Flat, Baroque And Berserk [Import]

Flat, Baroque And Berserk [Import]

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Reissue of 1970 album for Harvest, one of his most successful. 12 tracks including 'Don't You Grieve', 'How Does It Feel ' and 'East of the Sun'. 1999.

Tracks:

Don't You Grieve
I Hate The White Man
Feeling All The Saturday
How Does It Feel
Goodbye
Another Day
Davey
East Of The Sun
Tom Tiddler's Ground
Francesca
Song Of The Ages
Hell's Angels

Album Description

Reissue of 1970 album for Harvest, one of his most successful. 12 tracks including 'Don't You Grieve', 'How Does It Feel ' and 'East of the Sun'. 1999.

Album Details

Reissue of 1970 Album for Harvest. One of his Most Successful.

Customer Reviews:

for all who love songwriting.......2007-07-07

If you love songs and songwriting you will love this album. Roy Harper deserves to be recognized as one of the master songwriters of the last fifty years. On this particular album, Another Day gives a perfect example of Roy's genius for telling a story with economical and vivid lyric and melody. Harper uses everyday idioms and settings -- a visit for tea, for instance, to set his characters in a solid real world, then transports us into their minds and emotions with the flick of his pen -- "I wish that I had 'cause I'm feeling so sad that I never had one of your children..." Wonderful!

The first classic.......2007-04-12

1970 found Roy Harper producing his fourth full-length LP, Flat Baroque and Berserk. It also found him cutting out the somewhat clumsy, group-oriented sounds found on Come Out Fighting Genghis Smith and Folkjokeopus and returning to the folky, acoustic sounds that typified his first album, as well as markedly focusing on the poetic lyrical heights that he was obviously capable of. As a result, Flat Baroque and Berserk is his strongest album since his debut, Sophisticated Beggar, and the first in a long line of mind-blowing classics that spanned the 1970's.

The album opens with "Don't You Grieve," a new spin on the Jesus/Judas story, told from Judas' point of view. Right away, it's obvious that Roy hasn't lost his trademark sense of humor, but where his irreverence tended to detract on earlier albums, the irony and cleverness here ties in with songs that have serious meaning--digging at religion. This occasional combination of humor and seriousness is one of Roy's trademarks, and this album is when it really starts working. Plus, "Don't You Grieve" is a pretty rocking song. Between tracks one and two is a snippet of Roy's legendary, rambling between-song banter, an essential part of this album and a glimpse into Roy's inimitable live show. Track two, "I Hate the White Man" might be Roy's most controversial song (and that's saying a lot when you talk about Roy!), a burning mini-epic that lambastes the arrogance of white culture from the inside out. In a lot of ways, "I Hate the White Man" takes up where Folkjokeopus' "McGoohan's Blues" (which saved the album and showed the dizzying heights he could reach) left off--Roy really came alive, showing his gift for breathtaking, incandescent lyrics, his skill at skewering the deluded, and an edgy use of his incomparable voice. When you hear songs like these, you start to wonder why more people don't know about Harper's music.

The first two songs are classic tunes, but through the entire rest of the album there isn't a weak track (I'll talk about "Hell's Angels" a bit later). The deceptively light "Feeling All the Saturday" juxtaposes images of Roy's infant son with images of Roy resting his "toes on the horizon"--the song was written after Roy was told by a doctor that he only had a short time to live (he was plagued by a cardiovascular disorder that was only just cured in the early 2000's and repeatedly threatened his life). "How Does it Feel" is another classic, with a soaring vocal and some great verse-to-verse rhymes. Roy's fingerstyle acoustic playing is in good form on songs like "Davey" and "Francesca," showing hints of his inimitable style and his more progressive work to come. "Tom Tiddler's Ground" is another great tune that Roy still plays live, with a mysterious lyric and a great recorder accompaniment. The song also has a classic Roy moment--when the engineer tells him the tape is "Rolling," Roy responds, "A joint? Well you better had be then, hadn't you?" The album closes with one of Roy's classic throwaways--"Hell's Angels." Until the end, it's an entirely acoustic and subtle album, until the heavy lumbering rock of "Hell's Angels" breaks the spell. It's one of the funniest album closers ever--Roy intentionally spoiling his own vibe--but it's also a potent commentary on the Angels and contains the classic line; "Free speech!! One each!!" Yet another instance of Roy paradoxically creating meaningful throwaways, and displaying an eccentricity and brilliance unmatched by any of his peers.

Overall, Flat Baroque and Berserk is one of Roy's first records that really works from start to finish (with the exception of Sophisticated Beggar), and it remains today as glittering as the day it was released. Science Friction's remaster sounds flawless. If you're just approaching Roy's music for the first time, this is a great place to start, since it's accessible, but also shows most of Roy's greatest qualities--lyrics, musicianship, wit, and voice, and hints to the out-there progressive folk territory he would soon map on his magnum opus, Stormcock.

Roy writes, plays and sings like a dream!.......2006-01-06

Over the many years that I have been listening to this album the songs have become burned into my brain. This is the sound that made me want to play the guitar! To my ears he plays like nobody else, an acoustic but attacking style which is by turns thrilling, sensitive, stirring etc. Some of the songs are beyond sublime. Tom Tiddler's Ground, Francesca, East of the Sun, How Does It Feel, Feeling all the Saturday.
You should buy it. You will not regret it.
While you are at it, buy Stormcock as well.

"Roy Harper's acoutic tour de force"!!!!!.......2004-09-28

Hello music fans!!Whatever the reason you checked in here, i fully endorse all the other reviewers have to say!Released in 1970, and still as relevant to-day, this is definitely one of Mr. Harper's most important albums-an acoustic "tour de force"!!!By now he'd recorded 3 or 4 albums & was beginning to create his amazing unique songs!With the c.d. age, i've gotta say this album just sounds WONDERFUL on compact disc!!Check out "Don't you grieve" a twist on the Judas Iscariot tale, the ever-popular "I hate the Whiteman"...all Harper fans know what an epic song this is.it was screamed for live many, many occasions in the 70's /80's ..i was there!!.."Francesca"..gee, i wish i could write a song as gentle & beautiful as this."East of the Sun".......'where our lovin' was done'.........Roy you have written some of the most beautiful,beautiful acoustic love -songs of our entire generation!!!"Folkjokeopus" has to be one of the most satisfying acoustic 'folk' albums EVER.My favourite being possibly "hOW DOES IT FEEL"?..WHAT A SONG!!A reviewer on this same site has wonderfully mentioned the fact that Roy Harper almost makes Bob Dylan seem "safe"!!!I know what he means, God bless him!!.."Folkjokeopus is an ESSENTIAL folk album of epic proportions, from a guy with one of the greatest of singer-songwriter vocals!!!-BUY!!!!!!!

Flat Out Good.......2004-04-12

a CLIFFORD HODGE* review

Caution: Don't play this one for your priest/pastor. Live cut before small audience: "...Yes,I hate the white man, and I hate the man.....who turned you all loose." Even I don't have the kind of brass pair to sing something like that. Harper has never given a ___, you know. A very good album, showing that Harper and mayber Ian Anderson stand alone in the British folk/blues/jazz genre for the ability to blend piquancy and biting wit and commentary with a sweet pathos that does not veer off course into cheap sentimentality. "Francesca" will stick in your head as a love song of almost religious depth and spirituality. It is not surprising that he is a friend and musical collaborator of Kate Bush. Not his best work, but for many, it would be. It's worth owning, and if you like British folk with a bit of an edge, you should buy it. I know CD's are costly, but I bought some of my Harper LP's mail order, and paid just as much. HE NEVER WILL BE POPULAR. He is for the few who like John Martyn, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley (that's the dead father), Phil Ochs, Steeleye Span, and more obscure British folk. If you want the best, the old stuff, you have to work at it, buy on line. Your stores don't have that kind of brass pair either, they don't even have...well, never mind.
Cliff