In Cahoots – Utrecht, Tivoli – 27 September 1997
This was found on an unlabelled cassette, and on first listening to it I thought I had come across a personal Holy Grail – the recording of In Cahoots’ set supporting Caravan at London’s Astoria in 1996, my first time seeing the band – and a very strong impression they certainly made on that occasion.
Further study indicated, however, that this is actually from the following year, but another occasion on which InCa were invited by Caravan to play support, this time for two concerts organized by Jasper Smit’s CoCaCamp, Caravan’s Dutch fan-club. I was in attendance again – and later that night actually called on stage along with Jasper to receive an award in the form of a cement replica of the Blind Dog of St.Dunstans fame for my help with promoting the band, which seemed overgenerous as the Calyx website had only been in existence a little over a year.
This being a sextet gig, it was very similar to the Astoria performance (i.e. all “Parallel” material), unlike the following day’s gig which saw the début of the quartet variant of the band, with Doug Boyle sitting in (on “Above And Below”, if memory serves), as would be the case on two tracks of “Out Of The Blue”.
Caravan’s set was recorded professionally and released as a limited edition double CD by CoCaCamp, “Back On The Tracks”. In Cahoots’ set survives only as this soundboard cassette, with obvious limitations, i.e. the rather clinical sounding mix, and a certain amount of wear and tear, but it’s a welcome document as some of this music was rarely performed again.
The photo above is one I took at the Astoria, with the Caravan banner visible above the band – I can’t remember if they also had it in Utrecht, but the view of the stage was probably quite similar.
Phil Miller – guitar
Elton Dean – saxello, alto sax
Jim Dvorak – trumpet
Pete Lemer – keyboards
Fred Baker – bass
Pip Pyle – drums