Bombay Feeling

Bombay Feeling
'Experiment With My Love' c/w 'The Swastika & The Lily'
Released October 27th 1967. BER MM69
Simon Children (Lead Vocals, Harp, Assorted Fruit), Cadenza (Gyrations)

"I wanted our work to be a series of art events, eschewing all traditional forms of music performance. I demanded the unexpected". This was the theory behind Simon Children's 'Bombay Feeling', legendary for their Artfreakertainments - if not their music.

The group contained a rolling cast of thirty different hippy musicians, each instructed by Simon to only turn up if they felt the vibes were right. "This meant that, some nights, we'd have twenty seven hairies wailing and freaking, while on others there would just be me and a roadie", says Children. "But that was cool. I'd strip off, stand in a bucket and rub myself with warmed honey. I would recite one of my tone poems while my roadie hit the side of the bucket with his belt".

A key member of Bombay Feeling was dancer Cadenza. This exotic, full-chested Asian beauty would gyrate like an epileptic on speed - which she was - as Children threw pieces of fruit at a full size harp. Sometimes he would set fire to the harp "to make it sound better".

Children took his unorthodox performance methods into the recording studio with disastrous results. "The first session at Trout Tickle Studios was a shambles because I issued an edict that no-one should turn up. I imagined music could be created out of space and machine with no human intervention. I am sure it would have worked, but there was no one there to press the record button on the tape deck".

The second session was more successful. Children and his troop of art freaks assembled at Denmark Street's Pop Sounds under the direction of hit producer Mickey Smacke. "There were thirty two people and a burnt harp crammed into a studio fifteen foot by eleven", remembers Smacke. "They had one guitar and a rusty harmonica which they took turns playing. Children sang over the top, hitting his harp while dressed as a silkworm".

The resulting single, 'Experiment With My Love' became a minor hit in Germany. An album 'Exploding Distance Woman/Chronophasm Palladium Man' was never released after Gerald Putney of BER described it as "the sound of some lunatic hitting the side of a bucket with a belt for half an hour" - which it was.