The Incredible String Band

"The Incredible String Band was indeed what the sixties and those that were called "Hippies" was all about. Spirituality and Love.

"When you find out who you truly are..."


The Incredible String Band (sometimes abbreviated as ISB) were a psychedelic folk band formed in Scotland in 1966.[1] The band built a considerable following, especially within British counterculture, before splitting up in 1974. The group's members are musical pioneers in psych folk and, by integrating a wide variety of traditional music forms and instruments, in the development of world music. The group reformed in 1999 and continued to perform until 2006.

By early 1968 the group were capable of filling major venues in the UK. They left behind their folk club origins and embarked on a nationwide tour incorporating a critically acclaimed appearance at the London Royal Festival Hall. Later in the year they performed at the Royal Albert Hall, at open-air festivals, and at prestigious rock venues such as the Fillmore auditoriums in San Francisco and New York. After their appearance at the Fillmore East in New York they were introduced to the practice of Scientology by David Simons (aka "Rex Rakish", once of Jim Kweskin's Jug Band). Joe Boyd, in his book White Bicycles - Making Music in the 1960s and elsewhere[7], describes how he was inadvertently responsible for their "conversion" when he introduced the band to Simons who, having become a Scientologist, persuaded them to enrol in his absence. The band's support for Scientology over the next few years was controversial among some fans, and seemed to coincide with what many saw as the beginning of a decline in the quality of their work.[citation needed] In an interview with Oz magazine in 1969 the band spoke enthusiastically of their involvement with it, although the question of its effect on their later albums has provoked much discussion ever since.[citation needed]

Their November 1968 album Wee Tam and The Big Huge recorded before the US trip, was musically less experimental and lush than Hangman's but conceptually even more avant-garde, a full-on engagement with the themes of mythology, religion, awareness and identity. Williamson's otherworldly songs and vision dominate the album, though Heron's more grounded tracks are also among his very best, and the contrast between the two perspectives gives the record its uniquely dynamic interplay between a sensual experience of life and a quest for metaphysical meaning. The record was released as a double album and also simultaneously as two separate LPs, a strategy which lessened its impact on the charts.

At this time most of the group lived communally at a farmhouse near Newport in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where they developed ideas for mixed media experiments with Malcolm Le Maistre and other members of David Medalla's Exploding Galaxy troupe and the Leonard Halliwell Quartet. There, a film was made about the ISB, Be Glad For the Song Has No Ending. Originally planned for BBC TV's arts programme Omnibus, it featured documentary footage and a fantasy sequence, 'The Pirate and the Crystal Ball', illustrating their attempt at an idyllic communal lifestyle. It made little impact at the time, but reissues on video and DVD have contributed to the recent revival of interest in the band.