In Cahoots Le Dunois Paris 29 April 1984
“Merci d’être venus en France!” (“thanks for coming to France”), a member of the audience is heard saying to the band as they enter the stage. Indeed it had been a few years since either Phil Miller (with National Health) or Richard Sinclair (with Camel) had been seen on a French stage when they played at Paris’ Dunois venue as part of In Cahoots’ debut European tour. Pip Pyle and Elton Dean, on the other hand, had visited the venue with Soft Heap. For Elton this would prove a personal turning point as Didier Malherbe was in attendance, sitting in with the band on “Eastern Region”, and Didier’s wife Christine had brought along a friend, Marie-Noëlle Sala, whom Elton would later marry, the start of many years commuting from Paris to London (I met him by chance at the Eurostar lounge in Paris in 1999 on one of these commutes). In an interesting parallel, on the previous gig in Lillers Pip had met Sophia Domancich, then a member of Anaïd alongside Patrice Meyer, another whole set of lasting personal and musical connections. Back to the Dunois concert, this is a composite of two distinct audience recordings, one provided by long-time collector Philippe Renaud, and another by Pierre Paturle, who sent it to me back in 2000 and takes over where Philippe’s source stops, six minutes into “Speaking To Lydia”. Other sources exist including a partial soundboard source and even video of some of the performance (included here is a long excerpt from “Nowadays A Silhouette”). I have also included some very nice photos taken by Christian Dautancourt. It’s great to have a complete recording of this strong and copious performance, including several pieces whose available studio recordings are very different arrangements.
Phil Miller – guitar
Elton Dean – alto sax, saxello
Peter Lemer – keyboards
Richard Sinclair – bass
Pip Pyle – drums
Didier Malherbe – piccolo flute on “Eastern Region”
