LIVE AU BATACLAN 1973

As with many bands of the era, if you've only heard Gong's studio efforts you've only really had half of the story on them. The Live Etc. double album release was ultimately a bit of a fragmentary affair, drawing on a swathe of different performances from a sequence of different Gong lineups, with the result that it didn't really reflect how their live shows actually went.

This recording of their 1973 show at the Bataclan - recorded just as Flying Teapot was on the cusp of release and featuring material from that, Camembert Electrique, and some early takes on pieces from Angel's Egg - goes some way to correcting that, offering a decent-sounding set which finds them expanding on their studio numbers organically as the mood takes them.

Note, however, that the truly definitive version of this gig isn't this set - it's the 2CD collection taking in the entire Bataclan set released in the recent Love From the Planet Gong box, which contains the entire, unexpurgated setlist with corrected track names. (Whoever was doing the track names on this one for Mantra was basically guessing half the time.)