The Ceremony in question is the title of an album made by a band name of Spooky Tooth in 1969 in collaboration with French avant-guardista Pierre Henry. I’ll admit that my main motivation in buying it was that I really liked the cover. I’ll also admit that when I first listened to it…But, like many things in life which at first we find unpleasant, it grew on me. I adjusted to it and can say now, 50 odd years later, I mostly like it. That said, Spooky Tooth’s “Ceremony” is an infamous Rock Folly, and the story of it is even better, with Pierre Henry playing a blinder, the band never recovering, and the guitarist going off to become Ariel Bender in Mott The Hoople. Ceremony is credited with having ruined the career of Spooky Tooth.
Friends, I do not bring this matter to your attention on a whim.
It so happens that on Lord Tupelo’s first visit to my residence in Spain; a 4th floor flat with an enormous balcony that afforded a lovely view of pine clad mountains across the way, his first time over did not coincide with holidays so I was out for hours on end doing my work. I didn’t have a T.V. but I had a large collection of cassettes at that time and most of the music taped on them came from my old collection of albums. Of course, I invited his Lordship to make himself at home. He spent his days smoking, drinking wine from the local bodegas ( rechristened “The body gas shop”), reading and listening to music.
One evening after work we got to talking about the cassettes and the music recorded on them. I was not entirely pleased when Tupelo informed me that, in his opinion, Ceremony was among the most interesting items in all my vast collection. You see, at the time of that conversation I’d only had the album some 23 years – not sufficient for it to have grown on me to the extent that it has today. Further into that chat he revealed to me how he’d also taken to another cassette of mine containing music by José “Chepito” Areas. Tupelo, not being conversant with the phonetic nature of Spanish, pronounced the surname as in English areas, and not Spanish a-REI-as. This case of mispronunciation resulted in another character to be found in the pages of The Reeking Hegs, in which it is rendered as Joe’s Chepito Areas (English pron). Hence this anecdote.
I still have them both, but I haven’t listened to José for a while now.
Get a copy of The Reeking Hegs and read all about it all!
Here’s a link https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reeking-Hegs-Pete-Peru/dp/1940233798/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1630017120&sr=8-1
The Reeking Hegs 