Peter Hammill – Nadir's Big Chance

I have a misprinted copy that has a side one label with no tracklist

Hammill lets his hair down and rocks out in the mid seventies in the guise of anarchistic, eternal sixteen year old punk rocker Rikki Nadir and, somewhere out there in the murk, young Master Rotten hears the siren song.

Nadir’s Big Chance is a snarling attack on the cynical machinations of the music biz and the prevailing blandness of the rock scene of the time, a raucous exercise in elemental three chord trickery and, above all, an imioned celebration of the essential simplicity and joyous swagger of pop music. Beefy punk songs, weepy ballads and soul struts. It’s a classic.

So come on everybody - smash the system with a song!

Brash, flash, finely wrought and infinitely wracked, audaciously camp, chillingly reflective and a proper pre-punk precursor – the album that 'Ziggy Stardust' aspired to be.

Nadir's Big Chance was the fifth solo album by Peter Hammill, released on Charisma Records in 1975. It was recorded shortly after a decision to re-form the band Van der Graaf Generator (of which Hammill was the singer and principal songwriter), and Nadir's Big Chance is actually performed by the reformed Van der Graaf Generator line-up. In a 1977 Capital Radio broadcast, John Lydon of the Sex Pistols played two tracks from the album, "The Institute Of Mental Health, Burning" and "Nobody's Business", and expressed his iration for Hammill. The album includes two of Hammill's most frequently performed ballads, "Been Alone So Long" (written by Judge Smith) and "Shingle Song", and a reworking of Van der Graaf Generator's first single from 1968, "People You Were Going To".