | 283008
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - The Show Of Our Lives - Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD1).wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 5.8 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 80667E89
Copy CRC 80667E89
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: lxlWcMk2CJP_oQ8bwLo7j1fD0W0-] found
Submit result: lxlWcMk2CJP_oQ8bwLo7j1fD0W0- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
10 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum 3E23A724B7F791E467EA13C9CB381D57CA34F37060FB98AEB440AB39B9E13A63 ====
EAC extraction logfile from 8. September 2019, 8:07
Caravan / The Show Of Our Lives - Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD1)
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 2:46.34 | 0 | 12483
2 | 2:46.34 | 3:11.31 | 12484 | 26839
3 | 5:57.65 | 6:24.24 | 26840 | 55663
4 | 12:22.14 | 3:12.22 | 55664 | 70085
5 | 15:34.36 | 3:33.50 | 70086 | 86110
6 | 19:08.11 | 3:44.10 | 86111 | 102920
7 | 22:52.21 | 14:27.27 | 102921 | 167972
8 | 37:19.48 | 9:30.04 | 167973 | 210726
9 | 46:49.52 | 9:15.23 | 210727 | 252374
10 | 56:05.00 | 6:48.34 | 252375 | 283008
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - The Show Of Our Lives - Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD1).wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 5.8 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 80667E89
Copy CRC 80667E89
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: lxlWcMk2CJP_oQ8bwLo7j1fD0W0-] found
Submit result: lxlWcMk2CJP_oQ8bwLo7j1fD0W0- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
10 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum 3E23A724B7F791E467EA13C9CB381D57CA34F37060FB98AEB440AB39B9E13A63 ====
Track List CD9 - The Show Of Our Lives: Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD2) (2007):
01. Memory Lain, Hugh [5:04]
02. Headloss [4:28]
03. The Love In Your Eye [13:54]
04. Mirror For The Day [4:16]
05. Virgin On The Ridiculous [7:01]
06. For Richard [15:05]
07. The Dabsong Conshirtoe [15:11]
08. Stuck In A Hole [3:14]
09. The Show Of Our Lives [4:57]
Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 21:24
Caravan / The Show Of Our Lives - Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD2)
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:04.37 | 0 | 22836
2 | 5:04.37 | 4:27.43 | 22837 | 42904
3 | 9:32.05 | 13:54.13 | 42905 | 105467
4 | 23:26.18 | 4:15.62 | 105468 | 124654
5 | 27:42.05 | 7:01.05 | 124655 | 156234
6 | 34:43.10 | 15:04.63 | 156235 | 224097
7 | 49:47.73 | 15:11.32 | 224098 | 292454
8 | 64:59.30 | 3:14.13 | 292455 | 307017
9 | 68:13.43 | 4:57.12 | 307018 | 329304
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - The Show Of Our Lives - Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD2).wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 5.7 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 7EE69ABF
Copy CRC 7EE69ABF
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: R9W_E59KRSLOtHXIVS0FvTQ._eQ-] found
Submit result: R9W_E59KRSLOtHXIVS0FvTQ._eQ- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum D6C01B22909841BDD497AA991D79BD8802CB814F8E889C7D56B8C3885AA10586 ====
EAC extraction logfile from 7. September 2019, 21:24
Caravan / The Show Of Our Lives - Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD2)
Used drive : HL-DT-STBD-RE WH16NS40 Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Wavpack\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:04.37 | 0 | 22836
2 | 5:04.37 | 4:27.43 | 22837 | 42904
3 | 9:32.05 | 13:54.13 | 42905 | 105467
4 | 23:26.18 | 4:15.62 | 105468 | 124654
5 | 27:42.05 | 7:01.05 | 124655 | 156234
6 | 34:43.10 | 15:04.63 | 156235 | 224097
7 | 49:47.73 | 15:11.32 | 224098 | 292454
8 | 64:59.30 | 3:14.13 | 292455 | 307017
9 | 68:13.43 | 4:57.12 | 307018 | 329304
Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\_NL+_\_CD\Caravan - The Show Of Our Lives - Live At The BBC 1970-1975 (CD2).wav
Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 5.7 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 7EE69ABF
Copy CRC 7EE69ABF
Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database
Track 6 not present in database
Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database
End of status report
–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6
[CTDB TOCID: R9W_E59KRSLOtHXIVS0FvTQ._eQ-] found
Submit result: R9W_E59KRSLOtHXIVS0FvTQ._eQ- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
2 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
3 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
4 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
5 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
6 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
7 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
8 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
9 | (1/1) Accurately ripped
==== Log checksum D6C01B22909841BDD497AA991D79BD8802CB814F8E889C7D56B8C3885AA10586 ====
Caravan - The Decca / Deram Years (An Anthology) 1970-1975 (2019) {9CD Box Set, Remastered}
