I first saw the Soft Machine and Pink Floyd (their first gig) in 1966 when they played at the Chalk Farm Roundhouse, a launch party for our International Times newspaper. The two groups, virtually unknown, were paid a mere two pounds fifty for the evening. The orgaizers of that event had ripped the boards away covering the
entrance of that huge derelict building that had been abandoned since the electrification of the trains. There was no staircase, only a narrow, rickety step ladder at the entrance. When I arrived a long line of colorfully dressed hippies were slowly mounting that fracile strucure and disappearing into the semidarkness.

Wow! Was the only word possible to describe the interior. It was a ruin of ancient iron, rotting timbers that smelt of mildew soon replaced by the scent of marijuana. An attempt had been made to clean the site, but the place hadn’t been used since the war and had grown filthier with each passing year. Perhaps in daylight it would have frightened us away but at that moment we were all too excited to be scared of anything.

Pink Floyd played their psychedelic music at the far end of the Roundhouse That cavernous space made their enhanced acoustics and scary feedback sounds vibrate in repeat echoes. Film clips and slides were projected on the wabbly scaffolding hung with plastic sheets where organic bubbles of red and blue light pulsated, expanding and contracting in time to the psychedelic sounds. Impressive, but primitive compared to their later more elaborate Mark Boyle light shows, where paint slides projected onto Pink Floyd, created outer-space skin textures.

I have to admit I thought the unconventional Soft Machine were light-years ahead of any other group. Their psychedelic-laced jazz sounds and amazing innovations often ended in an extended chant. As part of Soft Machine’s sound effects that night a guy called Dennis, in a long cape and headdress, cranked up a motorcycle fitted with contact mikes. On one of his rounds, he caught me up on the bike and headed through the crowd and a giant jelly at a reckless speed, spewing fumes and jelly bits into the already loaded air.

From the next few years the Roundhouse became a revolutionary venue for the UK underground music scene which was much more exiting than we could ever have imagined. However few events were as electrifying as that evening of the launch party for our International Times newspaper. With the Beatles in attendance as well as Monica Vitti and her husband Michaelangelo Antonioni and most of the movers and shakers of the 1960s even the Dolce Vite so acclaimed by italians was no rival.