{"id":903,"date":"2008-09-19T22:33:53","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T21:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/?p=903"},"modified":"2013-02-20T16:37:04","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T16:37:04","slug":"planet-gong-charly-records-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/planet-gong-charly-records-1977\/","title":{"rendered":"Planet Gong – Charly Records – 1977"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Psychological Overture \/ Floatin\u2019 Anarchy \/ Stone Innoc Frankenstein \/ New Age Transformation Try: No More Sages<\/a><\/p>\n

Opium For The People \/ Allez Ali Baba Black Sheep Have You Any Bullshit: Mama Maya Mantrum<\/a><\/p>\n

Marvelous LP by Here And Now, this time joined by Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth of Gong. More Here And Now material is uploaded on this site if you use the search function and it is all worth searching out. Text below courtesy of wellers.demon.co.uk<\/p>\n

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Here & Now were the archetypical hippie\/punk crossover band and stalwarts of the 70s free festival scene. Although originally formed in 1974 it was at the Watchfield<\/span> Free Festival of August 1975 where the Here & Now band truly came into being. They regrouped in March of the following year and re-captured the spirit of their first encounter as the \u201cPrimal Tapes\u201d; two tracks from this session appearing on the \u201cGospel Of Free\u201d CD. The summer of \u201976 was spent touring as many free festivals as possible in the UK before heading off to tour France. At the beginning of 1977 and the end of this first French tour the band recorded a studio and live session for Radio France<\/span>,<\/span> and a track from this also appears on \u201cGospel Of Free\u201d.<\/p>\n

The news that Daevid<\/span> Allen of Gong had been inspired to track down Here & Now after reading a review in the N.M.E. prompted the band to regroup again in the Summer of 1977, playing street parties in \u2018celebration\u2019 of the Queen\u2019s Silver Jubilee (see picture below) and, naturally, more free festivals. At this point Twink<\/span>, the original keyboard player left the band and was replaced by roadie Gavin Da<\/span> Blitz.<\/p>\n

Here & Now teamed up with Daevid<\/span> Allen and Gilli<\/span> Smyth of Gong in 1977 to form Planet Gong. With a political agenda based around \u2018floating anarchy\u2019, Planet Gong combined the improvisational style of the early Here & Now with the quirky nature of Gong. The first \u2018Floating Anarchy\u2019 tour saw the band playing a mix of revamped Here & Now compositions plus Gong and Daevid<\/span> Allen songs. But shortly before the start of the second \u2018Floating Anarchy Free Tour\u2019 in the Spring of 1978 Allen quit and Planet Gong reverted back to the Here & Now band. Later that year Allen explained his departure;<\/p>\n

\u00a0I flourished again in Here & Now. Basically my role was to be helped by their honesty, their positive warmth, and at the same time to get them a wider audience. The moment the work on that level was done, and I found the pressures of the other 7 billion things I was doing were pushing me back here [Deya<\/span>], I had this feeling that it was the right time to now let them do it on their own<\/q><\/p>\n

The fruits of Allen\u2019s work with Here & Now were released as the \u201cLive Floating Anarchy 1977\u201d album plus a single, \u201cOpium For the People\u201d. These were recorded during the short tour of France that Planet Gong undertook at the end of 1977. The single was recorded in a Paris studio in both English and French; as for the album, Keith The Missile Bass recalls;<\/p>\n

It was recorded in Toulouse at a rather \u2013 ahem \u2013 anarchic<\/em> gig \u2013 a 3,000 seater<\/span> which had sold out weeks in advance, and thus found itself in a very difficult situation when another 3-4,000 people showed up and couldn\u2019t get in\u2026 they got \u2013 well \u2013 in that very French way \u2013 rather irritated<\/em>\u2026 The riot police showed up a little later and joined in by showing everyone just how good their tear gas and water cannons were\u2026 meanwhile the show was going on\u2026 It was recorded on an 8 track Tascam<\/span> machine and the engineers (who, it must be said, had<\/em> been plonked in a corner at the back of the stage itself) did an absolutely crap job\u2026 <\/q><\/p>\n

Daevid<\/span> Allen mixed and jiggery-poked his way through it in Deia<\/span> \u2013 nursing (amongst other things) the bass sound from the crackling cellophane it originally was on tape to the relatively realistic sound on the album. Other miracles were not in short supply\u2026 <\/q><\/p>\n

The album was first released on BYG Records in France and Charly<\/span> Records in the UK, the advances being used to fund the purchase of a PA and musicical<\/span> equipment. Original copies of the album urged buyers to pay no more than \u00a31.50 or better still to steal it, and had a black and white drawing on the cover with the suggestion that the owner coloured it in. The version issued by Charly<\/span> saw the price increased to \u00a32.25 \u2013 though the extra 75p did mean the cover came in colour. Since it\u2019s<\/span> release, \u201cLive Floating Anarchy 1977\u201d has sold tens of thousands of copies, but the band members have never received any royalties.<\/p>\n

Here & Now continued with a series of free tours in 1978 and 1979. No entrance fee was charged; concert goers were instead encouraged to make an appropriate donation to cover the costs of the show, feeding the band, and petrol money for the tour bus. \u00a350 was the target for each nights<\/span> collection. The second free tour, in the Summer of 1978, resulted in an album jointly issued with Alternative TV, one of the support bands, titled \u201cWhat You See\u2026 Is What You Are\u201d. Each band had one side of the LP, featuring tracks recorded on the tour. It was sold at gigs for \u00a31.00 or could be bought in shops for \u00a31.75. Although the sound quality is not great, it is well worth a listen not least because this is the only recording that features saxophonist Jack Neat who joined the band for a few months in early 1978.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of 1978 Here & Now\u2019s first studio album was released, \u201cGive And Take\u201d, plus an EP, recorded at the same time, \u201cDog In Hell\u201d. Again, the advances on the album from Charly<\/span> Records were used to fund a new tour bus, and a truck for equipment. The band then kicked off another free tour to promote the album, the fourth of that year, playing over 30 shows all over the UK. Just prior to the start of the tour they recorded a John Peel radio session following a chance encounter with him at an open air gig at Meanwhile Gardens. The Peel session captures the essence of Here & Now well. Two songs are from the \u201cGive And Take\u201d album and the \u2018space punk\u2019 style is much more in evidence than on the \u201cFloating Anarchy\u201d album, yet the importance of trying to capture the moment, the \u2018here and now\u2019, meant that two of the tracks were jammed \u2018there and then\u2019 in the Maida Vale studios \u2013 much to the surprise of the BBC engineers.<\/p>\n

The intense touring schedule continued in 1979, resulting in a live album, \u201cAll Over The Show\u201d and another studio single, \u201cEnd Of The Beginning\u201d. By this time the pressure of extensive touring in both the UK and Europe was beginning to take its toll. In the spring of 1979 the \u201cchoir of angels\u201d also known as singers Suze<\/span> Da<\/span> Blooze<\/span> and Annie Wombat, who had joined when Planet Gong was formed, left the band along with founder and drummer Kif<\/span> Kif<\/span> Le Batter. They were followed by another founder and guitarist Steffe<\/span> Sharpstrings<\/span> at the beginning of 1980. This left Keith Th<\/span>\u2018 Bass and keyboardist Gavin Da<\/span> Blitz as the remaining veterans of the Here & Now band of the 1970s \u2013 a band that probably played more free gigs than any band in history, that fused free-form psychedelic hippy rock with the attitude and raw sound of punk, and crossed paths with the ultimate pot head pixie, Daevid<\/span> Allen of Gong.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most importantly of all the Here & Now of the 70s challenged the music biz establishment by cutting out the \u2018middle man\u2019 between musicians and their fans. By selling albums to record companies they funded their own musical equipment, PA, and tour bus. This allowed them to do free tours with collections each night to cover running costs. The albums were then sold at gigs and through shops at roughly half the price of normal releases. Their ultimate goal was to establish an alternative free gig circuit run on a co-operative basis with a shared equipment pool \u2013 but this never happened. The politics of free tours and determination to challenge the music industry status quo connected with the punk ethos of the time, and Here & Now tours were typically accompanied with a host of punk bands on the bill. Many of these bands, such as The Fall and Mark Perry, went on to become the standard bearers and media darlings of the \u2018alternative\u2019 music scene of the early 80s. But Here & Now were never able to shake off the hippie tag to become anything more than the \u201ccrusties<\/span> concert party\u201d, garnering at best media indifference.<\/p>\n

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Psychological Overture \/ Floatin\u2019 Anarchy \/ Stone Innoc Frankenstein \/ New Age Transformation Try: No More Sages Opium For The People \/ Allez Ali Baba Black Sheep Have You Any Bullshit: Mama Maya Mantrum Marvelous LP by Here And Now, this time joined by Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth of Gong. More Here And Now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-downloads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6829,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions\/6829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}