Thanks to JTT for starting this tribute thread, although to my mind it didn't need 'Soft Machine' in the thread title to bestow. credibility on Kevin Ayers. 'Guest me too' has it entirely wrong in suggesting that KA just happened to be in the right place at the right time. You don't find yourself in a band with Daevid Allen and Robert Wyatt, and then another several years later with Brian Eno, John Cale and Nico, by accident. He was supremely talented but, as has been pointed out, not the best in terms of career management.

I first heard Kevin in a live BBC recording with his 1970 band The Whole World doing a creepy version of 'Lady Rachel', which had a seriously discordant middle section with Lol Coxhill's soprano wailing away. I was hooked immediately. What a band - a free jazz improviser (Coxhill), a respected modern composer and keyboardist (David Bedford) and a teenage guitar whizz and future ambient music superstar (Mike Oldfield). You never knew what was coming next with that lot. Their LP 'Shooting at the Moon' went from laid-back cafe crooning, to furious rock'n'roll, to a lengthy sequence of random squeaks and bleeps, in the space of one side. In one live show they put on a spoof wartime drama, 'Murder in the Air': "He's walking into the propellor.... Nooooo....!"

Rock, avant garde, country, calypso, ska, Ayers did it all; he could be whimsical and funny one minute, seriously disturbing the next. He also provided the soundtrack to a significant period of my life, and I still listen fondly to 'Whatevershebrings' and 'Bananamour'.

Great Youtube clips, thanks Blandiver. Happy memories.