National Health- Squarer for Maud REACTION & REVIEW 

I was wondering if you were ever getting back to this album. This is a favorite track of mine. Numinous!

Ahh, National Health...I can feel my fever reducing...pulse rate, returning to normal

One of MY TOP BELOVED Prog-Fusion-Canterbury Albums of ALL TIME! The full album is a late 70's gem

Boy, oh boy… I haven’t listened to this in years and it still fills me with wonder and joy. Just incredible music! Canterbury is remarkable!!

I love anything with Dave Stewart on it... you still have my 2 favorite songs on the album coming up, Dreams Wide Awake with its amazing Dave Stewart freakout intro and Binoculars. If you can find the set National Health Complete, Dave writes the liner notes in the booklet and they are hilarious.

Love this one. This is a "comfort band" for me, when I want to just turn off my mind, relax and float downstream, and enjoy some convoluted, abstract jams.

A beauty work of art! It takes more than one listening to really hear it.

National Health are my favourite jazzy prog band, I love this album.

I guess I missed something in my life, love this!

Good job, JP! Songs/pieces like this challenge the listener, for sure. I appreciate your open-mindedness.

The great JImmy Hastings adding his magic to the brew. I've just discovered that he appears on one of Radiohead's albums, so it'll be interesting to check that out.

A lot of serious people played with National Health at one time or another...Dave Stewart(also on the Bruford solo albums), Bill Bruford, Neil Murray(played with Whitesnake, Black Sabbath, Cozy Powell, Brian May, Peter Green, Michael Schenker), Alan Gowen(Gilgamesh), Philip Miller(Matching Mole, Hatfield and the North, Short Wave. All these guys that played in this band knew all the other guys like them. They all sort of meandered here and there with other great players. It was a fertile time period for progressive music.

Afternoon, Justin. Dave from London, under Grey Skies. Enjoyed this track, which I don't think I've heard before. As you say, masses of musical ideas, and I particularly liked the quieter, mysterious sections, and the addition of cello and clarinet. Keyboardist Dave Stewart I know better from his later collaborations with singer Barbara Gaskin (from Spirogyra), and my song ref Grey Skies is from my favourite album of theirs, The Big Idea.

Their best album, and one of the best tracks off it. (God bless John Greaves. He never got to write much stuff when he was in Henry Cow.)

AT LAST, THE PIECE ! Thank you

Masterful! An extraordinary example of prog fusion. Not my favorite genre, but far from my least favorite, and truly, this sounds as good as it gets to me.

Awww, as if I'd shout at you JP 😄 A great piece, but definitely the most eclectic, and challenging one on the LP. You'll likely need a few more listens to get your head around it, so much to take in. But worth the work, and ultimately quite satisfying. Specially heard in context of the full disc. So maybe one to revisit down the line, if/when you've a spare hour to yourself 🙂

oOooh I was waiting for this day!

I've always felt this album was the perfect meld of Hatfield & the North's and Henry Cow's sounds, 2 of my all-time fave bands. This track and The Collapso the best examples of this. Who said rock is repetitive music?

I'd say your final words here sum it up nicely. There's no need to judge the song good, bad, indifferent (in any degree of those). For most people it will have "some good bits" (as Aristotle used to say), and that's enough to come back for a second visit (because the quantum of that good is beyond just "quite nice" level). There are people with the kind of depth of knowledge that allow them to validly (for themselves, since that's all you ever get) take in the whole thing in one take, and then hit their gavel and shout guilty or not guilty right away, but for the most of us, first one little part of the brain cavity needs something to at least accept to be interesting, while the rest of the cavern is left arranged in the bewildered state, and then after some digestion time, we come back, and maybe find that one of the ziggly bits or the grungley part is actually not so terrible, really. And so we reach a state of having two good bits that are gummed into the sticky walls of the brain cavity well enough for all the echoes and voices of things that are not really there, shaking, to dislodge them. So the song gets two good bits and maybe even some connection between them. So might as well come by here to visit again, at which point often the process repeats, and maybe even the jumble finds a way of pretending to make sense at some stage - and becomes not just a good bit, but The Best Bit (as Aristotle used to say, as I said before). It's one of those songs that can start out with raggedy bits of almost just noise and by slow familiarization become The Favourite Song quite often. Hey, somebody had to set it out in grisly detail like this, so it might as well be someone else. Or me. Who does that, I mean. Steps through all the details of how a not exactly prodigy has a song grow on him or her, or even one of the pets. (I had dogs who loved *Flying in a Blue Dream* . My brother had a Jack Russell in whose presence you could sneakily work the words, completely conversationally and without rhythm, "I get knocked down, but I get up again", directed to someone else, who would charge around barking his head off and stopping to howl when necessary, because he heard The Best Song on Earth, so overflowed with joy, again. So you can't leave out the pets. Animals have songs they get familiar with, too.) (Got to get all those details in.) James (that was his name) (the Jack Russell) (actually James Norman Sickofornica) also howled at the telephone, so this was probably not a musical thing as we know it. It drove them mad. Eventually they had to replace the phone with one that looked like a chicken, and clucked like a chicken when it rang. Luckily the dogs never took to that phone. Got to get all those details down. Mustn't miss anything. I could escape (from the need to get all the details down) by giving a link to a song by *The Darkness* called *It's Love Jim* - which connects tangentially to the aforegoing collection of necessary details. Probably a good idea, otherwise I'm going to go on too long. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qYfQdl1cFE8.html

The first two National Health albums are essential Canterbury and it's hard to choose which is better. The first album has beautiful vocals by Amanda Parsons and the more fluid improvisational approach of Alan Gowen's second lead keyboards. Both of them are not on this album, but the band has gotten more tight and the writing is more "charged" :-) The addition of John Greaves on bass is a big component to this success. On the "strings" you're hearing Georgie Born on cello. From what I recall Maud is a computer and Peter Blegvad wrote the spoken word section. The compositions on this album are more structured which is Stewart's preference but there is room for solos and improvisation. Always love Stewart on the organ.

Brilliant album. You might wanna check out Phil Miller's In Cahoots.

What a toe-tapper! One of my favourite gatherings of musicians. This second album is not so directly accessible as their first perhaps, but it warrants and rewards a listener's full attention. I very much enjoyed your consideration of the piece in part and whole.

Excellent reccomendation! My Health is better locally, but the National Health, well? I'm grateful to the person who suggested this to you. Peace & Love.

This, along with the Bruford track you played yesterday, is my sort of fusion - tricky melodies and time signatures that seem to veer from side to side but all point in the same direction and conclude at a very satisfying end-point. I do prefer their debut however (this is not the received wisdom which holds 'Of Queues and Cures' as the better album) mainly because of the immensely satisfying Amanda Parsons vocals which serve the band as another nutritious ingredient - Tenemos Roads from that album is their zenith, imo. btw - you're thinking of 'numerous' rather than numinous

National Health and Hatfield & The North were both brilliant bands. I only preferred Hatfield & The North because of the mighty Richard Sinclair (of Caravan & Camel) being on bass & vocals.

first time listen. despite the chaos the melodies survived the dynamics varied and my smile remained ok maybe the last two minutes were a bit OTT intensity wise. TOP top stuff Da Iawn Jfergs! Da Iawn JP!

National Health just after Bill Bruford! You are on a right track. 😊 You should try Tenemos Roads from their first album, much better composition than "Maud" imo.

One of my favorite albums ever. National Health is sadly underrated.

Gute Musik die ganze Platte 😂

I like the introduction, not the rest. Unlike Bruford's compositions, which remain fluid from start to finish, this one is too disjointed for me (not to mention the abrupt transitions).

I hope you don't get no problems with this artist, even BB had problems to get anything from NH for his own compilation. - I see too less structure in these songs. It is way to much noodling around, for my opinion. I think that BB did it much better with his own band.

I agree with the King Crimson comparison. The track had me up until the last change, then it sounded like disorganized chaos. I'm not into jazz at all, random noodling for people than can't write in a disciplined manner.