Play those albums loud, @ColinJ .. particularly the first two.
A friend of mine bought the third album at the time that it was released and I really liked it.
Shortly after that I remember going to a sale at a record shop in Coventry and picked up the first two Soft Machine albums for a pittance. I was expecting them to be like the third album, but of course they are
very different. At first, I was disappointed but I soon grew very fond of them.
The same friend had a recording on reel to reel tape of a fantastic concert broadcast by the BBC that Soft Machine had done after the third album. I copied that on my reel to reel and played it so many times that I almost wore through the tape! I have a feeling that it might have been
this broadcast...
I was thinking earlier that Mike Ratledge might have made a big contribution (along with other band members) to my now poor hearing... (I had too much to drink before the gig!)
The most stupid thing I did was to stagger to the stage at one gig and put my head into the flared horn of a massive bass bin while the band were playing
LOUD!
There are certain frequencies that I can't hear at at all now. I'm not talking about the usual loss of high frequencies with age - frequencies below and above which I can still hear.
