Ivor Cutler, the Scottish poet and humorist, died Friday, March 3, at the age of 83. Try as I might, I can't really feel bad that he's gone: he'd been in ill health for years, was reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's, and said in one of his last published interviews a few years ago that since he had outlived all of his friends and family, he was basically just waiting to die. Sometimes it's best to let go. Still, he will be missed.
I ran across Ivor Cutler several times before I ever truly discovered him: after I bought his three mid-'70s albums for Virgin off of eBay a few years ago, I remembered that my aging-hippie music teacher at my elementary school in Boulder had played "I Believe In Bugs" for us on the piano on several occasions. Similarly, I found out that Ivor Cutler played the character Buster Bloodvessel in the Beatles' artsy flop Magical Mystery Tour around twenty years after the only time I ever saw it, on Boulder's public access station. More recently, when I discovered Robert Wyatt's strange and harrowing album Rock Bottom in my mid-20s, I saw the name Ivor Cutler in the credits (he performs the recitations on the side-closing tracks, "Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road" and "Little Red Robin Hood Hit The Road"), but didn't really discover his own work until a few years later, when I bought EMI's five-disc history of their '70s progressive label, Harvest Festival, which includes a piece from Cutler's masterpiece Life In A Scotch Sitting Room Part 2 (which Harvest had released in 1978; a CD version is available now on Rev-Ola). Between that surreal three-minute monologue about urinary habits in Cutler's destitute 1920s childhood in Glasgow's Jewish ghetto, and the almost-simultaneous purchase of an old Virgin Records compilation from 1975 that included the simple and utterly strange song "Go and Sit Upon the Grass," I was immediately hooked, and have since collected a large but nowhere near complete library of Cutlerana. (In particular, his books of poetry, mostly published by small presses some decades ago, are quite hard to locate, as are his children's books.)
Cutler's albums range from gnomic poetry (the entirety of one of his most famous poems: "If your breasts are too big, you will fall over/Unless you wear a rucksack"), to rambling, bizarre stories accompanied by his own wheezing harmonium and cheerfully deranged songs set to boogie-woogie piano riffs with lyrics like "I'm happy, I'm happy/And I'll punch the man who says I'm not," all delivered in a completely deadpan voice with one of the thickest Scottish burrs on record. Listening to Ivor Cutler reveals a world where people with woolen eyes get annoyed if you try to replace them with real ones, restaurant menus feature Bicarbonate of Chicken and family stories include the time dad had intercourse with a polar bear on a Canadian vacation. And yet, he wasn't merely a charming goofball, because a persistent dark streak runs through his work: there are moments of genuine anguish in poems like "An Old Man," some of the autobiographical material makes Angela's Ashes read like P.G. Wodehouse, and even the goofy, child-like "I Believe In Bugs" ends with Cutler looking forward to being dead and buried, providing nourishment for various creepy-crawlers.
But if you want to go exploring, here's where to go:
An Elpee and Two Epees (Universal International, 2005) -- This is Cutler's earliest recorded work, from his tenure at Decca in the early '60s. It's more overtly comic than his later work, and less unique, but given this material's previous rarity, this disc is a goldmine.
Ludo (Rev-Ola, 1998) -- Originally released on Parlophone in 1967 (and produced by George Martin!), this album is credited to the Ivor Cutler Trio, and features Cutler's piano backed with bass and drums on his most song-oriented material ever. This is the first truly great Ivor Cutler album.
Dandruff, Jammy Smears, Velvet Donkey (Virgin, 1974-77) -- Recently reissued on CD, these three albums are Cutler's most beloved albums, mixing songs with brief poems by himself and his longtime companion, Phyllis April King, whose gentler poetry has more in common with Stevie Smith or Wendy Cope than Cutler's genial Dadaism but makes for nice respites between Cutler's eccentricities.
Life In A Scotch Sitting Room, Volume 2 (Rev-Ola, 2001) -- released by Harvest in 1978, this is a live recording in front of an appreciative audience, and it features a singular rarity: in the midst of "Episode 13," a tale of horsemen riding through his neighborhood, Cutler cracks himself up laughing, breaking the persona of glumness that was his trademark.
A Wet Handle (Creation, 1997) -- This is simply an audio version of one of Cutler's books of poetry, filled with brief and often hilarious snippets.
There are many other vinyl records that haven't made the leap to CDs yet, including Cutler's 1980s stint on Rough Trade, which signed him thanks to Robert Wyatt (who remained a friend and fan) and John Peel's constant championing of Cutler's songs and poems. Cutler recorded over twenty Peel Sessions over the years, and a lot more for Andy Kershaw. Many of these are available online with but a few minutes' Googling. Not that we condone such activities, naturally.
Anyway, to sum up, without Ivor Cutler, the world is a slightly less odd place, and that's always too bad.
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