0318. Robert Wyatt
Shleep
Robert Wyatt started off back in the sixties as part of the jazz / avant garde and continued into the progressive scene with Soft Machine until he, in a drunken stupor, fell out of a fourth floor window and broke his back.
This album, though, starts off by giving me a smack upside the head. Cause as I was expecting a tired old prog rocker's last attempt at making it I get a vital, albeit broken-voiced, elderly musician who, in Heaps Of Shleeps, crate a little bit of musical mastery.
But then Schleep starts to falter and stumble as Wyatt's progressive vein starts to pulsate and demand jazz and other styles that in these versions just don't do it for me.
It still has a couple of things going for it though:
The homage to or pastiche of Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues called Blues In Bob Minor - I can't decide on which, but the pseudo-rap is at least an attempt to reproduce the sound of Bob's song - is a kinda cool thing and the title of the last track is probably the best I've ever read: The Whole Point Of No Return.