Henry Cow-"Legend" (1973)

Henry Cow is one of the most politicized groups in the history of progressive rock, its journey would begin in 1968, a year of great student unrest. Founded by two students from the University of Cambridge; Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson, their beginnings were an experience as an experimental duo, whose style was defined as "Neo-Hiroshima". At the end of 1968 they expanded the band with several more members, forming what would be the first nucleus of Henry Cow.
But this first line-up was unstable and quite changeable, in a relatively short time after different remodels and after recording a demo that was awarded by John Peel's program "Top Gear" on British state radio, Henry Cow's line-up was reduced and was consolidated in the figures of Fred Frith (guitar, violin, piano and voice), John Greaves (bass, piano and voice), Tim Hodgkinson (keyboards) and Chris Cutler (drums, piano and voice).
In 1973 they made their record debut with the album "Legend", with which they obtained enormous favorable critics and the fervor of the public, an audience that had been following them during the appearances in the political campaigns that had preceded the publication of the album.
That same year Henry Cow reinforced his fame with a notable number of concerts, in addition to a tour with the German group Faust and a memorable concert at the "Greasy Truckers Party Festival" offered in London, from which themes were taken for the double album in direct "Greasy Truckers Live at Dingwall's Dance Hall" (1973).
In Henry Cow's music it was easy to glimpse the influence of Frank Zappa and the subversive Faust, as well as classical composers of the caliber of Stransvinsky and Varese. Henry Cow had managed to gather all these suggestive elements, filtering them with taste and a totally personal criterion improvisation was one of the central points of his music, especially live, according to the tradition of the best "freebands", but with perfectly studied movements, paradoxically the music of Henry Cow was much more organized on a structural level than any other band rock of the time.