I sometimes use Aphrodite's Child as an example when talking about the Book and how the landscape of music discovery has changed. The full story goes like this.
1979. I hear the song The Four Horsemen on The Friday Rock Show (probably as part of the Friday Night Connection). I make a mental note: this band sound weird in a way that my 14 year old self finds undefinably attractive.
There are no Aphrodite's Child records in the shops. There is no mention of them in the music press. I have no idea who they are, where they come from, or whether the band still exists. They are not played on the radio again. If they were, it could only be on the Friday Rock Show, and it would probably be the same song, which wouldn't help me decide whether to invest more time hunting them down.
Years pass. When I'm in London, I may flick through the As in the bigger specialist stores. If I ever saw an Aphrodite's Child record there — and I doubt I did — it would probably have been a prohibitively priced.
1981 or '82. I stumble across the double album 666 in, I think, a record library. It is weird. A tad too weird for a straight-laced Tangerine Dream fan like me. I still like The Four Horsemen, and Hic et Nunc is at least recognisable as a rock song. There's a track called ∞ on which Irene Papas pants her way through a hysterical chant, making Je T'Aime… Moi non plus sound like Play School. It was clear that this woman was being seduced/raped by the Beast — and that had a strange effect on a teenage boy. The sleeve notes said "This work was recorded under the influence of 'Sahlep'", and I wished I had some of that to aid with my Physics prep.
It was evidently based on the Book of Revelation, which was so familiar as to be cliché. Allegedly Supper's Ready is too, though I've never quite traced the connection beyond the Gog and Magog reference. But whereas Ozzy Osbourne made 666, the Number of the Beast, sound like a pantomime dame, and Iron Maiden made him sound like Dennis the Menace, Aphrodite's Child made the whole tableau feel genuinely scary, and, you know… apocalyptic.
2008. Kids today. Inside five minutes they can find and read Wikipedia pages for the band and the album. Straight off they know more than I knew even after listening to the album: that Vangelis and Demis Roussos were founders of the band; that the record label objected to ∞ as obscene, and Vangelis had to fight for its inclusion — before being edited down, Ms Papas' performance in the studio apparently lasted a full 39 minutes. Sahlep, it turns out is not an exotic narcotic, but an exotic drink with allegedly aphrodisiac qualities — not what you want for Physics prep.
It doesn't stop there. Go to Last.fm and you can listen to almost the whole album, on demand, at the click of a mouse. Almost. Not ∞, sadly. Even the gracious generosity of the internet turns out to be finite.
I bought the CD, more out of curiosity than anything else, when I found it on Amazon in 2002. I wanted to see if it still sounded out of this world. Yes and No is the answer. Its eccentricities come across as period charm rather than anything supernatural. All in all, though, the pleasant bonus is that it sounds bloody good! Ambitious, exciting; it rocks out well in a few places, and elsewhere stretches out to reach the parts other psych-prog double albums cannot reach.
Listening from downstairs Lucy was intrigued and impressed. Listening while cradled in my arms, the Boy's eyelids became hooded and his eyes rolled back in his head. I think it's just that he was tired.
 MusicBrainz entry for disc 1, disc 2Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to disc 1 in full at Last.fm, disc 2 |
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