Alquin – Convicts of the Air

 

 

The Rock Show was by far the hardest to compile, trying to find things that still seemed to matter 50 years after when they briefly did seem to. I've not been tempted to revisit Alquin by ordering a CD, which one still can, but with The Faust Tapes being relatively famous for its place in the history of Virgin records and as an avant garde masterpiece, if there is such a thing, it is the probably the most obscure record on this whole playlist betting without the two tracks I had a hand in writing.

It's ghostly, its use of a flute entirely in keeping with the gothic feel of Jethro Tull and Focus, amongst others. Rock music from the late 60's and into the 70's exuded this atmosphere of mystique which, like Doris Stokes and most other atmospheres of mystique, didn't stand up to much scrutiny. 

Whether it was entirely due to the accession of the UK to the European Common Market that the early 70's saw a wave of continental bands, from Can and Amon Duul to Kraftwerk and Golden Earring, or whether their foreign-ness made them seem more exotic is hard to say. I was a fan of Focus, and certainly Faust even now seem to matter but there's a lot of old pop music available to listen to and they don't get listened to at all any more.

Alcuin was also called Ealhwine, Alhwin, or Alchoin – was an English scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. Like Jethro Tull, Fotheringay, Steeleye Span and Lindisfarne, there was a niche vogue for band names that evoked the misty, distant past. Not quite as distant as Tyrannosaurus Rex but not as gratuitously odd as Spooky Tooth or Tremble the Days Behind You which, admittedly, I just made up.