Track Listing

1. Joy Of A Toy Continued
2. Town Feeling
3. Clarietta Rag
4. Girl On A Swing
5. Song For Insane Times
6. Stop This Train (Again Doing It)
7. Eleanor's Cake (Which Ate Her)
8. Lady Rachael
9. Oleh Oleh Bandu Bandong
10. All This Crazy Gift Of Time
11. Religious Experience
12. Lady Rachael
13. Soon Soon Soon
14. Religious Experience
15. Lady Rachael
16. Singing A Song In The Morning

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32559 in Music
• Released on: 2003-06-02
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording remastered, Extra tracks

CD Description
Ayers left the Soft Machine for a solo career when his basic pop leanings appeared at odds with the intense jazz/rock of his former colleagues. This album was a cult favourite at the end of the 60s for no reason other than that Ayers was well liked because he was ever so slightly mad. Take a look and listen at the content of this album: 'Song For Insane Times', 'Eleanor's Cake (Which Ate Her)' and 'Stop This Train (Again Doing It)'. Through the haze of quirkiness there is a strong light melodic feel to much of the music, and Ayers did possess a heartbreaker voice that prompted one woman to state, 'he is the sexiest man in the world'.

Customer Reviews

Eloquent Solo Debut
Despite his best efforts to avoid courting too much popularity, Kevin Ayers' emergence from the Canterbury scene first in the Wilde Flowers and then with Soft Machine is well known. Typically, he jumped ship from Soft Machine as they were taking off after a gruelling tour with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, selling his bass guitar to Mitch Mitchell and switching to guitar to write the songs that were to make up his first and finest solo album, a light, folksy, if occasionally sinister collection of songs that benefit from the arrangements and piano playing of classical composer David Bedford, who was later to join the Whole World and work on all Kevin Ayers' best albums.

Robert Wyatt drums throughout most of the album and the rest of the Softs turn up regularly, separately and together, notably on Song For Insane Times.

Kevin Ayers has been musically likened to Nick Drake and Syd Barrett but he lacks the melancholy and some of the poetic genius of Nick Drake and also the manic intensity of Syd Barrett. Happily, unlike either of them, he also could not be described as a casualty, but is distinguished by his English sensibility and winsome eccentricity, which is eloquently displayed on this atmospheric debut.

In its re-mastered form Joy Of A Toy has acquired half a dozen bonus tracks including two remixed versions of Lady Rachel, one of his strongest songs, and early versions of his first single, Singing A Song In The Morning, under the working title Religious Experience. One of these has Syd Barrett himself playing guitar, though his mental health proved counter to the task and on the final single mix we can hear that Kevin Ayers himself provided a more than passable pastiche, abetted on organ and bass by David and Richard Sinclair from Canterbury compatriots Caravan

Oh Sheer Joy!
Joy of a Toy is Kevin Ayers' masterpiece, a delightfully odd and whimsical album from a genuine English eccentric. It is also an album of rare beauty full of unexpected twists and turns. This is the sort of album we wish Syd Barrett could have made after leaving Pink Floyd. From the opener, a cheerful hum-a-long version of Ayers' Joy of a Toy (a radical reworking of the tune originally found on the first Soft Machine album), we know this is NOT going to be typical rock fare. It does not however prepare us for the strange twiddly fragile gorgeousness of Town Feeling or Song For Insane Times, which must be up there in the top 20 most beautiful recordings ever. Then there is sonic locomotive trip of Stop This Train and the simply undefinable Oleh Oleh Bandu Bandong...WOW.
This CD has 16 tracks on it but titles 1-10 (the original Joy of a Toy album) should be listen to as a unit on its own and the bonus cuts regarded as a separate listening experience. Of the bonus cuts Soon Soon Soon, sounding like something from some magnificent but very odd stage musical, is the most fun.
This is the sort of album you want to have in reserve incase you need just the thing to brighten up a dull and ordinary day at home. Magical.

Joy unconfined
Kevin Ayers belongs to that list of late 1960s musicians such as Nick Drake and Syd Barrett who retain their English accent on record. Indeed, Ayers is also one of those who largely ploughs his own furrow while betraying occasional glimpses of outside influence. Routinely described as eccentric, his debut album is aptly named as joy is the feeling that predominates, despite several mood changes. 'Joy Of A Toy Continued' sets out his manifesto with its village green carnival attitude. Both 'Town Feeling' and 'The Clarietta Rag' partly resemble John Lennon's style, the latter having a similar melody to 'Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite'. Ayers is much farther out than The Beatles, however, this being an album you might expect Sergeant Pepper to make if he met Syd Barrett on his weekend off. It abounds with pop melodies, intriguing lyrics and a powerful cocktail of innocence and mischief.

'Girl On A Swing' features a light-headed piano pattern crossed with psychedelic guitar effects. This ability to experiment with unusual arrangements is even more effective on the mock-Romantic 'Lady Rachel' and 'Stop This Train'. 'Song For Insane Times' is more conventional but the thought-provoking lyric is the star, as is the case with 'Eleanor's Cake'. Undoubtedly, the weirdest, trippiest track is the mad 'Oleh Oleh Bandu Bandong' which, if you're not careful, goes round your head for hours afterwards. The straightest track, 'All This Crazy Gift Of Time' is, significantly, the least memorable.

The bonus song, 'Singing A Song In The Morning' is, with or without Syd Barrett, the most exhilarating experience on the CD and should have been a hit. Trying to describe Ayers's music is akin to pulling the sword from the stone. Suffice to say that if you like imaginative, melodic music with a good dose of experimentation, this album is a must.