NEW YORK GONG: ABOUT TIME

This album has nothing too much in common with classic Gong albums. In fact, it is "New York Gong", something like Daevid Allen solo project.

Whenever the year is 1980, don't be surprised to find there ... punk music. OK, it is far from usual punk, but Daevid Allen punk - synthesizer based , but with fast and simplistic punk rhythm. Songs are short, melodic, full of craziness and energy. Plus saxes and often speaking Daevid vocal. Plus political lyrics.

Very light traces of spacy psychedelia there. In fact, this is something should be named "prog- punk". Or you can name it kind of RIO/avant as well, with very NY downtown atmosphere ( John Cale sometimes sounds like this).

Quite interesting album, but far from Gong or usual progressive rock. For Daevid Allen fans and Gong collectors.

More interesting by far than the Expresso II-based rut that Pierre Moerlen's Gong had worked themselves into by this point, About Time sees Daevid Allen team up with a new Gong lineup headed by Bill Laswell - once they and Allen parted ways this group would become legendary industrial/funk pioneers Material. On here, however, they're engaged with investing some exciting New Wave energy into Allen's songwriting. Allen tackles most of the usual hippy topics he's fond of - feminism, environmentalism and so on - but the New Wave mode sees him address them more directly and bluntly than he usually does.

In principle, this should have been a shot in the arm for Allen; however, perhaps because the impetus for forming the band came not from Allen himself but from Giorgio Gomelsky, who at the time was embarking on a doomed attempt to sell RIO-ish fusion acts like Magma and Henry Cow to an American audience via his New York "Zu Club", Allen doesn't quite seem to fit into this musical context and a lot of his lyrics here seem to recognise this. Ultimately, Allen and this new backing band would part ways, and Material's best days would come after the divorce when they were free to really spread their wings. Still, for those who are really interested in the history of the extended Gong family tree, this is a fascinating musical collaboration which set the stage for Bill Laswell's own groundbreaking career, as well as keeping Allen's ticking over.

Daevid Allen + Material = New York Gong

Another one of the dozen versions of "Gong" out there, and while it has very little to do with the far out space jazz rock of the classic period, this is actually a very good late 70s album that shows Daevid Allen's adaptability to playing with different people in different styles. In this case, it's the hot underground avant-funk band Material from New York City. And this being the late 70s in New York, there's an unmistakable punk flavor to this album too. Allen, always the affably cynical observer, partakes in the zeitgeist of the times while poking fun at it, resulting in an album that's of its time but has a little bit of ironic distance from it too. Daevid had seen many scenes in many different countries by then, and while he understood the excitement of his environment, he also understood it to be just a phase on its way to something else.

As is the case with many older Gong albums, this one begins with a short sound-effect/tape loop introductory piece, here simply called "Preface". Then the band rips right into the hard-chargin' "Much too Old", where Allen winkingly rips New York City a new one. (Best line: "You can look for a place, but space is rare / Better take up smoking cause there ain't no air"). He even rhymes "Chick Corea" with "diarrhea". It's a simple, funny tune that gets the blood moving. Rather than let up, though, the band charges even harder into the next number, "Black September", an apocalyptic song about ecological disaster (from acid rain, chemical warfare, or perhaps both). At the climax of the song, Allen sneers "Don't Worry! Be Happy!" like he's Johnny Rotten. You go, dude. Always wondered where Bobby McFerrin got that idea.

Finally we get a break from the intensity, with the arty instrumental "Materialism" showing off the backing band's skills. "Strong Woman" is a laid back midtempo rocker with sympathetic, feminist lyrics from Daevid. "I Am a Freud" is the kind of Gong song we're usually accustomed to hearing from Daevid Allen, a brief bit of goofy fun that showed up often on the early Gong records.

Side Two begins with my personal favorite part of the album, the lengthy "Oh My Photograph". This nine-minute piece is actually in three parts: first, an instrumental section with a driving punky rhythm, but topped with an odd lead guitar line that seems to move in an opposite direction - almost kind of "no-wave", and really effective; second, a vocal section featuring the same galloping rhythm but a different melody - the lyrics seem to be about Daevid hating a picture of himself (?); and then the last section, a repetitive instrumental vamp that goes on just a bit too long for my liking. But those first six minutes are gold. The album continues the hot streak with a new rendition of an older number "Jungle Windo(w)", previously known as "Big City Energy" (see my review for the archival release "Camembert Eclectique"). This is a highly rhythmic ranting number featuring guest sax player Gary Windo (thus the joke in the spelling of the song title). Finally, we have another reworked old song, "Hours Gong" (aka Hours Gone, or Where Have all the Flowers Gone, or.....). It makes a great closer -- ending the album on a dead serious note, with it's funeral march tempo and firmly anti-drug message, as if cautioning the New York punk scene not to get too out of hand. It kind of works as an inspirational song to take control of your life. Right on.

I love this album and have loved it for many years; still, if it has any flaws, it's probably the relatively rough recording quality (sounds like a cheaply produced job to me), and the relatively non-adventurous music involved, which doesn't sound like it took a whole lot of time to write or record. But overall I have no qualms awarding this four stars -- Daevid Allen the veteran pro exchanging energetic vibes with some young snots from NYC, with both sides teaching the other a thing or two in the process.

One of those projects that proves Daevid Allen was nothing more than an interdimensional pixie floating around like a butterfly and sampling all the fertile musical nectars wherever they may reside. After leaving GONG to Pierre Moerlen after the Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy, Allen was all over the world collaborating and cross-pollinating with like-minded freethinkers far and wide. By the late 70s, the extended GONG family had blossomed into a diverse family of related band's all held together by the familiar GONG moniker inserted into their namesakes. One of the many projects that Allen himself was involved in was this bizarre little one-off project called NEW YORK GONG which these days is more often referred to as the origins of Bill Laswell's involvement in the mutant disco band Material as well as the launching off point for his involvement with the more skronky post-Henry Cow project Massacre.

Around 1978 Allen found himself in The Big Apple, a time when not only funk, disco and dance music were all the rage but also an uglier underground such as no wave, hardcore punk as well as their friendlier cousin new wave. Initially starting out as the Zu Band and created in 1978 by producer Giorgio Gomelsky who moved to New York in the hopes of promoting progressive rock bands, the changing musical tides dictated otherwise. The band included bassist Bill Laswell, guitarist Cliff Cultreri, keyboardist Michael Beinhorn and drummer Fred Maher but spontaneously and suddenly at an October 1978 performance at the Zu Club, lead singer David Allen adopted the band name NEW YORK GONG and it pretty much stuck after that point.

As NEW YORK GONG only one studio album resulted, the 1979 release ABOUT TIME which offered a very strange mix of GONG inspired psychedelia mixed with punk rock, new wave and mutant disco. The project also proved that Allen wasn't the kind of artist who could adapt to a band situation very well as his idiosyncratic personality guaranteed it sounded like an Allen project but nevertheless ABOUT TIME showcased a rather unique chapter in the greater GONG universe. The album of nine tracks at nearly 37 minutes found Allen writing the majority of the tracks but also found a few collaborative efforts from other band members. Starting with the psychedelic intro "Preface" where Allen welcomes all aliens, humanoids and other freaks of nature, the album jumps into an accessible form of punk rock with "Much Too Old" but finds Allen delivering his unique psychedelic rapping style that was prevalent in his early GONG days. "Black September" sounding more punk in nature actually finds Allen singing but he proved to be no Joe Strummer, Johnny Rotten or Jello Biafra.

The album's inconsistent nature is one of its charms as well as a hinderance at least for any points in trying to be a New York punker! "Materialism" jumps into a mutant disco style that's both danceable and psychedelic with some nice progressive moves as far as changing up the musical motifs and completely instrumental with some jittery guitar riffs. "Strong Woman" drifts into a more 70s hippie vibe with Allen's classic glissando guitar antics accompanied by tribal drumming and that sort of Talking Heads inspired sound that King Crimson was experimenting with in the 1980s. Allen's contemplative singing also finds him in outbursts of what sound like shamanic chanting trying to break into some sort of throat singing! The short "I Am Freud" breaks into unadulterated new wave synth-pop only with brief moments of sax squawks inserted into micro-breaks.

"O My Photograph" at over 9 minutes long is the strangest track on board as it showcases Allen as the hippie punk rocker with a punk bass groove accompanied by Allen's psychedelic guitar and his greatest poetic prose turned into as many ways as expressing it as possible. The longevity of the song allows the mutant disco bass groove on high energy throughout its entirely to allow many psychedelic moments with Allen and is surprisingly danceable all the while as trippy as anything Allen conjured up in GONG! The closest thing to an actually GONG song of yore was the early 70s sounding "Jungle Window" which wouldn't have sounded out of place on 1973's "Flying Teapot" as it sounds like one of those classic moments where Allen raps about multi-dimensional creatures backed by Laswell channeling those classic Gong bass grooves along with funk guitar and a feisty tenor sax cameo provided by Gary Windo. "Hour's Gone" finishes the album starting off with a strange guitar style and then sounding like an electrified Bob Dylan before bursting into a punk rock song!

While touted as a Daevid Allen punk album, this sole offering from NEW YORK GONG is really a smorgasbord of various ideas with punk as one of the ingredients. I'm sure it became obvious to the other members that this quickly became the Daevid Allen show and that his collaborative efforts always found his dominate persona and stylistic approach steering everyone into that that psychedelic mindset. Once Allen departed the rest of the band would continue as the dance-punk / mutant disco band Material but for a brief moment NEW YORK GONG offered a wild ride through the lens of Daevid Allen interpreting the world of punk rock and new wave. The album is actually quite fun if you don't take it too seriously. No this is not an essential piece of the greater GONG universe but it certainly is one that sounds like no other and given all the styles juxtaposed together in strange new ways it's actually must've sounded a bit refreshing for anyone dissatisfied with any formulaic approach of the era. Definitely worthy of a spin now and again as it showcases Allen in both fully psychedelic hippie mode only with a bit of attitude thrown in for good measure.