Penguin Cafe Orchestra: A Brief History

In the sleeve notes to this compilation, Arthur Jeffes, son of Simon Jeffes, writes of "drifting through seemingly endless (to a 5 year old) concerts". Somewhere I have a photo of Simon Jeffes and his children, taken on the beach at Mersea Island, just after the Penguin Cafe Orchestra's performance there at WOMAD 1985, when Arthur would have been about 5 years old. That was a bit of an invasion of privacy, but, in my defence, I think it's the only time I've snapped a star surreptitiously.

It was a couple of years ago that I decided that I had to have everything the PCO had ever done, even compilations like this that feature only pieces that I already have on other albums. There aren't many cases where I get suckered into parting with cash on the basis of promised enhancements from remastering, but for the PCO nothing is too much.

Arthur Jeffes continues,

The music of the PCO will I am sure continue to develop, be picked up by others, played, listened to in any number of permutations, and enjoyed. As long as it stays out there being tweaked, rearranged and played by both musicians and non- alike then it is still alive and this new series is another contribution to this process.

At lunchtime I heard a PCO track introducing Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz— infuriatingly it took me ages to identify which track it was: it's Scherzo and Trio (not included on this album). Without tweaks or rearrangements, but it's a joy that it's still out there.

Jeffes Jr concludes: "music for aesthetes, and for kids." And that, I think, nails much of its appeal. I like it because I like the formal systems compositions of Steve Reich, I like plaintive old folk tunes, and I like just jumping about or tapping my toes to music.

MusicBrainz entry for this album

Comments

[Mark]

Hi, I too am a big fan of PCO. I have the 4-cd History collection. I am particularly interested to learn about the location of the photo on the cover of Brief History. I guess it is somewhere in central eastern Europe; somewhere between Bohemia and Transylvania. But I could be wrong. Any ideas?

[David]

Mark, Wow! That's an interesting question, but I confess I haven't a clue. There aren't enough indicators in the photo, I think, to be able to locate it from that alone -- I suspect you'd have to ask one of the people involved in putting the collection together, possibly via the email address provided at http://www.penguincafe.com/home.htm