•
Rating:
ROY HARPER - "HQ"
("When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease")
The year 1975 was the year of Roy Harper.
In those 12 months, David Gilmour called him for a vocal part on the Pink Floyd album "Wish You Were Here": Roy was entrusted with the lead vocals on "Have A Cigar". Shortly after, his eighth album "HQ" was released: almost 41 minutes of pure poetry, spread across 7 folk-rock tracks, which remains to this day his most awarded and, along with "Stormcock," his most famous work. Nevertheless, it never enjoyed great popularity (but musical injustices are endless...).
Side A opens with the more than 13 minutes of "The Game", which boasts the collaboration of artists of the caliber of David Gilmour and John Paul Jones, not exactly rookies of guitar and bass respectively: the result is excellent and very enjoyable. The second track is "The Spirit Lives", which is certainly not the best on the album, but it deserves several listens, as does "Growns Ups Are Just Silly Children".
Notable is the presence of Bill Bruford on percussion, providing a great artist's touch to all the songs except "The Game" where Steve Broughton is present. Thus ends the first part of the album, beautiful, but not exceptional.
Side B is instead a crescendo of emotions. It starts with the not-so-memorable "Referendum", but continues with the excellent love song "Forget me Not", which strongly recalls the inspired Bob Dylan and the golden times of Lennon. Then comes "Hallucinating Lights" which is pure folk, although the duration of 6:24 feels a bit excessive. The album closes with the title track (in the USA the album took this name) "When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease". Without a doubt, it is the best song among the seven and is also Harper's most famous: a striking, intimate, poetic, and moving track. There's little more to add to describe it because words would be superfluous: instead, the advice is to listen to it, as it is a must for music lovers.
This is an album that touches the heart, and Roy with his voice gives even more emotions. After all, it's the same voice that allows us to fully enjoy "Have A Cigar", even though it's sad to be remembered only for this. "HQ" had and still has little notoriety, but at least you left your mark on a masterpiece remembered by all Pink Floyd lovers.
Thank you, folk master..
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 The Game (13:42)
There's an owl in the valley fixing his prey
He's not counting the tally
It's down to what comes up before the day
And the trees in the orchard were taken from a narrow view of time
Where the minds of the tortured perpetuated patron saints of crime
Oh civilisation.
I can fit into your puzzle but it's hardly, hardly ever a hold
And I'll tell you, yeah yeah, tell you the trouble
The habits I've got are more than 10.000 years old
And we cannot sell our souls to learning morals
Big brother is no place for us to slide
We cannot live by numbers or on laurels
And hardly on how far from death we hide.
And it's not a case of rampant paranoia
But just an age I'd love to see unborn
Not that I'd be missing playing Goya
More like I feel awkward passing on
Civilisation, civilisation down to my children
Without a question.
While the prophets of freedom, battery farming brains for narrow minds
Have decided, yes they decided that meaning is far beyond the lives they left behind
As two thirds of the population dine
On scraps in shadow lengthening with time
While propaganda spreads the same old theme
You is me and we can change the game, bullshit.
Oh but how many times have we written these lines
And delivered these signs and not made it happen
Walking the tightrope of taking our head off
Losing the rhythm, idealising and all criticising
And not realising that we've changed and left and we've gone.
And sad to be leaving the things we believe in but time has a way and we fly
The next age is born and the old hands are gone and done in the wink of an eye
No point in passing bad reason good guessing, no time for massing much more than can flourish with love.
And right now, my darling, I'm lying here dreaming of feeling, no daylight between us
So wherever you are and whenever I'm there is someplace we've got to be ours
Can we right-heartedly stand in this light and see what might turn out to be crazy enough, enough to be we ?
When we've had a past sad enough to last for sometime into the future
These storms have torn and true love is alone and the past is almost a failure
Consciences burn in the programme turn, computing the social behaviour
But yoke revolts, the foundation bolts and cries for yet another saviour.
And I'd pack my things on a pair of wings and tomorrow I'd be parting
With the summer birds and the winter herds for a place to face a new heart in
But it makes no difference, where I am I'm in the game first hand
There are no certain answers and no time to understand
The rules are set to paradox, coercion and blind faith
The goal's a changing paradise, a moment out of date
The dream is righteous grandeur fit to flood the universe
The fact is more than meets the eye but less than runs the earth, running the earth.
And the prisoner of the present paces up and down inside his cell
He's the living replacement, somersaulting from this psychic well
Screaming : 'I'm the sponsor of a hell'
Voices like the sea inside a shell
Telling me I cannot stake a claim
Possession is a clue but not the game
So please leave this world as clean as when you came.
So please leave this world as clean as when you came
Please leave this world as clean as when you came
Please leave this world as clean as when you came
Please leave this world as clean as when you came.
Loading comments slowly
