THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND

Five or six combinations of artists in the world are in the unfortunate position of being practically journalistically indescribable. I say practically in that these artists are of such obviously high calibre that they are describable only by the use of such terms as "brilliant", "genius", "revolutionarily unique", "gods and demi-gods" and, the worst of all, "the ultimate".

Included among theses artists are Cream—Beatles—Dylan—Traffic— Incredible String Band—Ray Charles—and, possibly, Pentangle.

None of these artists will admit to being anywhere near as innovative as critics and record companies make them out to be. This leads me to the conclusion that either when you get to be that good‘ you get humble as hell, or that you don’t think you’re that great because what you’re doing is just a natural psychological evolutionary process for yourself. Whichever of these (or possibly both) is true—I am not one to complain about or dissect the situation.

However, to pluck the Incredible String Band from that list, I should like to say that they are not that good.

I mean, yes they are good. But they are not what they are said to be by the likes of

a) Richard Goldstein: