Music Arcades: The Incredible String Band: The Best of 1966-1970

For a decade or two, the Incredible String Band were an enigma to me. I think I may first have read about them in the early eighties when I was digging around in early King Crimson and Fairport Convention. But chances of hearing ISB on the radio, or even browsing their record covers in shops, were there none. Years later, my work colleague Doug McCallum would occasionally make reference to them with an appreciative tug of his beard. He was old and shaggy, so that just added to the mystique.

Then they reformed, and there was a big subtraction. I saw them almost exactly nine years ago, at the Sidmouth Folk Festival. Being new to their music, I wasn't quite sure if the problem lay with me or them. However, the next day, one of Coope Boyes & Simpson (there was a time when I knew which was which, but that time has passed) made a barely-veiled attack from the stage, saying that he'd witnessed one of the greatest legacies being trampled under foot. Or words to that effect.

It would have been around the same time — possibly seeking out that highly-praised legacy — that I got this compilation from Fopp. I was going to make an unfavourable comparison with the comp of fellow-Joe-Boyd-protégé Linda Thompson a couple of days ago. And it's true that this collection doesn't have the same personality or love in its optical grooves. I thought the shapelessness of the album might be the compiler's fault, so I spent yesterday listening through three of the ISB albums on We7. I was working at the same time, so impressions with this partial attention can be misleading, and you could also argue that it's daft to bite off three albums in one go. Yet I was left with the same sense of shapelessness.

This is not necessarily a slight on ISB or their music. It's becoming a recurring theme on Music Arcades: that of fine-grained music that I fail to take in with broad-brush attention. Had I got hold of Wee Tam or Hangman's Beautiful Daughter back at the same time as that first Fairport Convention album, it would doubtless have been a different story. With a fat slab of cardboard and vinyl, a lyric sheet, and only a few other albums to distract me, I'd surely have embraced every warp and weft of the oddness therein.

Since that 2001 festival performance, I saw a Williamsonless ISB play a particularly lacklustre support slot at the Royal Festival Hall. Then there was the tribute night at the Barbican a year ago. Alasdair Roberts sang Maya and My Name is Death, and in an instant it was clear that these songs were the grandparents of those on Spoils. I'll bet he spent long hours absorbing those lyric sheets.