Cherry Red Records QECLEC102888

Tonight’s entertainment is a monumental 10 disc box set of the enigmatic, hard to pin down Kevin Ayers. If you’re unfamiliar, imagine if Nick Drake had suddenly developed a taste for expensive wine and women and decided to strap on a electric guitar, dye his hair blonde and ‘wig out’.

He’s just one of those artists I keep coming back to and find myself enjoying more and more, and this box set is a ridiculous treasure chest of delights including a nicely illustrated 68 page book which puts him in more context – a child of parents who regarded him as an inconvenience- shipped between Malaya (where he wondered free and happy in the sunshine playing alone) and various English public schools (which he hated because he couldn’t) eventually fetched up in Canterbury where this outsider and loner finds his tribe – he meets Robert Wyatt, Daevid Allen and other fellow counter-cultural travellers and people who indulge him (probably more than is good for him – naughty Kevin!).

We’re left with the curious, quirky and inconsistent collection of songs which reflect an increasingly unknowable and undocumented early 70s scene and become more beguiling as a result because you’re left to navigate this collection and figure out what was going on for yourself. What’s in the box? All the studio albums from ‘Joy of a Toy’ to the (none-more-1970s) ‘Bananamour’ all remastered with extra tracks – plus a wodge of decent quality live recordings, John Peel sessions and more. The live material, far from being padding, tells a whole different story about what a truly stellar live performer Kevin could be – joined by a changing line up including the aforementioned Wyatt, Mike Oldfield and the brilliantly mean looking Sax mangler, Lox Coxhill. Inevitably across this collection there is some repetition, although you can never have too many versions of Kevin’s accidental take on Kosmiche Musik ‘We Did It Again’.

As the next tedious 90s Britpop revival kicks in, I’d rather be with Kevin in 1970 thanks – take it away Mr Ayers: