Wee Tam / Big Huge

Artist: Incredible String Band
Label: Collector's Choice
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2

UPC: 617742029024
EAN: 0617742029024
ASIN: B00006BC50

Release Date: 2002-09-10

Related Categories:

British Folk

| Traditional British & Celtic Folk | Folk | Styles | Music

General

| Folk | Styles | Music

General

| Pop | Styles | Music

General

| Rock | Styles | Music

Pop Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

Audio & Video

| Categories | Electronics

Listmania:

Overlooked Great 70's Prog-Rock
Sixties Takeaways

Tracks:

Job's Tears
Puppies
Beyond The See
The Yellow Snake
Log Cabin Home In The Sky
You Get Brighter
The Half-Remarkable Question
Air
Ducks On A Pond

Tracks:

Maya
Greatest Friend
The Son Of Noah's Brother
Lordly Nightshade
The Mountain Of God
Cousin Caterpillar
The Iron Stone
Douglas Traherne Harding
The Circle Is Unbroken

Similar Items:

5000 Spirits / Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
Changing Horses / I Looked Up
U
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending/Liquid Acrobat as Regards the Air

Customer Reviews:

SOME OF ISB'S BEST MADE BETTER STILL.......2006-08-05

While the remastering is expert and reveals even more of the human warmth of this work, it's difficult to write about the music of Robin Williamson and Mike Heron for the simple reason that they pretty much created their own genre. Who will we compare to the Incredible String Band? The sources and reference points of and in their music are many and widespread. Typically filed under "FOLK", the music of The Incredible String Band was and is much more. A few years after the band broke up, Robin wrote of his interest in creating a "fusion" of different musical cultures, traditions and styles. Seen from this perspective, "Wee Tam / Big Huge" must be one of the first fully-realized examples of that fusion.

In a seemingly simple, quiet framework, ISB delivers a dazzling array of ideas about music and about humankind and our perceptions of the worlds in and around us -- what are we and what we are -- with diverse and complete musical authority. How else could you possibly pull off a song titled "Puppies" without being accused of creating kitsch? This is profoundly ambitious stuff. "Wee Tam / Big Huge" allows us to witness nothing less than the patchwork creation of a being in "Maya" who is comprised of the many archetypes of the human race: "businessmen his nervous system, no-hustle men his stomach" and, my personal favorite, "opinions are his fingernails". Here, as throughout this record, small metaphors create greater metaphors, leading to saturated meanings. Throughout, the lyrical content matches the musical innovation. Always poetic and illuminating, I'd question the typical "psychedelic" conclusion: this stuff is too aware and well worked out. Remember: "At bath time the hippies, in chains, they are crossing the hall..."

As a contrast to the long and almost tone-poem-like pieces such as "Maya" and "Job's Tears" and rollicking fiddle tunes like "Log Cabin Home", there are a pair of very short, haiku-like pieces that are as pure as they are beautiful. "Son of Noah's Brother" and the more remarkable, myth-imbued "Yellow Snake" demonstrate that condensed and concise poetry can be as powerful as the more elaborate and extended work.

There is also a sense of the sacred throughout, from the every day in "Air" and the wonderfully inventive "Duck's on a Pond" to the collage of religious and literary phrases that comprise the lyrics of "The Mountain of God". Through a rich mix of musical and cultural ideas, "Wee Tam / Big Huge" makes the monumental accessible, and the miniature profound without ever resorting to cloying sentimentality, cliche or the dead ends of blind faith. This is music of approachable, constant and everyday beauty. Music as easy to love today as it was when the world was new.

TISB-Wee Tam/Big Huge.......2006-02-22

The other reviews correctly describe the richness and beauty of these albums. Mystical yet fun, fascinating musical concepts, still fresh after so many years. Highest rating...BUT...while wonderful on the ears, terrible on the eyes. Bad job on the lyrics insert, which are truly microscopic to the point of being unreadable. I'm lucky to have the original vinyl for reading. Otherwise, get a high-powered microscope. Still, a gorgeous recording, as are all their early releases.

Wee Tam and the Big Huge.......2005-08-10

I had not heard this for thirty years. Many of the songs have stayed with me. The best recordings they ever did - before they got too self conscious. Still a classic - modern bands are just too cautious. They all want to be cool.

The ISB at their very, very best in this SINGLE album.......2005-06-03

`The Big Huge' and the `Wee Tam' are nominally two different albums by The Incredible String Band (TISB) when actually; they were released simultaneously in 1968 as if they were a double album where you could buy the two disks independently. The sense with which the two titles can be combined as `The Big Huge Wee Tam' is one small sign of how these two albums were always supposed to be seen as a single work, in much the same way as Dylan's `Blond on Blond' and the Beatles' `white album' are two phonographs in a single album.

It is due to this title combination that I always considered `The Big Huge' as the first of the two recordings. The second reason is because the first cut on this album, Williamson's `Maya' so completely captures the style and spirit of both albums. It also clearly connects TISB with the style of Donovan Leitch as exemplified in his song `Atlantis'. There must be some name for this kind of song in song writing circles, and I wish I knew it, as it is so distinctive in construction. Basically, it enumerates between eight and twelve things, generally people, in a group where each type serves a particular person or fits a role in the whole. The simplest example of such a song might be the `Do-Re-Mi Song' from `The Sound of Music'. Both `Maya' and `Atlantis' are much more complicated, but fit the same basic pattern.

`Maya' is doubly interesting in that it is almost certainly based on the famous illustration on the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes' great work `Leviathan' on political philosophy, where the head of the sovereign sits on a body composed of smaller bodies.

This pair of albums may have been the high point of the TISB recording career. At the very least, together with `The 5000 Spirits or The Layers of the Onion' and `The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter', it created a body of work which at the very least insured the durability of the groups modest popularity well into the 21st century. And, I believe it is the last set of recordings they did in the style of original writing they established in `5000 Spirits...' With their next works, I detect definite changes in style and more independence from Mike Heron, as he released a solo album around this time.

I made the observation in a review of `The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter' that many of the songs can be heard as evening entertainment for children on their way to bed. I can strengthen this analogy with this album with the references to Tolkien's fiction in one or two of these songs. Add to this references to A. A. Milne's `Winnie the Pooh' and songs about caterpillars and I rest my case. Very few of their songs relate to that most favorite song subject, romantic love. Much more time is spent on adventure, discovery, tall tales, and nonsense rhymes.

For those of you who may be coming to TISB from encounters with Fairport Convention and The Pentangle, I suggest that TISB is the gold standard of original writing based on Celtic and other world folk traditions. Fairport Convention, especially Sandy Denny may have written some great songs and Jansch and Renbourn of `The Pentangle' are probably greater instrumentalists, but TISB conveys a folkish charm that is truer to the great 1960's counterculture spirit than any other band.

A High Water Mark of the ISB.......2003-12-16

This is a magical album (and yes, it is one album, as a reviewer below noted). There are songs here which feel simultaneously ancient and totally innovative, achingly beautiful and unfathomably mysterious -- at this moment I am thinking of the songs "The Circle is Unbroken" and "The Iron Stone." But really everything here is amazing. This is one of those albums where you feel that the artists were stretching every nerve and muscle, reaching out beyond themselves to grasp something which they had glimpsed. A masterpiece is made when they succeed, and that's what happened here. And the beauty is not just conceptual. Sure, these guys were picking up a bewildering variety of instruments they had never learned how to play, but they pull it off; it all works. And Williamson's voice... a careless listener will think he's just tunelessly jibbering sometimes, but he's not, he's not... His voice glides and modulates all over the place, always exactly where he wants it to be. This work was really a transcendent, watershed event. For myself, I find it has an intensity unrivalled by any of the Incredibles' other albums, though "U" and "5000 Spirits" and "Hangman's" are all essential listening as well. But this is really something special.

Music CD:

Music CD

Stand Proud V.2 ~ Naoto Shibata

Kyoufuno Restaurant ~ Seikima-II

The Very Best of Martin Denny ~ Martin Denny

Helder & Live Bonus CD ~ Blof

Cristina D'avena E I Tuoi Amici in TV V.16 ~ Cristina D'avena

Natural ~ Jobam

Guitar Freaks 9th Mix & Drummania 8th Mix ~ Game Music

Carolan's Cottage ~ Joemy Wilson