Gig review: Gong

Published on Monday 23 November 2009 20:25

PICTURE HOUSE, EDINBURGH ***

OLD space-rockers, it seems, never die. They just – in the case of Gong's 71-year-old major-domo Daevid Allen – end up doing a passable impression of the first Doctor Who William Hartnell on powerful acid, rain-dancing their way around the nation's stages in, variously, a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Nobody knows I'm a lesbian" and a wizard's outfit adorned with dangling compact discs.

Anyone who has managed to live without indulging in the industrial levels of inner space exploration conducted by the Australian Allen over the years would have agreed that this show was a bit weird. Allen, also a founding member of the moderately less barking psych-rock outfit Soft Machine, and his fellow Gong originator Gilli Smyth often sang in garbled tongues, while somewhat low-budget projections of floating mandalas and pointy-headed aliens flashed by behind them.

The fact that Gong remain such an acquired taste that many might consider them a rather unfunny joke band is indisputable, but much of their music – including detailed solos from guitarist Steve Hillage and saxophone lines which sound like folk accordion from Didier Malherbe – is hugely accomplished. Songs such Waccy Baccy Banker ("about a ****er who smoked a bit of dope and saw the light") and Flying Teapot overdo it with the dated dope evangelism, but Allen's wide-eyed "you are I and I am you" singalong with the large crowd at the finale of You Never Blow Yr Trip Forever best demonstrated the simple communality his music is trying to achieve.