A man with two heads is very unique

Everybody is unique but some people are more unique than others. At the danger of being labelled an oxymoron I wish to pay brief homage to the totally unknown pop act that is John Greaves and Peter Blegvad. John is a bassist and pianist who has played with Henry Cow and National Health and has an unhealthy obsession with the French poet Paul Verlaine. Peter is a wordsmith and cartoonist (the Independent's Leviathan) who also doubles as a musician and has performed as part of Slapp Happy. Their two headed collaborative album Kew.Rhone is a classic and thankfully impossible to categorise. You could write a book about it - with contributions from Jonathan Coe, Carla Bley and Robert Wyatt - and you would know a great deal more about palindromes, numinosity, proverbs and even perverbs so Peter Blegvad has done just that. Like this painting 'Exhuming the First American Mastodon' by CW Peale you would get to dig (ie understand and appreciate) a little more about the author and his chum but it would still leave you with a poetically playful sense of awe and wonder at how such a beast could have lived and now go unrecognised.

From Rock Bottom to a Knight at the Comicopera

Authorised biographies are compromises - between the writer and the subject, between image and perception, between falsehood and reality. Fortunately Robert Wyatt has been found, and had his beans spilled by, a sympathetic but unsentimental fan (Grasscut man Marcus O'Dair) who is equally interested in the musician, the political observer and the human being. 

It is Robert's pure mischievous childlike originality and his melancholic vulnerability that come across so strongly in this book and, perhaps overdue, the creative symbiosis he has enjoyed with his partner Alfreda Benge. In some ways I would have liked the book to be have named after both of them and included Alfie's childhood and more of her work. Robert is a collaborator who gives generously and it is the musical 'Guest Spot' obscurities in the discography that delight over and above the phenomenal solo work and his key role in Soft Machine and Matching Mole - go stream!

That this unique productive life could have been prematurely interrupted many times is a salutary lesson to us all to value the people who dare to do different. I'm not going to use the phrase national treasure because Wyatt is completely international and stubbornly flawed ...and that is what makes his singular voice so authentic and precious.