{"id":19180,"date":"2020-07-27T05:30:50","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T09:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=19180"},"modified":"2020-07-14T11:40:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T15:40:00","slug":"album-review-soft-machine-live-at-the-baked-potato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/07\/27\/album-review-soft-machine-live-at-the-baked-potato\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Soft Machine \u2013 Live at the Baked Potato"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-19181\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/soft_machine_baked_potato.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/soft_machine_baked_potato.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/soft_machine_baked_potato-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/soft_machine_baked_potato-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>The original Soft Machine was a kind of jazz answer to Pink Floyd. Contemporaries of Syd Barrett\u2019s group, they often showed up on the bill with his band. But because the Canterbury group was grounded in jazz \u2013 albeit with a rock sensibility \u2013 it was destined to remain well outside the commercial sphere in which the Floyd would flourish.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s more than a half century later now, and none of the original members remain with the group. For several years, an aggregation made up mostly of key mid-70s-and-beyond members toured and recorded as Soft Machine Legacy, and now they\u2019ve dispensed with the \u201cLegacy\u201d tag and reverted to the old name.<\/p>\n<p>Far more importantly, they earn the right to use it. The current lineup John Etheridge, Roy Babbington and John Marshall have decades with the group, and Theo Travis established his bona fides on his own. On this new live album, the band tackles early Soft Machine material with skill, energy and finesse. Right out of the gate, they nail \u201cOut-Bloody-Rageous\u201d from the old lineup\u2019s monumental <i>Third<\/i> double LP. The new material \u2013 not to mention the fact that this Soft Machine has a guitarist (Etheridge) \u2013 meshes seamlessly with the vintage pieces.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s no end of bands trading on the glories of past lineups. Soft Machine stands apart and above such outfits; as <i>Live at the Baked Potato<\/i> makes plain, this lineup deserves to call itself Soft Machine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The original Soft Machine was a kind of jazz answer to Pink Floyd. Contemporaries of Syd Barrett\u2019s group, they often showed up on the bill with his band. But because [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,49,62,65],"tags":[1994,1995],"class_list":["post-19180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-soft-machine","tag-soft-machine-legacy","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19182,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19180\/revisions\/19182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}