Tag Archives: Music

Gong founder Daevid Allen has died, aged 77

Gong were one of the many bands that inspired me to create music. I was never really  a hippy but found a lot that appealed to me in the music. It is also in many ways on a totally different track to much of present day societal point of view. Many of the musicians and creative folk that influenced my thinking have sadly passed in the last couple of years. The gong albums I have are on Cassette and I don’t have anything to play them so I can’t have a nostalgic listen at this moment. 🙁

 

Powered by Guardian.co.ukThis article titled “Gong founder Daevid Allen has died, aged 77” was written by Guardian music, for theguardian.com on Friday 13th March 2015 07.59 UTC

Daevid Allen, the leader of the legendary prog-jazz eccentrics Gong, has died aged 77. The news was confirmed on the Facebook page of Allen’s son, Orlando Monday Allen.

And so dada Ali, bert camembert, the dingo Virgin, divided alien and his other 12 selves prepare to pass up the oily way and back to the planet of love. And I rejoice and give thanks,” he wrote. “Thanks to you dear dear daevid for introducing me to my family of magick brothers and mystic sisters, for revealing the mysteries, you were the master builder but now have made us all the master builders. As the eternal wheel turns we will continue your message of love and pass it around. We are all one, we are all gong. Rest well my friend, float off on our ocean of love. The gong vibration will forever sound and its vibration will always lift and enhance. You have left such a beautiful legacy and we will make sure it forever shines in our children and their children. Now is the happiest time of yr life. Blessed be.”

Last month, Allen announced he had been given six months to live, after cancer for which he had previously been treated had spread to his lung. “I am not interested in endless surgical operations and in fact it has come as a relief to know that the end is in sight,” he said. “I am a great believer in ‘The Will of the Way Things Are’ and I also believe that the time has come to stop resisting and denying and to surrender to the way it is.

Allen was born in Australia in 1938, but his springboard to musical legend came after he moved to the UK in 1961. He was a founder member of Soft Machine in 1966, but became best known after starting Gong. The band are best known for their Radio Gnome Trilogy, made up of the albums Flying Teapots, Angel’s Egg and You. Although he left Gong in 1975, he resuscitated the band in 1991 and played with them on and off until he became too ill to tour in 2014.

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What happens after you wake up wake up

It’s the perfect moment when you finally realise that absolutely nothing seems that important anymore. First you have ambitions and perhaps some of these you will achieve, but often its really the struggle to get there that’s the fun part of brings satisfaction, but then once you get there, your looking to the next mountain to climb.

So what happens if one day you suddenly think, what’s the point in striving because there is ultimately nothing except finding another challenge at the end?

 

Well, I suppose that after you lived long enough it/s going to happen. Having written and recorded about 400 different songs and musical works, the rot seems to be setting in somewhat. I still enjoy creating stuff and playing it too but gone are the days when I had sufficient of an obsession to come home from work and spend hours recording stuff. Granted it’s a much quicker process now as in days of old tape required much more planning re overdubs, and managing tape hiss and just good old fashioned getting it right, which becomes a lot easier with practice of course. Listening to old demos from 25 years ago can also be a bit of a shock. A sense of the familiar laced with dread.

 

I still have not managed to get my own rather quirky stuff into a live environment that often but a few tunes have made it into regular live incarnations though they are very rather different from the first quintessence on tape or CD.  I am still very ambivalent about my voice although I have been singing live for the past 7 years or so regularly.

Rather than writing this at the moment I should be getting on with my next project which I have sketched out a brief musical outline for, but I seem to be finding jolly good reasons not to get started.  I have always got bored quickly, often so that my concentration goes just about at the point where I should be putting the final polish on something.  I remember my school reports saying something a long the lines of could do better or tends to daydream or is easily distracted and yes that seems to still be the case. I don’t think fundamentally our persona changes that much really. Sometimes when things come too easily to us to start with we give up when challenged I suppose.
I did have copies of my school reports lurking somewhere but I can’t find them now frustratingly as I think that they might be fun to revisit.
I am writing this the morning after doing a spot at the Arundel Festival, which was great fun to do and did not require too much effort. Arundel is somewhere that I remember from trips out as a child and its funny to be going back there now. We regularly gig in that area so its very familiar now.  I enjoyed the drive down through the countryside equally as much as playing the gig too. Just the right amount of sunshine and not too much traffic either.