OFF: Damo Suzuki, Acid Mothers Gong

[Jon Jarrett]

        Dear All,
                  Nick's already posted a long review of this gig, but I
thought what I wrote soon after it touched some different spots and so on,
and hey, I'm vain enough think someone might want to read it, so here it
is.

The Incredible String Band/ Damo Suzuki & The Switch Doctors/ Acid
         Mothers Gong, Royal Festival Hall London 21/10/03

        "The Incredible String Band, sadly, weren't. At least one of their
members was definitely reminding me of Clive Dunn and he didn't really do
anything. For one song he was all the percussion there was, on a
djembe-like thing, which he barely patted and he couldn't be heard at
all. Great deal of enthusiasm from the two stage right, keyboardist-singer
and violinist-cellist-guitarist-songstress, but not that much to be
enthusiastic with. They had some fans in and they had a good time but I'm
afraid this was a Past It performance.

        "Mr Suzuki is not past it. He started with a huge scream and
didn't shut up for most of his set, or stop moving, but it still wasn't
that tremendous. Only when Mike Howlett, the Gong bassist moonlighting
with the Switch Doctors as backing band, explained that they were in fact
improvising, did this begin to be forgivably explained. The drummer was
very high-end-of-the-kit though, and whenever he got people with him he
would try and speed them up; I got tired of this the third time. Mike
Howlett by far the best player present, would try and agitate the rhythm
so as to speed people up rather than actually leave the beat because he
was holding people together, but he also couldn't really move the band.
The guitarist was bedroom standard and reminded me terribly of Carl
Anderson, he had many of the same noises but rather less of the ability,
and Carl would be first to admit he's never yet been up to this sort of
gig.[1] The keyboardist was worse, wouldn't move when the time signature
changed, kept hitting half-tones off the harmony... he really spoilt
several otherwise quite good moments for me by not listening to his
band-mates. He was all right on swooshbox (EMS synthi I mean) because that
doesn't require you to listen, though it's better if you do I think, but
he was bad on organ, and I wish he'd stopped. It got better towards the
end but it still wasn't good.

        "This all only went to impress on me how good Acid Mothers
Temple's rhythm section are. In a performance which I can't even fully
describe, they were the stars: shifting in split seconds from one speed or
pattern to another, shape-changing throughout, they were free of any kind
of hindrance whatever. Forgive me if I don't attempt the AMT's names, bar
the one Anglicised one, but the full stage complement was: one synth
player with beard, from AMT, dressed in an orange fur suit and playing at
least sometimes with a trackball controller some way away from his
machine; the other AMT synth player, tiny Cotton Casino, chain-smoking
almost ceaselessly (I said as the smoke rose, "we don't need no steenkin'
smoke-machine") and often dancing in a kind of St-Vitus-afflicts-only-my-
left-leg way as well as giving up playing to dance more freely reasonably
often--there was plenty of other noise; Bloomdido Bad de Grasse of Gong
and the Hadouk Trio, completely unflappable despite much to be flapped by
throughout on a variety of wind instruments, two saxes at least, also a
flute and one strange metal closed hoop with holes in and a thing of
African (I expect) provenance I couldn't identify; Gilli Smyth of Gong,
Mother Gong and Glo on space whisper vocals; a gap centre stage; Josh
Pollock of The University of Errors in red pyjamas and on upside-down
guitar and megaphone vocals; and the AMT's lead guitarist in silver lame
body-suit and cape with Fender and hair. Behind them lurked the fabulous
AMT rhythm section, the bass-player also singing in a variety of voices
growly, falsetto and Tibetan throat and attired in something like Morris
dance costume but more ragged and peasant-hero-like. And the drummer,
dressed in a housewife's dress and headscarf (he is not, I think, female).

        "There was, I thought, a danger that Daevid Allen would not be the
most sillily-dressed person present. I need not have feared. He arrived
topless in blue harem trousers and a silver cape and a strange hat which I
can no longer picture, and as he arrived, the noise, which had started
with the synths and the AMT guitarist, building in treble with clouds of
scorching star-dust a long way off rising invisibly but audibly into the
hall, began to acquire force. Gilli moaned, Josh squawked a great deal
through his megaphone, using the switch to blip his voice on and off, the
AMT bass-player also contributed strange vocals and began a slow and at
first almost inaudible thundering noise from his bass, the drummer played
free and fast drawing shapes within the clouds. Daevid swung his headless
guitar about the place and contributed some glissando work, the AMT guy
also got out a knife and did similar, the noise built, and built some
more, Cotton could no longer stand still (though still smoking), the other
synth player was also intoning into a mike now when he wasn't standing
back from the synth with his trackball creating waves of noise he
pretended to surf on... the bass rumble grew, squeaks, squawks and shrieks
punctuated the rushing electronic fizz, the noise built, I don't know how
long they kept it up for, it felt like at least five minutes growing all
the time and in the last thirty seconds something like a shape emerged, a
frantic bass pounding, the huge ship they'd created just began to clear
the ground--

        "And it all stopped, all at once, and in the space in which our
thwarted brains writhed the bass-player dropped a thin funk pattern and
the drummer some similarly jazz-lined fills and Daevid started reciting
while Didier blew smokey notes into the dark, but it was the most awesome
deliberate anticlimax, and I couldn't really tell you how it ended. And
that was just one song, which seemed to have some good words in it at the
time but by the end of the set it was all washed over in my memory by what
was to follow.

        "Now, I can't even attempt to separate the rest of the pieces they
did. They were all distinct, and at least one more did the lots-of-noise-
then-change-into-a-funk-band thing, in a very AMT way, and another patch
where the core trio of guitar, drums and bass were firing off pauses at
each other which also struck me as being like the last time I'd seen them,
in this same hall. They did actually do one Acid Mothers Temple number
more or less off their own bat by conspiracy between the bass-player and
guitarist. But most of it was, not shapeless, but shape-shifting and some
of it was just noise. Let me try and describe one number that seemed to be
separate so I can try and tell you how this was to be near.

        "This one started slow. Over a quietly-growing synth, sax and
gliss backdrop Gilli, in the most sarcastic form I've ever seen her (she's
something of a hippy at the best of times so outright contempt is a rare
thing to hear from her), started in on George Dubya Bush, chiding him like
a child from after the apocalypse she depicted him causing. `But that's
all right George, you couldn't help it. Evil unbelievers made you do
it! And now you've got no-one to play with! But that's all right
George...' and so on. The noise built meanwhile and Daevid, who had for
some time been playing around with a pair of Mickey Mouse gloves on
sticks, or very like that, now dropped out of sight for a second and
reappeared with new headgear, a bird's skull mask with wings pointing up
from his temples in a strange and grotesque Pan-like form of the Devil. He
moved off stage and dragged on, while Didier calmly walked through him and
the new appearance to change instruments, a man in black jumper and jeans
whom I didn't know. The noise built and shape swirled in it while the bass
player contributed low guttural Yeti-like heavy breathing noises. As he
did so Daevid stood the guest between the synth-players and back a bit,
and stretched out the guest's arms crucifixion-like, before moving forward
to grope Cotton with the hands-on-sticks. The mummery changed round until
both Cotton and the guest were standing in front of Daevid and then they
dropped to their knees to worship. Gilli was silent by now and the
growling and noise grew around her, while Didier ignored everything and
kept on blowing where he could find space to be heard. The noise reached a
fever pitch as Daevid bent his acolytes over and beat them on the rears
with the sticks before moving away to take up his guitar, leaving them the
sticks. I was so intent on the tableau that I didn't quite notice the
bass-player shift things round and slowly bleed off the tension with a
livelier bassline that seemed to belong to folk, and as Daevid started in
on the glissando Cotton and the guy in black started getting off with each
other on the floor, she (I'm told she's female, I wasn't sure at the
time) rapidly disappearing underneath him. The noise was coming from I'm
not sure where by now. Josh was still sort of playing; I suspect Cotton's
synth was still running while she did whatever she was doing on the floor,
and the other guy was still working the trackball; there was Didier and
Daevid too, but a few seconds later the lead guitarist, the drummer and
very rapidly the bass-player all downed tools to run around in the middle
of the stage in a kind of crabwise tag, just like their playing in that
they would all move into a new pattern and freeze, with arms out warning
each other away, at some signal before moving again; Josh joined in and
there was shrieking and shouting which, it being some way away from
microphones, didn't really interfere with the soundscape the remaining
musicians played. Smoke from behind the synths indicated that Cotton's
mouth was free for a cigarette again and the two seemed to be lazily
playing at each other with one each of the hands on sticks. It truly was
`absolutely freak out' (one of the AMT albums' titles), I couldn't remove
the phrase from my head. Slowly the musicians resumed stations again and
brought the shapes back together through several different places before
letting the whole thing close down.

        "I think that was the third number. I think they did six, counting
the encore which was shorter than the others. I do not know how many
cigarettes Cotton smoked: she is an Olympic-standard smoker. I do not know
how Didier stayed so calm. I do not how Daevid gets away with it. I don't
really know what I saw and heard. When I left the world seemed much less
relevant and very drab and grey and unreal. I was not on anything except
alcohol and love. It was an amazing gig.

        "Sherman put it down as `complete musical indescribability', but
I've had to try for fear I might forget even more. You really did have to
be there. If they ever do it again I'll leave more warning, but it won't
be anything like this one because even while it was happening it was
changing from anything it had already been. Mad. Fantastic. Out of words."

        Yours all,
                   Jon

--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)