OFF: Review: Canterbury Sound Festival 2000 (Man, Arthur Brown, Gong, etc)

[Jon Jarrett]

Dear All,
          this is Bcc'd to two mailing lists to avoid cross-posted
responses, so Carl and Anna are only the obvious recipients - hullo you
two. This was written offline as part of something else so forgive
occasional context failures. Now...

On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, Radio Gnome Invisible wrote:

> Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 16:25:43 GMT
> From: Radio Gnome Invisible <radiognome at hotmail.com>
> To: rocksoc-chat at chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: review: cropredy 2000
>
> Cropredy Music Festival 2000
>
> This is the first time I have been to Cropredy, so I decided to write a
> review for you lot (since Carl's not here to write his essays :).

        Dammit, I knew there was something I was supposed to be doing to
make up for Carl's absence other than insist on Hawkwind at WUS (yes, I
know, I should be there, but it's wet out and my bike's broken and I'm far
too tired to enjoy it). So, without further ado, here is a review of the
first ever Canterbury Sound Festival, with bonus headings so you can skip
the bits you're less interested in if need be...

(ambience)

        The place it was being held at was called Mount Ephraim Gardens,
just up the road from Canterbury, a stately-home-type garden I believe,
certainly it had permanent toilets so they must have regular vistors (no
pun intended). The weather was lovely, and the place itself is also
beautiful, an old piece of landscaping with lots of trees all still looked
after, and by someone not bothered about a lot of hippies sprawling on his
land either, a true rarity.

        We had dawdled somewhat and the City Blues Band, whoever they may
have been, had already finished, but the person running the PA had fine
taste in incidental music although there was quite a lot of folky stuff
and _far_ too much on very old crackly vinyl. Nonetheless, sat under a
tree drinking Shepherd Neame and listening to old psych in the sun is a
damn pleasant way to idle away a spare half hour.

        As we waited more and more people arrived, and it became clear
rapidly from the queues for food that the organisers had massively
under-estimated the attendance. They'd only sold a third of their tickets
in advance apparently so that can be forgiven, and although people did
have to wait a long time not much actually ran out and I didn't see anyone
complaining. It was probably too cool to be complaining.

(Rubber Biscuit)

        Because everyone was so chilled, the first band on, Rubber Biscuit
("all the way from Whitstable"), who had a thing about getting people
dancing, had a thin time of it. They achieved only three people dancing
throughout their set, which was unfair because as far as bands that
clearly want to be The Commitments go they weren't bad. They even had some
original material, though the best things they did were covers, from
people as diverse as James Brown and The Divine Comedy. Nonetheless, when
they'd all (three singers, four brass-players, piano-player, guitarist,
bass-player, drummer) left the stage I felt things might be a bit more
promising. Not bad, but 11 people dressed in black have little to do with
that sort of day.

(Man)

        A short gap ensued and then Man arrived. Deke Leonard (guitar,
vocals) was wearing black too but we'll let him off as he was playing damn
well. In fact, they were all on form, even if Martin (bass, vocals) Ace's
Hawaiian shirt should have been burnt on the loom, and Mickey Jones (lead
guitar, vocals) was stratospheric. A developing trend was emerging
however, in that none of the bands from here on were playing with the
line-up you would have expected: keyboardist Phil Ryan was looking after
his sick wife and one Gareth Torrington was standing in, on a Yamaha which
gave them an unusually up-to-date soundscape to play over.

        They opened with `Ride and the View', as I'd kind of expected, and
were thus off to a flying start. It cannot be stressed enough how
professional Man are these days - they do not disappoint. With the song
ended Martin took the mike and as always his patter was worth the
recording: "Well, here we are in the Garden of England, where all the rich
people live... What you laughin' at, you rich bastards? You're adjacent to
a Third World country and it's called Wales... Still, you'll have heard
we're getting our own Stock Exchange now - the Dai Jones index." The rest
of the set went pretty much straight on from there, with `C'mon'
following, and then as Martin told us a track from the new album, which
was called `Stuck Behind the Popemobile', which wasn't too bad though as
far as I'm concerned their song-writing hasn't matured with their
playing. `Why Am I So Lonely' is another case in point, though a rather
better song - both are two songs inadequately fitted together with
choruses that don't belong with the verses either musically or
lyrically. But they were played very well. And they ended with a
masterpiece version of `Many Are Called But Few Get Up' which suddenly
changed into an equally beautiful `The Storm' just before the end and then
returned to itself to finish up with the parent song's blistering drum
explosion. And that was it, but it was pretty good.

(Arthur Brown)

        Next up was Arthur Brown, and that was something. I had no idea
what to expect since I'm only dimly aware even of `Fire', but anyone
expecting The Crazy World was rapidly informed otherwise by the band, who
were three, playing a variety of percussion, a cellist and one playing
mandolin, steel guitar or violin. And of course there's Mr. Brown
himself. I'd never seen him before, so I was struck by the following
things that may be obvious to the afficionado: (i) his gaunt height - he
seemed about seven foot on stage and he wasn't standing on anything
extra; (ii) his vocal range, which is even taller, damn near pitch-perfect
all the way and exceptionally loud and clear and (iii) his TV-evangelist
stage presence. He was all round exceptional. The band made everything
sound distinctly otherworldly and suited his style very well. The set-list
included some new things which I can only guess the titles of, but
otherwise I can piece it together from a discography, and it went:

Hard Rain Gonna Fall (this was excellent)
I Put a Spell On You (he had the entire audience in his hand for
        this, it was quite literally spell-binding. he did suggest that
        aome of us might like to dance after that but he was sensible
        enough not to push it and followed it with a sudden flash of Laurel
        and Hardy)
Love is (the Spirit that Will Never Die)
Tantric Lover (quirkily different to the previous one)
?Bridge Across the River of Your Dreams (including pretending to strum
        strings on the arm of the video camera, and a short extemporised
        poem about it)
Come And Buy
Prelude - Nightmare (I think - he ended by shouting "I AM-" and the
        stopping and remarking idly how it was a very powerful position to have
        the audience waiting for just one song, and pretending to lie down
        and go to sleep, before finally relenting and brushing the camera aside
        with, "Out of my way, mortal!")
Fire (this was of course excellent, even with the odd instrumentation, in
        fact because of it, but he went to an extreme making an old number
        interesting by taking a radio mike and coming out into the audience,
        letting a few people yell `Fire' for him and finally getting right up
        to the top of the field and discoursing idly about how nice it was
        to sit on the grass and ignore the band - "but then again, I'm supposed
        to be performing". He had us eating out of his hand: I could suddenly
        understand how the Pied Piper of Hamlyn did it and the parallel was
        inescapable when he ran back down the hill with five kids
        following him - he ran all the way up and back, where he got the
        breath to sing from I don't know)
(A sort of poem about how love, or more specifically sex, in this plastic
age of make-up and gyms and callisthenics, isn't what it used to be -
rather funny)
?That's How Strong My Love Is

        So, as you may understand, people were leaving after that because
it couldn't be topped. They were wrong, but never mind, I could see their
point. It was one of a hell of a show.

(Colosseum)

        After some more music there followed Colosseum. About this lot I
only knew that they were jazz-rock, and though they had some astonishing
players, the drummer and the saxophonist standing out for impressive
soloes (the latter on two saxophones), they were basically trad stuff and
didn't draw me in. I was reared on trad jazz as far as I was raised on
anything but classical, and I suspect this lot suffered from the early Led
Zeppelin problem - you know, it's very good, but no-one who knows _real_
blues is ever going to consider more than a pale imitation (no pun
intended - well, maybe just the one).

(Gong)

        However, then there came the ones I'd really come to see, the
mighty and extremely silly Gong. I could talk lots about Gong by way of
background but it would be uninteresting to most so I shall just rave a
bit. Gong's line-up is always unpredictable: this time it was the three
essentials, Daevid Allen on guitar and vocals, he having accepted that he
has gone completely white (which with as much hair as he has is
impressive) and wearing a white jumpsuit with orange reflective arm-rings,
Gilli Smyth on space whisper vocals and Mike Howlett on bass (he's
shrunk! Seriously! and gone grey suddenly. Still plays like a maniac
though), with extras being Gwyo le Pix of Zorch on keyboards, Theo Travis
on saxophone, and Chris Taylor on drums. Chris was very good, Daevid was
electric - I hadn't realised he was entirely capable of playing lead as
well as rhythm and gliss, and Theo was less good than I expected, most of
the sax noise being apparently Didier Malherbe on tape, though my
companion insisted it was being played off the keyboards [I was later
advised that in fact it was all being done off the keyboards, which apart
from anything else had a mouth control for the dynamics - that must be
fucking difficult to do!]. But Gilli impressed me most. I saw her with Glo
in '97 and then she struck me as no more than a shambling hippy crone. The
CD I have from 94 also seemed to indicate a fairly weak performance was to
be expected. But she's lost a lot of weight, toned up and she had it
together big-time - she still spouts a lot of very dubious stuff but her
witch's cackle was genuinely frightening and I was shocked into adoring
her without further ado. Like seeing Nik with Hawkwind for the first
time,I suddenly got the idea of what she was supposed to add.

        In fact, a lot of things started making sense to me in strange
ways as the set went on... Daevid was on front-man form too, with
pseudo-French accent and strangenesses. The set was short, and they came
on to a scrambled Francophone radio intro and started up with something I
didn't know, may have been off the new album. Then, after an introduction
from Daevid, it was off into the old stuff - `Radio Gnome Invisible',
which was good, something else I didn't recognise but which I suspect was
`Givin' my Luv to You' [possibly `Magdalene'?], and then a marvellous
`Zero the Hero and the Witch's Spell', followed by an equally good `I Am
Your Pussy' which was when I suddenly `got' Gilli, and then a nice
combination of a beginning of `Isle of Everywhere', lots of very low
other-wordly but with Gong behind her Gilli sounds more convincing, and
then it wandered into the chant that precedes the glorious Om Riff. I
should have realised what was going on, I'd have been incredibly excited
as it built up, as it was I was very nicely chilled when I suddenly picked
up the bass part and realised what was about to happen as the band crashed
into the riff. I don't know how long they actually played the Om Riff, ten
minutes, maybe less even, but I had to dance to all of it, actually dance
or as close as I get, this having only been documented three times
before. And I remember very clearly noticing that after they had all left
the tune and were improvising wildly that the Riff was *still there*, in
the spaces left. I can't imagine that could actually have been so, that
is, that they were playing around the riff, I think it must have just been
driven into my head but even knowing this I could still anti-hear it. The
title became meaningful to me now. I was on Planet Gong for the first time
and most reluctant to come back.

        They're playing Cambridge in November and everyone I can get to go
is coming, all right?

(Caravan)

        In a way this wasn't really fair on Caravan, as they'd organised
the festival, but many more people left after Gong and Caravan had a much
smaller crowd to play to. They were I think pretty good, although I knew
none of their stuff, a sort of extra-large (two drummers, violinist, two
guitarists and a bass player and keyboard player, on an organ like Ray
Manzarek used to use, sort of little thing in a box with a very narrow
keyboard) Jethro Tull with violin instead of flute. But I was too far away
to enjoy it fully, being still very much on the Planet Gong. We went
before they had finished, got Chinese and stayed up debating whether or
not Porcupine Tree have lost it.

        What strikes me most is that there was no police presence, and no
pressure to finish up on time - Caravan must have been on track for
over-running by half-an-hour or more - and that everything was so
peaceful. It was great. I shall be there again next year and hell, as long
as they can do it. I hope they bring in some newer bands rather than
_just_ sticking to the veterans like that, but no complaints from me for
doing so the first time. Yeah baby. Yours all,
                                                Jon


--
 |  Jon Jarrett (01223 741219)           jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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