One of the great things about the University Library in Cambridge, and its claim to have everything ever published in the UK, was the way you could exploit this outside term time when you had a little more time on your hands. It was during the holidays that I secured copies of Robert Fripp's articles in long-forgotten music technology magazines, and where I first got hold of Nat Hentoff's amazing Playboy interview with Bob Dylan. There were, however, a couple of things I was unable to find there. One was Laurie Anderson's U.S.A. book. I've never been able to track that down. Another was Paramhansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, as mentioned in Jon Anderson's sleevenotes as one of the inspirations for Tales from the Topographic Ocean. (I think I may have been searching for Paramhansa Yoganda on the microfiche, which probably didn't help.)
Since Google took over from modest enterprises like the University Library, I managed, in an idle moment, to track Yogananda down. The full text of Autobiography of a Yogi is available online, but, as it's long, I ordered a print copy. I took it on holiday to Tunisia when we went there a couple of years ago, and got as far as page 186 of 575 before I gave up. Then I checked back on those sleevenotes and read,
I had a few moments to myself in the hotel room before the evening concert, leafing through Paramhansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. I got caught up in the lengthy footnote on page 83. It described the four part shastric scriptures which cover all aspects of religion and social life as well as fields like medicine and music, art and architecture. For some time I had been searching for a theme for a large scale composition…
"Leafing through"? The bugger didn't even read the book from the beginning! Here's that all-important footnote: read it and feel the enlightenment.
As for the "large scale compositions", there may be four side-long tracks on this record, but it's pretty clear that by and large they comprise four- and five-minute sections that are joined up by complex time-signature changes, instead of either 'blank' vinyl (as was the fashion prior to the '70s) or skits and studio mix segues (as was the fashion after the '70s). Robert Fripp's been contemplating 20-minute compositions as well recently.
This album has many good moments, but to me the production has always sounded incredibly muddy. It occurs to me, a quarter of a century after I bought the record, that this may not be a feature of the original recording but just of my pressing. I've never heard the album in any form other than my own vinyl copy (where would I hear it? Topographic Oceans is as close as you get to a banned recording in a western democracy), so it could be that I've been labouring with a duff copy all this time. [Update, 22 December 2008: I've now had a chance to listen to the remastered version in full at We7 and it's certainly better; however, I reckon it was probably all the vinyl copies, and possibly the initial CD release, that were affected by the muddiness.]
 MusicBrainz entry for disc 1disc 2 |
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