Shadows: Shadows Of

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I’ve written about Gong before, a couple of times, and mentioned them in passing. They are a band that I really enjoy, and nevertheless remain pretty obscure. You could probably get a doctorate in the band’s history—it has formed, splintered, reformed, renamed, and changed members more times than one can count. Nevertheless, there’s a website that tries to chronicle Gong's various changes and permutations (as well as other bands from the Canterbury Scene).

I got into Gong through its late 1970s-early 1980s incarnation as a fusion band led by Pierre Moerlen, featuring lots of mallet percussion. The original, spacy, psychedelic version of the band was less interesting to me—although there was brilliance, there was also lots of weird, hard to listen to stuff to wade through. For the most part, the Moerlen-led band was tight, had interesting songs with an unusual amount of percussion and, maybe most importantly, featured incredible musicians, including Allan Holdsworth on guitar. If you don’t know who Allan Holdsworth was (he passed away earlier this year), find his music on the Internet. Days before his death, a 12 CD box set of his solo albums from 1982-2003, entitled The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever, was released. The title was taken from a proclamation on the cover of an issue of Guitar Player in 2008, and it isn’t an overstatement. That’s not to say that there aren’t other guitarists who changed the way guitar was played, but he’s certainly one of them. He was the favorite guitarist of Eddie van Halen; Tom Morello and Frank Zappa, among others, have cited him as an influence.

But the main reason that I’m going back to the Gong well for this theme, which has many possible topics, is that I recently had a chance to meet another of the musicians who played on this song, percussionist Mino Cinélu. Cinélu later played drums for Holdsworth, was in Weather Report, played with, among others, Pat Metheny, Peter Gabriel, Miles Davis, Sting, Kate Bush, Herbie Hancock and Branford Marsalis, and led his  own bands. Mino participated in a panel that I attended recently about copyright law and music, which was led and organized by my friend Heather--who makes her second appearance in SMM--and also featured prominent lawyers and a musicologist who have been involved in some of the most well-known music copyright cases in recent years. Although I’m a lawyer, that’s not my field, and it was fascinating.

Afterwards, we, of course, repaired to the bar for drinks, and I had a chance to chat with Mino, mentioning that I was a huge fan of Gong (particularly the one album of theirs that he appeared on), and Holdsworth, and had participated in an interview with Pierre Moerlen when he, and another formation of Gong, played at Princeton when I was a student. He couldn’t have been a nicer guy, and we’ve been in contact a few times since, most recently to confirm that he, in fact, performed in the live version of “Shadows Of” from the video above, because the Internet shockingly had conflicting information.

It was recorded at the Reading Festival in 1976, and featured Pierre Moerlen and his brother Benoit, also a percussionist, Holdsworth, bass player Francis Moze, percussionist Mirelle Bauer, woodwind player Didier Malherbe and Cinélu. Although the sound quality isn’t great, the performance is, despite the fact that it lacks the amazing acoustic guitar solo of the original, which was a rarity for Holdsworth (or, for that matter, Malherbe's great flute solo).

The Reading Festival that year was a prog-fest, although not exclusively. Other performers included Camel, Phil Manzanera/801, and Brand X. Other non-prog acts included AC/DC (listed in very small type), Black Oak Arkansas, Rory Gallagher (both in very big type), Ted Nugent, and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. And, as they say, many, many more.

Suites and Medleys: Supermarket

Pierre Moerlen’s Gong: Supermarket
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Great, another opportunity for me to reach into my pretentious prog rock collection and dredge up another long-winded suite. Well, I sort of went there, but not exactly. Bear with me for a bit, for some exposition/history about some obscure, but interesting music. I’ll keep it short, because you can easily find more detail on the Internet if you want—especially because this is the kind of music that has long fascinated rock snobs and obsessives.

We start with the “Canterbury Scene” of the late 1960’s-70’s, centered around a group of musicians with some connection to Canterbury, England. The music is a mix of jazz, rock, prog rock, and general spaciness, and the musicians seem to create new bands, with different combinations, on a daily basis. I’d hazard a guess that various mind expanding substances were also involved.

Probably the most famous band to be considered part of the scene is Soft Machine. A founding member of that band, Daevid Allen, an Australian, and early “hippy”, is refused reentry to England in 1967 due to a visa issue, so he stays in France and forms a band called Gong. (Aside--and there are many to be had with this crowd—one brief replacement for Allen in Soft Machine is Andy Summers, who later becomes the guitarist for a somewhat popular band, The Police).

Gong is, basically, insane. Spacy, jazzy, crazy music, the band members adopt pseudonyms like Bloomdido Bad de Grasse and create a band mythology with characters named Zero the Hero, the Octave Doctors, and Flying Teapots. Remember, this was the 1970’s.

The band is a revolving door of musicians, including a brilliant, classically trained French drummer and percussionist named Pierre Moerlen, who joins, leaves, returns, ultimately takes over leadership of the band and moves it toward somewhat more conventional jazz-rock. Over time, the various members of Gong create a series of ever shifting spinoff bands, usually with the word “Gong” in the name; the one led by Moerlen becomes known, cleverly, as Pierre Morelen’s Gong. If you are interested in more detail on the Gong family tree and their inspired looniness, there is way more information than you need at this website: [Planet Gong]

As I said, Moerlen is an incredible percussionist, and his version of the band focuses on more conventional late ‘70s fusion, but with an emphasis on mallet percussion (vibraphone, xylophone, marimba, etc.). In my book, as a drummer, he is in the same league as Bruford, a subject of an earlier post, and who also spent a brief period in Gong. Alan Holdsworth, who played guitar in Bruford’s bands, also played with Moerlen.

The subject of this post is supposed to be Suites or Medleys, and the Pierre Moerlen’s Gong album Time is the Key, opens with a four track suite. At WPRB in 1980, we were big fans of these guys, and arranged to bring them to campus for a concert that was pretty amazing. My daughter still wears the t-shirt. We got to interview the band, which included guitarist Bon Lozaga, a very talented player, who was a Holdsworth disciple, and strong bassist Hansford Rowe. One or both of them lived in New Jersey, and would call the station occasionally, and we supported one of Lozaga’s projects, Boji. (Another aside—I just found a download of a Boji gig from 1981 at Trenton’s City Gardens. Here’s the opening song, and I’m pretty sure that is me doing the intro. Which shocked the hell out of me.) Boji: Katalpan Rise

I think during the interview, Moerlen said that he wrote the first side of the album on the vibraphone, and the other on the drums. Or maybe I read that somewhere, but the sound of the two sides is very different. I have linked to the third track from the suite on side one, “Supermarket,” which is fun, and playful, and has a great vibe solo. It is a little New Age-ish and sounds a little like Mike Oldfield (the “Tubular Bells” guy), which is not surprising, since Moerlen toured regularly with Oldfield. If you can track down a copy of Time is the Key, I think you will enjoy it. It isn’t the best Gong album, or even the best of the Pierre Moerlen led Gong albums (I’m a fan of Expresso II, but a case could be made for Gazeuse a/k/a Expresso), but I still like it.

Moerlen retired his version of Gong not too long after they appeared at Princeton, but tried to revive it later, with other musicians and little success. Lozaga and Rowe performed and recorded for a while as Gongzilla, creating another branch on the Gong tree. Unfortunately, Moerlen died in 2005, in his 50’s, of natural causes, ending the career of an unappreciated artist.