Reaction to CARDIACS. 

It's about being off sick from school watching old Lassie films in the 60s and 70s on a black and white telly in suburbia and getting bored

A very wondrous band indeed.

A bit of silliness can be a very good thing indeed. Glad you enjoyed this one, would highly recommend listening to the song Loosefish Scapegrace which I think is a masterpiece.

Cardiacs are very special, truly a unique band utterly insane but utterly beautiful and mesmerising. Been in awe of them for over 30 years when me and my friends used to watch the live film all that glitters is a mares nest almost every weekend after the pub in drunken rapture that a band could be that good

Great - glad you enjoyed- hope you enjoy them with the lyrics as well - an awesome band worthy of laudation

Ahh, lovely, such an open-minded reaction. Nice to hear you singing along, as Tim said: 'It's all just tunes'! I would recommend aomething from their classic line-up next which ran from the mid-80s to c. 1990. What you heard was a four piece band, back in the '80s they had a keyboard player, saxophonist and percussionist too. I would reccomend 'Big Ship', 'The Everso Closely Guarded Line' and maybe 'Buds and Spawn' from this era, but its pretty much all gold.

Brilliant band, love Cardiacs.

Hi, great reaction. I appreciate the fact that you didnt stop the music to made comments, I hate when that happends. I discovered cardiacs about 5 years ago and now not a day passes without me listening to their music. Such an unique band, for me all of their songs are great. Hope you continue reacting to more of their music.

Really different and original band. To get the full flavour of Cardiacs, watch the video versions of R.E.S. and Tarred and Feathered.

Don't think you'd be much helped by having access to the lyrics. 😃I have a feeling (main composer) Tim Smith wrote the music first and then just squeezed some lyrics onto it, which resulted in quite some odd stress on words at times. But glad to see you enjoyed it. This was kind of diving in at the deep end. (They were often referred to as "prog punk", though Tim tended to claim they were a psychedelic band.) I warmly suggest you to check out previous band member William D Drake (who had left the band by the time this was recorded) for a somewhat more ... pastoral version of what Cardiacs were doing.

Cardiacs are very special. Best band ever.

I think the pictures on the cover have been edited to have bigger eyes, to make them look at least in some ways, like four little boys. One that you might like from this album that has a nice fan video is *Fairy Mary Mag* (with mysterious lyrics, as usual). Here's a link to that fan video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kanAr4xIlpA.html (And then if you find that you like at least most of it, one of the next things you might enjoy is the a capella cover of the entire double album - of which there are at least some isolated tracks available, too - by a guy called David Minnick, calling himself the group, the 180-G's. It's a labour of love, and beautifully done.) It might get a bit overwhelming (because there's just so much coming at you without pause), but although it's not a theme album, there's quite a lot of coherence between the various tracks of the entire album. It's full of repeated motifs, for instance. (The crazy synthesizer "solo" in Fairy Mary Mag being one of those.) Some of it is quite harsh, but much of it is just easily appreciated as fun and beautiful. (If it's enough fun, that's a beauty all of its own, I think? So your laughing is exactly the right reaction here, for instance. It's meant not to be taken too seriously, and you've done just that. Great comments on approximately this very point in your summary.) Oh, and there are different but related projects to Cardiacs, that Tim Smith, the "leader of the starry skies" was involved in. For starters, there's the band *The Sea Nymphs* AKA Mr and Mrs Smith and Mr Drake (on account of it being a group made up of Mr and Mrs Smith, and Mr Drake), which is perhaps a bit more experimental, and "unplugged". And then there's *Spratleys Rats* (official name, now, because although they just thought "Spratley's Japs" sounded like one of those sweets you could buy out of jars at the old shops, someone pointed out it might be offensive to someone wanting take offense at it.) There's some depth beneath the stuff skittering about on the water's surface. Or maybe I should say this is a very deep well, with good water in it.

I'd like to say, I also appreciate the fact that you don't pause the music. Also, I thought I would share something I found on YT since suddenly becoming fairly obsessed with this band a couple of years ago. I think you'll enjoy the approach to audience participation in this clip, occurring immediately after they finish "Insect Hoofs On Lassie" : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fE3cehO6RrE.html (full concert with better audio below - also you get the context of the audience member poor Timmy had to put up with all through the gig, constantly making some weird animal noise) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NyN7LOwJZ5g.html

Cardiacs are basically the sort of band that God himself would listen to . . . on repeat

Wow, only uploaded 14 hours ago. Only 16 views.

johnny c, yikes, i feel like i'm having the big one!