Radical thinkers: The Incredible String Band, 1969 (from left) Licorice McKechnie, Mike Heron, Robin Williamson, Rose Simpson.
“WHEN GEOFF Travis and Jeannette Lee from Rough Trade said they wanted to put together the box set,” Incredible String Band singer and instrumentalist Mike Heron tells MOJO, “I was genuinely moved, and I don’t say this lightly, that there was a record label led by people who still cared about the songs Robin and I wrote back in the ’60s.”
And so the serpentine progress of The Incredible String Band – a group rated by Robert Plant, McCartney and Dylan among others – goes on. An unquantifiable, acoustic facet of the psychedelic underground, wondrous strange albums such as The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion and Wee Tam & The Big Huge remain recommended both for those who mislaid their memories of the ’60s and those who weren’t there but wish they had been, and continue to pulsate with a peerless aquarian glow. Next summer the Rough Trade label collects their first five, 1966-69 albums, and add a contemporaneous live recording, radio sessions and a handsome booklet, plus other yet-to-be-revealed extras.