I Am Your Animal, Watching Your Head - Gong

GONG

Who the hell is supposed to be listening to this stuff? Jazz lovers? Potheads? Hippies? Kraut rockers? Aliens? Prog heads? Cats?

The answer turned out to be...me. And aliens.  This was one of those bands my man Volvo (Babic/Anders/Chris) sent to me over the Atlantic. And when I received it I thought I had finally found the chink in his music-suggesting armor. I mean....this is crap right? Songs about Pot-Head-Pixies while some woman sings like she's trying to serenade heavily sedated killer whales. Who wants to listen to that? Oh, I see. This is coming through a pirate radio station from the planet Gong called Radio Gnome Invisible. What the hell?

Well 41 year old Greg would have forgotten about the band right there. But 21 year-old Greg periodically gave it another shot. (I'd like to think 42 year-old Greg has opened his mind again, but we'll have to wait and see about that.) And eventually my brain learned to speak the sound of Gong.

See that's what it is. Unique musicians tend to have a sonic language. Or something like that. (Ask a real music critic or professor to describe it better. This is the best I can do ok?) Like...."The Boys Are Back in Town" by Thin Lizzy is an okay song right? Nothing too exciting. Didn't make me love Thin Lizzy. But once I grew to love Thin Lizzy, once my brain could speak the sonic language "Thin Lizzy" I could look back at "The Boys Are Back In Town" and hear the great things I missed.

So my brain learned to speak Gong. Gilli Smyth's "Space Whisper" vocals still sounded like serenading heavily sedated killer whales, but now I wanted to hear what the whales had to say in response.  And I wanted to hear advice from a Pot-Head-Pixie. I can't exactly explain why this goofiness works for me while I still have a little trouble getting deep into Zappa for instance. But it did.

One last thing. Gong should be experienced an album at a time, not a song at a time. And it probably sounds really awesome if you're stoned. For me, it makes me have some really fun dreams if I put it on before I go to sleep.

And yeah, Gong founder Daevid Allen is in fact from Australia.

Listen to the album Camembert Electrique by Gong

Whatever Greg, I only have time to listen to one song.

Oh. I thought this was gonna be trippy, space out music

Buy Gong albums on Amazon