Posts Tagged ‘King Mob’

Nick Hornby never had days like these!

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Recently a friend suggested I try to acquire some Russ Henderson vinyl I wanted via Discogs. I’d landed on this site a few times but had never really investigated it. When I checked it out, I was disappointed to find only two Russ Henderson titles were listed there, the 1966 vinyl album Caribbean Carnaval! (sic) and the CD compilation London Is The Place For Me 2, which features a Henderson track taken from Caribbean Carnival; only the latter was available in the Discogs marketplace, but needless to say I already had both it and the release it is taken from. I double-checked my copy of the 1966 vinyl and ‘Carnival’ is spelt correctly on the sleeve and labels, the spelling error had been generated in the Discogs listing, although I’ve now amended it.

My interest in Russ Henderson stemmed originally from the fact that he lived in a flat beneath my mother at 24 Bassett Road way back when in the sixties. He is also a supremely groovy, if sometimes overlooked, musician. A few years ago I went into a used record shop in Bexhill-On-Sea, and was flipping through some sixties vinyl when the owner asked me what I was looking for. I told him I wanted anything by Russ Henderson other than Caribbean Carnival. He told me he was an expert on rare records but he’d never heard of this act. I explained that Henderson was a highly regarded jazz musician but that he’d also led the first steel band on the streets of London. The shop owner asked me if I was looking for anything else. I told him I wanted some releases by The Global Village Trucking Co. He proceeded to scream at me to get out of his shop, wailing as I left that he was a vinyl expert and I must be making up names because he’d never heard of this band either. In reality, the vinyl nerd simply didn’t know the depths of his own ignorance. My mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, had been acquainted with The Global Village Trucking Co. The Globs, as they were fondly referred to on the seventies free festival circuit, don’t particularly groove me; but I was still interested in getting my mits on their releases for research purposes primarily…

The Globs aren’t too well served on Discogs either, they don’t even have their own page, just entries for their appearance on the double compilation album Greasy Truckers Live At Dingwalls Dance Hall. When I looked there was no sign of The Globs sole long player at Discogs. This served to remind me that I’d missed the documentary BBC4 broadcast on The Globs then (1972) and now (2008) last year… and it ain’t available on BBC ‘Watch Again’  either! Having investigated a few records that had some connection to my mother’s life at Discogs, I figured I might as well go the whole hog by moving on to looking at myself.  When I searched for myself on Discogs, I turned up an artist profile, but again the discography was very partial. I have four albums to my own name, three fiercely independent productions and one that came out on Paul Smith’s King Mob label which was also indie, but distributed by Sony. Strangely this latter title, my best distributed and promoted record, was missing from Discogs. Likewise, the list of releases I either appear on or contribute tracks to was very patchy.

So I figured I’d join Discogs and add my missing releases. That said, I found completing and submitting the form for my King Mob album Pure Mania such a pain in the ass, that I’m not sure I can be bothered to add my missing compilation and guest appearances. What do you think? Should I go for it or is this wasted effort? I certainly can’t be arsed to add other omitted King Mob releases; such as  Ken Kesey in the form of recordings made of the Acid Tests, and Charles Bukowski. At first I was surprised by what I couldn’t find on Discogs, but gradually the limitations of the site began to make sense to me. It suffers from all the faults that disfigure huge swathes of the web, since it is both a market place and a popularity contest (other people vote on the accuracy of your submissions). The only reason I can see to add items to Discogs is either because you have a copy you want to sell, or because it is a release on which you feature. The idea that someone would upload all the items from their record collection not already on Discogs is mind-numbingly depressing; the term anorak isn’t insulting enough to cover a saddo of this calibre! A series of searches showed I have several dozen releases not currently on the site – ranging from Eddie Bo (whose discography is incomplete) to Ward 34 (whose only single isn’t listed, yet anyway) – and if I was to do a thorough investigation, I suspect I’d find what I have that isn’t there runs well into three figures…

Just in case you’re interested, my still rather partial profile on Discogs can be found here. Likewise, I mentioned Technorati earlier this month, and following on from that I joined BlogCatalog. If the aesthetics of boredom really grove you, then you could do worse than check out the latter site, starting with my page, of course, which is here.

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in music, Web 2.0 | 26 Comments »

More on the death of King Mob’s Chris Gray

Monday, May 25th, 2009

In the past couple of days I’ve found some more online pieces about the death of Chris Gray. I’ve also come across blog talk of a Guardian obituary that was supposed to appear on 21 May; there is no sign of it yet but I guess this may still materialise. The most comprehensive obit so far is by Charlie Radcliffe who was very close to Chris in the 1960s, had little contact with him for more than 30 years after that, then rekindled this intimate friendship seven years ago. Among the many interesting observations Charlie makes at The Void are the following:

“The Acid, published under the pseudonym of Sam  by Vision Press this year, is as much a contribution to the politics of the new millennium as it is to psychedelic exploration… For Chris there was precious little contradiction between the one and the other and he saw The Acid as a rational and entirely logical development of his 60s and 70s political agenda… Chris continued his political life through the late 60s, before moving to India in 1969 to join Osho. Chris’ interesting account of this period of his life is in Osho (also by Sam!) His ‘retreat’ to India earned him the opprobrium of the ‘politically committed’ but a close reading of the book is enough to indicate that Chris never turned his back on his political convictions…”

Like Chariie, I can confirm that Chris remained ‘politically committed’ and that the revolutionary transformation of society was the focus of many of his conversations with me and a couple of other people I introduced him to. One time when I was rapping with Chris, he told me the reason he went to India was to finance the revolution. He journeyed east with the explicit intention of mailing dope back to London, so that this could be sold to raise money for political activities. Some gear was intercepted before the post office delivered it to its intended recipient, when Chris got wind of this he delayed his return home. He hadn’t planned on staying away from London as long as he did, but once the British authorities had marked his card, he faced a simple choice between living in India until the heat cooled off or being busted. This enforced stay in the east led Chris to an involvement with Buddhism and ultimately Osho. To the best of my knowledge, Charlie is right to say Chris left for India in 1969, but I would stress it wasn’t until the mid-seventies that he came across Osho (AKA Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh). To clarify further, my impression is that Chris had a period back in London after his first Indian trip before returning there and involving himself with Osho.

While I was aware that Chris had a long term involvement with Osho, this wasn’t something that came up in my conversations with him. Nonetheless, Osho was a major part of Chris’ life and an obit appeared on the  Sannyas News site on 17 May 2009. This post opens with the following observation: “The main founder of the Sannyasnews website, Swami Paritosh (Chris Gray), usually known as Pari, and who for writing purposes used the pseudonym “Sam”, died in the London Hampstead Marie Curie Hospice (Eden Hall) last Thursday morning (May 14th). He had put up a brave struggle with cancer over the last 12 months. He was 67.”

A few more posts about Chris’ death can be found on the History Is Made At Night, Boredom Is Always Counter-Revolutionary and Artosphere blogs. If you want to read Life of Osho by Chris Gray there is a free download available online. New and used paperback copies of Life of Osho by Sam (Sannyas, London 1997) are still readily available and carry the following International Standard Book Numbering: ISBN-10: 0953153401 and ISBN-13: 978-0953153404; since you can get a new copy for £10, avoid the used book dealers who are charging £25 and more for it. Although I’m not convinced Osho or any other guru is worth following, I still found this book really interesting for the overtly political reading Chris gives of Bhagwan’s teachings, and for the brief account he provides of his own ‘kamikaze’ drug smuggling of the early eighties. The other book Chris wrote as Sam, The Acid: On Sustained Experiment with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, or LSD, was officially published by Vision Press about six weeks ago but no copies appear to have been commercially distributed yet. The Acid carries the following International Standard Book Numbers: ISBN-10: 0956204902 and ISBN-13: 978-0956204905. I assume copies will become available in due course.

Christopher Nelson Gray, born 22 May 1942 in London; grew up in Crosby, Liverpool, and raised by his grandmother. Educated at Repton. Died in London on 14 May 2009.

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in counterculture, obituary, politics | 76 Comments »

King Mob’s Chris Gray RIP

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

I just got an email from Charlie Radcliffe telling me that Chris Gray died last Thursday morning (14 May 2009). Chris is probably best known for his brief membership of the Situationist International and being one of the key figures in the Notting Hill (west London) based King Mob. Chris was the editor and translator of the first English language anthology of French Situationist texts Leaving The 20th Century: The incomplete works of the Situationist International (1974), a book that over a long period was to have an enormous impact.

I got to know Chris around 2002 when I was researching the life of my mother Julia Callan-Thompson. At that time Chris had been ill with hepatitis c for some years, but it didn’t stop him from getting out on the streets to join anti-war and other demonstrations. He was extremely upbeat about the ongoing possibilities for the revolutionary transformation of society, and never complained about his illness. Chris told me several times he felt really sorry for those who got hep c from blood transfusions etc.; his attitude was that despite becoming ill from needle sharing, at least he’d had and enjoyed the smack that went with it.

When I saw Chris it was usually at his spartan flat in New Court, Hampstead. For health reasons, he was dividing his time between London and Cornwall. Despite the minimal decor in his London pad, Chris was really hospitable and always cooked for visitors. He viewed both me and his own daughter Mob as numbering among what he humorously referred to as ‘the lost children of Ladbroke Grove’. The first time I visited Chris, he told me he’d been aware of what I’d been doing for a long time, and said it was a shame we hadn’t met before because we had so much in common; viz, shared political and cultural interests alongside his acquaintance with my mother. Nonetheless, Chris hadn’t known my mother nearly as well as two of his former partners did in the late-sixties and early-seventies; both Brenda Grevelle and Hazel Gray saw her more much more regularly than he did back then.

During the years I knew Chris he was working on a book about LSD, and he seemed particularly curious about his own mother’s medical treatment with this drug in the 1950s. There is no need to repeat here the many anecdotes about Chris that have led some to view him as legendary, you can find them elsewhere but obviously not everything that has been written about him can be described as strictly factually accurate. Suffice to say I found Chris great company and appreciated him for his sharp mind. Rapping with him really brought home for me the fact that his translations of Situationist texts were intended to have an effect on the political climate of Britain and America; he was not aiming for the dry pseudo-objectivity of an academic.

Some of the lines that most impressed me when I first read the translations Chris made from French were his interpolations; added because he wanted to ensure these incendiary Situationist tracts worked for an Anglo-American audience. My absolute favourite among them is in his translation of On The Poverty Of Student Life. Here he threw in something along the lines of: “If the anarchists will tolerate each other they will tolerate anyone…” Chris assured me this addition was based on a throwaway line of conversation the pamphlet’s author Mustapha Khayati had tossed at him, he’d merely substituted ‘anarchists’ for ‘English’.

To the best of my knowledge, Hazel Gray died many many years ago. But Chris was still in close contact with Brenda Grevelle when I knew him. So my thoughts are with her and their daughter Mob.

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in counterculture, obituary, politics | 40 Comments »