GONG AT SHEPHERD'S BUSH (via Rob the Cheesemeister)

Gong set list Shepherds Bush

1. Intro tape One by One
2. 757 (occupy)
3. Radio Gnome
4. Tic Toc
5. Pussy
6. Escape Control Delete
7. Tropical Fish / Selene
8. Flute Salad
9. Oily Way
10. Outer Temple
11. Inner Temple
12. Goddess Invocation
13. Om Riff / Master Builder
14. Change The World
15. I Bin Stoned / O Mother
16. Zeroid
17. Opium
18. Dynamite

19. Can't Kill Me

At Montserrat DVD - £7.99

Live At The Uncon 2006 DVD - £12.99

Live In Tokyo  CD - £7.99

I'am Your Egg CD - £7.99

Histories & Mysteries Of Planet Gong DCD - £11.99

25th Birthday  CD - £9.99

LINK: Daevid Allen Review

Q: The Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy is full of symbolism; the first and most obvious symbolism to me is the concept of ‘starting new’ or the idea of ‘rebirth.’ It’s found in the story of the Pothead Pixies being reincarnated with the help from the Octave Doctors in the Angel Egg and it’s also in the beginning of your awareness of the Planet Gong. I could be projecting my own ideas and imagination, but I envisioned you (with Gilli Smyth) lying under a tree and having a moment of inspiration. Can you tell me more about the night on Easter 1966?

The Radio Gnome Trilogy was created to be a vision carrier not a fixed idea. The most important thing is the story you make from it as an individual. Your vision. From your vision you can find inspiration to understand your own path.

My part is to weave an archetypal story structure that serves as a launching pad for you so you can project your own ideas and imagination and envision what works for you.

There is no one correct story.

Read on...

Gonzo Links:

Daevid Allen

Daevid Allen and Mother Gong

Daevid Allen and Friends

Daevid Allen And Russell Hibbs

Daevid Allen Magick

Gong

Gong Global Family

ENOCHIAN THEORY: I think this bunch are rather nifty (and they are gonna be supporting Gong)

Enochian Theory have released their track For Your Glory, Great Deceiver as they gear up for their support slot with Gong next month. Hear it below.

The band, who supported TesseracT earlier this month, will open for Daevid Allen’s prog icons at the Shepherds Bush Empire on November 19.

It’s Enochian Theory’s biggest UK show to date and they say: “We’re proud to have been chosen to open for Gong. Expect some cool things from us.”

The band’s album Life… And All It Entails – from which For Your Glory, Great Deceiver is taken – was released in March. Four years in the conceptualising, it was voted by iTunes users as one of the best rock/metal albums of the year.

FInd out more at www.enochiantheory.co.uk.

Read on...

Home Listen / Watch Schedule Programmes Local events Music About Contact Playlist and Download for the Daevid Allen Special October 1st 2012

Many thanks to Daevid Allen for gracing us with his presence. He was a wonderful guest!

Here is the Download

Playlist:

Steven Wilson – Grace For Drowning – (Grace For Drowning)
Talking Heads – Cities (Fear of Music)
Tori Amos – China (Little Earthquakes)
Gong – The Year 2032 (2032)
Charles Mingus – Freedom (Mingus Mingus Mingus ..)
Yardbirds – Still I’m Sad (The Very Best of the Yardbirds)
Daevid Allen – Daughters of America (Soundbytes 4 The Revalation)
Ornette Coleman – Happy Hour (Virgin Beauty)
Pink Floyd – Bike (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn)
Robert Wyatt – Sea Song (Rock Bottom)
Percy Grainger – Country Garden
Gong – Opium For the People (Live Floating Anarchy 1977)
Traffic – No Face, No Name and No Number (Mr Fantasy)
Captain Beefheart – Electricity (Safe as Milk)
Daevid Allen – History and Hope (Soundbytes 4 The Revalation)
Gong – You Can’t Kill Me (Camembert Electrique)

Gonzo Links:

Daevid Allen

Daevid Allen and Mother Gong

Daevid Allen and Friends

Daevid Allen And Russell Hibbs

Daevid Allen Magick

Gong

EXCLUSIVE: Rob Ayling on Gong

I was invited to watch my old mates Gong go through their paces at a secret rehearsal room location in London.

It is so wonderful to see my old chums, Daevid and Gilli. Every time I see them it is as if time has stood still.... Of course their son Orlando is always such a great spirit to be around.

New guitarist Fabio was good to meet up with again. We hadn't seen each other since the UNcon - near 6 years ago. Then of course David Stut on bass. Dave is always solid, having enjoyed his work with the current line up of Jade Warrior and Cypher.

Good to hear the old classics booming out at me as I sat alone in the rehearsal room save the band. I many ways it was a private Gong show of my own - how cool is that ? Imagine if that 12 year school boy clutching his beloved copy of Angels Egg could see me now ???

After rehearsals it was off for some food and a good ol' catch up.

I can't wait to see them play at the Shepherds Bush Empire.. But if you can't wait that long you can catch them on another date.

Must go - its Telepot time !!!

Gonzo Links:

Daevid Allen

Daevid Allen and Mother Gong

Daevid Allen and Friends

Daevid Allen And Russell Hibbs

Daevid Allen Magick

Gong

Gong Global Family

GONG: Two sneaky behind-the-scenes shots from the Gong rehearsal room

 Gong trade in flying teapot for electric kettle. 

Gonzo Links:

Daevid Allen

Daevid Allen and Mother Gong

Daevid Allen and Friends

Daevid Allen And Russell Hibbs

Daevid Allen Magick

Gong

Gong Global Family

SPIRITS BURNING: A taster for the new project

Spirits Burning, is one of the most unique entities in the space rock galaxy. The group consists of one main member, Don Falcone, and many other participants from various  bands and projects.

Members of Gong, Hawkwind, Acid Mothers Temple, Porcupine Tree, University of Errors, Quarkspace, Scattered Planets, Mooch, F/I, Melting Euphoria and scores of others have all participated on Spirits Burning discs. The recording process would probably not have been possible without the power of the internet, but Don finds many different methods of bringing the musicians together.  By using his magic, Don constructs tracks with a very natural feel, as if these contributors from all over the planet were in the same place for the recordings.

This morning I received a taster for their new project...

LINK: Neil Sloman on Daevid Allen

In 2008 our good friend Hugh Hopper asked  if we could put up a one of his musician friends; He turned out to be Daevid Allen of whom I had vaguely heard but knew little about. Infact Daevid and Hugh were founder members of Soft Machine and he subsequently went on to form Gong, a band that still plays in various guises around the world and continues to have a big influence on young musicians today

Read on...

Gonzo Links:

Daevid Allen

Daevid Allen and Mother Gong

Daevid Allen and Friends

Daevid Allen And Russell Hibbs

Daevid Allen Magick

Gong

Gong Global Family

DAEVID ALLEN: Psychedelic baby

Interview:

Daevid, you were born in Melbourne, Australia and in your teenage years you decided to travel to Paris. What compelled you to go to Europe?

I wanted to be at the epicentre of the artistic avant garde wherever it was in the world.

While staying in Paris you met Terry Riley and soon the doors to all jazz clubs were open. Tell us about times in Paris?

Actually they were always closed to us because we were too weird. 

I did a poetry reading accompanied by Terry playing a motorcycle engine. It was not what they wanted. The doors remained closed. On the other hand Chet Baker was our friend so we got in at least.

Around 1961 you went to England where you met two very extraordinary people, William S. Burroughs, and Sun Ra. What do you remember from meeting them?

I met Burroughs in Paris. In London he told me to get a haircut and disappear.

I met Sun Ra in 1979 in NYC. He told me to have a cup of coffee and relax.

Read on...

Gonzo Links:
Daevid Allen
Daevid Allen and Mother Gong
Daevid Allen and Friends
Daevid Allen And Russell Hibbs
Daevid Allen Magick
Gong
Gong Global Family

LINK: Steve Hillage - something else

Even as Steve Hillage paid tribute to the psychedelic rock band Gong in 2006 at the Melkweg in Amsterdam, he also took a lengthy look back at his own underrated solo work from the 1970s.

Live at Gong Family Unconvention, Amsterdam, due in both CD and DVD formats on September 10, 2012, from Gonzo MultiMedia, focuses on the latter — as the Steve Hillage Band, which hadn’t appeared on together in some 25 years, performed tracks from 1975′s Fish Rising, 1976′s L, 1977′s Motivation Radio, and 1983′s For To Next.

What those solo albums did, this live set makes clear, is point the way for Hillage’s transition from volcanically inventive guitar player to a quirk-filled innovator behind the boards. Before he would go on to work as a producer (Simple Minds, the Charlatans, Murray Head and Robyn Hitchcock) and then architect of ambient techno (System 7), Hillage would issue a series of recordings that focused more on imaginative band interplay and textured arrangements.

The guitar work is often a long time coming, though when it finally arrives, there are these pupil-dilating outbursts of kaleidoscopic sounds — each of them their own undeniably persuasive argument for a long-awaited return to Hillage band projects.

Read on...
Check out Steve's Gonzo Artist Page

A BLAST FROM MY PARTICULAR PAST: Travelling Daze

I would like to point out that this review, is purely my own opinion. It has nothing to do with anyone else at Gonzo Multimedia. The opinions expressed are my own, and my own alone.

I want to introduce you to the jolly nice people at Enabler Publications who are doing a sterling job issuing books (amongst other things) on the free festival and 'traveller' culture of Britain, which has largely disappeared in the past twenty years. Alan Dearling sent me a copy of their new book, Travelling Daze which tells the story of the Free Festival and Traveller movement from then until now.

First of all, lets get the review bit out of the way. This book is a magnificent achievement from a socio-cultural point of view; it documents a period of British social history that would otherwise have been forgotten, and it is essential reading for anyone who has ever turned their wild staring eyes towards the open road, or even put Hawkwind or Gong onto the CD player. That means approximately 98% of the people who read the Gonzo Daily. So go out and buy it.

But it also opened a whole slew of emotional cans of worms which I had thought were buried deep in my psyche, never to be opened again. Because, for many years, I was almost a traveller. I say 'almost', because I always had a house of bricks and mortar to come back to. And in a body blow to my anarchist credibility, I owned said house (or rather - at the time - Abbey National PLC owned it). But for great stretches of time for about twelve years from the late 1980s, I spent a lot of my time (and what is more important, my happiest times) on the road between various events at which I sold my wares and danced like an idiot.

There are people and places in this book that I had nearly forgotten. The descriptions of the Treworgey Tree Fayre, for example, were spot on, and brought back all the glorious insanity of those days with an immense rush of joy and pain.

Because of the very nature of the book, it celebrates what was good, creative and positive about the scene, which is exactly what it should do. It doesn't attempt to gloss over the negative aspects, but it doesn't dwell on them. I stopped being part of the culture because of people such as 'The Brew Crew', a bunch of filthy dirty brigands off their heads on Carlsberg Special Brew, the dole fraud, the widespread use of heroin, the sexual promiscuity and violence amongst some traveller children, and the low-life scum (including grave robbers, amateur pornographers, and car thieves) who ended up part of the scene once it was no longer able to police itself effectively.

The book has done something very important for me, and something for which I can never thank Alan Dearling enough. It has reminded me why I first got involved in the Traveller Culture, and what I had first found attractive, nay irresistible about it. It encapsulates a beautiful part of our shared history; a time when people of integrity preferred a shared communal existence in the open air, and turned their back on the increasingly unpleasant face of Thatcher's Britain.

The fact it all went wrong wasn't their fault. In fact, it could be argued that the scum who ended up forcing so many people, including me, to turn away, were actually just as much children of Thatcher's policies as the yuppies, the outsider dealers, and those annoying women with ponytails who used to say "OK, Ya" a lot. They were selfish, unbridled capitalists, with no thoughts or care for the society in which they had planted themselves. Pure Thatcherites, in other words.

This is a fantastic book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Go to the Enabler Publications website. Knock three times and say Jon Downes sent ya!

‘Endure, Adapt, Evolve’ (or, Emerge, Mutate, Flourish) A kind of Intro...Alan Dearling

Wally Hope

In the beginning, there was Phil Russell...
Alan Dearling

Keeping Hope alive: Then, now and into our futures. A personal account by Dean Phillips, custodian of the Wally Hope Appreciation Society

Wally in ‘others’ words’. A further excursion into Wally Worlds from Alan

Life with the Convoy: to Stoney Cross and Beyond...Amanda (Gemini)

David Stooke: Traveller artist. Includes Green Lane by Reg Desborough, Spider by DiceGeorge and Phil the Beer by Andy Hope.

Festival Welfare Services – the early years: a personal memoir by Margaret Greenfields and Yvonne Doyle

George Firsoff (1944-2004)...Alan Dearling

Life after Newbury...provided by Pete Sheppard

Twice Blessed: Born a Traveller...Ferdia Earle

People are the best part of nature. Painting by Elizabeth Anderton

Sid Rawle

Sid Rawle...compiled by Alan Dearling

Sid’s place in Traveller history...Andy Worthington

Some more observations about Sid...Alan Dearling (with Jeremy Sandford)

The Vision of Albion by Sid Rawle as told toJeremy Sandford

Some memories of travelling days...Nicki Turton

Memories of free festivals and travelling scene...Steve Bubble

A sense of community by Liz

Hawkwind: a few words about the ultimate Traveller band...Alan Dearling

You could live like that...Netty Miles

Taff the Photo – bits of my history

The Levellers: There's only one way of life, And that's your own...Alan Dearling

Travelling Bands: Music and Festivals within new Traveller Culture 1995-2011...Sam Wilkinson

Epilogue: Affinities...Alan Dearling

Plus:

Stonehenge Free Festival illustration...Gary (Teapot Circus)

Westbury White Horse 1985 illustration...Gary (Teapot Circus)

More artwork from David Stooke, Joe Public, Gubby and additional pics by many people, especially Taff the Photoand Traveller Dave Fawcett, and more including those from Chazz Pink; Nigel Ayers; Fiona Earle, Rob Large; Flash Harry; Frank; Carol Waller, Graeme Strike, Matt Smith and other travelling friends.

Dedicated to all of the UK’s Travellers.

Those who have sadly left us,

those who have found different homes,

and those who are still keeping the faiths.

MAGICK BROTHERS TOUR DATES

Another of GONG frontman Daevid Allen’s off-shoot projects, featuring Allen along with Graham Clark and Mark Robson.

The acoustic periods in Daevid’s life have always coincided with periods of spiritual self initiation and renewal. Of course these themes are encoded in the music, so that listeners might access similar changes through osmosis. Named after his first album in 1969, Magic Brothers is the freshest and most human of his material to date.

This morning I was greeted by an email from the Gonzo Cheesenfuhrer, Rob Ayling, and it contained those mystickal words:

MAGICK BROTHERS TOUR DATES

Sat 08/09 Hitchin UK
Club 85
74 Whinbush Road, Hitchin, Hertfordshire SG5 1PZ · +44 1462 434 801

Sun 09/09 Lewes UK
Zu Studios

Thu 13/09 Bournemouth UK
The Winchester
39 Poole Hill, Bournemouth BH2 5PW · +44 1202 557 937

Fri 14/09 Sheffield UK
Greystones
Greystones Road, Sheffield S11 7BS · +44 144 266 5599
Bus routes: 81, 88A

Sat 15/09 Hebden Bridge UK
Trades Club
Holme Street, HX7 8EE · +44 1422 845 265 · [map]

Sun 16/09 Glastonbury (GB)
King Arthur
31-33 Benedict Street, Glastonbury, BA6 9EX · [map]

Fri 21/09 Sandwich UK
St Mary's Art Centre [TIX]
St Mary's Church, Strand Street, Sandwich CT13 9HN

Sat 22/09 Lincolnshire UK
Alchemy Festival [TIX]

Fri 28/09 Mallorca E
Teatre Lloseta
Carrer d'es Pou Nou, 0
07360 Lloseta de Mallorca
+34 971 514 452

SWEET NOISES THAT GIVE DELIGHT AND HURTETH NOT...

About ten years or so ago a bloke called Andy Billings (now living in Canada but then a resident of the next estate up from the CFZ in Exeter), was a regular visitor to our HQ in Holne Court. He soon became a close friend and the CFZ Computer Consultant, but he is such a nice chap that we looked forward to his thrice weekly visits immensely.

The problem is that he was a teensy bit gullible, and for some reason brought out the worst in me and Richard, and became the butt of our stupid sense of humour. It was - I think - on his first visit that we found him peering at my voluminous and ever expanding CD collection with a worried look on his face...

"Don't you have any normal music?"

He said. We pretended not to know what he meant, and he went on:

"and, who ARE `Gong`?" he asked, "and do you REALLY need 27 of their albums?"

I protested that Gong were one of my favourite bands, and enthused about them so much that he insisted on listening to a track. I played him excerpts from Radio Gnome Invisible and he looked at me in horror.

The game was afoot.

Over the next weeks and months Richard and I would ensure that whenever we saw Andy's distinctive figure walking up the steps to our house, we would put on ever more bizarre peices of music. Eventually we spent several hours a week downloading weirder and weirder things (many way past the grey area that divides the listenable and the unlistenable. To make it even funnier, we made sure that we would sit, listening to the music, clicking our fingers, nodding our heads, and tapping our feet in time with the rhythm (when there actually WAS any rhythm - which in the case of songs like Zyclon B Zombie or Journey through the Human Body by Throbbing Gristle, or In the year of 1963 I was admitted to the Mental Institution by Wild Man Fisher, there usually wasn't.

Thank you for letting me share that.

WARNING: POTHEAD PIXIES ON TOUR

Yesterday teatime Corinna went to the shops and came back with this month's copy of Mojo (which - by the way - features an interview with Gonzo's very own Tony Palmer). It also had an ad in it for an autumn tour by Gong, and as Gong are the reason that Rob and I became friends in the first place, it would be very silly indeed not to feature it here.

So, this morning, I went poking about online, and found the following text on their website:

In the manner of Dr Who Gong has gone through one of it's periodic 're-generations' and now takes the form of daevid allen, Gilli Smyth, Orlando Allen (drums), Fabio Golfetti (guitar), Dave Sturt (bass) and Ian East (sax'n'flute). This is the line-up that will be touring the UK and Europe this Autumn.

The November UK gigs are now confirmed and listed in the gig section, as are the European dates in France, The Netherlands and Germany. More gigs may be added over the few next weeks so keep checking to stay abreast of the developing situation.

Accomplished drummer/producer Orlando is of course Gilli and Daevid's younger son. They have for years been keen to include him as member of Gong and see now as THE time. Fabio Golfetti, leading light of the Invisible Opera Company of Tibet (Brazil), is a very polished guitarist in smooth Gilmouresque prog mode and of course a glissando guitar practitioner of long standing. And many of you will have experienced the entertaining, expert musicianship of Ian East and Dave Sturt on respectively, wind instruments and bass, on the 2009-10 Gong tours and know that those chairs within the band are in more than capable hands.

Yes indeed things do change but Gong's mission statement remains rampantly and receptively what it always has been - that is, just whatever you perceive it to be...be-do..be-do..be-doo.
What will we get? What will you divine? A Colin Baker/Sylvester McCoy or a Patrick Troughton/William Hartnell? The choice as always is yours.

Their website is http://www.planetgong.co.uk/
Check out the following artist pages at Gonzo:

http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/artists/6028/Gong
http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/artists/6462/Gong%20Global%20Family
http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/artists/6408/Gong%20Matrices%20.%20Gilli%20Smyth
http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/artists/5888/Daevid%20Allen
http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/artists/6392/Daevid%20Allen%20and%20Mother%20Gong
http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/artists/5889/Daevid%20Allen%20And%20Russell%20Hibbs
http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/artists/5895/Daevid%20Allen%20Magick
http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/artists/6417/Gilli%20Smyth

And proably more. But those will do for a start

A REAL EXCLUSIVE: Daevid Allen writes about Gong's recent trip to Brazil

Don't say that we never have ow't for you. Today we have a pdf dowbload of Daevid Allen's own account of his recent trip to Brazil with Gong Global.

Because the positioning of images with blogger shows up differently depending on what browser you are using, and what settings you have on your computer, I (in my infinite wisdom) decided not to mess with Daevid's page layout (I have known him a long time, and am sure that he would set the Pothead Pixies on me if I did). So here it isd, in all its glory as Daevid intended:

Download From Here Dudes and Dudettes

And just to make your day complete...

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

My name is Jon, and its been, ummm 38 years since I first heard the sort of music I now write about every day. It was the autumn of 1973 when I spent a weekend at my friend Tim's house. His elder brother who had a moped, sideburns and a blonde girlfriend called Christine who looked a bit like a goldfishk, played us this weird record called The Dark Side of the Moon and neither me or Tim had ever heard anything like it before. But it blew me away, and I realised for the firtst time that there was life outside the top 20.

Then the next spring one of the older boys on the school bus gave me a copy of something called The New Musical Express and I read it avidly from cover to cover. The nextr week I bought my own copy, and soon I was reading all of the music papers each week. Then one day in the summer term I read in the pages of the NME that a band called Gong were selling an album for 49p. Gosh I thought, and I went and bought it.

I had no idea what it was going to sound like. I vaguely thought that it might sound a bit like a Deep Purple album that someone had taped for me, and was totally confused by it when it didn't. But it was the only LP I owned and I had spent several weeks pocket money on it, so I persevered and grew to love it. And so, my life was changed for good.

Cos it was through my love of Gong that I met Rob Ayling in 1988, and if I hadn't met him and spent the next twenty years blagging free CDs off him until he finally decided that it would be better if he gave me a job, then I wouldn't be here now, and my world at least would be an entirely different thing.

Thank you for letting me share that...

Steve Hillage and System 7 Live Festival Dates

Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy AKA System 7 have announced confirmed Festival dates for System 7 this coming summer. Steve of course was busy touring with Gong last year and also performed as the Steve Hillage Band. You can buy the Steve Hillage Live CD Live at the Gong Unconvention 2006 directly from the Gonzo website

http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/product_details/13851

Along with the Gong Montserrat DVD and Gong Live at the UnCon 2006 DVD

http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/site.php?s=2&action=list_table&t=products&filter_id=152&dbf_search_for=Gong+%28artist%29&image.x=15&image.y=13

Sat May 14th - Hendre Hall, Bangor Nth Wales - System 7 / Alex Paterson / Mannaseh
Wed May 25th - Concorde2 - Brighton - System 7 Live
Thurs May 26th - The Junction - Cambridge - System 7 / Eat Static
Sat May 28th - Off The Tracks Festival - System 7 Live & Mirror System DJ Set
Fri June 3rd - Sunrise Celebration - System 7 Live
Sat June 4th - Sunrise Celebration - Mirror System DJ Set
Fri June 10th - Indigo Festival - Israel - System 7 Live
Fri June 17th - Willowman Festival - System 7 Live
Sat July 9th - Hadra Festival - nr Grenoble - France - System 7 Live
Sat Aug 13th - Sonica Festival - Ulcinj - Montenegro - System 7 Live

Daevid Allen Bananamoon Obscura!

Gonzo recently released the University of Errors live In Chicago album.It was part of a series of recordings featuring Daevid Allen called the Bananamoon Obscura Series This album can be ordered directly from the Gonzo website
www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk

Here in a feature originally published in the Newsprint magazine Daevid discusses the series of recordings.

Daevid Allen
Bananmoon Obscura

The story of Daevid Allen’s musical activities has more twists and turns than your average governments first term of office. Whether it was with Soft Machine, Gong or the many Gong offshoot bands of which there are enough to keep even the most dedicated of rock biographers busy for many years. The man never stays still for long enough for anyone to pigeonhole him and perhaps that is the way he likes it.
While many people will only be interested in his Gong activities there are also a great many who follow his every musical move. For these people the Bananmoon Obscura series of recordings will be like manna from heaven. The series has been put together personally by Daevid and features some of the more interesting avenues of his musical journey’s
Each recording comes from Daevid’s vast musical archive and is limited to just one thousand copies of each CD, which makes each title an instant collectors item.

The idea for the series was initially from Voiceprint MD Rob Ayling who suggested that Daevid must have plenty of unreleased recordings that could be made available for release that were either historic or contained some magic moments and as Daevid explains:

I was being interviewed one Saturday morning on LBC when we were joined by Genesis P Orridge of Throbbing Gristle fame & an amazing artistic integrity has he. Anyway he was there to promote his Psychic TV ‘Astory’ collector’s series on Voiceprint & Rob Ayling subsequently offered a similar thing to me. I saw it as a chance to make public a series of limited editions of my favourite moments of inspired musical & poetic creativity in each of the styles I have experimented with. Solo shows, duets, Spanish acoustic, Jazz Rock, Ambient, Electro Acoustic, Imp pro Rock, Guitar glissando & Theremin, Experimental Sound Inventions, Atonal Textures, Tape loops & collage, Performance Poetry etc. I also felt free to use tapes/disks that were perhaps too low fi for normal release.
“I immediately thought there were a whole bunch of things like that so I thought as long as I put; In Glorious Lo-Fi on the cover this could be a really interesting thing and with modern technology we have managed to clean the recordings up so the outcome of that is that there are some really magic moments that are going to be plonked on little CDs and sold as little delicacies I suppose”

Keeping an archive such as this and deciding what to release and what not to release is also more time consuming than you might think again Daevid Allen explains:

“Well that’s the most energy consuming part of it actually just having to go through it and listen to it all. You’ll hear something and think it’s great and then you listen to it perhaps when you are driving and it sounds shit and you think how could I have thought that was good. It’s very tricky but over a period of time it becomes clear to you that some things have got a real golden quality about them and they’re the ones you’re looking for.” Keeping an archive requires a fair bit of discipline together with an instinct for recognising a good-recorded gig or magic moment & making sure you get a copy.
It is pretty much a question of playing the music in different states of mind & consciousness until you are sure that the overall effect is up to scratch.
Then it depends on the magic ears of Dallas at Serendipity who cleverly restores the crappiest old tapes & disks filled with clicks & dropouts…the man is a genius!

Another plus for the fans are that none of the releases that make up the series have ever been released before so people really will be getting something perhaps old and yet new.
There will be around half a dozen releases initially but Daevid does have other recordings he would like to release.


“I can see at least 20 releases and maybe more. The archives are mostly held by GAS in Glastonbury.”The series encompasses Daevid’s work with bands like the University of Errors, Euterpe, Magick Brothers, Invisible Opera Company And a concert Daevid gave with Nicoletta Stephanz in New York when the set was put together literally a couple of hours before going onstage.


“A few hours before the gig we had a meeting in a hotel room for about two hours where we worked out a plan of action that was all. We were each inspired by the other & it was a momentous occasion since Nicoletta went on to appear with Gong in Philadelphia & with University of Errors on UGLY MUSIC FOR MONICA CD & with Magick Brothers at the UK Big Green Festival 03”.

One of Daevid’s favourite recordings in the series is an acoustic compilation, which draws on three sources for its content.

“It’s like an acoustic composite because the songs are taken from three different albums but it’s the way they’re put together and they become a sort of companion volume to the other acoustic songs set I’ve got.”

Of the other releases in the series, which is probably one of the most eclectic series of releases that Voiceprint has handled, there are recordings of Daevid with Brainbox which features Pip Pyle and Hugh Hopper two stalwarts of the Canterbury scene and a live recording of Daevid and Russell Hibbs performing their favourite songs and poems in front of a small intimate audience. When asked the seemingly crass question of whether Daevid feels happy with the direction and various twists and turns his career has taken he answers with good humour

“I guess so, the thing is I’d just do it anyway and if it doesn’t work I just eat spaghetti.”

The Bananamoon Obscura series will be issued throughout 2004. Daevid Allen has personally supervised the digital transfer of each recording and each release is limited to just one thousand copies making them the ultimate collectors item for Daevid Allen and Gong fans the world over.


© Jon Kirkman 2003 and 2011
Buy the University of Errors Live In Chicago along with other Daevid Allen and Gong CDs and DVDs directly from the Gonzo Website
http://www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/site.php?s=2&action=list_table&t=products&filter_id=152&dbf_search_for=Daevid+Allen+%28artist%29&image.x=12&image.y=14