Robyn has only performed this song once, at The Chapel,
on May 22, 2025.
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From Robyn on Patreon in 2023 As a junior groover, the first gig I attended was Traffic and The Nice in Hyde Park in July 1968. It was a new world for everyone involved: suddenly music people began to look and sound utterly different from how they had even 2 years previously. Pop groups had now metamorphosed into rock bands, amplification had quadrupled, hair was heading for your collar bone, and cigarettes could re-arrange your mind - not always in a good way.
Being 15 this all seemed natural to my pals and me - for us there was no ‘before’ to compare modern life with, other than childhood. I couldn’t have fitted into the clothes I’d worn a few years previously, so why try to resist the velocity of change? My parents were tolerant, or naive, letting me meander through the stoned hordes with my friends. We were just too young to partake - though not for long. Clear-minded, we sat amidst a relatively petite archipelago of other groovers who were still trying to figure out how to dress like hippies. Should you wear a lampshade on your head? How far through Central London could you comfortably walk barefoot?
The Nice were fun: at one point the vocalist and bass player Lee Jackson read out a message to “All the noddy men here” - I’ve wondered about the noddy men ever since, off and on, over the years.
Then on came Steve Winwood and his cohorts in Traffic, who were fabulous. Dave Mason was in the band that week, so a fair number of his songs were featured. Whatever the tensions may have been between him and Steve, their voices contrasted beautifully together. The music they all played was exhilarating - the funky sludge that diluted rock music in the late 60s and early 70s was yet to come, when the drugs began to bite. In July 1968 it still felt fresh. Some of the songs were from Traffic’s forthcoming album which had yet to be released; some I recognised, including a haunting jewel from their first LP entitled ‘No Face, No Name, No Number’. Winwood composed the music for this one and Jim Capaldi, who at that point was the drummer in the band, wrote the lyrics.
‘No Face, No Name, No Number’ reaches out to me like a ghostly hand from my adolescence, squeezes my shoulder and still gives me goose pimples. So here’s a rough mix of the version I’ve done for my “1967” album, out next summer, recorded by Charlie Francis at Stwdio Penty, Cardiff. Once again, Charlie pilots the mellotron, this time following the old ley-lines of Chris Wood’s flute…