I’ve just bought a couple of Steve Hillage CDs ‘L’ and a comp and am liking* them a lot.
So that has of course led me to another ‘rabbit hole’ that is Gong. Of course I’ve heard of them and know a bit about them. I worked with a guy who was a fan from the start and he hardly ever stopped talking about them. However all of that was over 50 years ago so I’ve forgotten his recommendations probably because I took no notice back then.
So what do any Gong fans out there recommend, albums, comps, box sets I’m open to all. Thank you in advance.
I’d recommend ‘Camembert Electrique’ as the absolute starter – then ‘Flying Teapot’, ‘Angel’s Egg’ , ‘You’ & ‘Shamal’ are also pretty strong & ‘Floating Free Anarchy 1977’ as a cracking live album.
After that, depending what you like or don’t, just work your way forwards or backwards through their other stuff & the various incarnations of the ‘Here & Now Band’ & Daevid Allen’s other projects
Here’s a little taster to bring out your inner Cosmic Pixie/ Druid hot knife wielding freak self!
Great advice – spot on for the pixie powered lunacy at the start of their career. I recall seeing them play a stonking set back when the Camembert could be had for 50 of your p.
Saw them several times then (once at Bradford Uni where some of the audience decided to have a punch up/ disagreement about Gong’s musical merit,, .and when they did some reunion concerts a few years ago.
About the only band I can stand that uses flute.
A friend was caretaker for Mother Gong in the late seventies/ eighties and gifted me a pair of pot-headed boots.
I bought it when it came out and found it utterly incomprehensible. Put me off Gong for life but I’ve got bits of Steve Hillage which are excellent. I ought to give it another spin.
Shocked and stunned, Twang…shocked and stunned…
I know. I remember “Squeezing sponges over policemen’s heads”…
Like the new avatar though.
Like this @Twang ?
https://imgur.com/a/WErSK7D
Exactly.
Imgur have changed how you find your latest posting it appears I posted the picture four times and eventually deleted three the one above was one of them.
Definitely Camembert Electrique, Angel’s Egg and Shamal.
After trying all of the above recommendations ..
There are distinct “phases” with Gong and although there is some continuity between them, the music changes quite a lot depending on the phase. I love the early Daevid Allen Gong and recommend pretty much anything up to Shamal for that, but the albums become more fusion-y from Shamal onwards for a while, although no less enjoyable in my view. Where does liking Steve Hillage set you up for? Difficult to say – I think you’ll need to listen to both sides.
Gong have a very long career, of course, and I won’t write them off after 1980, but peak Gong is definitely before that IMHO
I would start with the three albums from what is described as the classic period, ‘Flying Teapot’, ‘Angel’s Egg’ and ‘You’ (beginning with ‘Angel’s Egg’ and then ‘You’). The Gong line-up for these three albums was never bettered. Alongside founders Daevid Allen, Gilli Smyth and Didier Malherbe were newcomers Steve Hillage on guitar, Tim Blake on synths, Mike Howlett on bass and drummer Pierre Moerlen.
Unfortunately, by coming late to the party, you missed out on a fine Gong boxset – ‘Love from the Planet Gong’ – released a few years ago and now very difficult to get. Its 12 CDs covered the ‘classic’ period extensively. But the good news is that the three albums mentioned above have been extracted from the boxset and each made available as two-CD deluxe sets, with the first CD in each set comprised of beautifully remastered versions of the original album and the second CD made up of tracks from three different Gong concerts. Even better news is that the live CD in the ‘Angel’s Egg’ package comes with what I consider to be the finest recording Gong made; a 12-minute version of Other Side of the Sky, recorded in Roanne in 1973. Moerlen is on fire.
I see Steve Hillage’s ‘Fish Rising’ as a continuation of the classic line-up (only Allen and Smyth are missing from that album). Hillage left Gong after ‘You’ and, within months, released ‘Fish Rising’. If you like ‘Fish Rising’ you will love the other three mentioned here.
Agree with all of the above.
However, if you also like a bit of jazz/rock – and you like Allan Holdsworth – don’t miss out on Gazeuse, probably the best of their jazzy albums. Very little in common with the mighty Radio Gnome Trilogy – but an excellent album in its own right.
Steve Hillage was still present when I saw them at Watchfield Free Festival at the end of August ’75, after Daevid and Gilli had left. Quite possibly his last gig with that lineup. Arthur Brown guested on part of the gig, wearing an immaculate white suit.
“Fish Rising” was sort of Gong Depleted/Augmented. It was the “You” lineup minus Daevid & Gilli and with Dave Stewart (Khan, Hatfield & The North, National Health) on extra keyboards and Lindsay Cooper (Henry Cow, National Health, Comus) playing bassoon.
Canterbury in excelsis!
I can highly recommend Shamal and remember liking Camembert Electrque but that was certainly listened to under a fog of weed that may have coloured my judgement.
In reverse tell me where to go in regards to Steve Hillage – I had and loved Fish rising – I bought a couple of albums last year but it was his more recent oeuvre – more dance less spacey.
L – if you like the Fish, gotta get L next!
A pointer towards he and his partner Miquette Giraudy’s more recent electronica with System 7 is his “Rainbow Dome Musick” ambient album, composed and recorded for continuous play in an installation at the Festival For The Mind-Body-Spirit at Olympia in 1979.
Egad and eglid, surely “a fog of weed that may have coloured my judgement” really means “at the time, having thrown open the doors of perception, I was capable of appreciating the inner magic and fundamental beauty of hippy giggling, and consequently bathed in the innocence and joy within the music, but over time those doors have sadly closed once more and I am these days incapable of such pure and unadulterated abandon”.
Spot on @Vulpes-Vulpes however as an upstanding pillar of society I can no longer admit to such indulgences to the people I work with as they just wouldn’t believe me to be the same person. Oh alright that’s complete bullshit – of course they would believe it.
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions, I will consider all of them.
I confess I find the Pothead Pixie stuff inexorable guff, but the later stuff, the jazzier Pierre Moerlain’s Gong has some traction. Someone mentioned Gazeuse and I’d second that.
Similar to me: I like all Gong music, but it helps when Daevid Allen and Gilli keep their pie holes shut. “I am a witch”, indeed. PSHAW. And I’ve been immersed in it for half a century, and did a lot of my drugs to it back in the day.
increasingly I find that the singers and lyrics of the music I like the worst thing about it. This is why Magma are so good. You don’t know what they are saying, it’s just voice as instrument.
I agree that some of the lyrics were ‘inexorable guff’. But look behind them and there is a tightly knit band of musicians playing an intriguing blend of musical styles – and playing it incredibly well. Within each album there is space music (Allen’s glissando guitar, Smyth’s space whispers and Blake’s bubbling synths), traces of jazz (Malherbe’s saxes and flutes), funk (from bassist Howlett) and rock (Hillage and Moerlen, who to my mind is one of the great unsung drummers of the genre). There is also an overarching sense of humour (admittedly, on occasion, emerging from pie holes in spurts of inexorable guff).
These six musicians only played together on two studio albums (‘Angel’s Egg’ and ‘You’) and much of their music can only be found on live recordings: Bataclan, Roanne and Hyde Park (all on ‘Love from the Planet Gong’, although most of the Bataclan concert can be found on a standalone album released by Mantra), Sheffield (on Mantra’s ‘Live in Sheffield 1974’), the reunion concert of 1977 (found on ‘Gong est Mort, Vive Gong’) and an excellent compilation album ‘Gong in the Seventies’. These albums are becoming expensive to buy but streaming services are available.
At some point there will be a mega-boxset covering Gong through the ages. This was due last year, then promised for this year; but with only three months to go, I think it is safe to say it will not be here in 2023. The good news, though, is that the project has not been abandoned.
Agree, agree, agree – @Munster beat me to it!
Even Flying Teapot (usually the primary focus of any ire relating to inexorable guff) has some excellent, original and interesting jazz-rock behind the vocals. I’d reinforce everything that Munster has suggested about the live albums of the period – in the early 1970s, all that was available was the Gong side of Greasy Truckers Live at Dingwalls, still one of my all-time favourite LP sides. These days we’re spoiled for choice.
Anyway, it’s all a matter of perception: Retro’s inexorable guff may be someone else’s light-hearted whimsy. 🙂 And, for balance, I was the one who recommended Gazeuse further upthread – so it is in fact possible to enjoy both sides of the Gong!
I agree wholeheartedly.
Absolutely sh*t hot musicianship throughout their best stuff.
I don’t mind a bit of woo woo codswallop once in a while (& personally find it far less tiresome than much of Zappa’s frat/scat nonsense which spoils a lot of tremendous playing for me).
I played ‘Flying Teapot’ on headphones after work for the 1st time in yonks yesterday & enjoyed it tremendously!
‘Inexorable guff’? After frequenting this place and it’s previous locations for 2 decades I’m immune to it and I’m not excusing myself of being guilty.
Thumbs up for Camembert Electrique from me as well – track 4 in particular is quite enchanting. Goes well with White Noise – An Electric Storm (track 2)
I saw an iteration of Gong in the early 90s in Bournemouth (Planet Gong/Gong Maison) – very silly and very entertaining. They were supposed to be supporting GWAR, who never turned up (possibly turned back at customs because of their blood-spurting dinosaur costumes…)
I bought these two from the Merchandise stall and have treasured them ever since. Something to dive into after a spliff – which is close to never these days.
I can’t recommend a specific album. I can recommend that the only acceptable position for listening to Gong is lying flat on your back. Ideally on a beanbag.
Presumably with your head between a pair of *huge* bins!
Good gracious! This isn’t Deep Purple we’re talking about here! Huge bins, indeed…
On your beanbagged back with a pair of cordless cans. Playing this.
Okay, finally a subject I know something about. (70’s Canterbury and Henry Cow being the other)
A personal blurb:
Speaking as an unashameless Gong Daevid & Gilli & Hillage fanboy and particularly all things inexorable and guff like, I understand the reticence to embrace the pixelated gnomic aspect to be found in Gong.
It’s been there from the get go. No one cool admits to liking Gong because, y’know, they weren’t cool (and yet…)
I was utterly transfixed as a teen. The hand drawn cartoonish Spike Millaganism, inviting and fun, quasi-eastern spiritual symbols, ‘ave a cup of tea and some cheese, then the most out-there psychedelic music I’d ever heard (Hawkwind ’72 notwithstanding) yet then to be confronted by Gilly Smyth’s frankly scary incantations and very upfront (for me at least) feminist sexual politics… (clearly she did NOT want to fuck me! (‘I Am Your Pussy’ from Flying Teapot)
Daevid Allen began in the early 60’s as a raconteur poet, attracting cool musos and poser artistes to conflate his absurdist Pataphysical Dadaist tendencies.
The original Soft Machine formed around him in Canterbury ’66, the young Robert Wyatt in his thrall, at least until it became obvious Daevid was not particularly interested in high end muso-music per se.
He reveled in pissing off expectations, which he did many times over his lifetime.
I’ve followed the whole thing for well over 50 years and, yeah, the strongest (and “streaming, mate!”) stuff came early then got diluted, then re-constituted over and over to massively varying success.
That said:
Camembert Electrique is absolutely quintessensual.
The live at Glastonbury Fayre 71 (which, yes, was not recorded at Glastonbury at all blah blah) is also obligatory listening.
The Greasy Truckers live stuff (also cobbled together by Daevid)
The Radio Genome Trilogy is de-rigueur
Shamal and Gazuese are horses of an entirely different genus – musical gems, none the less.
after that, and there is a shit-ton to be found, you have to be a fan.. and, obviously, I am.
Daevid’s best solo albums, to my mind, are
Banana Moon – on par with Camembert for acid-reflux vitriol
Good Morning and Now is The Happiest Time of Your Life – Lovely Post-Gong spiritual hippy acoustic collections.
N’existe Pas – like Banana Moon, designed to piss off the pastoral hippy fans and pave the way towards Daevid’s 80’s New York performance artist phase
and on and on….
Hillage: Fish Rising is head and fins above anything in the Gong catalogue, and, to be honest anything in the Hillage catalogue.
It is still, after 48 years, my all time favourite LP. It astonishes me how much I never tire of it. Where’s my headphones and beanbag?
The rest are great positive guitar rock albums to varying degree, Rainbow Dome Music is a unique slice of proto-ambient electronica
System 7 is EDM, if that floats your boat.
If you’re wondering, I’ve not psychically engaged with the very current Cardiac/Gong configuration.
By all reports they are amazing live but unless they venture to Australia I won’t witness that.
Their several studio albums, while seemingly above par psychedelic rock outs, seem to lack the requisite anarchaotic cheese, aka inexorable guff for my taste (such as it is)
how much of a Gong fanboy am I?
this much:
This is excellent, both sonically and visually; Daevid Allen’s ‘Gong on Acid’ revisited for the 21st century.
Great post- have an ‘Up’!
thanks, Mr Jim, I’ll smoke it later
No-one cool admits to liking Gong? Can’t be true – I like Gong and I’m as cool as a very cool thing indeed (adjusts propellor hat)…
What a fine post! Strong and streamin’, mate!
Edith: …and I know what you mean about the current band. I did so want to like them – but it’s just not hitting the spot.
I thangyew
Camembert Electrique was sold for 50p when most albums were £2 so everybody bought it and it’s still maybe my favourite.
I saw 70s Gong at Farnborough Town Hall and there was so much weed being smoked by the audience that you only had to inhale to feel dizzy.
I saw the recent incarnation of Gong a couple of years ago and they were very enjoyable too.
The most recent studio album, The Universe Also Collapses is heartily reccommended.
Thank you, thank you for all your suggestions.
I decided on 2 x 2CD comps: ‘Opium For The People’ & ‘Magick Invocations’ only one track duplicated. I see where listening to these takes me.