This double album in all it's typical 70's gatefold glory just fell into my lap quite recently. I have to admit I had never heard of Caravan, didn't know their songs, didn't know the members of the group - nothing. They never really made it, falling into the void of 'also-rans'. No commercial singles and although they released quite a catalogue the best they did was #50 on the album charts.
Because of that, it was very strange playing the tracks all these years later. This is a compilation so some songs are over 50 years old. I've never been adverse to a bit of prog rock and I've written about it in Vinyl Vault before, bands like ELP, Magna Carta and my favourites, Curved Air (Vinyl Vault 18 Jun 2020). However, playing what is effectively brand new 50 year old prog rock is a different kettle of fish. It's strangely familiar but still unknown, potentially pretentious but at the same time you have to push aside 2021 and listen with 1970's ears. That way it is fresh and experimental and does what it says on the tin. Prog rock may be a bit of a wide brush for Caravan. Due to them being from the Canterbury area they're also termed as part of the "Canterbury Scene" which although predominantly prog rock also blended psychedelia, rock and jazz into the mix.
The two opening tracks are almost mainstream - 'If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You' and the very pleasant 'Aristocracy'. Then there's the typical slightly self-indulgent prog-rockyness of track 3 on side 1. It's an 18 minute combination of three titles - 'Can't Be Long Now / For Richard / Warlock'. If you thought that was a marathon, strap yourself in for ALL of side 2. This is a 22+ minute opus of 9 individual titles. They're spelled out on the gatefold but I've given it the short title of 'Nine Feet Underground'.
Side 3 opens with an odd bit of cheeky-chappy stuff, 'Golf Girl'. It's about cups of tea and has a trombone that is the equivalent of someone blowing raspberries while a piccolo attempts to imitate Ian Anderson's Jethro Tull flute playing.
'Hoedown' almost is.
Once again there's a 4 title combination that takes 12½ minutes to close out this side of the album, called 'The Love in Your Eye' for brevity. The last side of this double album starts with 'Memory Lain, Hugh' then drops straight into 'Headloss' with a drastic change of style and tempo, switching gears to an almost Top of the Pops foot-tapper. Not expected but a bit of light relief after the intensity ?? eccentricity ?? of some previous tracks. 'Virgin on the Ridiculous' is taken from a live show in 1973 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It's quite heavily orchestrated but still cuts into sort of 'Yes-light' breaks, as does the last track 'The Dog, The Dog, He's at it Again'. The lyrics of that last song seem blatant and obvious but I think I need to listen and re-read a few times, there could/should be a deeper meaning.
This is the 1976 pressing of the double vinyl album, not to be confused with the 1994 2-CD release of the same name. Oddly the CD version had 10 more tracks than the vinyl, but 4 of the original vinyl tracks were left off, so of the 21 tracks on the 1994 set only 7 appeared on the 1976 release. Got that ?? Good.
So that's Caravan. It took me 50 years but I got there and some of it was worth the wait.
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