In Part 1 I explained how I bought 4 pairs of gig tickets for K’s birthday and it just happened that they were all this month. We’ve already enjoyed 80s pop from Altered Images and punk from Buzzcocks. Read on to find out who we saw next…..
Gig number 3 was Gong. Psychedelic Rock is not a genre that I know anything about, but K has several Gong albums and raves about them, so when I found out that they were playing at The Cluny this had to go on the birthday list. I have to say I wasn’t keen. I even went as far as asking if any friends or their partners wanted to go with K instead of me but there were no takers.
K would describe Gong as more of a collective than a band, with many changes of personnel since they began in 1967 and no original members. Current frontman is Kavus Torabi. Legend has it that he was suggested by Gong founder Daevid Allen. shortly before his death in 2015. Torabi is quite charismatic, joined on stage by some pretty decent musicians on guitar, bass, drums and jazzy sax. All this with some in-your-face lighting and in front of an animated backdrop, with abstract images, morphing florals and characters from a mythology that accompanied the albums (pixies riding around in flying teapots no less!)
With all that going on the whole show was a bit of a hippy trippy assault on the senses. I certainly found it interesting, but can’t say I remember a single song or felt at all moved. Glad I went though. It was an experience!
The fourth and final gig of our Month of Music was A Flock of Seagulls. If you are more a fan of movies than music, then you’ll know that scene in La La Land when Mia is at a pool party and sees Seb playing in an Eighties cover band. She requests that they play “I Ran”. That was a Flock of Seagulls song, their biggest hit.
Only Vocals/Keyboard player Mike Score remains of the original line up, and in the last 40 years he’s gone from the craziest haircut ever to no hair at all! That electro-pop sound still works, both the hits (“Wishing”, “Telecommunication”, as well as “I Ran”) and the less well-known tunes.
Score has assembled some skilled musicians to join the Flock’s current incarnation – it was a great gig and took us straight back to the Eighties!
Our month of music is now at an end and it’s been a blast, with four very different gigs, all very enjoyable and all experienced at a lovely intimate venue, The Cluny, in Newcastle’s Ouseburn. We’ve had such a great time that I’ve booked tickets for four more gigs later in the year!
Stitches by the Sea 