Amethyst Arcade

Amethyst Arcade
'The Soul of Jeremiah Westmacott' c/w 'Galliard's Empty House'
Released 17th May 1967. Polydor 8291898

Dominic Bartholomew-Aphyd (vcls, aesthetics), Francis Drummond (lute), Jethro Pike (acoustic bass), Piers Tambourlaine (viol)

If there's one word that summed up the music and ethos of Amethyst Arcade, it would have to be 'gentle'.

The group formed from the ashes of Rob Petrie & The Dishmen when Bartholomew-Aphyd and Tambourlaine quit in November '65 after realising that the vulgar sound of Petrie's amplified electric guitar quite upset them.

It often reduced Bartholomew-Aphyd to uncontrollable bouts of weeping.After recruiting Francis Drummond, a talented songwriter and watercolourist, Amethyst Arcade embarked on an effete crusade of gentleness, which eventually led to them totally dispensing with the playing of popular music onstage.

Their gigs would usually be quiet, relaxed affairs, the silence only occasionally broken by acoustic bass player Jethro Pike allowing himself the luxury of a pinch of snuff.
Bartholomew-Aphyd would sit in an Elizabethan resting chair and immerse himself in thoughts of ancient Greece, while Drummond would work on a pleasant watercolour, often featuring a naked, teenage girl admiring an Etruscan vase, while being softly licked by a faun.

Tambourlaine would usually take a light nap or read a book about fly-fishing. Sometimes he would make a pot of weak Earl Grey tea.The climax of their performances would often consist of Bartholomew-Aphyd kneeling down to present a member of the audience with a collection of kestrel's eggs, resting on Egyptian cotton wool and displayed in an ermine box.

This was plainly no ordinary pop group.This routine varied from gig to gig, however. Sometimes, Drummond would play several shimmering notes on his lute, an occurrence that would frequently cause Francis Tambourlaine to collapse into a dead faint. He would then be carried from the stage on an antique Venetian collapsing bed. Bartholomew-Aphyd would be moved to utter a few verses of poetry in his barely audible gasp of a voice. It was as if the very act of moving his lips caused him a fantastic, limpid exhaustion that few of us ordinary mortals could appreciate.It was therefore unfortunate for this most sensitive of groups that they were usually booked to appear at working men's clubs in the North East of England.

This eventually presented insurmountable problems for Amethyst Arcade and they eventually parted company after many tearful fare-thee-wells and bye-thee-byes on a misty day in the autumn of 1967.They did leave us, however, with an enchanting, if rather long (11' 27") single. 'The Soul Of Jeremiah Westmacott' begins with a seven-minute expostulation on Piers Tambourlaine's viol, which attempts to illustrate fourteen conflicting emotions simultaneously.

Gradually, after a single note from Pike's muted acoustic bass (he was not to play another note on the song), we can hear Bartholomew-Aphyd's asphyxiated, sibilant voice enunciate:

'The Soul Of Jeremiah Westmacott,

Like a falling leaf in the dreams of an elf,

I inspect a woodbine - or is it an eyebright?

Gently breathing on my shoulder

A horse's breath

HumbleRich with honey

Velvet Ivy on a gravestone

Shall I make tea now, Sebastian?'

I think that says it all.