Including copies of this album by Dr Strangely Strange.
Regardless of what my other associates thought of the Incredible String Band, however, the album went over well enough for one of them to walk into our regular Saturday night venue brandishing a copy of the group’s second album on Vertigo, a label that I probably would have skipped right on by since I didn’t hold Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep and Juicy Lucy in particularly high esteem.
In fact, I didn’t regard them with any esteem at all.
So the discovery of Kip of the Serenes by Dr Strangely Strange goes down as one of those surprising strokes of serendipity that emerge from nowhere and could just as easily have slipped by without anyone raising an eyelid.
Over the years the album, along with its worthy successor, wormed its way into a prime spot in Hughesy’s pantheon of obscure and widely ignored albums, gaining sufficient prominence to ensure that I’d check every couple of months to see whether either of them had been rereleased on CD.
The second album, Heavy Petting, appeared in 2003 on a Japanese reissue label, guaranteeing Hughesy’s continued interest in locating a digital version of its predecessor.
Then, early in 2008 a message on one of the sixties-related mailing lists on the 'Net alerted me to the fact that a reunion gig the previous June had been recorded and that the recording was in circulation. Around the same time I saw a review for a new album, Halcyon Days.