I'm sure I won't be anywhere near as eloquent as I was yesterday but here goes.
I started out by saying that the pursuit of perfectionism is the single reason why so many things in life never get done. The first entry in this blog ends with a question and although I haven't posted much yet, I didn't want to answer the question until I had the opportunity to revisit the song the lyrics from whence the question came.
I went on to say that I only have that particular track on vinyl and my record collection, which spent most of its life in nice shelving units arranged alphabetically by genre, band and year released, now resides in various boxes and crates in my new house. The house isn't new, just newly purchased. Well... newly purchased two years ago.
I wanted to wait until I got all of the scraping, sanding and painting done before I broke out my records, CDs, books etc... but it didn't work out that way. There goes that perfectionism again.
Someone should do a dissertation on the relationship between perfectionism and procrastination if it hasn't already been done.
Anyway, back to the quote. "This moment is like no other moment" is from a song called, you guessed it, This Moment. It was recorded by a trio of Scotsman called The Incredible String Band. Actually, by the time that particular track came out the trio was reduced to a duo but then expanded again by the duos respective girlfriends into a quartet.
The Incredible String Band, in all its various permutations, existed from 1967 to 1974 and yes, they were incredible. Consisting of Mike Heron (guitar, piano, organ, sitar) Robin Williamson (guitar, mandolin, fiddle, flute, bowed gimbri) and Clive Palmer (banjo, guitar) for the first LP anyway, The ISB had even the Beatles and The Rolling Stones listening to them with envious ears at one point for the sheer originality and uniqueness of their songcraft. Heron and Williamson, both multi instrumentalists, wrote some of the most beautiful and mischievous songs of the 60's and early 70's blending blues, folk, traditional English and Irish with traditional Afghani and Indian motifs to come up with some of the most inventive music ever recorded under the folk/rock mantle to date.
There's another side to that coin however. Isn't there always?
When you've got a couple of guys who are that willing to stretch and take chances you naturally get some chaff along with the wheat, so be careful if you decide to seek them out and purchase a disc or two. I'm not sure how much of their material has been released on CD, especially in the U.S.A. I'm sure more of their cataloge is available in the U.K. If you can find them on a file sharing site somewhere look for an LP entitled 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, which contains such ISB classics as The First Girl I Loved, Hedgehog Song, Painting Box and Chinese White.
The Incredibles made a lot of wonderfully inventive and unforgettable music but for the average music listener, even those of you who consider yourselves adventurous, I'd have to say they are an acquired taste. Well worth the acquiring but you've got to start in the right place.