Continental Circus w/ Gong and Daevid Allen

Gong’s Continental Circus is an enigmatic album – both in the way it sits in the band’s discography and through its connection to film director Jérôme Laperrousaz. The album is certainly atypical of the progressive rock sound the band is known for.   But those are not necessarily bad things.

Laperrousaz’s first cinematic encounter with progressive rock and sixties counterculture occurred at the 1969 Amougies festival in Belgium. The five-day festival saw Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, Archie Shepp, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sunny Murray, Sonny Sharrock, Soft Machine and The Pretty Things, among others, perform on the Franco-Belgian border. Laperrousaz documented the event but the film (Music Power) was banned shortly after its release due to legal complications.

Laperrousaz had begun work on another project earlier in 1969 and that is where he focused his energies after Amougies. Continental Circus revolved around a 500cc Grand Prix motorcycle race, which opposed the Australian-born independent racer Jack Findlay to world champion Giacomo Agostini. Laperrousaz’s new film was about motorcycles, not rock festivals. But this did not prevent the French director from reaching out to Daevid Allen and his bandmates. He needed them to provide a soundtrack for the confrontation between the two racing legends.

Up to that point, Gong had been associated with Franco-anarchist communes and psychedelia. But things changed with the release of Continental Circus.

“At various times in France, Gong was a revolutionary band – a flat-out anarchist, student’s revolutionary band. Then, for a while, when we did Continental Circus, we became a biker’s band, with all the bikers coming out to see us play! That was outrageous!” remarked Daevid Allen in a 2002 interview.

There are no credits on the cover but it is believed that the  soundtrack was recorded sometime between February and November 1971 with the same personnel that worked on the Camembert Electrique album.

The soundtrack contains two versions of “Blues for Findlay” (w/ lyrics and instrumental), processed sound excerpts from the film (“Continental Circus World”) and a nine-minute opus titled “What do you Want.”

The latter opens Side B and serves as the central piece of the Continental Circus soundtrack. “What do you Want” is a blues-infused prog piece trapped somewhere between motorik musik and Pink Floyd. Hints of Wyatt-era Soft Machine appear half way through the song which ends after reaching its guitar-driven climax. “What do you Want” is followed by the instrumental “Blues for Findlay.” Together, the two songs present Gong at its very best.

WHAT DO YOU WANT