Gas Giants
Gas Giants
Gong – The Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy (1973-4)
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Gong – The Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy (1973-4)

Tom and Gav explore Gong's magnum opus from many different perspectives and Gav speaks of his brush with greatness whilst working in the pit band for Jesus Christ Superstar...
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Pierre Moerlen’s barely legible signature on Gav’s German pressing of YOU

Interviews, Written Word, etc…

Sound & Vision

Igor does it straight….

National Health does it Prog!

Meanwhile, on the dark side…

The start of the fascination.

Gong shows us their Jazz chops…

…and for those of you watching in black and white, here is the Jazz version we played an excerpt from

One of the greatest moments in music.

The Origins of M. Malherbe’s unusual nickname…

We need to talk about Pierre Moerlin.

They’re still listening to Jazz…

“We were doing asymmetrical rhythmic patterns…”

The Bass moves the first beat of the bar. Here’s the same riff from Steve Hillage’s later solo album

The Salmon Song includes a bassoon

Shout out to Lindsay Cooper!

The Fall and Gong?

Unknown to us at the time of recording, on the Oh! Brother podcast, Grant Showbiz outlines the connection between The Fall and Gong …really…

How to get closer to the Planet Gong

(Owning the Media)

Because the Planet is, you realize, one of the spots before your eyes…seriously, part of the fun of the trilogy is the art work which is best appreciated as it was intended - on a record sleeve. Hit up Discogs, trawl 2nd hand record shops, flea markets, record fairs, you should be able to find the separate records for around €20 each, earlier pressings obviously bringing more. For the non vinylist, however, it is worth considering this: Gong’s brilliant but wayward history is reflected in its history of the slings and arrows of outrageous record companies. All of the albums can be found on CD with one or other cover on the front, sometimes albums that don’t have anything to to with each other are paired together or broken up into rather lop-sided compilations. There are a number of live records out there, some of which have some studio rarities mixed in as well. There have been two attempts to put everything into some kind of order to give a serious overview to the work of the band -

  • The Charly Boxed set (2015) is a four CD set with a remixed version of all the albums and an extra CD of alternate mixes. It comes complete with a very nicely assembled book of photos, sketches, articles, tickets, flyers, etc. This edition was NOT authorized by the band. It currently retails at €70 or so on Amazon.

  • Love From the Planet Gong - The Virgin Years 1973-75 is a much more ambitious affair comprising 13 CDs, artwork and a book. Each CD has the album in question followed by a selection of outtakes and alternate versions. Also included is the Album “Shamal” (1976) which was not part of the Radio Gnome Invisible story, but was an album for Virgin, but for some reason does not include the earlier album Camembert Electrique. which predated the trilogy, but was released by Virgin in 1974. The entire collection has been curated by Steve Hillage and includes sessions for the BBC some live concerts, etc. It is very extensive, but not cheap and you can expect to pay around €130 for it.

    Of course, it goes without saying that all of this is available on Spotify to stream online, but where’s the fun in that?

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Gas Giants
Gas Giants
All of culture explained by two fat old men, one artifact at a time. Gav and Tom gas about music, movies, TV, books and their creators attempting to understand what they mean about everything else in the world. New episodes every other week Fridays.