The primary chapter in Gong’s so-called Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, Flying Teapot did a lot to determine the wayward mystique of this most idiosyncratic of bands, giggled and imagined into existence, in and round Paris, by the extensively traveled Australian beatnik (and former Gentle Machine guitarist) Daevid Allen.
A largely unprecedented mixture of sloppily anarchic, communal rules and formidably honed musicality, Gong had – momentarily – stabilized right into a nominally purposeful unit by the point they got here to file Flying Teapot at The Manor, Richard Branson’s newly opened residential studio in Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire, within the winter of 1972-73.
Take heed to Flying Teapot on Apple Music and Spotify.
Along with the core of Allen (who had given himself the nom-de-Gong of Dingo Virgin), his companion, the “space-whispering” Gilli Smyth (The Good Witch Yoni) and saxophonist/flutist Didier Malherbe (Bloomdido Unhealthy De Grasse), the band now included two extremely consequential new arrivals amongst its quantity: synthesizer participant Tim Blake, who had beforehand labored for a spell as Gong’s sound mixer, and guitarist Steve Hillage. Each would make key contributions to the Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy – and each would, like Allen himself, secede from the Gong mothership in 1975.
Launched, within the UK, on Virgin Information on Might 25, 1973, Flying Teapot launched Allen’s charmingly abstruse Radio Gnome narrative: a full-fat indulging of the Gong mythology hinted at on 1971’s Camembert Electrique. The album title alluded to the thinker Bertrand Russell’s “cosmic teapot” analogy – coined to spotlight the perceived irresponsibility of those that make apparently baseless non secular claims – by which Russell provocatively advised that “nobody can prove that there is not, between the Earth and Mars, a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit.”
As for Flying Teapot’s nominal plot, rock scribe Mark Paytress described it as being “primarily concerned with the growing consciousness of earthling Zero The Hero” – although, as John Platt, editor of the much-loved Comstock Lode fanzine, has famous, Allen’s intent in establishing the Gong mythology, and forming the band within the first place, stemmed largely from a pursuit of “the attainment of higher states of being and communication.”
If it’s debatable as to what number of Gong followers truly understood (and even bothered to observe) the narrative, it’s equally debatable as to how a lot it actually mattered. For most of the Gong trustworthy within the mid-70s, “The Pothead Pixies” carried a immediately symbolic significance as a canny relative of product placement and a handy freak flag. In case you smoked pot, you have been within the tribe.
And the music? It’s a pleasant, beaming burble of left-turning, cosmic-funk riffs (“Radio Gnome Invisible”), cackling, erotic whispers (“Witch’s Song/I Am Your Pussy”), shimmering nebulas of glissando guitar (the title monitor), and contrails of electronica (“The Octave Doctors And The Crystal Machine”). Nicely, what else may it’s?
Flying Teapot might be purchased right here.
