Prog Rock

Soft Machine are an English rock and jazz band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs.

Soft Machine's music has been described by critics and journalists as progressive rock,[5][27][44][45][46] experimental rock,[47][48] jazz rock,[49][50] jazz[5][51] and psychedelic rock,[27] as well as being a part of the Canterbury scene of progressive rock.[5][46] According to Hugh Hopper, "We weren't consciously playing jazz rock, it was more a case of not wanting to sound like other bands; we certainly didn't want a guitarist."[52]

The title The Soft Machine is a name for the human body, and the main theme of the book (as explicitly written in an appendix added to the 1968, British edition) concerns how control mechanisms invade the body.

First heard this song at a 3 day Halloween party in Chicago, in a 3 story brownstone. Some Hells Angels crashed the party but were fun and shared their experiences with us. Nobody wanted to leave the party so we slept on couches, the floor, etc. Woke up the next morning to find out a girl in a stripper costume had crawled into the blanket with me to get warm. I asked her how she knew she would look good in such a costume and she quietly said "these are my work clothes". The 2nd night the cops showed up on the street below as someone was barfing off the balcony, and we got nervous as we had a lot of weed. However, they were really interested in the cathouse across the street. So here we were, about 25 crazy art college students. I forgot to mention that the glass doorknobs had been removed and "bloody" mannequin hands were put in their place. A full suit of armor greeted people at the door in the darkened hallway with sinister red lights where the eyes would be. There was so much snow on the cars the next morning that the only way I could figure out which one was mine was to clear the snow off the windows and look inside. In which I found a couple making out. I apologized and said "Carry on keeping up your end of the Chicago tradition".