Ah, what a gig! Legendary. I'm still bouncing around. It was all a bit of a rush to get there (what kind of gig starts at 7.00pm prompt?) and Steve Hillage was already half-way through 'Palm Trees' when we arrived. Managed to push our way through phallanxes of grey men in leather blouson jackets (chaps - what happened? The ravages of mortagages and middle age?) to secure a place up at the front. Hillage is looking increasingly like a geeky Frank Spencer, that is until he starts to play. He worked his way through much of 'Fish Rising' and before long his head was tipped backwards, face gripped in that strange rictus grin, fingers dancing across the fretboard, fully entranced by the music that descends through him.
After a short break the mothership landed. With the band launched into 'Control Escape Delete' (my favourite song from the new album, dealing with the imminence of death in a moving but light hearted manner) Daevid Allen slipped through the intersticial lattices of time and space to dematerialise on stage, dressed as he is, the uber-Pixie, the Octave Doctor, the Wizard of the Keys. With pointy hat, silver cape and pixie grin, he performed his mudras and invocations. At a youthful 71, he's lithe and athletic, and yet there's an insubstantial quality to him. He leaped about the stage as if he's made of air. Gilli Smyth, it must be said, is looking pretty frail, but still sends shivers with her space whisper cackles.
And they rocked. For a full hour and forty five, working their way through Camembert Electric, the trilogy and 2032. The light show was exquisite and my only sadness was that Bloomdido wasn't there to complete the line up. I missed his gnomic presence, his witty lines and cheeky riffs.
High point? Allen, dressed in a silver insectoid suit, with a single curling tentacle sprouting from his head, asking 'would you like some tea?'. 'Would you like some infinitea? Would you like some mushroom tea? Would you like some ayahuasca tea?' And to each, the grey men, suddenly remembering the hopes and possibilities of their long-forgotten psychedelic youth, punching the air with a resounding 'Yes!'
Onwards.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Saturday, 28 November 2009
Gong
I've been getting increasingly excited about seeing Steve Hillage reunited with Gong, currently on tour and playing tonight at the O2, Oxford. There's a new album, 2032 (2012 heads take note - here is your get-out), overseen by Hillage with his trademark guitar but in the last few weeks I've been pretty much listening to nothing but the classic Gong albums: Camembert Electric, and the Flying Teapot triology.
It's hard to overestimate the influence Gong have had on me. I first heard them at school when a group of sixth formers performed an avant-garde dance piece to 'Flying Teapot.' I was immediately gripped, not by the dancing which was as toe-curling as it sounds, but by the music. The strangest thing I'd heard, at once it evoked a spiritual yearning and a Dionysian terror, the illicit thrill of dissolution. Yet to encounter anything more mind-altering than cheap bottles of cider, Gong were genuinely psychedelic - they blew my mind.
I've read that they never made any appreciable impact in America, their blend of Eastern scales, jazz-inflected rock and spiritual-dadaism proving baffling across the pond. Why sing about the spiritual quest, only to lampoon it at the same time? But it was exactly this mix, of serious (almost militant) hippy philosophising (Bertrand Russell's flying teapot filled with a heady brew of mysticism and theosophy), together with a trickster's refusal to take anything too seriously that I found so appealing.
Take this, from You's 'A PHP's advice':
'If you're a believer, what do you believe? Why do you believe it? Doncha ever wonder if it's really true?' Pretty much my mission statement.
Add to this, Hillage's heaven-bound glissando guitar, Didier Malherbe's gnomic sax and flute solos, Tim Blake's VCS3 warblings, Gilli Smyth's space whisper, and Daevid Allen's impish invocations and you have the perfect infusion. Allen is now in his 70s but I hear that Gong not only still cut it, but knock the stuffing out of bands half their age.
I shall be up the front, praising the Pot Head Pixies, sliding and gliding down the Oily Way and doing my damnedest to Blow my Trip forever.
It's hard to overestimate the influence Gong have had on me. I first heard them at school when a group of sixth formers performed an avant-garde dance piece to 'Flying Teapot.' I was immediately gripped, not by the dancing which was as toe-curling as it sounds, but by the music. The strangest thing I'd heard, at once it evoked a spiritual yearning and a Dionysian terror, the illicit thrill of dissolution. Yet to encounter anything more mind-altering than cheap bottles of cider, Gong were genuinely psychedelic - they blew my mind.
I've read that they never made any appreciable impact in America, their blend of Eastern scales, jazz-inflected rock and spiritual-dadaism proving baffling across the pond. Why sing about the spiritual quest, only to lampoon it at the same time? But it was exactly this mix, of serious (almost militant) hippy philosophising (Bertrand Russell's flying teapot filled with a heady brew of mysticism and theosophy), together with a trickster's refusal to take anything too seriously that I found so appealing.
Take this, from You's 'A PHP's advice':
'If you're a believer, what do you believe? Why do you believe it? Doncha ever wonder if it's really true?' Pretty much my mission statement.
Add to this, Hillage's heaven-bound glissando guitar, Didier Malherbe's gnomic sax and flute solos, Tim Blake's VCS3 warblings, Gilli Smyth's space whisper, and Daevid Allen's impish invocations and you have the perfect infusion. Allen is now in his 70s but I hear that Gong not only still cut it, but knock the stuffing out of bands half their age.
I shall be up the front, praising the Pot Head Pixies, sliding and gliding down the Oily Way and doing my damnedest to Blow my Trip forever.
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Staffordshire Hoard
I was in London yesterday and with an hour to kill, popped into the British Museum to see the Staffordshire Hoard, the stash of Anglo-Saxon gold artefacts discovered by a metal-detectorist earlier this year.
How disappointing! Though the largest haul of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered, there are only about ten items on display. They haven't been cleaned properly yet and so much of the detail on the hilts and pommels is obscured by mud. The photos on the website are much better, so save yourself a trip.
However, an hour at the British Museum is never wasted. I've yet to be drawn into graphic novels, though an exhibition of Hoshino Yukinobu's manga character, Professor Munakata, had me tempted. The Rosetta Stone is always thrilling, as much for what it is as what it has come to represent. It hangs there in its case like one of Kubrick's monoliths, a totemic presence.
And then I was delighted to stumble upon some famous Anglo-Saxon runic inscriptions: the Franks Casket, carved from whale bone; the Seax sword retrieved from the Thames. I'm interested in Anglo-Saxon culture and religion for a number of reasons, but mostly because I find its animistic pagan worldview rather thrilling, in a hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck kind of way. The English runes or futhorc come from a time when the boundary between the prosaic act of writing and the magical exertion of will upon the world was thin. Words were magic. Peering at these objects, suspended behind glass as if for our protection as much as theirs, you can almost sense the magic force with which the makers thought them imbued. I experience it as a sense of loss.
How disappointing! Though the largest haul of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered, there are only about ten items on display. They haven't been cleaned properly yet and so much of the detail on the hilts and pommels is obscured by mud. The photos on the website are much better, so save yourself a trip.
However, an hour at the British Museum is never wasted. I've yet to be drawn into graphic novels, though an exhibition of Hoshino Yukinobu's manga character, Professor Munakata, had me tempted. The Rosetta Stone is always thrilling, as much for what it is as what it has come to represent. It hangs there in its case like one of Kubrick's monoliths, a totemic presence.
And then I was delighted to stumble upon some famous Anglo-Saxon runic inscriptions: the Franks Casket, carved from whale bone; the Seax sword retrieved from the Thames. I'm interested in Anglo-Saxon culture and religion for a number of reasons, but mostly because I find its animistic pagan worldview rather thrilling, in a hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck kind of way. The English runes or futhorc come from a time when the boundary between the prosaic act of writing and the magical exertion of will upon the world was thin. Words were magic. Peering at these objects, suspended behind glass as if for our protection as much as theirs, you can almost sense the magic force with which the makers thought them imbued. I experience it as a sense of loss.
Yage Letters
Last week I finally made time to pop into the Albion Beatnik Bookshop, in Oxford's Jericho district. There's some great stuff in there, and even though the 'Drugs' section (unhappily labelled 'Addiction') is a bit thin (and, ahem, could almost certainly include the occasional book about magic mushrooms) I managed to pick up a copy of The Yage Letters by William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.
More travel writing than trip-lit (though increasingly I'm hard put to tell the difference), the book nonetheless describes Burroughs and Ginsberg's journeys through South America in search of ayahuasca, told through letters dispatched between the two during the 50s and 60s. Burroughs fucks and drinks and injects and curses his way through Bogota and Peru, and while his bleak misanthropy is refreshingly savage , invigorating almost - 'the most inveterate drunk, liar and loafer in the village is invariably the medicine man' - he is a hard man to like.
Ginsberg comes across as altogether more human, playful and concerned, and the angsty way he wrestles with life, death and what the fuck it's all about, while wretching his guts out into the Amazonian night, is all too familiar. Burroughs, ever the junkie, ever the liar, squirms and wriggles away from honest self-examination. When the yage kicks in, he reaches for the sedatives. By contrast, Ginsberg's warm humility and willingness to go there is infectious.
'I am only a busybody meddling in human affairs vainly trying to assert the Supremacy of the Soul - which can take care of itself without me & my egoistic assumption of the Divine, my presumption that the Eternal needs my assistance to exist and preserve itself in the world.'
'There's no need to communicate the News of God. Those who seek, find...All's taken care of in Perfection.'
Gurus and religionists take note.
More travel writing than trip-lit (though increasingly I'm hard put to tell the difference), the book nonetheless describes Burroughs and Ginsberg's journeys through South America in search of ayahuasca, told through letters dispatched between the two during the 50s and 60s. Burroughs fucks and drinks and injects and curses his way through Bogota and Peru, and while his bleak misanthropy is refreshingly savage , invigorating almost - 'the most inveterate drunk, liar and loafer in the village is invariably the medicine man' - he is a hard man to like.
Ginsberg comes across as altogether more human, playful and concerned, and the angsty way he wrestles with life, death and what the fuck it's all about, while wretching his guts out into the Amazonian night, is all too familiar. Burroughs, ever the junkie, ever the liar, squirms and wriggles away from honest self-examination. When the yage kicks in, he reaches for the sedatives. By contrast, Ginsberg's warm humility and willingness to go there is infectious.
'I am only a busybody meddling in human affairs vainly trying to assert the Supremacy of the Soul - which can take care of itself without me & my egoistic assumption of the Divine, my presumption that the Eternal needs my assistance to exist and preserve itself in the world.'
'There's no need to communicate the News of God. Those who seek, find...All's taken care of in Perfection.'
Gurus and religionists take note.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Andy and Cliff
As some of you know, aside from Telling the Bees I play pipes with hurdy-gurdy maestro, Cliff Stapleton. Our music is a kind of organic trance, simple, looping but elegaic tunes played over and over, against the backdrop of a drone. There's dances that go with the tunes, though you can appreciate the music on it's own (photos here).
We have a gig coming up, in Bath, so do come along and check it out.
It's looking increasingly likely that next year we are going to be joined by concertina wizard, Jim Penny, of Red Dog Green Dog fame. The three of us had a splendid rehearsal last weekend. On the way home, Jim and I stopped for a walk up a prominent iron-age hillfort, along the 303. Not only was the view stunning - the Somerset levels disappearing into hazy autumn sunlight - but there was an unexpected treat, the fruits of the season poking up from the sward. Back ache ensued.
We have a gig coming up, in Bath, so do come along and check it out.
It's looking increasingly likely that next year we are going to be joined by concertina wizard, Jim Penny, of Red Dog Green Dog fame. The three of us had a splendid rehearsal last weekend. On the way home, Jim and I stopped for a walk up a prominent iron-age hillfort, along the 303. Not only was the view stunning - the Somerset levels disappearing into hazy autumn sunlight - but there was an unexpected treat, the fruits of the season poking up from the sward. Back ache ensued.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Glastonbury tonight
Just about to head off to Glastonbury, where I'm playing tonight at the Assembly Rooms with Telling the Bees. Always a great place to play. I'm pre-gig excited.
Back late tonight cos I'm lecturing on drugs and religion tomorrow - no rest for the wicked, eh?
Back late tonight cos I'm lecturing on drugs and religion tomorrow - no rest for the wicked, eh?
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Bright Star
Sobbed my way through Jane Campion's latest, Bright Star, about the tragic love affair of John Keats and Fanny Braun. Every bit as brilliant as you'd expect. So good to see a movie that doesn't rely on histrionics, emotional manipulation or CG-fucking-I to bludgeon you into submission. Good old-fashioned acting, film as art, cinematography - remember that? Oscars please.
Horizons
Things have been silly busy since I got back from NYC. I've been gigging with Cliff, promoting the new Telling the Bees album, teaching in Oxford and Bath and then piping as part of a major dance piece, Common Ground, in Greenwich. All of which means I haven't had a chance to say what a fantastic time I had at the Horizons conference in New York.
Debate about psychedelics seems much more advanced in the US than here. When I mention 'Shroom' to people in the UK I'm typically met with sniggers and titters, nods and winks. How refreshing then to have the subject taken seriously for a change. Maybe it's the proximity to NY University, but I found people to be friendly, open and, most importantly, critically informed, which made for some fascinating conversations. Hard to pick one or two talks as favourites, but Earth & Fire Erowid were as engaging as ever, and it was great to here how psilocybin research is finding its way back into the academy both in Switzerland and the US. Dan Pinchbeck was a no-show, which was a shame as I'd have relished the opportunity to debate with him again.
I also got a glimpse into the possibilities of the New York beatnik art boho scene (every bit as cool as you'd imagine) - there's some great stuff happening there (not least the robot-gamelan). It's a dreadful cliche, but the American can-do attitude was infectious and intoxicating, a tonic for a jaded old-world soul like myself. And get this - the event was declared a Goan-trance-free zone. There is a God!
So, if you want to hang out with cool psych-types who like to think as much as they like to get experienced, then head to Horizons. I know I'll be back.
Debate about psychedelics seems much more advanced in the US than here. When I mention 'Shroom' to people in the UK I'm typically met with sniggers and titters, nods and winks. How refreshing then to have the subject taken seriously for a change. Maybe it's the proximity to NY University, but I found people to be friendly, open and, most importantly, critically informed, which made for some fascinating conversations. Hard to pick one or two talks as favourites, but Earth & Fire Erowid were as engaging as ever, and it was great to here how psilocybin research is finding its way back into the academy both in Switzerland and the US. Dan Pinchbeck was a no-show, which was a shame as I'd have relished the opportunity to debate with him again.
I also got a glimpse into the possibilities of the New York beatnik art boho scene (every bit as cool as you'd imagine) - there's some great stuff happening there (not least the robot-gamelan). It's a dreadful cliche, but the American can-do attitude was infectious and intoxicating, a tonic for a jaded old-world soul like myself. And get this - the event was declared a Goan-trance-free zone. There is a God!
So, if you want to hang out with cool psych-types who like to think as much as they like to get experienced, then head to Horizons. I know I'll be back.
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Making Sense of Magic Mushrooms
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifI shall be speaking at the October Gallery on tuesday 24th November, as part of the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness series, details here.
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Please reserve your place as space is limited.
Email rentals@octobergallery.co.uk or call 44 (0)20 7831 1618
Making Sense of Magic Mushrooms
For those who have encountered magic mushrooms, the psilocybin experience is like an ancient codex whose glyphs are at once baffling and clear. To make sense of it, each person must perform an act of translation or interpretation by which the strange is rendered familiar. But how should this be done? In the post-war period alone an original psychological framework has given way to that of mysticism, itself replaced in turn by the language of shamanism.
In this talk, Andy Letcher will encourage us to move away from the mushroom experience itself the usual province of trip-lit , to a consideration of how it has been interpreted throughout history. For, contrary to received wisdom, very few cultures have decoded the mushroom as we do. Along the way he will ask whether magic mushrooms bring genuine transcendence, or if the experiences they occasion forever bound by culture.
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Please reserve your place as space is limited.
Email rentals@octobergallery.co.uk or call 44 (0)20 7831 1618
Making Sense of Magic Mushrooms
For those who have encountered magic mushrooms, the psilocybin experience is like an ancient codex whose glyphs are at once baffling and clear. To make sense of it, each person must perform an act of translation or interpretation by which the strange is rendered familiar. But how should this be done? In the post-war period alone an original psychological framework has given way to that of mysticism, itself replaced in turn by the language of shamanism.
In this talk, Andy Letcher will encourage us to move away from the mushroom experience itself the usual province of trip-lit , to a consideration of how it has been interpreted throughout history. For, contrary to received wisdom, very few cultures have decoded the mushroom as we do. Along the way he will ask whether magic mushrooms bring genuine transcendence, or if the experiences they occasion forever bound by culture.