Album review: KEVIN AYERS/LADY JUNE/OLLIE HALSALL – The Happening Combo

KEVIN AYERS/LADY JUNE/OLLIE HALSALL - The Happening Combo

Market Square Music [Release date 22.09.17]

The news handout with this cites it quite correctly as being ‘something of a curio’. It’s not that the music involved is overly outré but that the package overall corrals up three very distinct talents whose music here is seemingly disparate.

Tracks (three from each) veer from home recordings of strummed pop songs, to eerie spoken-word nonsense poems, to quasi-metal rock-outs. Oddly, while the tone poems of Lady June synch with her period albums, ‘Linguistic Leprosy’ and ‘Hit & Myth’, guitar virtuoso and ex-Patto axe-man, Ollie Halsall is down for the gentle pop songs, while prog’s odd-ditty merchant Kevin Ayers is in full-on ‘rawk’ mode for his contributions.

Does this matter? Not a jot: the result is a very enjoyable wander though the individual and collective mind-set of these ex-pat, colonial talents as they co-existed in the mountain town of Deia in Majorca, Spain during the 1980s and ‘90s.

Halsall’s songs are acoustic numbers, probably recorded on the balcony or dining room; June’s (outtakes and ‘refreshed’ tracks from her archive) are more studio-bound, while Ayers’s capture him upbeat in a New York City studio with a top-notch line-up, including Halsall, blister their way through three then-new songs, including an affecting cover of Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay”, that didn’t the get major label pick up expected, sending the disappointed crew back to the Balearics.

Digi-packaging scores well here: Ayers’ fan club honcho Martin Wakeling and curator Marvin Siau (who also contributes his original version of Ayer’s ‘Falling Up’ album’s “Another Rolling Stone”) both write from positions of first-hand knowledgeability when it comes to contextualising this music as the sound-track to agreeable days of wine, fish and smoke, couched in hazy, hot Mediterranean afternoons, to a backdrop of cicadas.

Beguiling period photography plus more of June’s extraordinary artwork add further to establishing a storyline of three eccentric individualists on the run from the past. This beggars further investigation – watch out for the documentary!

*** for the music and an extra * for the packaging

Review by Rob Peters

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

Since early 2020 Josh has been entertaining us with exclusive monthly live sessions, streamed via Facebook.
In 2023 he signed a recording deal with Sony in Canada and released a new single on 15 September.

Next session: Sunday 1 December

Check out videos here: https://www.facebook.com/getreadytorockradio

David Randall presents a weekly show on Get Ready to ROCK! Radio, Sundays at 22:00 GMT, repeated on Mondays and Fridays), when he invites listeners to ‘Assume The Position’. The show signposts forthcoming gigs and tours and latest additions at getreadytorock.com. First broadcast on 3 November 2024.

UK Blues Broadcaster of the Year (2020 and 2021 Finalist) Pete Feenstra presents his weekly Rock & Blues Show on Tuesday at 19:00 GMT as part of a five hour blues rock marathon “Tuesday is Bluesday at GRTR!”. The show is repeated on Wednesdays at 22:00, Fridays at 20:00). This show was first broadcast 29 October 2024.

How to Listen Live?

Click the programming image at the top of the page (top right of page if using desktop)

Listen via Windows Media Player. Click or tap here and “open file”
Listen via other media player (eg. VLC) Click or tap here and “open file”

Get Ready to ROCK! Radio is also in iTunes under Internet Radio/Classic Rock
Listen in via the Tunein app and search for “Get Ready to ROCK!” and save as favourite.

More information and links at our radio website where you can listen again to shows via the presenter pages: getreadytorockradio.com

Power Plays w/c 11 November 2024

ARCANE MOON Hello Sun (indie)
S8NT ELEKTRIC XTC (Long Branch Records)
ARCANA KINGS Here We Go (Curtain Call Records)
KLOGR face The Unknown (Zeta Factory)
BEYOND UNBROKEN Dance With The Dead (FiXT)
REVENGIN Decadent Feeling (Wormholedeath)

Featured Albums w/c 11 November 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Singer Songwriter)