Biography
In the British music landscape of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mike Absalom stood apart as a true eccentric, a singer/songwriter whose skewed humor drew equal force from heavy illicit drug use and an off-kilter outlook. He avoided the acid casualty fate that claimed contemporary Syd Barrett. After releasing a lone Saydisc album titled Save the Last Gherkin for Me in 1969, Absalom turned to busking and a hand-to-mouth existence. His performances in a London Underground station caught the ear of producer and A&R man Patrick Lyons, known for his work with Nirvana (U.K.), who then secured him a Vertigo Records deal.
Absalom spent the early 1970s crisscrossing Britain on the college circuit and in intimate clubs. The Vertigo association produced two albums; the first, simply called Mike Absalom and issued in 1971, attracted scant notice even though its Roger Dean cover doubled as a poster map of Notting Hill Gate. Greater interest greeted 1973’s Hector and Other Peccadillos, yet the response still fell short, and Absalom soon dropped from view.
Years later he reappeared in Canada, where he now resides in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. His sets have grown to embrace Celtic material performed with Mike Absalom & the Squid Jiggers as well as assorted harp pieces, earning him a following across western Canada for both the breadth of his repertoire and his enduring oddball wit.
Absalom spent the early 1970s crisscrossing Britain on the college circuit and in intimate clubs. The Vertigo association produced two albums; the first, simply called Mike Absalom and issued in 1971, attracted scant notice even though its Roger Dean cover doubled as a poster map of Notting Hill Gate. Greater interest greeted 1973’s Hector and Other Peccadillos, yet the response still fell short, and Absalom soon dropped from view.
Years later he reappeared in Canada, where he now resides in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. His sets have grown to embrace Celtic material performed with Mike Absalom & the Squid Jiggers as well as assorted harp pieces, earning him a following across western Canada for both the breadth of his repertoire and his enduring oddball wit.
Albums
