This may just be Gong’s natural audience. A packed out village hall with a mixture of the Gong curious and those travelling from afar; innovative and enthusiastic promotion (thanks Phil Ogg); campervans lined up opposite the venue on the approach to a local school; punters streaming in garbed in multifarious T-shirts including those of the greater spotted Camembert variety; Jonny restored to the GAS merch stall; Kavus Torabi excitedly pacing the venue pre-gig; Dave Sturt beaming and relaxed; Fabio Golfetti tired but in good spirits after his mammoth flight from Brazil where he’d been playing with his band Violeta de Outono; and friendly door staff with nary a wrist band, inkstamp, searches or herding in sight.
Yet Gong are far from strangers to these parts on the roof top of England, close to the Cumbrian/Northumbrian border. The band played one of their last gigs with Daevid Allen in nearby Alston in 2012, by which time practically all current members of the band were in situ; whilst we ourselves had witnessed a gig right here in Allendale with the current line-up four years later (our kids had stayed behind in Alston cooking lemon curd tarts with our friend Tracy – 9 years on, all are in attendance). There’s an affinity for the band around these parts which means that the Tat for Tibet bus festooned with original Daevid Allen artwork, which makes its annual appearances at Kozfest and Glastonbury, is moored close by, whilst there’s a memorial in a park back over in Alston for a local character known universally as ‘Teapot’.
The familiarity extended to the tracks aired tonight – despite talk of new material in the offing, there were no new songs, as the band honed a set list on this brief UK mini-tour (York, Huddersfield and Liverpool were the other dates – Bristol is to come in June) before setting off on the second leg of a US tour which started in 2024, this time visiting its West Coast. Drawing almost exclusively from the 3 post-Daevid Gong albums, the band continue to perform meticulously crafted and powerful material. Racing through ‘My Guitar is a Spaceship’ and ‘All Clocks Reset’ from the latest album ‘Unending Ascending’, spliced either side of the rumbustious ‘Kapital’, and followed by the trademark title track from the first post-Daevid Album ‘Rejoice! I’m Dead’, this is high octane, driving stuff, and Kavus was probably only half joking when he suggested that the frivolity would have to stop at that point…
But if the sixties-drenched ‘Tiny Galaxies’ calmed things down a little, they were quickly ramped up once more by the tribal ‘My Sawtooth Wake’, drummer Cheb Nettles hammering out a hypnotic beat. And on to the main event: an extraordinary segued 35 minutes or so starting with the exquisite ‘Through Restless Seas I Come’, the Selenish invocation ‘Ship of Ishtar’ and samples of Daevid’s voice before eventually erupting into the familiar sounds of ‘Master Builder’, a brief but exultant nod to the band’s legacy. Perhaps the suspense is held a little too long here: there are so many other vignettes within a very strong recent repertoire also deserving of attention, but it’s fair to say the audience were transfixed. Then on to a triumphant conclusion with ‘Choose Your Goddess Now’ and an encore of ‘Insert Your Own Prophecy’.
Each gig throws up its own unique memories based on set list, sound mix or the venue itself. For me I’ll take away the spine-chilling crystal clear four part vocal harmony which greeted us on ‘Spaceship’; or maybe Kavus seemingly having the audience in his pocket as he extended his long arms imploringly in their direction, wide eyes seemingly agog at what was unfolding. Maybe it was Dave Sturt and Fabio Golfetti (the latter predominantly on glissando) underpinning everything sonically and rhythmically from their stations stage right, seemingly in their own trances. A transition in the ‘Restless’/’Ishtar’ medley completely floored me whilst I was subconsciously processing news of a sad event from earlier in the week – perhaps something bigger shifted here too, as at the end of the gig I spotted a punter cutting short a fag break outside, driven in by the first, welcome, rain for a month – he was grinning as water dripped out of the creases in his trilby. But the prevailing memory tonight was the saxophone of Ian East, alternately barking or crooning on tenor and soprano, high up in the mix (as he always should be), his uncompromising solos giving the band’s sound a wonderful authority. Another wonderful evening. US audiences are in for a treat.
Gong’s ‘I See You’, the last Gong album with Daevid Allen has just received a 10th anniversary remix and release – available here
Twango, who promoted this gig (and many others in the North East) will host The Utopia Strong at Allendale on October 23rd this year. https://www.facebook.com/Twangogg/
Fabio Golfetti has recently released a 20th anniversary edition of the Violeta de Outono album ‘Ilhas’, available here:
Facelift’s interviews with Fabio are published on the blog here:
And details of both Gong’s forthcoming US tour plus a UK autumn tour with Henge are below:
The Canterbury scene(zine) continued.... 