| I believe that I have all of Chris Stone's books, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that I really am a fan of his writing. He wrote several stories about his friend Kodan, and he wrote in such an engaging manner that I almost felt fond of him. When I read the opening words of this week's story, it was a very real shock... |
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| Dancing With The Demons: the deadly romance of heroin |
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Kodan is dead. Who was he? He was a man who died before his time, of an overdose of heroin. He thought he could have one last blow-out before going into rehab. It was a blow-out all right. It blew out his life.
It’s an old story this. Anyone who has ever had dealings with junkies knows a version of this story. The junkie tries to go clean. Six months off, a year, but that old niggling urge is still there, like the voice of absolution whispering in his ear. And then one day there it is in front of him, for real, in the hands and eyes of another junkie, and he thinks, “well it can’t do any harm. Just one last time, for old time’s sake.” And the deed is done, the dose is too strong, the heart gives way and - bang! - he’s dead.
Life is cheap, they say. For a junkie it’s worth precisely ten pounds a wrap, with all the inevitable consequences: the degradation, the lies, the hurt, the betrayal of love, of friends and family, the manipulation, the theft, because to a junkie nothing really matters but junk.
It hurts to have to say this of my friend, but it’s true. In the end the person he betrayed the most was himself.
I first met him some time in the early nineties. He wasn’t really a junkie then. He was just practicing. It was late summer and the poppies were out, nodding on their stalks like little green sages with a secret message to convey. You’d be walking along with him and his neck would rise. “Pop, pop, pop,” he’d say: like that, turning his head left and right like a radar dish. “Pop, pop, pop.” And he’d leap a fence into someone’s garden and come back with all these poppy heads. And then later he would boil them up to make this awful, greeny-yellowy slop. I tried it myself once. I was sick for two days.
But I never saw any harm in Kodan’s obsession then. He was the most down-to-earth, yet the most cultured man I ever met.
We were good friends. We talked a lot, about anything and everything, about philosophy and art, about politics and religion, in the pub or at home, as we skedaddled here and there, from the far south of England, to Scotland, his home. We talked to save the world. And Kodan could listen too as well as talk. He could absorb your thoughts and play them back to you. He made you feel as if no one could understand you like he could. He was comfortable with intellectual intimacy.
So we had a bond, Kodan and I. It was only later that I discovered he had the much same bond with everyone else.
Read on...
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COMING SOON FROM GONZO MULTIMEDIA:
Pierre Moerlen's Gong |
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To say that Gong were a peculiar band would really be an understatement. They were originally founded in the late 1960s by ex-Soft Machine guitarist Daevid Allen, who for various administrative reasons cited as ‘Visa irregularities’ but which I have always suspected were more to do with Daevid’s Situationist antics during the Paris Student protests of May 1968 which very nearly brought a successful revolution to Western Europe, he was not allowed back into the Mother Country to rejoin his Canterbury chums.
So Daevid went down to Deya in Majorca where he, and partner Gilly Smyth began to assemble a loose-knit collection of musicians who began recording under the name Gong. One of these musicians was Didier Malherbe (latter dubbed Bloomdido Bad-De Grass by Daevid), a tremendously gifted saxophonist and flautist, who Daevid claimed to have found living in a cave on the estate of poet Robert Graves. The rest is history.
Daevid, both with and without various versions of Gong, has produced a peerless body of work encompassing folk, jazz, rock and prog (often all of these things and more at once), and his musicianship and compositional skills are legendary.
Put like that it all seems simple, but it was anything but. After releasing You (the third part of theRadio Gnome Invisible saga, and the least silly of the albums to date) Daevid left the band. Whether it was because of personal difficulties, musical differences, or – as he claimed to me many years ago – because one night an enormous psychic force field prevented him going on stage, neither I or anyone else who wasn’t there at the time will ever know.
Daevid went solo, and also teamed up with Here and Now as Planet Gong, and later with the band that would later become Material as New York Gong. Eventually he would reform Gong, but that would be many decades in the future. A few years later Gilli Smyth formed Mother Gong. According to an unsourced quote in Wikipedia “Allen delighted in this proliferation of groups and considered his role at this time to be that of an instigator, travelling around the world leaving active Gong-related bands in his wake.” There may not be a citation there, but that certainly sounds like the Daevid I used to know.
What of the rest of the band? Well, many people believed that the idea of Gong without Daevid was like the Rolling Stones without Keith Richards, but after a stint as Paragong they regrouped as Gongwith guitarist Steve Hillage at the helm. The band recorded a new album, but Hillage left before its release. Gilli Smyth and Tim Blake had left at around the same time as Daevid, so the rump of Gongnow led by the only surviving founder member Didier Malherbe aka Bloomdido Bad de Grasse, found himself in need of recruiting new members. He brought in noted French percussionist
Pierre Moerlen as co-leader, and when de Grasse himself left in 1977, Moerlen was in charge.
The newly instated Pierre Moerlen’s Gong sometimes also known as Expresso Gong made some excellent and innovative records, and – amongst many other things – were responsible for this album. So it all comes round in circles in the end.
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COMING SOON FROM GONZO MULTIMEDIA:
Brainville
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Who are Brainville? You might well ask.
Whichever way you look at it, Daevid Allen is one of the most interesting and enigmatic characters in music. An Australian, he was working in a Melbourne book shop when he discovered the writings of the ‘Beat Generation’, and his life was never the same again. He travelled to Europe in search of the Beatnik ‘nirvana’ in 1960, and found himself in a Paris hotel, living in a room that had only very recently before been vacated by poet Allen Ginsberg and his life partner, fellow poet Peter Orlovsky. Here he met Terry Riley who introduced the young Allen to the world of free jazz, and the notorious William Burroughs.
Armed with these revolutionary new ideas, he travelled across the channel to England where he formed The Daevid Allen Trio featuring his landlord’s 16 year old son Robert Wyatt on drums. A few years later in 1966 they formed the legendary Soft Machine with Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge.
After a European Tour in 1967, Allen was refused entry to the UK because of a visa irregularity, and moved back to France, where he became involved in the famous student insurrection of 1968. He then moved to Deya, Majorca where he, and partner Gilly Smyth began to assemble a loose-knit collection of musicians who began recording under the name Gong.
Daevid, both with and without various versions of Gong, has produced a peerless body of work encompassing folk, jazz, rock and prog (often all of these things and more at once), and his musicianship and compositional skills are legendary.
His partner on these legendary recordings is Mark Kramer (known usually by his surname), who is almost equally as legendary as Daevid but in a completely different genre. He was a member of New York Gong and a band called Bongwater and toured with many famous acts (usually playing bass guitar) including The Fugs and The Butthole Surfers.
In the late 1980s he was sound co-ordinator on Penn and Teller’s Broadway shows, and later formed a band with Penn Jilette. He started his own Shimmy Disc records, and in 1992 Kramer sold his Noise New York recording studio and moved just across the Hudson River, where he'd found a house going into foreclosure with a state-of-the-art 24-track recording studio built in. He dubbed the studio Noise New Jersey, and continued to produce recordings. One of his albums that year was Who’s Afraid with Daevid Allen, and three years later the duo followed it up with another album, Hit Men.
Unsurprisingly when one considers that these records are a collaboration between two artistes for which the word ‘idiosyncratic’ is an understatement, the music they made together is impossible to categorise, and even more impossible to describe.
Hugh Hopper started his musical career in 1963 as the bass player with the aforementioned Daevid Allen Trio alongside drummer Robert Wyatt. There can be few other free jazz bands of the era with such a stellar line-up. Unlike other legendary ensembles such as The Crucial Three (a Liverpool band from 1977 which featured three musicians who were to go on to enormous success) the Daevid Allen Trio actually played gigs and made recordings.
All three members ended up in Soft Machine, which together with Pink Floyd was the ‘house band’ of the burgeoning ‘Underground’ movement which tried so hard to turn British cultural mores upside down for a few years in the latter half of the 1960s. (Hopper and Wyatt had also been in another legendary Canterbury band called The Wilde Flowers). Hopper stayed with Soft Machine (for whom he was initially the group’s road manager) until 1973 playing at least one session with Syd Barrett along the way.
During his tenure the band developed from a psychedelic pop group to an instrumental jazz rock fusion band, all the time driven by the lyrical bass playing of Hugh Hopper.
After leaving the band he worked with many pillars of the jazz rock fusion scene such as:Isotope, Gilgamesh, Stomu Yamashta and Carla Bley. He also formed some co-operative bands with Elton Dean who had also been in Soft Machine, and made some excellent and demanding records with Kramer. No, not the bloke from Seinfeld with the silly haircut. Aren’t you paying attention?
Pyle joined Phil Miller, a friend from kindergarten, and Phil's brother Steve, in formingBruno's Blues Band, which rapidly evolved into Delivery. However, Pyle left the band in 1970 after arguing with singer Carol Grimes. He briefly played in blues band Chicken Shack and Steve Hillage's band Khan.
In 1971, drummer Robert Wyatt asked Pyle to play instead of him on one track of Daevid Allen's solo album Banana Moon. From this, Pyle joined Allen in Gong. While only in the band for eight months, Pyle plays on both Camembert Électrique and Continental Circus. Pyle was replaced by Laurie Allan, but rejoined Gong for a period in the 1990s.
In 1972, Pyle worked with Paul Jones (who had been singing with Manfred Mann), before founding Hatfield and the North with the Miller brothers in 1972. Steve Miller was soon replaced in the band and the line-up eventually settled on Pyle, Phil Miller, Richard Sinclair and keyboardist Dave Stewart. Hatfield and the North was released in 1974, while a second album, The Rotters' Club, followed the next year. As well as drumming, Pyle wrote many of the band's lyrics.
Following Hatfield, Pyle joined Miller and Stewart in National Health as well as playing in other projects, including Soft Heap with Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean and Alan Gowen. He also played on Neil's Heavy Concept Album (1984), a spin-off from the television seriesThe Young Ones with which Stewart was involved.
So how did these four guys, for whom the word ‘maverick’ was probably coined, come to work together? Well, it was all down to Kramer. He had made a couple of albums each with Daevid and Hugh, and with the benefit of hindsight it seems that it was always going to be only a matter of time before the three of them worked together. And when they did, who was the most obvious choice as a drummer?
When you put it like that it all seems remarkably logical dunnit? |
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| THE YES CIRCULAR - THE WORD IS NOW |
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| The Court Circular tells interested readers about the comings and goings of members of The Royal Family. However, readers of this periodical seem interested in the comings and goings of Yes and of various alumni of this magnificent and long-standing band. Give the people what they want, I say |
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It has been a busy week for the Yes camp, and for the various Yesalumni in their various solo projects. We posted an interview with Steve Howe this week, which you can read HERE. Surprisingly there is a dearth of live reviews from the current tour. Apart from several from the Los Angeles show (a good one and a not-so good one), there haven't been any others yet, or not that I have found.
If anyone out there in readership land can find any, please email me at the usual address. |
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We also posted an interesting interview with Chris Squire and a very revealing interview with Geoff Downes (who is, as I have said before, as far as I am aware, no relation to me whatsoever).
We also found a nice mini documentary on the late Peter Banks, and Jon Anderson paid a gracious tribute to his erstwhile bandmate. Rick Wakeman's biographer also had a few words to say...
The jury is still out on the question of whether the new line-up will convince the fanbase that they are the bona fidewearers of the Yes crown, or whether the fact that neither Rick Wakeman or Jon Anderson is involved, is just too big a blow. I don't know about you, but I am finding this all immensely fascinating, and cannot wait to see what happens next.
Watch this space! |
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perhaps started as a squeal,a squeak,
a song,a hiss-perhaps even silence
proceeded into photograph,records,documents, school records,certificates
a little library - a paper trail - a passport, awards, accreted family histories
Archives become necessary as paper ages like us.We grow gray as they yellow.
Where shall we index you? By surname or first? By achievements?
Every little Wikileak relies upon a Wikipedia. Whistleblowers need records!
Little libraries accumulate data. We become Akashic. Remember memories?
Chronicles, histories - all stories begin like this - a tale shared, collected, remembered
Then the organizing of texts - assembling like soldiers in the war on memory
Forgetting is our foe - we remind war he fails peace. Austerity fails prosperity.
We must not fail our Libraries. Remember - we are all books. Archive us gently.
Remainder us rarely. Antiquarians. Bibliophiles. We are all self-published. Rare!
We must not fail our Libraries. Remember - we are all books. Archive us gently.
Remainder us rarely.Antiquarians.Bibliophiles. We are all self-published. Rare!
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In Victorian times every well-bred Gentleman had a 'Cabinet of Curiosities'; a collection of peculiar odds and sods, usually housed in a finely made cabinet with a glass door. These could include anything from Natural History specimens to historical artefacts. There has always been something of the Victorian amateur naturalist about me, and I have a houseful of arcane objects; some completely worthless, others decidedly not, but all precious to me for the memories they hold..
I used to be a collector of rock and roll memorabilia, but most of my collection went into my solicitor's pocket during my divorce from my first wife, and I never had the stomach to build the collection up again. However, people send me pictures of interesting things such as this which came from our old mate Graham Inglis.
Hawkwind eased off appearing at small English festivals in the '80s but still did a few, here and there. Ditto the '90s, and one appearance in North Devon was something for the organisers to trumpet. They produced an eight-page booklet for their Summer Daze festival in 1996:
Held on Stapleton Farm near Stibb Cross, I attended with several mates, one of whom couldn't remember, the day after, anything about the Hawkwind performance. I remembered having had a head-bang / hair-shake to "Hassan i Sahba" (the one with the chorus line about hashish) but couldn't remember anything else.
Must've been a good show, then!
Read on...
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The Clover story begins during the "Summer of Love" of 1967 when the band played their first gig. Before we go any further however, it might be prudent to say that although many people regard Huey Lewis as the main member of Clover, mainly due to the subsequent success of Huey Lewis and The News, he didn't join the band until 1971. In fact Huey doesn't even feature on the band's early albums recorded for Fantasy.
The band played a number of gigs with an amazing array of high profile artists including,Canned Heat, The MC5 and Steve Miller Band. Signing to Fantasy Records in 1969, where the band became label mates of Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Cloverrecorded their debut self titled album. In the meantime Hugh Anthony Cregg III, joined the line up initially playing harmonica and occasionally stepping up to the microphone for vocals. Hugh Anthony Cregg III of course was Huey Lewis, although initially he called himself Hughie Louie after two of Donald Duck's nephews! With Huey on board the band continued.
In 1976, following a gig in a club in San Francisco, which was witnessed by Nick Lowe, the band were persuaded to up sticks and move to the U.K., where the "Pub Rock " scene was well established. The band soon secured a deal however with Phonogram records.The Clover, recorded two albums for Phonogram, with the second being produced by a young Mutt Lange. Neither album was a success and despite being the backing band for the Elvis Costello album, ‘My Aim Is True’, they headed back to America and split in 1978. Both Huey and John McFee would go onto bigger success. Huey, with Huey Lewis and the News and John with the Doobie Brothers.
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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:
Introducing Jimmy Carl Black the Indian of the Group |
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Jimmy Carl Black started recording two years before he joined the band that became Frank Zappa's legendary Mothers of Invention. That early group was The Keys, whose 1962 single ‘Stretch Pants/Just A Matter of Time’, is a prized rarity. Jimmy was the drummer and sometime vocalist with the Mothers of Inventionfrom 1964 until 1969, when Frank Zappa fired the entire band.
After the split, Jimmy continued to work occasionally with Frank, most notably appearing in the film, ‘200 Motels’, in 1971. During the seventies he played with Captain Beefheart and in the eighties, formed The Grandmothers, with other previous members of the Mothers of Invention. Jimmy also made a number of solo albums as well as touring regularly with the Zappa/Beefheart tribute act, The Muffin Men, until his death in 2008.
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COMING SOON: Classic Robert Calvert
by Graham Inglis |
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In the 1980s Bob Calvert - the late resident poet and on-and-off frontman for the space rock kings,Hawkwind - was developing a musical career of his own until he suddenly died of heart failure in August 1988. Development of new songs, experiments with commercial electronic music and the reworking of old songs was carried out at his home in Margate. Absorbing this material into his overall stage repertoir , he'd then go 'out on the road' and perform it. This release covers both aspects of this process.
He was, sadly, never really noticed by the wider public or by the general music broadcast media. He just never became fashionable. His output has been compared to such diverse performers as Gary Numan, Syd Barratt, Brian Eno and Michael Moorcock but perhaps there's only one label that really counts: Bob Calvert.
This pairing, then, is a 'must' for all fans of the man's work, displaying both musical sides: the flamboyant stage performance, and the quieter and more thoughtful feel of the studio. "Blueprints From The Cellar" is a CD version of some home created demos and experiments, originally released informally to fans by mail order as "The Cellar Tapes" - available in cassette tape form only. Many fans of Calvert and the general Hawkwind-related music scene were unaware of these two cassette releases, as promotion was by word of mouth only. Ah, the days before the World Wide Web.
Many of the tracks also appeared on his albums "Test Tube Conceived" and "Freq" and many were performed on the live portion of this release: "At The Queen Elizabeth Hall". This performance was recorded live in October 1986; it was originally released on vinyl, but sadly in very limited quantities and sadly - since it was his first live album - after his premature death.
Stage performances in 1986 were enabled by accompanying bands Maximum Effect and thenKrankschaft. Maximum Effect was formed from Nik Turner's band Inner City Unit. Also in this year his own recording of poems - collectively called "Centigrade 232" after the temperature at which paper will burn - saw its first audio release.
Most of his gigs consisted of a mixture of poems and songs, and sometimes sketches and tangential interractions with the audiences. Sometimes under some pressure to "do someHawkwind" he often preferred to be thought of as a poet and playwright. Space rock, he told me once, is "old hat." That was way back in 1977!
The second half of this pairing, the "Blueprints" disc allows us to, in effect, peep over the shoulder of a craftsman honing his musical creations in his workshop, the spools on the old Revox sedately turning. Some of the songs done during this era were developed and augmented to the point of being ready for transfer to the next-intended studio album; others were little more than rough outlines or embryonic ideas that weren't carried forward to fruition.
Songs about diamond mines, and Soweto (a shanty town area of the city of Johannesburg) remind us of his interest in his country of birth: he was born in South Africa, although he left there at the age of two when his parents emigrated to England.
Lyrics like "home computers now / that can keep an eye on you" make one wonder what Calvert would have thought of the current age, 25 years on, where computer-assisted spying is part of normal everyday life. Other themes that he explored range from the interations between people and technology through to feelings and fears - and even the worlds of factory work and espionage! ("In a house-boat on the Nile...... secret papers from a file....")
While the audio quality falls somewhat short of that of a soundboard recording, it is an invaluable document of this era of the Captain's composing and performing genius.
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