I started watching a few videos of The Soft MAchine during their "Third" album. They definetly sound like a jazz group with rock influences even though it might be the other way around. Hugh Hopper is a great bassist and really holds it down while playing some very jazzy lines and some great melodic lines.

True dat!! Hugh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Hopper) is definitely a very unique bassist, majorly cool use of fuzz, very creative player AND composer/conceptualist. My favorite stuff of his (not counting solo) are the second through fourth Soft Machine discs. His solo outings like 1984 and Hoppertunity Box are highly recommended. He also did a project about 2002 or so with Nick Didkovsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Didkovsky) (Dr. Nerve) and a drummer called BONE - Uses Wrist Grab" that is very cool. The thing was, they never physically played together, just fed-exed discs back and forth.

Such a drag Hugh's battling lukemia right now. Best wishes for a full recovery to Hugh.

+1

I love his work on the early/middle Soft's stuff.

/rick

Like Hugh a lot, I'm probably more of a Kevin Ayers guy though.

How about organist Mike Ratledge, the absurdly unsung hero of that band!

Like Hugh a lot, I'm probably more of a Kevin Ayers guy though.

How about organist Mike Ratledge, the absurdly unsung hero of that band!

Yeah, Mike (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Ratledge) was definitely the mysterious one in the bunch. Gotta love that kazoo-like fuzz organ thing he did! After he left Soft Machine (I think because at that point they devolved into a boring generic fusion-lite thing after Wyatt and Hugh Hopper left) he started composing for soundtracks, commercials and the like plus producing.