Any self-respecting hippie, young and old, would have a soft spot for Gong, the onomatopoeically-titled avantgarde, anarchic ensemble founded by Australian Daevid Allen in the late 1960s. A founder member of quintessential British hippy band, Soft Machine, Allen used the name Gong for early solo albums, but relocated to Paris, where he had previously published poetry in the early 1960s, having collaborated with beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg and the novelist William Burroughs. Here, the full day-glo flowering of the Gong aesthetic came into being, with band members taking on surreal, Captain Beefheartesque monikers. Vocalist (or, rather, Space Whisperer) Gilli Smyth became known as Shanti Yoni; bassist Christian Tritsch called himself The Submarine Captain, Allen himself was named Bert Camembert and - my personal favourite - saxophonist/flautist Didier Malherbe insisted that he be subsequently known as Bloomdido Bad De Grasse. The halycon hippie days at the communal get together in a farmhouse in Sens, near Fountainbleu, generated the requisite amount of vibes needed to produce albums such as Camembert Electrique and the band's ambitious Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy (The Flying Teapot, Angel's Egg and You). If the quite natural image of a bunch of idealistic Afghan coatwearers raising a collective pair of peace-sign fingers to the establishment brought about sensimilla-fuelled chuckles, the music and lyrics were even funnier. Songs about abstract variations on science-fiction, mysticism and the band's self-styled pot-head pixies were surrounded by a haze of freefalling spaced-out improvisations and jazz/rock fusion. Regular (but not founder) member Steve Hillage unwittingly usurped Daevid Allen's leadership in the mid1970s, causing Allen to jump ship. This left the group in a state of flux, which was all the more compounded when Hillage left shortly after to embark on a successful solo career. Punk rock more or less drove Gong back from whence they came, and it was only when the 1980s arrived that the band's freewheeling musical extrapolations found favour with a more accepting audience. Festivals' outfits such as Ozric Tentacles and Here And Now (which subsumed Gong in its entirety in the latter part of the 1980s) returned the band to its underground roots: playing free at new age and neo-hippie festivals. Daevid Allen is now back on board. What a long, strange trip it must have been.
