“Beautiful as the Moon, Terrible as an Army with Banners” by Henry Cow
From the 1976 album Concerts

Even though I’ve indulged (and I think in retrospect that’s the appropriate term) in my fair share of free-form avant garde improvisation in my time, I’ve never been a huge fan of listening to this kind of music by others, whether it be from a band that occasionally dabbles in it, like National Health, or one that does nothing but, like AMM. The only band that I’ve ever really thought did free-form right was the mid-’70s lineup of King Crimson.

I think of Henry Cow in much the same way as National Health. Both bands worked in both free-form and composed contexts, though Henry Cow’s compositions were much more challenging (to the listener, if not to the performers) than those of National Health. But in both cases, I find their composed work much stronger than their improv.

I would really prefer to link to a composed track from Henry Cow’s legendary masterpiece The Leg End, like “Teenbeat” or “Nirvana for Mice,” but unfortunately the only clips of those tracks I can find on YouTube are the album versions set to still images. (I wish it were possible to make YouTube automatically exclude any of those types of “videos” from search results.) As it is, the only actual live video of the band I’ve found so far is this clip from their later collaboration with Slapp Happy, where they went all-out with the crazy improv, including the worse-than-nails-on-a-chalkboard vocal screeches of Dagmar Krause. Still, it’s a chance to see these incredibly talented and brazenly adventurous musicians in action, so it’s worth enduring the less pleasant aspects. That’s what rock in opposition (RIO) is all about anyway!