DAEVID ALLEN PERFORMANCE SITE

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interview 11/11

by Thodoris

1.Which are the current projects you're involved in? Are you doing recordings this period?

Two projects to report:

New release (Oct 2011): A beautiful, elegantly hard bound, high quality printed book of daevid's more recent poetry from the naughties.
Already a rare book as quantities dwindle.
A quality collectors item of funny wise surreal provocative sad but ultimately transcendental poems. Many songs have been seeded from this collection.

<daevid allen: soundbites 4 tha revelation 2012> BRACKET PRESS. UK.
The key to this project is 73 (daevid's age now): thus: 73 copies only.
Each costs
73 pounds sterling or australian $108 from www.planetgong.co.uk
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Latest release (Dec 2011)
CD: sound design and spoken word.
<daevid allen: soundbites 4 tha revelation 2012>
download at www.flamedogrecords.com

NOTE: flamedog records is run by Orlando Allen (Gilli and Daevid's son).

2.How much your beatnik background influenced your career as a musician?

100% except on tuesdays when my Situationist background took over.

3.What do you remember the most from your company with William S. Burroughts and Robert Graves?

One I didn't fuck and the other I left to Gilli.

4. Under which circumstances the free jazz Daevid Allen Trio transformed into The Soft Machine psychedelic sound?

It was a post modern lobotomy.

5.When you started playing music as Soft Machine, had you realized then that you were pioneers and inventors of British psychedelic sound?

We just thought we were total freeks.

6. Do you think music history would be different if there wasn't the Robert Wyatt's injury and Syd Barrett didn't lose his mind?

Nothing by accident. Everything has meaning. Imagine a world without Wyatt's album: ROCK BOTTOM.

7. How difficult was to form a new band and find band members in a turbulent Paris?

I had a love affair with a turbulent front line Paris journalist and she featured me two weeks running. I was briefly fashionable. This certainly helped me to steal Claude Francois's rhythm section for GONG.

8. Which was the process of writing a Gong song? It was more like jamming at studio or each member worked the compositions on his own?

We tried everything. Even composing underwater on acid. Whatever it takes we do it.

9. Did you enjoy playing as Acid Mother Gong? How did you came in contact with Acid Mother Temples members?

The pixie queen from the underworld danced into my life with a coded message from them. We never talk about music. We still play together on special occasions. We are family.

10. Which is the purpose of the existence of University Of Errors?

To make fun of the power of winning. To promote the beauty of losing. To cock tease the music business but always remain a free band. Free to ERRORISE for we are all ERRORISTS!

11. Had you met Jim Morrison while he was staying in Paris?

I sat on his grave in a cold wind and caught a chill. I nearly died.

12.What music do you hear this period?

Right now I am listening to a Kate Bush new release. Then Saul Williams, Ornette Coleman, George Antheil, Carla Khilstedt, Igor Stravinski.....

13.Have you ever been in Greece? Send a message to Greek listeners.

I have been to Greece many times and I love that country.

I am flinging everybody kisses in the form of tiny radio controlled model helicopters shaped like teapots and which taste of vulva hulva. I hope to see you next year with GONG!

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Daevid Allen Luc Pilmeyer

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