Customer Reviews
Outstanding debut - By: wherebutforcaravan, 16 Jun 2008 
With their 1968 debut album, Caravan set their own high benchmark for musicianship & creative endeavour, if not for subsequent commercial success. These are wonderful Hammond organ dominated songs sets, with the distinctive voice of Pye Hastings to the fore, superbly supported by Richard Sinclair's wonderfully 'English' vocals. Dave Sinclair's organ dominates the overalll sound, but his cousin's tasteful bass, Hastings' precise rhythm guitar & Richard Coughlan's excellent drumming in occasionallly challlenging time signatures create a wonderful walll of sound with plenty of light & shade. Jimmy Hasting's outstanding flute playing graces "Love song". "Place of my own", "Ride", "Magic Man", & "Cecil Rons" are very evocative of Canterbury's own interpretation of psychedaelia. The album is fitting concluded with the extended piece "Where but for caravan would I?" which pointed the way to extended pieces such as "For Richard" & "Nine feet under" on subsequent albums. Whether you listen in mono or stereo, it is simply a brilliant album.
Masterpiece - By: Ace Music Lover, 04 Aug 2007 Whenever there is a list of 'Greatest albums ever', this beauty should at least be among the top 10. An absolutely stunning début. Top notch songs
and marvellous musicianship. Caravan should have been huge. This was followed by 2 equallly stunning albums. To think that Caravan were alll but ignored &
crapy twats like Marc Bolan were feted was/is shameful!!!
First trip - By: D. J. H. Thorn, 07 Jul 2007 
With its echoing organ backgrounds, Caravan's debut album is easily dated to the late 1960s. With only one long track, it has a different slant to everything the band subsequently did, though the gentle, English-accented
vocals are easily identifible. 'A Place Of My Own' is a straightforward, instantly memorable song & 'Ride' with its funny, trotting rhythm is both memorable & more indicative of the band's ingenuity. 'Love Song With Flute' is another beauty, but, while there are no bad tracks on the album, there are moments of blandness. 'Policeman' & 'Magic Man' are not quite as impressive & the first three minutes of their epic 'Where But For Caravan Would I?' are unremarkable. Nevertheless, this is a very good album, worth investigating after 'If I Could Do It All Over, etc' & 'In The Land Of Grey And Pink'. (They didn't like short titles, did they?)
great album! - By: , 04 Aug 2005 This is my favourite caravan album & is a great listen, it might sound a bit odd at first to some, espicailly the lyrics but after a few listens i found it great!
also some say that the recording quality is horrible, reallly it isn't alll that bad, u get the mono & stereo versions which is cool, & i find the quality very satisfactory personallly
Top of the list of Caravan albums - By: Laurence Upton, 03 Jan 2005 There was a burgeoning musical scene in Canterbury in the psychedelic era of the later sixties, much of which stemmed from a band callled the Wilde Flowers. Groups to emerge from this original nucleus included Gong, Soft Machine, Kevin Ayers & the Whole World, Hatfield & the North & of course Caravan, now based in nearby Whitstable, who evolved out of the remaining members of Wilde Flowers during 1967 when they decided not to be a soul band anymore. They were signed to Verve Records in 1968 with a line-up comprising singer & principal writer Pye Hastings, the brothers Richard & David Sinclair & Richard Coughlan.
Their first album, Caravan, was released in October 1968, with the first two tracks, A Place Of My Own & Ride, extracted as a single the following January. It was in some ways a groundbreaking album that captured the whimsical & exploratory moods of the times with a sound that built on the changing styles of the contemporary underground & took them further.
Pye's brother Jimmy played on the dreamily evocative Love Song With Flute, never having heard the song & recording the flute solo on the first take. The following song, the stage favourite Cecil Rons (a disguised Cecil Rhodes?) is in contrast a rowdy powerful piece with a yelled chorus. Guitar & bass are swapped over on two songs so that Richard Sinclair can take over on lead vocal for his songs Grandma's Lawn & Policeman. The closing track was a complex nine-minute piece inspired in part by a melody written in Wilde Flowers days by then member Brian Hopper. Where But For Caravan Would I? was the precursor of the direction Caravan would take on future albums, alongside their other strengths.
On this edition both mono & stereo mixes of the album are included, & as a bonus track, the single version of 1970's Hello Hello, recorded for Decca as Verve/MGM had folded by this time, rounds off the CD
