Liam Gallagher John Squire band at the Troxy in London by Charlie Lightning.
We’ve now finished the UK tour with the Liam Gallagher John Squire band and it was a good one, the London gigs were a fitting climax. I’ve never played at the Troxy before but it was quite a grand venue with a good sound. It took yonks to get there though, how can you be in London and 45 minutes drive from your gig in London? That’s like driving to Preston from here. We only have four gigs remaining anyway, in exotic European and American locations. If you’re lucky enough to live in any of them I’ll see you soon.
Previous Forum Visit
I’ve shared this before but the only other time I’ve played at Kentish Town Forum was with my good Burnley friend DJ Woody at the DMC finals. It came to mind this week when I was walking around in there how small a gig it seemed to be doing with LG but how big it seemed when it was just Woody, Carl and me playing in public for the first time. The audience of turntable enthusiasts were warm enough, I remember talking to a few guys afterwards who genuinely had no idea what I was doing up there. “What was that thing you were sat there with?” etc., I hope that day some guy went home and started googling Moog synthesizers and I changed his life.
You can clearly see I’m wearing my brand new Magma t-shirt in that video, the night before I’d been to see them with Shinners at Band on the Wall. That t-shirt is still going, not going strong but going nonetheless, and it’s been an invaluable ice breaker with French prog enthusiasts since. I’ve been thinking about Magma quite a bit of late after watching Dune Part 2. They had nothing to do with it obviously but when Jodorowsy had tried to make Dune in the 1970s he’d approached Magma to make the music for the Harkonnen planet. Which would’ve been fucking awesome. If you don’t know Magma listen to Mekanik Destructiw Kommandoh here and imagine a madder version of Dune by a Chilean surrealist.
Jodorowsky’s Dune despite never being made did result in an excellent documentary which I can’t recommend enough. As well as Magma he’d enlisted Pink Floyd, Salvador Dali and Giger. It’s amazing to see how his (and Moebius’) visions directed the culture and aesthetic of science fiction (and therefore everything) for the next 20 years.
As I’m sure you can tell even from that short trailer the documentary has a fantastic soundtrack by Kurt Stenzel:
I loved that soundtrack and ended up using it to mask the voices of other people on public transport whilst reading. I don’t generally use music as a backdrop for reading but I will use analogue synthesizer based work if I’m reading sci-fi, it puts me back in the 70s mentally and that’s where sci-fi lives for me. So a good portion of my reading the Three Body Problem on planes was accompanied by Kurt Stenzel’s work. I also used Black Mass by Lucifer for the same purpose.
Now that I’ve come round to mentioning the Three Body Problem I might as well say that as a trilogy it’s my favourite work of science fiction ever. And seeing as it’s topical I might as well mention that I’m about four episodes into the Netflix adaptation of it and so far I’m not impressed. I think somewhere during the first episode I was “quite impressed” but the feeling has now passed and I’d be surprised if it were to return. There’s too much missing and it appears to be at the expense of fleshing out characters who were nothing to do with the original story anyway. I don’t look forward to conversations with people I recommended the book to who now feel that a bit of TV gives them the right to opine on its contents. It doesn’t, go and do your homework. Sometimes you have to read the whole book. You almost always should.
Anyway, there you go. Kentish Town to Outer Space and the end of all things.
Magma. Now you’re talking…