“Golf Girl” by Caravan
From the 1971 album In the Land of Grey and Pink
There are several versions of this video on YouTube, but this is the first one I’ve tracked down with decent video and sound — most are dreadful.
“Golf Girl” is kind of a silly song. The real masterpiece of this album is the side-long “Nine Feet Underground,” but the only versions of that on YouTube are an audio-only BBC recording from 1971 and a reunion show from 2001 without the inimitable Richard Sinclair on bass and vocals. So we’ll go with “Golf Girl.”
I saw Richard Sinclair live at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis back in the mid-’90s in what can only be described as a very unusual show. It’s a tiny venue, without A/C (at least at the time), and it was the peak of July heat. There were about 40 folding chairs set up in the middle of the room. They were mostly full for the opening act, singer-songwriter Clive Gregson. Most of the crowd (if that term is not a gross exaggeration) departed after he played. So there were about a dozen of us left by the time Richard Sinclair — alone — took the stage. And two of those twelve were disinterested friends I dragged along semi-willingly.
The show consisted of Richard (it was so informal I feel I can call him that) sitting in a chair, playing bass and singing bits and pieces of classic Caravan and Hatfield and the North tunes, breaking liberally — often in the middle of a song — to adjust his bass tuning or to take another sip of beer. Still, it was enjoyable to get so up-close and personal with a Canterbury legend. (And it was a good laugh for my companions.) The opening number was a highlight: he performed the trombone lead (played in this YouTube clip by Dave Sinclair on electric piano) vocally, in a “mouth trumpet” style, while playing the bass part as usual.
After the show, I approached Richard to sign my copy of the first Hatfield and the North album, which he happily did. As he was signing it, he lamented that the turnout had not been better. Noting the warm weather, he posited: “Maybe they’ve all gone for a swim.” Priceless.
For reasons I won’t go into, I’m thinking a lot of cryptomnesia these days, and, now that I can clearly hear all of the details of this recording, I feel like I’m observing an instance of it: the drum part Richard Coughlan is laying down during the verses here sounds a lot like what The Mars Volta would come up with years later for their great “L’Via L’Viaquez” from Frances the Mute. But any resemblance between that song and my own “Unnatural Disasters” is purely coincidental.
