三日月雲に隠れて - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

或る調べ物をしていたら、ソフト・マシーン *1とゴング*2のオリジナル・メンバーであるデヴィッド・アレン*3が３月13日に癌のため亡くなっていたことに気づいた。嗚呼。何だか、親戚のおじさんの死に目に会えなかった、そんな感じがする。

“Headmaster left the Blue Planet March 13.” http://www.universityoferrors.com/news.html
Guardian Music “Gong founder Daevid Allen has died, aged 77” http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/13/gong-founder-daevid-allen-has-died-aged-77
Adam Sweeting “Daevid Allen obituary” http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/13/daevid-allen
Everett True “Daevid Allen: The original anti-establishment hippie remembered” http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/mar/13/daevid-allen-gong-soft-machine-remembered
“Daevid Allen, prog-rock innovator – obituary” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11469764/Daevid-Allen-prog-rock-innovator-obituary.html

彼は今年の２月に「余命が６か月しかない」ことを宣言していたのだが*4、結局は自らの予言を成就することはできなかった。
Guardian Musicの記事から；

Allen was born in Australia in 1938, but his springboard to musical legend came after he moved to the UK in 1961. He was a founder member of Soft Machine in 1966, but became best known after starting Gong. The band are best known for their Radio Gnome Trilogy, made up of the albums Flying Teapots, Angel’s Egg and You. Although he left Gong in 1975, he resuscitated the band in 1991 and played with them on and off until he became too ill to tour in 2014.

Flying Teapot

アーティスト: Gong
発売日: 2006/11/21
メディア: CD
クリック: 1回
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Angel's Egg

アーティスト: Gong
出版社/メーカー: Caroline
発売日: 2005/02/22
メディア: CD
クリック: 11回
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You (Radio Gnome Invisible, Pt. 3) (CCCD)

アーティスト: GONG
出版社/メーカー: VIRGI
発売日: 2004/10/01
メディア: CD
クリック: 5回
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また、Everett Trueさんの記事から；

How best to explain Daevid Allen to an outsider?
People loved Daevid Allen: he was warm, friendly, vibrant, lively. The original anti-establishment, anti-capitalist hippie. He was given to exotic, wild flights of psychedelic fancy that took in the warp and woof of the Western esoteric condition as preached by the poet Robert Graves*5, and moved them into inner flights of fancy with a light-hearted bent. For a while in the 80s, he drove cabs in Melbourne until he took out a loan from a fellow member of Gong, the group he founded, to go on a “how to teach rebirthing course”. His music is like Sun Ra meets Vivian Stanshall*6 meets DIY punk meets a really big fucking bong.
Except when it isn’t.
Nothing makes sense when you talk about Daevid Allen. Everything makes sense.
He was a beat poet, also known as Divided Alien, an early contemporary of Barry Humphries*7, who moved across to London from Melbourne in 1961 via a sojourn in Paris, where he stayed in the room at the Beat Hotel recently vacated by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. He met William S Burroughs, he formed a free jazz trio … then he founded Soft Machine with his London landlord’s son Robert Wyatt. In 1967, during the Paris riots, he handed out teddy bears to the police.

In some respects, Allen invented punk rock. Too extravagant a claim? Do the maths. Without Soft Machine, there’d have been no Pink Floyd, at least the version that evolved after Syd Barrett left. And without Pink Floyd, nothing for the punks to kick against.

How best to explain Daevid Allen to an outsider? After Allen had his psychedelic vision under the influence of Graves – they met in Majorca – he formed Gong (later known as Planet Gong, Mother Gong, New York Gong, Acid Mothers Gong, and so on). The idea behind the “band” was, according to long-time member Mike Howlett, to “allow the musicians to play for a higher source or a less self-centred focus”. Whatever that means.
Gong were one of the anomalies of the 1970s and 1980s: a haphazardly sideways psychedelic explosion of crap jokes and decent tea: Monty Python as reimagined in a series of musical acts, genuinely surreal.

デヴィッド・アレンのちょっと複雑な婚姻関係について、Adam Sweeting氏の記事から；

By now Smyth*8 and Allen had separated, and in 1981 Allen returned to Australia. He had had two sons, Orlando and Taliesyn, with Smyth, and now had a third, Toby, with his new partner, Maggie Brown. They moved to Byron Bay, 100 miles south of Brisbane, though Allen and Brown lived separately. Smyth had married the musician and producer Harry Williamson in the UK, the pair of them having formed Mother Gong, and they moved to Australia in 1982.
In 1988 Allen was back in the UK with a new partner, Wandana Turiya (with whom he later had a fourth son, Ynis), and various musical experiments led to the formation of Gong Maison, which also featured Williamson.

1930年代生まれで、世代論的に言うと、ビートニクの世代とヒッピー世代を架橋する存在だったわけだ。1970年代半ば以降洗練されたフュージョン・バンドになりつつあったゴングを飛び出して、Here & Nowというバンド*9と合流してPlanet Gong*10を名乗ったライヴ・アルバム、Live Floating Anarchy 1977を聴いたのが、デヴィッド・アレンの音楽との本格的な出会い。このアルバムは〈生真面目なロック〉というものからの解放をもたらした。1980年代は私の注意の及ぶところから逸れてしまうのだが、それは彼が紐育でのビル・ラズウェル一派との活動を経て、生国濠太剌利に引っ込んでしまったことと関係があるかも知れない。そして、1995年にディスク・ユニオンの某店で、Je ne fuim' pas des bannesを買い、再開を果たしたという感じか。