Hatfield and the North at Imperial College – 17 November 1972

Sadly missing the opening minutes of the performance but still clocking in at a respectable 34 minutes, this is a Holy Grail of sorts – a performance by the original line-up of Hatfield and the North, just weeks after it had changed names from Delivery following the replacement of Steve Miller by Dave Sinclair. Better still, a couple of friends make guest appearances – Lol Coxhill is heard wailing away on soprano sax during the opening “Shaving Is Boring”, and Robert Wyatt contributes Echoplexed vocals to Dave Sinclair’s “A Mewsing”, as he would again a few weeks later when Hatfield appeared on French TV’s Rockenstock programme.

On this occasion, Hatfield were appearing, along with several obscure artists, at a benefit concert for Radical Alternatives to Prison at London’s Imperial College, in what was hoped to be the first in a series of fundraising concerts for RAP.

It is interesting to note how much of Hatfield’s eventual repertoire was already in place, albeit in somewhat embryonic form, but there are also tracks destined to disappear from the setlist : Dave Sinclair’s contributions, obviously, including a prototype of Caravan’s “Watcha Gonna Tell Me” (from 1980’s The Album), but also Pip Pyle’s lovely instrumental ballad “All Day Forever”, featuring Pip himself on rhythm guitar, and “For Robert”, a cousin of “Rifferama”, the latter absorbing its chord changes but not its main theme.

Thanks to remastering artist extraordinaire TomP for making the limited original source sound as good as possible.