Took most of January recuperating after that beast of a flu over Christmas – no squash, no standing around in cold, draughty rugby stadiums, by order of the management – a bit of music could do nothing but restore a feller’s spirits, right?
Amongst an unexpected flurry of gigs before Christmas, I went to investigate the latest incarnation of Gong, alighting woozily in the Shires. This is Kavus Torabi’s version of the venerable old machine and it was … OK… I mean I knew there’d be nothing of the old line up, and that Torabi very much received the blessing of Daevid Allen to carry on with Gong. But, well… it was all a bit Ozric Tentacles. Maybe not such a surprise given that the Ozrics were also on the bill. As an evening’s entertainment, it was absolutely far out, and never having actually taken acid myself, it was certainly the most psychedelic thing I’m ever likely to do.
But in the end, it was all a little bit meh…
It reminded me, though, of something I bought for a friend, an old-school Gong fan …
Dashiell Hedayat
The world being as it is, I would’ve preferred to have bought this on vinyl but ended up downloading it and burning it, which, as luck would have it, meant I had it for myself as well. And very grateful, I am too.
So, a bit of history…
Dashiel Hedayat was the pseudonym of writer Jack-Alain Léger who had previously released an album under another pseudonym, Melmoth, and went onto write a number of books under 3rd and 4th pseudonyms (or 4th and 5th if Léger wasn’t in fact his real name, I’m losing the will to care…). The Melmoth album involved him reading his poetry over some sort of sonic backdrop and apparently gained some “acclaim”, but I’m probably never going to go there…
For his second record, he got himself another stage name and tooled himself up with a proper counter-culture band, somehow managing to recruit all the members of Gong to back him on it:
Quite the “look”, this video, isn’t it? It’s like a Fast Show version of the Seventies (but without the weather forecast) …
It’s a shame there’s no footage of his backing band but you’ll have to take it from me – it’s the actual Gong … erm gang – Allen, Gilli Smyth, Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle et al. As such it is in fact peak era 1971-style Gong, recorded just after Pyle joined and somewhere before Camembert Electrique appeared – smack in the middle of the whole Radio Gnome period.
And it’s all the things, 21st Century Gong are not – gallic, spacey, replete with Gilli Smyth’s breathy, vaguely ridiculous backing vocals, Allen’s guitars wandering all over it and even with some sparkling glissando.
Back before Christmas, I chatted with an old fan who said he’d seen Allen play a solo gig in Wolverhampton which consisted of the man himself armed only with a didgeridoo, leading the audience in the Om chant. Frankly, I’d settle for that…
Much as I’d love to be able to share footage of that evening (and avoiding any BBC-style notions of “balance” by showing one of the Torabi-Gong videos) here’s the latest clip I could find of the old Pixie himself (mercifully, not a didgeridoo in sight).
You’ve got to love a man who makes an effort…
It’s all living proof that no matter how far out most of us can go, there are some who can go furthur…
Partly Porpoise 