Kevin Ayers / Lady June / Ollie Halsall :: “The Happening Combo” - Market Square
Thank God for Marvin Siau, known to many in the cosmic circles of the Dionysus location of Deià, a mountain range in the northern part of Mallorca, Spain as “Starvin' Marvin”. A nickname he was gratefully given by the late Kevin Ayers, “Kirwin Dear”, upon their monumental meeting at his tropical paradise of poetic perfection in the Serra de Tramuntana that famously faced the Mediterranean Sea. This is a musical duo of friendship, partnership and brotherly love you don’t hear about too often. A sonic secret of soothing sorcery and simplicity, the two immediately bonded over fishing, swimming, the constant connection to the sea and it’s cool cuisine, most notably Siau’s labor cleaning mussels and catching eel, and the simple fact that at the time Ayers was residing completely alone in his aquatic castle of musical magic and mosaic memories and while pondering on the times and moments spent in his past lives with Wilde Flowers, Soft Machine and the historical collaborations with the likes of John Cale and Nico, Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt and countless other across his four plus decades of mythical music story-telling excellence, a new decade had already approached providing a new dawn in its hopeful wake for the aging musician.
While another million miles of undressing the sun and moon till the soulful skies part and the ancient seas break across the rudimentary rocks, revealing the revelational door to fundamental freedom and personal peace, both Siau and Ayers would soon begin recording religiously throughout the early to mid 1980s until the biblical meeting of minds came together for what would eventually become infamous “The Happening Combo”. With the elemental essence from a radical pusher of the subconscious subculture of poetry, avant-garde and lifestyle in Lysergia, Lady June (June Campbell Cramer) and Ayers’ friend and collaborator, Ollie Halsall, since the tropical tonality of 1975’s “Yes We Have No Mañanas, So Get Your Mañanas Today”, the band was set in motion to conjure a cosmic community of eventful sound, musical evenings grilled in enlightenment and sophisticated salsa and the togetherness of friends and creative family. Upon the arrival of “Tubular Bells”, a savant, Mike Oldfield, arrived in a van containing a gorge of gear and recording equipment that would soon flood Ayers’ home, planting both heirloom electronic and analog seeds for the album’s percolating production.
With tracks such as Ayers’ sedative cover of Dylan’s classic “Lay Lady Lay”, originally appearing on his 1983 album “Diamond Jack And The Queen Of Pain” and the one and only original from Siau entitled “Another Time”, the bone’s of the album immediately began taking skeletal shape, but laying dormant like that of some tonal treasure secured someplace scared and soft in the foreseeable future, “The Happening Combo” wouldn’t fully come into its atmospherical avatar until many years after Siau began working with June on the blissed out track “Gemini”, and “Sea Cake” and “Fleas Dream Too”, which was originally released on her 1996 album “Hit and Myth”. Consisting of recordings that span between 1980 and 1997, the album is an exciting equation of emotions, bountiful beauty and rich history that acts as an esoteric Hors d'oeuvre and sophisticated sampler of both genre and geological mastery from a time and place carefully captured by Siau and his delightful dedication to his present moments among friends. With hardly any attention from labels at the time of its creation, most of what Halsall contributed to the album was also released on previous works, such as he and Ayers’ 1986 album “As Close As You Think” and 1992’s “Still Life With Guitars”, “The Happening Combo” recordings remained preserved on tape in Siau’s personal possession until the proper opportunity struck. By the time of the album’s collective release in 2017, the trio had already unfortunately passed, Ayers being the last of the three in 2013, and even though they never got the chance to see or hear the project’s final departure into the eager ears of fans both new and old, the music they meticulously manifested is set in stationary stone for all eternity until their spiritual arrival back to the fundamental flesh realm at any given moment.
