What does it sound like?:
Gong
What does it all *mean*?
As John Peel said of them on the Glastonbury Fayre Album
“Curious Band”
Back in the early seventies I was introduced to this band by the ‘big boys’ and you either liked what Gong were doing or wondered why they were doing it in the first place. I recall seeing them at Bradford uni at about two in the morning at a Freshers’ Ball and reading in an interview with them that students had been fighting after the gig depending on which side of the fence they fell.
One of the ‘big boys’ I saw recently said that he didn’t want to listen from stuff from then in case it didn’t stand up to scrutiny and spoiled fond remembrances, so I’ve done it for him. I donned my Gong boots and with a plate of camembert (batteries not included) by my side I aurally immersed myself in the discs.
So what do you get?
12 CDs and a DVD
* The First 4 Virgin Records studio albums plus bonus tracks
* First CD release of the original Flying Teapot masters. Beautifully remastered with previously unreleased bonus mixes.
* First CD release of Shamal from the original masters. Superbly remastered with previously unreleased bonus mixes.
* The complete John Peel sessions from BBC Radio One from 1973 and 1974.
* 2CDs of full gig at Club Arc En Ciel, Roanne in 1973
* 1CD of full gig at the renowned free concert in Hyde Park, London in 1974
(Part of the reason for wanting to hear all this is that I’d hitched down to that there London for the Hyde Park gig 45 years ago and wanted to listen again).
* 2CDs of full 1975 gig at the London Marquee Club including first live recordings of tracks from Shamal and Steve Hillage’s debut solo LP, Fish Rising.
* 2CDs entire gig at The Bataclan, Paris in 1973
* 2 tracks recorded at the Edinburgh Festival in 1973
* Includes the previously unreleased quadrophonic Pye and Westlake Studio mixes of You.
• Notes by Gong archivist Jonny Greene of the Gong Appreciation Society and artwork including rare and previously unseen art work by Daevid Allen.
Plus a snazzy 64-page illustrated lyric booklet with art work (unfortunately not available for review) which is a shame as the band were a visual delight, at the aforementioned Bradford gig their light show was a laser shone onto a mirror mounted speaker and reflected onto the wall behind the band, Roadies had placed small propeller mounted teapots on the front of the stage. Bloomdido wore a beret with joke shop eggs and bacon atop.
Listening to the live concerts you can hear a band trifurcating and indeed not long after there emerged from the band’s break up Daevid Allen’s Gong, Pierre Moerlin’s Gong and Steve Hillage solo.
If you enjoyed Gong back then you’ll enjoy this now, if however you were of the opposite persuasion then you’ll still wonder why they did it. I’m just glad that they did.
Goes well with…
Electric Camembert
Release Date:
27/09/2019
Might suit people who like…
Pot headed pixies
An embarrassment of riches. Having all the albums and a number of bootlegs, not sure if I need to get this, but I must probably will. Personally, I like the “You” period best, as it is proggier and less self-consciously thought disordered (I sometimes felt Daevid Allen needed a slap, and his witchy ‘lady’ Gilli too), but OOAA and the mercurial nature of Gong meant that they moved on from this stage anyway.
The amount of prog found on this site I find puzzling. Was it ever a big thing in The Word magazine? Don’t think it was.
progressive rock (if you please) was big in the fans, but the normative view of music journalists post 1975 has been to take the piss. Popularism and user-generated content means fans now express their appreciation more than would have been the case as they are now creating the content.
I have a perspective on this. Prog is generally shite and British invented shite at that.
BUT:
There is a wonderful space somewhere between prog and jazz, particularly free jazz, that only certain Bits seem to hit, some only occasionally at that.
Someone posted Henry Cow recently, Well that’s definitely in the zone. Gong were often in the zone. Sometimes Crimson are. Early Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt, Matching Mole, etc. also were.
Can anyone define this for me? It seems an important niche, almost akin to krautrock.
Oh and it also reminds me of my own criticism of jazz that it consists too much of this procession of soloists. Well this genre that I’m talking about now manages to improvise wonderfully without solos as such. Know what I mean?
The Word always tended to embrace new more than the associated blog, which was more conservative, as I recall, at least in the early years. The magazine employed a mix of journalists some of whom specialised in dance/hiphop for example. I think they were wary of being another Mojo, and too retro minded. Prog I sensed was not taken too seriously. Hepworth reminisced about switching the light switch on and off to create a light show effect to Roundabout by Yes but one sensed that to him that kind of music was a phase those of a certain age were into then grew out of.
I say yes to jazzy prog, especially long, mostly instrumental tracks like on Soft Machine Third and some Caravan. Also Traffic. Post Syd, pre-Dark Side Floyd too and some Focus. The Softs/Caravan stuff also has a dreamy, otherwordly feel which I find highly evocative of that early seventies era when there was an underground, a world not so well known except for those in the know. A very attractive almost mellow form of rock. It’s like nostalgia only I was too young to have been a part of it but I sense it is of a time while still having appeal now.
Was it ever a big thing in “The” Word magazine? Maybe not – but the point is that it wasn’t automatically slagged off and routinely derided. Hepworth might not have taken it too seriously, but that’s OK – neither did the best of the protagonists (as Gong demonstrated very nicely). Word managed to cover a bit of the old progressive music without descending into “Prog is shite and British invented shite at that”, as suggested by a commentator higher up this very thread…which was nice…
What’s this, someone waking up a thread so old it’s got Tahir “Trespasser” W on it??
I feel like I’ve opened up by lunchbox to find someone’s had my banana.
(hurr)
I was a fighter pilot in the USAF until I discover that God was a boiled egg in my lunch box – so I ate Him. Can’t remember why I was looking for Gong threads – is it still Tuesday?
There are seven levels.
And a Dairylea.
Since this thread has been randomly revived after three years (!), it’s time for me to point out to you (Diddley) that it wasn’t Roundabout that Hepworth reminisced about turning the lights on and off to, it was Yours Is No Disgrace (think of the intro… DUN du dun DUN, DUN du dun DUN, DUN du dun DUN DUN… POOOOOW….).
Hep is straightforwardly positive about The Yes Album in the 1971 book.
I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for that pesky fitterstoke. My sense is that Hep/Ellen do think a lot of that old prog stuff is rather laughable but there’s a warm nostalgia that goes with it. It’s mostly not up with the greats. If that matters.
Arf!
I agree with you that the jazzier the progressive rock, the better it is, as I like that more, too, but this sounds like a “what have the Romans ever given us? ” argument, given “Henry Cow … Gong … Crimson … early Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt, Matching Mole”, to which one can easily add Hatfield and the North, National Health, and (perhaps) even Caravan. Perhaps you are giving a thumbs down to the more popular, but crasser (not in that way) symphonic style of progressive rock epitomised by Yes, ELP, and earlier Genesis?
Yep I am.
Thanks for making that clear.
You are of, course, wrong to give those bands a thumbs-down, but there’s no accounting for taste…
…or the lack of it.
Well, wasn’t me that introduced the word ‘crass’. I can live with it though!
True; I don’t know what he means by that either.
He means crap and so do I. Leave it at that, will you.
Oh, sorry, didn’t realise I needed your permission to join in.
Personally I can live with bad taste. In fact, i thrive on it. I say ‘crass’ when Yes became son-et-lumiere hippie kitsch and then the Jon Anderson wetness really flowed out (“Circus of Heaven” was the shark-jumping point), crass even more for ELP (Emerson’s wanking with a synth, and pointless manhandling of a Hammond, and Greg Lake’s God-awful ‘sensitive’ songs), and Genesis’s girlie-prog (and worse) once Gabriel left.
Pretty much what I call horrible in the extreme.
I find Yes unsufferable, Genesis twee and uninspiring, I quite like Pink Floyd. No clue about King Crimson, Caravan and suchlike, but I prefer 2 or 3 minute songs to side long “epics”.
This.
Exactly my take on prog, although I think you are much too kind about Genesis, who I dislike passionately. Twee and uninspiring are about the best that can be said for them.
Initially my distaste was probably because I was a veteran of the punk wars, and of course prog was strictly verboten and degenerate. I have tried very hard to be less judgemental in my mature years, but at best I still find prog dull and at worst actually annoying.
Prog discussions aside, I love this band and especially this period. If only the thing wasn’t £111 I’d be shelling out right now
Can I just say that I once played in a band that supported the then band of the current Gong bassist, Dave Sturt. One of my “many” musical” claims to fame (ie “only” and that’s pushing it)
Dave Sturt’s recent-ish solo album Dreams and Absurdities is well worth checking out. High gloss ambience, with enough forward propulsion to keep things interesting.
Brilliant bass player, even at a tender age. He played fretless at the time, which impressed me greatly being a very poor bass player on any type.
Tell us more about your band!
Well ahead of our time and misunderstood. Actually that just about applies to the whole of my life.
Saw this lot in 1973 myself – what an amazing experience that was. Plymouth Guildhall had room for several hundred seated people, but the turn out must have been no more than 50 – so we all came forward and sat on the rush matting in the gap between the front row of seats and the edge of the stage; the band came on and blew the roof off. I was about 5 feet from Didier’s saxophone, and I grinned the entire evening. Marvellous. I am investing.
Big Gong fan here too.
Back in the day, Camembert Electrique was 50p
Going to see them in November supporting Steve Hillage in Southampton.
As were The Faust Tapes. Can anyone remember listening to it all the way through? I found that if I managed to complete side one I was in no mood for side two.
Mid 70s, I saw Faust at Guildford Civic Hall and Gong at Farnborough Town Hall.
There was so much weed being smoked at the Gong gig that you only needed to inhale to feel slightly giddy.
Happy times 🙂
That was the only to make the music tolerable. 😉
Faust I have no recollection of.
Gong I recall hugely enjoying. The medicinal aspect may have been a factor 😉
Never got through it. Still have it though!
Well. 50p.
Quite. Plus it’s a cool cover, and, well, you had to. See also Camembert Électrique – slightly more listenable. “Squeezing sponges over policemens heads” was a highlight.
Back in the days when I was really skint my musical appetite was sated by buying these cheap albums. Here are a few:
As above:
The Faust Tapes and Camembert Electrique.
Plus:
The Rock Machine vols. 1 & 2
You can all join in
Gutbucket
All Good Clean Fun
The Harvest Bag
The World Of Blues Power
I think the lot together would have cost me less than £10 and there were many gems to be found amongst them.
Also there were many MFP albums around that time featuring Pye artists such as The Kinks and Donovan. Plus many Track records samplers Hendrix and The Who.
Brought me much pleasure back in those days and I still play them from time to time.
Have spent the last 25 years catching up with what I couldn’t afford to buy back then.
Decca’s “World of…” albums were great value. The Clapton and Mayall ones were excellent, and then there was the Bowie one with the totally inappropriate Ziggy picture on the cover, considering it’s full of Deram material.
Imagine putting out albums – the ‘Backtracks’ samplers – with a picture of a toddler smerking a fag on the cover these days – you’d be hung, drawn and quartered by the thought police.
Robert Wyatt is a genre all by himself…and a damn fine one…..
Should Prog be Prorogued on this site – I do hope not. These days I love talking about prog more than actually listening to it but it is a fascinating genre. I do agree though that the jazzier end has worn better than the classical end. Don’t know much about the mighty Gong though and not sure if I can now be bothered to find out – too much other good current music out there.
Am I odd? I loathe all the Flying Teapot/Daevid (FFS) Allen nonsense, but after he had been deported or whatever, and it became Pierre Moerlin’s band and almost exclusively instrumental, yes please, great stuff. And that’s the rub with all the other Canterbury lot: musically often very sound, but when they tried to be deep/stoned/pueriley humourous, that’s when I want them to all eff off. Hatfield and the fuckers a good case in point.
Have a thumb up from me, Ret. If I could have the Flying TeaPot trilogy with Daevid Allen’s snide sneering vocals (and Gilli Smythe’s silly witch stuff) I would go for it. I never understood why he was such a guru to some. His ‘punky’ phase was as punky as Hazel o’ Connor in “Breaking Glass”, and his acoustic stuff drippy and wet. I liked it as I liked psychedelic, i liked space rock, and I liked jazz, and this is what I got with Gong. the lyrics I could take or leave. Mostly I was so wrecked at the time, I was rather drifting, anyway. The jazz rock phase? You betcha. Gong Maison, and all the other variants, too. A piece can be called anythign, so why not some daft title?
Yes, I tend to agree. I’ve really tried with the so-called classic early Gong, and I just find it a bit of a mess. The only Gong I own is Shamal from 1975, and it rocks. For an album coming out of the moribund mid-70s, there is remarkably little slack here. Great tunes played with controlled power and rhythm by musicians who sound like they mean it. More to the point, impeccable stoner music.
But where do you stand on Steve Hillage solo? Is it blasphemy to say that he also leaves me cold? Mates were raving about Live Herald, so I bought it, and was completely underwhelmed. The voice: weedy; the ideas: not that interesting. Mates raved about Rainbow Dome Music, so I bought it, and again I was underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong. On paper, Rainbow Dome Music is just the kind of thing I think I will like. Languid synthy psychedelic music. But I couldn’t find anything there. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough? The only Steve Hillage project that’s excited me has been the stuff he’s done more recently with System 7.
A quirk I notice about discussing prog-rock is how often fans will exempt their favorite group (especially VDGG or Henry Cow) by claiming they were never really prog in the first place; there has been such a nervousness about seeming to like Rick Wakeman’s musicals, or whatever. (I agree with the idea of jazz-end UK prog being most interesting; maybe it’s also a late-psychedelic thing, although I think I will pass on the Gong box.)
Prog and psych are like Tottenham and Arsenal.
They’re right next to each other, they have almost an incestuous relationship, and most people (who have an interest in such things) fall on one side or the other. I’m obviously psych.
To outsiders their spats are a complete irrelevance as, to outsiders, they’re exactly the same.
Actually that last bit is more accurate for Tottenham and Arsenal.
Anyone else notice that Tottenham 2019 are like Arsenal 2010 and Arsenal 2010 are like Tottenham 2019? Thing is, have they themselves noticed?
Oh I don’t know, the prog lot were nice suburban middle class boys (and they are boys) who did their music lessons and went to uni and did astrology or town planning before meeting a folkie with a few songs and forming a band. The psych lot got expelled at 15 for speeding and took to hanging around in car parks making a row then made a career out of it. Jazz/prog crossover people are like proggers but their parents were more boho had some Miles and Brubeck albums.
Stereotyping end.
Not bad though. Except that some of us were not destined by our upbringing, but made our own journeys by seeking out alternative sources of information.
But I think what you have clarified is why ELP, Floyd and Soft Machine represent three distinct strands . The last of the three I am reluctant to call prog, because I quite like it, and all that other eccentric British stuff that goes with it, and that would mean admitting to liking some prog, which I am most determined not to do! (Psych is also OK with me — sometimes).
Prog generally has better chops. Psych is really just souped-up r’n’b played by stripey-trousered ex-mods.
…..anyway these labels are,like, nowheresville. Let’s just call it “Heavy music for Heads”.
An important distinction, is ‘head’ versus ‘hippie’. ‘Heads’ are not scared of science, like electricity and it’s gifts, and eschew eastern mysticism, 1968 radicalism, and strummy fey bollocks like Tyrannosaurus Rex. Heads may be omnivores. I was a head, not a hippie.
Psych is really just souped-up r’n’b played by stripey-trousered ex-mods.
What’s not to like?
I don’t mean to disparage. It’s less “musicianly” and all the better for it, in my humble. There’s a lot to be said for music made be lairy, hairy louts.
Do psych and prog overlap? I’m getting confused. What is Ummagumma? Psych or prog?
I’ve always thought that post-Syd early Floyd (before Meddle) fits comfortably into the German Kosmiche music scene of the late 60s. Perhaps VdGG belong there too.
“German Kosmiche”?? Come on, you just made that up!
Psychedelic, which predates psych as a genre in my mind. Clearly an influence on it but see my stereotyping – psych guys were crazed on cheap speed and accelerated everything in a trancy way – Hawkwind being an early example.
So psychedelic is different from psych? Okay, I’m really confused now. 🙂
Only when Lemmy and DikMik were in the band – everyone else wuz on psychedelics…arguably Hawkwind were at their best when the two factions played nicely, ie before Lemmy got sacked…
Ummagumma is profoundly within what was once referred to as progressive music. Along with countless other works that are in no way either exclusively ‘rock’ or ‘jazz’. What they have in common is that they were, at the time of their creation, trying to push things along a bit rather than bang out stuff in a tin-pan-alley style. This means that the term encompasses Laura Nyro and Captain Beefheart, The Third Ear Band and Shirley Collins. The derivative term ‘prog’ is a lazy diminution of what was once something that went some way towards defining the differences between the ‘heads’ and the ‘straights’. Maybe you just had to be there, and if you’re not old enough, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Trouble was, having successfully “pushed things along a bit”, away from Tin Pan Alley stylings, a majority of the bands then settled into their ruts and stopped progressing.
But they still called themselves and indeed were still called “progressive”.
Now they just called prog and deserve nothing more.
If it sounds like they had classical lessons and never managed to get over that then they prog.
Can, for example had plenty of classical lessons, but got over it big time. Hence they not prog, thank god.
Can had too much soul to be prog. Prog is unremittingly white.
Yes because no classical music , for example, has soul, does it?
Quite. What a lot of nonsense is said about “prog”. Mostly by those who were not there.
The unremitting whiteness of The Temptations is blinding me, along with that of Richie Havens and dozens of others who, if you had had them tucked under your arm back in the day, would have earned you the question, “Oh, I see you like progressive music then?”.
Huh?
Thanks for making my point so clearly.
Subtle. Subtle.
I have a spare ticket for the Steve Hillage / Gong gig in Southampton on 14th November if anyone’s interested
I’m interested!