Song Of The Day 9/25/2014: Gong - "Prostitute Poem"

Canterbury Week: My physician has advised me that Canterbury Week was - how'd he put it - "taking a toll on my psyche." He gave me a stress test, for which I just copied the guy next to me.

He suggested I try to relax instead of working so hard on it. "What right do you have?" he goes. "You've never been to Canterbury. You don't know the first thing about Canterbury. All you've learned about Canterbury has come from hushed whispers and embarrassed silences. You only know what you've read in that fish-wrap Circus magazine. In fact, while I'm at it -- you know, I've treated people from all over the world. I've treated people from Canterbury. I've gazed into the inverted crystal cones of their minds. I've listened to their stories. I've sat patiently while they caterwauled about hearing cathedral bells every time they open the refrigerator. I know these people. I know you, too. I've known you since you were a hypothetical in your father's mind on a date night that proved more calamitous than he bargained for. And I know you now as a parenthetical bleep on the surface of a waning culture. I know you, man... and let me assure you of this: You're the furthest thing from Canterbury that I could ever think of!"

Wow. Thanks, Obamacare.

Gong were a Franco-British band that was spliced together by an Australian named Daevid Allen. I wonder if they ever called him "Dævid." They managed to preserve themselves under the somewhat loose constraints of psychedelia the longest, owing partially to Allen's early exposure to Sun Ra and his Cosmik Arkestra and his inability, or lack of desire, to convert the conversation into a more actionaable item. I think they're still together, or at least some people consider that they could potentially still be together situations permitting, and they have some mysterious thing planned for 2032. If I don't have laundry maybe I'll show up.