12. Soft MachineThe Soft Machine

Like Can, in my early years of collecting I could not find the decent Soft Machine LPs, just the rubbishy mid- to late 70s fusion ones when Mike Ratledge just gave up. Finally one day the first album and Vol. 2 appeared in a charity shop for 50p about 15 years ago when I gave up on The Heads for a bit and Hugo and Wayne were rehearsing with Jim from Thee Hypnotics. Anyway I played this LP to death. The thing that stood out for me was Mike Ratledge and his frantic but well-schooled fuzz organ freak-outs. I remember some old hippy telling me about a Soft Machine gig he went to and he mentioned how brutal the organ was.