Curved Air
Link to Official Curved Air site
Link to Francis Monkman's site
This page last updated June 2008
Starting in June 2008, some of the original members of Curved Air are reforming for a series of gigs. Link to the offical Curved Air site (link above) for details.
In my opinion, 'Curved Air' were the most underrated band to have walked this earth. It is impossible to describe the inner emotions their performances evoked. Their work was often categorised as 'Classical Rock'. It is true that they combined violin, vocals, electric guitars, drums and synthesisers. Darryl Way's composition 'Vivaldi' in it's various incarnations, probably correctly falls into this category as does much of their work on their first album 'Airconditioning'. Some of their lyrics are a little strange, but there are some which can influence your life. Take for example the song 'Situations' on 'Airconditioning'. It contains the simple line 'See what a fool I've been, I haven't lived my dreams'. On their 'Second Album' the synthesiser was more prominent. In some performances of tracks like 'Young Mother', 'Back Street Luv' and 'What Happens When You Blow Yourself Up' (this was only issued on the 'B' side of a single) the synthesisers provided an underlying tone of excitement mixed with an ominous hint of doom. They literally make your flesh tingle! You need a good stereo system and plenty of volume to reproduce this at home. Curved Air also produced some beautiful ballads such as 'Melinda More or Less' (Phantasmagoria) and 'Elfin Boy' (Aircut). You need to listen to these to hear Sonja Kristina's unique voice at it's clearest.
When I first set this page up, the only other information about Curved Air on the web was a piece at the Delerium.co.uk web site. This has since disappeared, but of course many other sites, including the official Curved Air web site are now in place. If it's straight factual information, reviews and lots of photos that you want, that is the place to visit. Rather than simply repeat what is available elsewhere, I will use this page to provide my own recollection of Curved Air.
I left home in September 1971 to start my first job near Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. Curved Air were in the charts at the time with 'Back Street Luv'. Since I was new to the world of work, I was being paid a pittance and consequently living in a boarding house where I shared a room with two other guys, Geoff (or was it Jeff?) and Andy. I had a car of sorts ( a 1953, split screen Morris Minor, top speed 60 mph) and one weekend Geoff persuaded me that we should head for Bournemouth, to see Curved Air. This was to be my first rock concert and I was not particularly excited.
As we queued up outside the Winter Gardens to get tickets and gain entry I heard the eerie sounds of a VCS 3 Synthesiser being tuned up, though I had no idea what it was at the time. I don't remember much about the concert other than being impressed by Darryl Way's electric violin and his costume (a black and white number, one side of his jacket black and the other white, with the opposite effect on his trousers), Francis Monkman's synthesisers and oscilloscope. Of course like thousands of young men at the time I also fell madly in love with Sonja Kristina.
Within a few days I had bought copies of their first two albums. I was too late to get 'Airconditioning' as a picture disc and I had to make do with a black vinyl copy. I was consoled by the fact that people told me that the sound quality on the picture disc was not too good, being either the first, or one of the first picture discs ever issued. I did manage to track down several picture discs both originals and a re-issue many years later (the original bears the the code WSX 3012 in large red letters on one side).
After a number of months the third album 'Phantasmagoria' was released, but with the exception of 'Melinda more or less' it did not excite me much. I have since heard other versions of another track, 'Marie Antionette' which I really like, but the version on 'Phantasmagoria' didn't really grab me.
Although I continued to follow Curved Air in the music press I didn't get to see them again until early 1973. This was at the same venue in Bournemouth as previously but with a new line up. The only band member remaining from my previous outing was Sonja Kristina. This band sounded different but was just as exciting. The young Eddie Jobson was staggeringly competent with his keyboards and violin, while Kirby on lead Guitar was the coolest dude I'd ever set eyes on. I really liked the album 'Air Cut' which was the last of the Curved Air Warner Brothers releases and am amazed that to this day (8th October 1997), it is the only Curved Air album I've not been able to find on CD.
In 2002 pirated CD versions of Air Cut started to appear in places like eBay. As of late 2004 there are versions of Air Cut being offered on eBay which appear not to be pirated. I bought one which was issued by m2urec of South Korea. The catalog number is M2U-2005. The sleeve is identical to the original LP sleeve, both inside and out, except of course it is CD size not LP size. It also has printed on it in white letters, "Licensed by Sonja Kristina UK". Also included was a black and white poster. A booklet of Lyrics (the ones on the sleeve being too small to read), and a separate card flap, which states among other things "Look. This is the first official re-issue." It seems the same item may be being offered, where this additional card flap is written in Japanese.
As of April 2006 Air Cut (released by Repertoire Records) is available from
or
While I prefer the packaging on the m2urec version of Air Cut (it is more representative of the original vinyl LP packaging), some of the more delicate passages on the track Metamorphosis, seem to have been quietened down, to well below the levels of the original vinyl release. On the Repertoire version the volume levels seem to be the same or similar to the vinyl LP version. Based on that, if I was only going to purchase one copy, I would buy the repertoire version.
[ In the meantime after leaving Curved Air, Darryl had formed his own band 'Darryl Way's Wolf'. I bought the three albums they released, 'Canis Lupus', 'Saturation Point' and 'Night Music' and have since managed to obtain all three on CD. Meanwhile Francis joined the very successful outfit 'Sky'. Sky made it big time when they released 'Toccata', a feat repeated some twenty years later by 'Vanessa Mae'. Among their classical repertoire Sky also performed the Curved Air number 'Vivaldi'.]
Shortly after this I moved to London and I heard that Curved Air had split up again mainly on account of Eddie moving to replace Brian Eno at Roxie Music. Many years later an album called 'Lovechild' was released which apparently was in preparation at the time of this split. Much of the work on 'Lovechild' was unfinished and hence a bit thin, but I did enjoy the track 'The Dancer'.
Over the next three years I saw Curved Air three more times. Once with the original line up Darryl Way, Francis Monkman, Florian Pilkington Miksa and of course Sonja Kristina. New member Phil Khon played bass. The venue was the Central London Polytechnic and the 'Curved Air Live' album resulted from this tour. I remember being disappointed that Francis had swapped his VCS 3 for some Japanese thing that sounded like a strangled cat and didn't have an oscilloscope.
I then saw two gigs during the 'Midnight Wire' era where Stewart Copeland had joined on drums. Other new members were Mick Jacques and Tony Reeves.
The first of these was at Watford town hall and the second was at the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm in London. There were a lot of technical problems at the Chalk Farm gig. Darryl's organ blew a fuse, so he had to improvise the keyboard pieces on violin, until someone managed to bypass the fuse with silver paper from a cigarette packet. The audiences were definitely much smaller than at the early gigs and something seemed to be lacking. However they did have some very nice lighting with pastel shaded filters.
In early 1976 I moved to Swindon, where I stayed for five years and lost touch with the London scene. However one weekend, later in 1976 when visiting my brother in Battersea London, I heard Sonja do an interview on Capitol Radio promoting Curved Air's new 'Airborne' album. This culminated in a competition which promised a 'Curved Air Kite' for those who submitted the best poem starting with the words 'The drought has made our capital dry...'. Sonja promised to return to the radio station the following weekend to announce the results and read the best poem. Unfortunately I was back in Swindon, out of the range of Capitol's airwaves when this event took place, so I never heard the outcome. About a month later however, a brown packet dropped through my letter box. On opening it I found a rather flimsy kite with an 'Airborne' sticker pasted on the front of it. There was a simple accompanying instruction on how to fly my 'Whamo Kite'.
After their 'Airborne' album the band broke up in 1976. Not long after this while Stewart was forming the Police, Sonja released a solo album on the 'Chopper' label, which included tracks such as 'St. Tropez' (also released as a single) and 'Roller Coaster'.
I didn't see or hear anything about them for years. In the late 1980s I discovered that Sonja and Darryl had at some time got together and released a single 'Renegade / We're Only Human' in the Curved Air name. Sonja had also released a vinyl 12" single 'O Fortuna / Walk on by', the sleeve of this had a very nice picture of her. Sonja had also embarked on other ventures including a band called 'Sonja Kristina's Escape' and another called 'Tunis', which had all passed me by, without me ever hearing about them.
However through 'Time Out' one of London's weekly events publications I discovered that Sonja was back on the circuit with acoustic friends. I attended several gigs and was delighted when the Original Curved Air came together again to perform a couple of gigs in North London. It must have been 1990, because they sang an intro '20 years on'. They had first got together circa 1970. The first of these gigs at the Town & Country Club 2 was great the second a bit lame. The second gig was very good, but the venue and the smaller audience meant the atmosphere was more muted. After that I followed Sonja's solo performances in the London area, enthusiastically, until I moved to Singapore in 1994.
Her 1990s albums 'Songs from The Acid Folk' and 'Harmonics of Love' have some very nice songs she has written, as well as some restyled old Curved Air numbers.
If you have never heard Curved Air you should. Their sound was very different to other bands of the era, especially on 'Air Conditioning' and 'Second Album'. If you were once a Curved Air fan you should try some of their other work. One of the reasons their success was short lived was probably that they refused to stand still, resulting in little continuity from one album to the next.
Over the years since the demise of Curved Air as a live act, Darryl Way has composed and performed a number of classical pieces. His CDs which I have are 'Concerto for Electric Violin', 'The Human Condition', 'Under the Soft' and 'The Elektra Ensemble'. Among a number of other projects, he has also arranged and conducted the music of Sting (ex Police). This was performed by The London Symphony Orchestra and released circa 1995 on a CD entitled 'Fortress', under the Angel label.
The BBC released a CD in 1995 of 1970s Radio performances by Curved Air. There is a track on this which has never been officially released before. The track is 'Thinking on the Floor'. In some respects you can see why it was not released, but for me it contains some of Darryl's best violin work.
In 1999, Francis has rescued the 1990 gig of the Town & Country Club 2, it should soon be available to buy on CD from the official Curved Air web site, which you can link to from the top of this page. This is a brilliant piece of work and now I would recommend to newcomers or avid fans as a must have.
If you can't find Curved Air CDs in your local record shop or from one of the other sites, it is worth checking Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Do you find animated .gif files really annoying? I do! There you are, trying to read some interesting text and this horrible flickering thing, or worse, things, keep distracting your attention. Unfortunately like most web page creators I had to prove I could do it as well.
Apart from the one above which came courtesy of MS Front Page 97 and is supposed, on my page, to represent Francis Monkman's oscilloscope (sorry the signal is a bit flat, he can't have started playing yet!), I've created my own animation below. Yes I know the center wobbles, but so do most of my old vinyl LPs.
Have you got any idea, how much it cost me and how long it took for me, to get a scanner which could scan a whole LP? Unfortunately it was only after I had bought it that I discovered it could only scan the pictures and not the sounds, so I guess you will have to buy your own Curved Air CDs after all.
If like me you live in Singapore you will be amazed to find that the HMV shop here has copies (@ 1st November 1997) of 'Midnight Wire' and 'Lovechild' filed under the name 'Curved Air', in their Rock and Pop section, on the second floor. But for some reason, they have put 2 copies of Curved Air's 'Second Album' in their 'Blues' section on the third floor! (17th, April 1999, the two copies of 'Second album' have at last moved to Rock and Pop, 'Lovechild' has gone, but there is now a copy of 'Airborne'). Tower Records in Pacific Plaza currently (11th February 1998) has 2 copies of 'Airconditioning', 'Lovechild', and one copy each of 'Second Album', 'Live', 'Midnight Wire' and 'Airborne', while Supreme Compact Disc Centre, in Far East Plaza, has one copy of each of 'Airconditioning', 'Second Album', 'Phantasmagoria' (@S$17.99 each) and 'Lovechild'.
UPDATE - Singapore January 2002 - Tower Records in Pacific Plaza has long closed, but there is another one in SunTec City. You can still find Curved Air CDs in Singapore, though I noticed that recent stocks of Midnight Wire and Airborne in HMV are much more expensive at S$36. Second Album can still be picked up there for S$20.
UPDATE - Singapore March 2002 - The Curved Air CDs at Tower Records in SunTec City and HMV in Heeren have gone. So there is now no Curved Air in either of the largest CD shops in Singapore.
UPDATE - Singapore November 2004 - Still no sign of any Curved Air items for sale in major outlets in Singapore.
Be careful, the cover on Lovechild is remarkably like that on Airconditioning (the cover on 'Lovechild' is a sort of mix of the front and back covers of 'Airconditioning'). While both are worth getting if you are an avid Curved Air fan, 'Airconditioning' is the first and more representative recording for newcomers.
Anyway, hopefully this bit of nonsense is enough to create sufficient space between the important text far above and my attempt below at web animation.
