Word: robin
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This is the magical mystery world of The Incredible String Band, which is al most as exotic as its name. The band consists of two lank-haired 25-year-old Scots. Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, each of whom seems to be half child, half wizard, and all musician...
Last week, in Boston's Jordan Hall, Robin and Mike wound up a brief series of East Coast appearances designed to introduce them to their growing audience in the U.S. Festooned with colorful rugs and cluttered with instruments, the stages on which they appeared had the aura of gypsy encampments. That aura was heightened by an occasional waft of incense and by the presence of two girls known as Licorice and Rose (real names: Caroline McKechnie and Rose Simpson), who live, travel and perform with the band. Resplendent in beads, braid, silks and velvet, Robin and Mike wandered about...
...meaning of all this is often unclear, even apparently to the boys in the band. "If the songs could be explained, they wouldn't be songs," shrugs Robin. "They mean something different to everybody." Although their work suggests a blend of late Beatle and early Blake, Mike will only say about influences: "I get something out of everything, even Doris Day. New spheres of reference, ways of widening the mind -everybody finds his own path to them...
...began by teaching himself songs on the ukulele by Fats Domino and other vintage rock 'n' rollers. By the time he finished high school, he had moved on to playing guitar with "a lot of bad rock groups" while working in the daytime as an apprentice accountant. Robin, whose father is an Edinburgh insurance executive, started in music when his grandmother gave him a recorder, eventually worked up to playing banjo with a New Orleans-style jazz group...
...OTHER ACTORS are more or less monotonic. Martin L. Kessler does nothing with the part of Robin Oakapple, the would-be do-gooder in that lingering line of n'er-do-wells, the Baronets of Ruddigore. Where he should be ridiculously eager, he is listless; where he should be bottomlessly downcast, he is listless. On the other hand, John B. McKean, who plays Oakapple's foster brother, is ceaselessly, aimlessly and rather awkwardly energetic. He is always swirling, prancing and dance-stepping. His good intentions and obvious relish for the part can neither overcome nor excuse the peculiar dialect...