Tramshed - 22/11/2019
“Good evening sir…welcome to the Flying Teapot. Have you flown with us before? Of course, I can see you have. XXS size t-shirt with luminous asymmetric design…green felt pointy pixie hat.”
“Make yourself comfortable…something to make the trip special? Coffee, alcohol…or something stronger?”
The sensational Gong have been supersonically flying since the late sixties and, as members of the “family” come and go, Gong’s most recent incarnation shows the journey has maintained all of its energy, enthusiasm and expertise.
In fact, strange as it may seem, Gong’s relentless orbital psychedelic pathway seems to have now completed the circle and reconnected with the zeitgeist. In these days of fear and uncertainty, the calm atmosphere of Planet Gong has so many contemporary attractions that it seems highly likely that Richard Branson would pay a fortune to hire a Brexit escape rocket and visit it.
It was, of course, Branson who brought Gong to wider attention in 1974 by re-releasing the seminal Camembert Electrique album on his new Virgin label (a bargain at 59p at the time), shortly before he threw the hippies out of his Oxford Street shop and still quite a way before he discovered private islands. For those with lesser budgets, Gong’s music takes you to similar destinations for the price of a Tramshed ticket.
That’s where we were privileged to hitch a ride on Gong’s meditative magic carpet ride aboard the carefully, tight-woven fabric of Ched Nettles’ drumming and Dave Sturt’s bass. They provided the rocket fuel to visit the black holes of the long distant past (the former earthlings Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth’s "Fohat Digs Holes in Space"/”You Can Do What You Want”) or enabling the more modern messaging, scribed on space stationery, of “Rejoice!” inspired, according to Sturt, “by the light, love and passing of our dear friend and inspiration, Daevid Allen.”
Half way through, Kavus Torabi steps forwards and karma connects the more than willing crowds to pitch a single note together and feel the force of the joyous journey. Torabi is a fantastic and inspirational front man, whimsical, waspish, filled with woe and wonder, staring and smiling his way into our hearts and souls with his out-of-this-world urgings and chanting mantras. The projections and light show were stunning, the sound crisp and the atmosphere as light and heady as you just know it would be if you were to deeply inhale and step out onto Planet Gnome.
We have lost many great comedians in recent decades, some like Eric Morecombe and Tommy Cooper, at the stage where they were closing in on financially free, artistic independence and with the potential to follow those such as Bob Monkhouse and Frankie Howard into new, edgy and exciting chapters of performing.
One such is Peter Sellers, and I couldn’t help thinking that if he was still around and able to star in and executively produce a film about a rock star who was an avant-guarde firecracker but who, fifty years on, had become an old-guard damp squib, he would have done so. And for his anti-hero, he’d have to look no further than Steve Hillage (who actually, these days looks a little like a Sellars’s Strangelove-style creation as, coiffed and assured, he smiles enigmatically from behind his stage shades.)
Look, I get it. Steve Hillage is a hero, of this there is no doubt. And if you were one of the capacity crowd with its fair share of south Wales rockers who doted on every twiddle and kerjang, I’m sorry but I didn’t get it. I slap my own wrists. I’m a lifelong fan of Hillage’s work in forming the futures of Gong, Caravan, Kevin Ayers et al and a fair bit of the eponymous great body of work that Steve Hillage has in his back catalogue. But whereas on the night, Gong was transcendental and trippy, Hillage seemed staid and static- in fact, bordering on the dreaded curse of the seventies, pomp rock. I felt that not even his great technique or the magnificent musicianship of the Gong family behind him could break the ennui.
But the visuals were great. And Gong was fantastic…
