A bad 1975 review of VDGG - Godbluff

I love that review! We put it in The Book. VdGG themselves have a sense of humor about such things - that review was put into their 1976 World Record tour program. There's another great one from '76 that bashed their Marquee Club show (from the NME) that went something like "Peter Hammill's guitar playing is as out of tune as his singing while David Jackson takes dubious pleasure in playing in a different key. The rythym is left to the imagination of Guy Evans & Hugh Banton, and they too are as ineffectually uninspired as the other two. Frankly, they were appalling." It was the third night of a 3-night stint at the Marquee and the writer is completely mystified that all three nights were completely sold out with lines around the block. The thing is, in '76... pH *was* out of tune a lot and did scream more than sing much of the time on stage - but that's what makes it for me (maybe you've gotta like punk a bit, I don't know).

The thing to keep in mind is that most of the time they got pretty good write-ups, and they definitely knew there was no other band on the planet like them. So, that being the case, they're able to laugh at the occasional bad review, especially one so entertainingly written.

Here's a quote from Nic Potter, from The Book, about their disasterously-received show at the Royal Festival Hall in 1970 (when Nic was a member of VdGG): "I remember a review from Chris Welch that said '...appalling saxophone and dustbin-of-my-mind type lyrics'. (laughs) But we just laughed about it. We never got downhearted. I remember we fell over laughing and we never took it to heart."

Of course, that's easy to do when you're critics darlings and almost all the other writeups about you are glowing (as VdGG's were in '70 after the release of 'The Least').