The Montreal Star Wednesday November 26 1969

Overwhelming display of musical sound

By Juan Rodriguez

The good vibes were in force last night at Place des Arts. The Incredible String Band were the generals and an unexpectedly large crowd of troopers went into ecstasy.

Actually I should start with an admission. The ISB plays very personal music and one has to be on their wavelength to fully enjoy it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t on their wavelength and, thus, didn’t receive their signals, so to speak.

Mike Heron and Robin Williamson are obviously very adept at playing a wide variety of instruments. Some of the ones used last night included: sitar, piano, electric guitar, amplified bass, recorder, guitar, fiddle, organ, flute, wah-wah peddle, mandolin, slide whistle and the proverbial myriad of percussion instruments. The sounds were exotic, sure enough, and there was a lot of it floating around the stage. They are entirely pleasant people, full of hope and love and beauty and things like that, and they sing, basically, of their experiences with the wonders of this and any other world. Gee, it’s great to be alive was the message I was struck with and, yessir, I concur.

Nevertheless, it was the music I came to hear and I was not impressed, despite the overwhelming display of musical sounds.

In a word it was sloppy. Self-indulgent. They evidently feel a lot of feelings, but they betrayed them, in my view, at least by countless amateurisms. Simply, the singing was pretty awful, whiny uncontrolled, bereft of any sense of drama, timing and pace.

They overloaded their songs with words, musical notes and gimmicks and with ridiculously overstated vocal technique. Or lack of technique. They state the obvious, which is fine in its way, but they do not make it worthwhile hearing because they drown these simple, everyday revelations with a posture that dictates: “look here, this is the inner light” for, to quote quite a gushy line, “I swear you have the power as the angels do.” Good music usually communicates age-old feelings in a new mode; in this way they are believable. The Incredible String Band pluck and strain away, taking themselves and their thoughts – far too seriously to be believed.

But, I ask myself, who can put down love which is the feeling they radiated throughout their recital? Still, they reminded me of Donovan in their namby-pamby approach.

Soon boredom set in. Frankly, I don’t think it was too sporting of them to subject their audience to about seven minutes of tuning up and moving about between practically every song. The balance and tone of the sound system was not good either. In some parts of Salle Wilfred Pelleber the tonal quality of the sound was murder on the ears.

Overall, it was the total lack of economy and tight structure that switched me off. They sang whatever came into their heads but it quickly became all too repetitive. To me, they were waxing the floor over and over again.