GONG

Love From The Planet Gong: The Virgin Years 1973-75 UMC

REISSUE OF THE MONTH 9/10

 THE master of the Voisines hunt and his friends don’t look like the kind of rural Frenchmen who would appreciate a psychedelic collective living in the woods nearby. Not so: “Gong are very friendly,” says the huntsman, interviewed on French TV’s Rockenstock in 1973. A friend adds, “We’ll be sad when they leave, because they play gigs all around here. We like them.”

A year later though, after drugs and customs busts, Gong would leave France, and head to the Oxfordshire town of Witney, not previously known for its collectives of like-minded musical, spiritual and chemical explorers. There they carried