Amazing that they pulled this off live. Tremendous musicianship. Chris Cutler plays with such style.

This, of course, was their break-thru smash hit single. :-)

Part 3 - So uplifting. The struggle to awaken and seize our own power and shape our own destiny.

One of the greatest bands of all time, Frith is a genius and his versatility knows no bounds, extraordinary composition!

That drummer has such elegance with his traditional grip there. I love to see talented musicians enjoying the process.

Sounds just like the album - all that seeming chaos is actually highly composed.

IMHO Henry Cow is not only the best band in the history of progressive rock but quite possibly the culmination of the whole avant rock thing. I simply love this guys, true 'musical heroes' for me, alongside Glenn Branca, Anton Webern, Captain Beefheart, Anthony Braxton and Orthrelm. Well, in this concert recorded in Switzerland (Vevey) in 1976, with splendid audio and image quality, we have the british formation in its intermediate period, where to the band's initial sonic blend (compositional exercises inspired by the Second Viennese School + free jazz infused improvisations + electroacoustic experiments) is added the anarchic spirit of the bretchian expressionist cabaret. Simply essential, perless and timeless stuff.

a masterpiece from a great band . saw them live so many times :-)

I just came across this live version. There is and was no other musical group like Henry Cow. I've been a fan since 1974.

So sad to hear about death of Lindsay Cooper. Tremendous influence on the Henrys, what they later did , and elsewhere.

The best musical suite from HC in a dedicated stunning live performance. Dagmar's vocals added a lot to the bands potential.

I've seen Fred Frith several times both in the DC area and in San Francisco and I saw Chris Cutler at a friends art gallery in DC (Signal 66) but I've never seen the rest of the musicians, nor this amazing band. I wouldn't have liked it when they were around being a child. But I love it now.

My like second time hearing this band and I'm really impressed. Might be up there with King Crimson in bands that took me by surprise. Dagmar's vocals are great, she also looks like my mom did as a young lady growing up in Schweinfurt a bit. :) The bass is really well done too.

Questi musicisti mi sono molto cari. Più passano gli anni e più intenso è il loro ricordo. Lindsay RIP

Best lyrics in whole rock music!

Amazing music by amazing musicians. Dagmar's diction and pronounciation is impeccable (she is german). She executes extremely complex melodies and rhythms with astonishing ease & facility.

That is one of the most beautiful musical suites I have ever heard. I've loved this for 30 years. Amazing.

GREAT GREAT!!! IN MY HEART SINCE DAY ONE (BACK IN 7O'S, I'LL NEVER FORGET THE SHOCK OF THE FIRST TIME).I AM A FOLLOWER OF ALL THE MUSICIANS, GREAT WORKS .....SEARCH THEM !!!

I love the way the constructivist nature of the music reflects the Marxist lyrics.

Ive always like Henry Cow. I feel they were the best of the RIO bands. I love the album version of this composition, but I never felt they could pull it off live. This is amazing.

How amazing that this was shown on TV! Can you imagine seeing today on CBS Friday at 8pm!

Just came across this, thanks for putting it on here. I bought their second and third albums back in the seventies. Something in their music spoke to me then, and I’m still learning how good their music is, all these years later. As someone else said, brilliant to hear all that complicated composition repeated live, wonderful playing. Ok

Dagmar chants are outta this world

Discordance was their game creating an oddball body of work that in their day pushed boundaries. It was refreshing to have musicians willing to do this knowing what they were doing was not designed for commercial success but would be appreciated as a groundbreaking work of art that would push boundaries and open up new territories for exploration.

Saw them supporting Beefheart. Incredible gig.

Great band, great music !!! Between Magma and Soft Machine

it makes me think of Zappa and the Mothers.

I love the simple guitar intro 🙂

I love the drummer from 11:00 - very artistic!

Breathtaking music! The Best of Henry Cow! Thank you for posting!

I'm astonished that this footage even exists. Who had the foresight? Interestingly, they really could play all of this stuff in concert - it wasn't all just elaborate studio constructions.

One of their most "Canterbury" sounding pieces - it's little wonder that John Greaves was so easily able to turn around from this and go play in National Health.

My God! Thank you for sharing!! This has long been one of my fave Henry Cow pieces and to see it live (though in 3 pieces) just made my day!!! Don't blink or you'll miss the master mind behind it all: Fred Frith!!!!

Henry Cow was too progressive even for Prog Rock fans. Still it's one of the best! (Along with Frank Zappa and King Crimson).

So much Messiaen in the beginning of part 2, I love it

VERY VERY GOOD BAND OLD...........................

just amazing and tremendously important music... you can really hear the bridge to the later Art Bears here, only this is tremendously complex

Genius-Dagmar,Fred,Chris Lindsay,Tim and Georgie Born on fantastic bass!

I always find myelf returning to this set.

Greetings from Pispala, Finnland.

Thank you for sharing this gem!

RIP Lindsay. You were the finest of the fine. Ankh em Maat!

WOW!!! THANK YOU HENRY COW! AND THANK YOU Giancarlo Buzzanca!!

Adoro lo stile vocale di Dagmar Krause

Fantastic. Thanks for Sharing!

This is incredible!

Yes, it's Georgie. And she was a few months shy of her 21st birthday at the time, so actually only 20.

The best rock band ever. Conceptually and technically

All together haunting and lovely music ... This music is so far and away ahead of anything before or since. Btw that bass player looks like she's 17.

just amazing ..i got almost everythin they ever recorded cos' i love'em

Awesome performance, thank you for sharing this. Awesome deep intelligent lyrics and technical talented musicians displaying a great concert. This is fucking cool.

this is fantastic

Definitely a field recording.

Thanks to Giancarlo, that is GREAT footage, never seen them although I have all the albums from those years. I guess by now John Greaves split for National Health? Dagmar, Hodgkinson, Frith and Cutler are all at their best... Crazy new and not to be heard in your local disco!!!

This is the day I was born

Brill! Thanks.

definitely the stuff you want to play at the next scheduled block party

H.C. était beauté, message, violence et rêve, mais surtout l'instrument puissant d'une volonté formidable. hENRY cOW disait "Je veux" quand beaucoup d’autres marmonnaient "je voudrais" Il a atteint son but sans se plier à la plus infime compromission, comme une charrue accrochée à une étoile. Une fois pour toutes, ces gens-là traçaient leur chemin et ne s'en écartaient jamais, refusant toute flagornerie qui fait de la musique populaire d'aujourd'hui une lasse prostituée.

Van der graaf generator meets king crimson meets frank zappa on steroids

Wow! I never saw them being from the states. Finally...

THE ultimate progressive overture, from the most progressive band of all.

Greatest ending of any Cow piece ever.

great timeless machine

Extraordinary.

Situation that rules your world - despite all you've said I would strike against it but the rule displaces... There I burn in my own lights fuelled with flags torn out of books and histories of marching together, united with heroes, we were the rage, the fire. But I was given a different destiny - knotted in closer despair. Calling to heroes, do you have to speak that way all the time ? Tales told by idiots in paperbacks; a play of forms to spite my fabulous need to fight and live. We exchange words, coins, movements - paralysed in loops of care that we hoped could knot a world still. Sere words, toothless, ruined now, bulldozed into brimming pits - who has used them how? Grammar book that lies wasted : conflux of voices rising to meet, and fall, empty, divided, other... Clutching at sleeves the wordless man exposes his failure : smiling, he hurls a wine glass, describing his sadness twisted into mere form : shattered in a glass, he's changed... How dare he seize the life before him and discompound it in sulphurous confusion and give it to the air? He's rushing to find where there's a word of liquid syntax - signs let slip in a flash : "clothes of chaos are my rage !" he shrieks in tatters, hunting the eye of his own storm. We were born to serve you all our bloody lives labouring tongues we give rise to soft lies : disguised metaphors that keep us in a vast inverted silliness twice edged with fear. Twilight signs decompose us High in offices we stared into the turning wheel of cities dense and ravelled close yet separate : planned to kill all encounter. Intricate we saw your state at work its shapes abstracted from all human intent. With our history's fire we shall harrow your signs. Now is the time to begin to go forward - advance from despair, the darkness of solitary men - who are chained in a market they cannot control - in the name of a freedom that hangs like a pall on our cities. And their towers of silence we shall destroy. Now is the time to begin to determine directions, refuse to admit the existence of destiny's rule. We shall seize from all heroes and merchants our labour, our lives, and our practice of history : this, our choice, defines the truth of all that we do. Seize on the words that oppose us with alien force; they're enslaved by the power of capital's kings who reduce them to coinage and hollow exchange in the struggle to hold us, they're bitterly outlasting... Time to sweep them down from power - deeds renew words. Dare to take sides in the fight for freedom that is common cause let us all be as strong and as resolute. We're in the midst of a universe turning in turmoil; of classes and armies of thought making war - their contradictions clash and echo through time.

wow saw them 1975!

Me amrgaron la noche. No voy a dormir por seguir escuchando esto. gracias por subirlo

ganda banger dassss

Your blackest Black Sabbath isn't a tenth as heavy metal as this magnificent music.

That ending....

awesome

I don't know why, but I never really got the Zappa influence - HC are simultaneously darker and more playful than Zappa, who I find a little arch and knowing at times. Both brilliant musically, but I much prefer Henry Cow. I managed to see them play a few times, but not this lineup (unfortunately). Dagmar is wonderfully intense, Tim looks like he is having a good time, Chris is just an artist on the drums. In fact the whole band is wonderful throughout this long and complex piece. RIP Lindsay

All hail Vevey, and for Yes too :D

Dagmar"s voice and the rest of the band are right on! Amazing live recording. Brava! !wonder what year this was?

This is from a different edit than I'm used to, pretty sure. Many perspectives and shots seem unfamiliar, and I've watched this performance quite a bit. Thanks for posting!!

how could you not?

Incredibly complex composition with influences from all over the place. Deserves several listens. You don't get many bands like this anymore.

i love you dagmar! I wish i could create a time machine

I hear a lot of Zappa in the melodies, but with a different twist. Like it a lot.

MY GENIUS WIZARD,PERHAPS THE GREATEST OF ALL TWENTIETH CENTURY GENIUS'S,PAUL HINDEMITH, whose ludus tonalis,symphony In Bflat for concert band 1951, all piano,mathis der Mahler,i hear echo in this great music,most musician majors in college use,learn from his HORIZONS AND LIMITATIONS, UNTERWEIZEN UND TONSTATZ, other, check him out, MILE'S DAVIS AND CHARLIE BYRD' PARKERS VERY FAVORITE COMPOSER,COW, IS OF HIS POWERS,

Revolutionary! As strong now -- maybe stronger -- than in 1976. The most magnificent coda ever. If only the political spirit invoked by this piece could be enacted in the world of 2019. Maybe it can be!

This sounds like Frank Zappa!!

13:25 and on = goosebumps

DAMN!!! Why isn't music this good today?? Thank God for recording. Fabulous. Almost sounds like Zappa slowed down and played backwards. I wonder what Frank would have thought of this. Thank you!!

And they are back, under the name Henry Now so you can catch them live....

The performance is f...king epic! Thanks for sharing this masterpiece. ps who is the girl on the bass ?

Im saying this as a girl, Georgie is so fine

For a few bars at a time, they could almost be Hatfield and the North...

if this is Georgie Born, she was 21 at this time (born in 1955)

r.i.o. ( rock in opposition)

If this didn't make the proles rise up, am not sure what will...!

remember me, 200 Motels of M.O.I.

p.s. Georgie Born was in National Health too.

Норм музончик, не хуже КиШ и Ромы Зверя. // Excellent band, great music.

- Wunderbar! Vielen Dank aus Schweden! Is it from the Big Box?

Hmmm... I shouldn't wonder. But why wasn't this record a massive hit?

Wondering if the drummer is the same cat in the Edgar Winter group?

well contain of Dialectical Materialism in act of music !

FRITH è un GENIO ma anche TIM HODGKINSON lo è , LIVING IN THE HEART OF THE BEAST è praticamente SUA e lo stesso dicasi per la Ancor più celebrale e complessa ERK GAH !!!!! Inutile dire che anche il resto della band è di straordinario livello !!!!! Dagmar krause grande vocalist femminile, Lindsay Cooper rip la fiatista sax tenore fagotto flauto traverso e oboe , Georgie Born basso elettrico e CHRIS CUTLER batteria e percussioni varie , durante l'esecuzione di LIVING IN THE HEART OF THE BEAST vi fu un inconveniente tecnico ,il violino di FRED FRITH non stava funzionando allora ad un certo punto DAGMAR improvvisò un vocalizzo in sostituzione dello strumento che però qualche minuto dopo riprese a funzionare e così la band poté portare a termine la suite !!!!!!

Does anybody know what type of playing drums that their drummer did..