I grew up thinking Henry Cow were the best thing on the planet - then I heard Zappa's Uncle Meat and realised in the first twenty-minutes they'd plagerised every note! Not the lyrics of course; where The Mothers sang of 'fuzzy dice and bongos', Henry Cow gravely scorned worlds of liquid syntax and foretold of the inevitabilities of revolution in sky-high 6th-form rhetoric time to sweep them down from power! Deeds renew words!. From a bunch of bougeouis muso drop-outs it made about as much sense as Tales from Topographic Oceans, but it was great fun all the same. Indeed, the first side of Henry Cow Concerts (Beautiful as the Moon etc.) is one of the most amazing slabs of rock 'n' roll ever recorded.

Henry Cow finally fell apart over the recording of album of more accesable songs than the dense political tracts of yore, but none the less uncompromising musically. The album finally came out as Hopes and Fears - the band was now called the Art Bears, though the line-up on that album is essentially the full H.Cow band. It was wasn't until the second album Winter Songs that the new trio really got their shit together and focussed on the sort of stuff josepp links to in his OP. Winter Songs is a very fine piece of work which has still (IMHO) to see definitive CD release - that package MUST not only include the songs that were not included on the album but also include Chris Cutler's Winter Songs booklet in full: essentially a hand written philosophical pamphlet in which he expands on the - er - concept. Weighty in more ways that one, but essential all the same.

They followed up with The World as it is Today - a return to the tedious political righteous brow-beating of H.Cow which doesn't come anywhere close to the beauty, craft and intensity of Winter Songs. To quote the lyrics to The Slave (linked to by josepp above): Then did we dream? Or were our houses lambent gold? In winter's pool did glory pass and hold us speechless in its spell?.

Glory passed all too quickly; it was 1979 FFS, how could the Art Bears live up to The Fall and Joy Division? - but I'm still still speechless in the spell of Winter Songs, the cover of which (on vinyl) always forms part of our Xmas decorations.