[ Originally posted to What’s Rattlin’? Yahoo! Group on July 5, 2011 ]

I am not sure that criticism of art qualifies merits the dreaded adjective of “pathetic” but hey…I am totally comfortable repeating my earlier statement that while there were a few (I am thinking of only three; 5th’s All white and Drop and 6th’s Chloe and the Pirates) still listenable post Fourth offerings, my point involves the loss of musical bravery and decline from what made Soft Machine spine tingling, perspective changing inventors of new perfect music. Sure this lasted only for a span of three / four years tops, but that is not unusual and perhaps unavoidable ( Hendrix and the Beatles are perhaps proof positive) It has nothing to do with “post Robert” as I am not arguing he was even the essential component, it’s not as simplistic as that. All the live recording toward the end of his membership show that he was losing form and I am sure he was a pain, it was obvious they had to divorce for all of their sakes. It was, however, the compositional abandoning of their unique musical terroir and their commitment to new music by simply handing the reins over to the very “normal” Karl Jenkins. In their day, Soft Machine were a lot of things but they were never normal. Even John Marshall, while an excellent player, was extremely conventional.

But in the day I did listen and buy all the albums and wore them out because who wanted to listen to Wishbone Ash for God sakes, but it was not the same. There was decay and there was a falling away which to me seems inarguable. Not to see that seems almost pa – pa -path…no, I can’t say it