Never
heard of the radical underground music scene going on in Sixties
France? Well that's probably because there wasn't much of one. If, as
I keep suggesting, the music was tied with the social and political
upheavals of the time, then France should have been a contender of
Brandoesque proportions – it had more upheavals than any other
developed nation. Yet, while these did tie in to
artistic movements, such as New Wave cinema, music made for something
of an exception to the rule. (Check out Italy from the same era and
you might come away with a similar story.)
Opinion
remains divided whether France produces popular music which simply
doesn't export, or whether it simply doesn't bother with the stuff at
all. But that matters little here, for both point us in the same
direction.
On the
other hand, of course, there never was a rule that wasn't made to
break. So let's home in on a couple of notable exceptions...
Gong
Reader,
please indluge a personal digression...
When
you're young, you can be very sure of yourself. The two or three
things you know line up neatly in your head, free of tangles. So, to
my mid-teen mind, music was a pretty clear-cut affair. Hawkwind were
quite clearly the highpoint of everything which had happened since
the onset of recorded sound. Which left Gong (pictured up top) to
pick up the silver. Simples.
Not
that my schoolmates were always easy to convince of this, and
sometimes pearls fell before swine. I remember showing the colourful,
handwritten cover from 'Live Floating Anarchy'
(below) to one of my few remaining associates. He stood looking at
it in some bemusement, before finally handing it back. “Is it
music?” he asked hesitantly, “or is it just
messing about?” “I'm really not sure,” I beamed back. But he
seemed unaware that this was actually an advantage.
Yet,
while I love Hawkwind to this day, over time I lost a lot of interest
in Gong. It was partly hearing the later albums (from
'Shamal'), after instigators Daveid Allen and
Gilli Smyth had left, which were quite definitely music without the
messing about. While the old Gong had been the soundtrack to patching
your jeans, things had turned to swish Euro-prog. They even had... I
can barely manage to type the words... proper covers. Ugh!
But
somehow, like capillary action, such sheer competent awfulness seemed
creep back into the earlier stuff. Concept album trilogies on the
theme of hippies getting stoned? It stopped sounded appealing. With
Hawkwind aiming squarely for the systematic derangement of the
senses, Gong seemed by comparison mere blissed-out whimsey.
Yet,
as this clip demonstrates so perfectly, sometimes they really
could go off. It makes an advantage of the very
thing that would later rip apart Gong, that the French never really
took to being hippies. Allen and Smyth blow in among those neat
beards and button-up shirts like foreign weeds. But here the two
sides blend so perfectly and effortlessly it creates a whole new
thing – for which I'm not sure we even have a name yet.
Their
“just messing about” is grounded and given shape by the more
skilful and disciplined playing of the musicians; while the free-form
zaniness gives the players a focus and an edge which keeps them away
from their more noodly tendencies. It's really not so far away from
how the Magic Band worked with the Captain. Plus I also love the way
the backdrop isn't some lava-lamp effect but Vertov-style
silhouettes of the band setting up. C'est superbe!
Magma
These
young people of today. With their I-pods, their apps and that Spotify
business on their mobiles. Just try telling them this, and they won't
believe you...
...but
in my school library there were precisely two books on rock music.
Given the absence of anything similar on the shelves at home, they
represented the sum total of knowledge on the subject in my world.
There was the one with words in it and the one with pictures in it.
Ever the English whizz, I went for the one with words in, the 'NME
Book of Rock'. Then, in what seemed the logical next move,
I read it.
But of
course the school library was expecting that book back. In fact, from
previous experience they were likely to show a strange vociferousness
on that sort of subject. And another of the many things lacking in my
world was a photocopier. But, in an unusual modernist gesture, I had
been permitted access to my Mum's manual typewriter. So if I came
across an interesting-sounding entry, I'd preserve it for posterity
by copying it out verbatim.
I kept
the resultant sheets of A4 in a battered red binder. My typewriter
permissions didn't extend as far as being allowed to change the
ribbon, a piece of maintenance now some years overdue. But provided
you squinted hard at the increasingly greying text from under bright
light, you could make out most of the words. Well, most
of most of them.
That
red binder was like my lo-fi, Babbage engine version of Wikipedia.
Only with less sound files and edit wars.
It was
a bit like a hungry man copying out menus from restaurants he
couldn't get to. Or afford to eat there even if he could. I dreamt...
I dreamt of the day when I would track down the
musical sources of those sacred entries. Those strange and
enthralling names – Captain Beefheart, King Crimson, the Velvet
Underground – so different to the day-world of school, where things
had names like Dr. Neville, Mr. Murgatroyd and Further Maths. That
voyage of discovery, it would be my mission, even if it took me a
lifetime.
Which
is pretty much the way it worked out.
Now
one of the most enticing names contained in that red folder was
Magma. They were French. Which was pretty strange to start off with.
Music was English. Or American. Except for the Germans who liked
heavy metal. But French?
For
some reason the book didn't even mention what's normally considered
Magma's killer app, singing in an imaginary language that supposedly
came from another planet. But it did say this:
“Formed
to perform enormous, megalomaniac oratorios concerning Earth's
future... Magma fall by their humourless and irredeemably pretentious
concept.”
Well,
naturally I was desperate to hear more.
Which
required some exertion of patience. In time I'd come to hear Captain
Beefheart, I'd come to hear King Crimson, I'd come to hear the Velvet
Underground - and yet Magma remained elusive. Of course I'd continue
to hear their name, scattered like breadcrumbs along a young music
aficionado's path. The people who liked the maddest
stuff, who got interested in a band just at the point everybody else
was giving up on them, they always seemed to rate them. John Lydon
was rumoured a fan. There was a brief rush of excitement when they
played London some years ago. But all the while without my ears ever
striking pay-dirt.
Today
of course the instant hit of the interweb means I can hear them any
time I want, without having to get up out of this chair. And of
course it's correspondingly harder to find that time. So I've pretty
much just dabbled in the odd YouTube link.
Added
to which, they're not particularly YouTubeable. Listening to Magma
clearly isn't an instant hit. You're
supposed to get into them the old way, the way I
got into Captain Beefheart or Pere Ubu, slowly and piecemeal, gradual
acclimatisation. It's like the way LPs had a natural pause between
sides, where they'd wait for you to come and turn them over. While
CDs just run.
Their
videos can look like you'd stumbled across the rituals of some
strange cult, with no clue what it all means to initiates. For which
I suppose the word is “apt”. It's not like Frank Zappa in any
particular, but it is like Frank Zappa in terms of
breadth and scope. Dip into two bits of Zappa from two different
eras and you'd have no idea how those dots joined
up – it's like that. In terms of what they do,
what sort of music they make, it seems bewildering. In, you know, a
good way.
Their
whole other-language schtick, however grandiosely absurd, is actually
kind of fitting. Discovering a new band like thisis
like hearing a strange new language. At first all you could hear was
the sheer otherness of it. But after a while you
could pick out phrases, and even start putting them together...
But
one thing I have found and do enjoy is the way they'll blend rock and
classical styles so unselfconsciously, unlike the self-important
look-at-me ostentation that so beset their era. And the way they
don't use classical elements for ornamentation, sporting string
sections like bling, but instead take up the power and force of
classical music. Their name, I would guess, was chosen to combine
monumentality with fluidity. And just like the magma layer oozes on
with no heed paid to time and tide, they remain active to this day!
If
anyone reading this is an initiate, who can speak
that other-world language and could suggest a good starting point for
full-album immersion, I'd be grateful for any pointers. Which
wouldn't necessarily have to come on typewritten sheets in battered
red binders. Just preferably.
Coming soon! The Sixties underground in Luxembourg. (Only kidding…)
