Back in the days before the
Cuneiform and
Voiceprint labels began issuing a host of archival
Soft Machine music (including reasonably well-recorded live sets from the so-called "classic" period of the band), bootleg tapes -- often live audience recordings of poor quality -- circulated widely among
Softs fans. One of those tapes was a mysterious "lost studio album" called
Rubber Riff, and fans might be forgiven for enthusiastically seeking out a tape of this session, or at least displaying healthy curiosity about why
Soft Machine would record an entire studio LP that would then sit on the shelf, hidden well away from public ears. Granted, the recording was made by a
Soft Machine lineup from the group's mid-'70s "fusion" period, a band that practically no one viewed as "classic." Nevertheless, keyboardist/composer
Karl Jenkins, drummer
John Marshall, bassist
Roy Babbington, and guitarist
John Etheridge had proven themselves capable of kicking out a reasonably solid and occasionally even exciting jazz-rock/fusion effort,
Softs, during the same early-1976 time frame that
Rubber Riff was recorded, even if the last original
Soft Machine member, keyboardist
Mike Ratledge, had departed the band for good and was relegated to "guest" status on that LP. So no one was expecting
Rubber Riff to be another
Third or
Fourth, but another
Bundles or
Softs might not be out of the question.
Well, sorry folks, but those who managed to acquire a bootleg tape of
Rubber Riff soon learned that the album was quite a different animal than even
Bundles or
Softs. As author
Graham Bennett points out in his
Soft Machine biography Out-Bloody-Rageous, at the time of its recording
Rubber Riff was not intended to be a
Soft Machine release, despite featuring basically the same lineup as
Softs (with overdubs from flutist
Ray Warleigh added after the principal session had been completed). Rather,
Rubber Riff is an album of "library music," 14 instrumental tracks averaging two to three minutes in length and intended to serve as a pleasant and unobtrusive background for various broadcast purposes. As drummer
Marshall says in the book,
Karl Jenkins was looking toward his own future as a composer, and the
Rubber Riff session was a helpful step for
Jenkins in "getting his jingle assignments." That's not to say that the music isn't sometimes energetic, catchy, atmospheric, and even memorable -- although memorable as in the type of tune you'd like to force out of your head to make room for something more substantial. At least you can say that, in releasing
Rubber Riff as a
Soft Machine album in 1994, the
Voiceprint label brought to the market a high-quality studio recording rather than a tape of dubious origin sounding like a cassette recorder had been left running on the seat of a cab, motor running and windows shut, waiting outside a venue where
Mike Ratledge,
Robert Wyatt, and
Kevin Ayers may or may not have been playing in 1968. Otherwise,
Rubber Riff would be well suited as background music for the Weather Channel, conjuring up such deep thoughts as: "Sunny with a light breeze during the morning hours. Increasing cloudiness in the afternoon with the possibility of a brief shower. Total rain accumulation one-quarter inch. Afternoon high temperature 75 degrees. Clouds clearing by early evening. Overnight temperatures dropping to 60 degrees." Well now, that's rather pleasant indeed. ~ Dave Lynch
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