Album review : VAN DER GRAAF – Vital (2 CD Remaster)

Cherry Red [Release date : 29.03.24]

The year after England won the world cup, English musician Chris Judge Smith took a “summer of love” trip to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury, a pivotal point on the Flower Power map.

It is not explained why he returned with the words, Van Der Graaf Generator on his lips. But that’s what he called the band he formed in 1967, with singer songwriter, Peter Hammill and keyboard player, Nick Peame.

The abrasive progressive rock of VDGG was the very antithesis of the soft rock sounds emanating from the USA’s west coast, so how that visit influenced his band name decision remains a puzzle. We can only guess that he spent his time listening to Captain Beefheart.

A little over ten years later, after releasing 8 studio albums, the band recorded their first live album, Vital (1978) at the Marquee Club in London.

It turned out to be the band’s Swan Song. It disbanded later that year.

The recording has now been remastered from the original tapes, and will be released this month as a 2 CD package.

Of the sixties progressive bands who came to the fore by pursuing rock, jazz and experimental sounds, Van Der Graaf (as it came to be known) was often mentioned in the same breath as fellow art rockers, King Crimson. But it was Hammill’s dark, existentialist lyrics, and the band’s musical ferocity that marked them out as exceptions to the norm.

Centrepiece is the ‘Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers/The Sleepwalkers medley, a 14 minute truncation of the originals’ combined 34 minute duration. Zappa-esque time changes and conflicting instrumental match ups piece the song together skilfully. Merged like this, it becomes an hypnotic stream of consciousness. Darkly hued and razor edged.

Elsewhere, Hammill’s lyrics artfully illustrate that there’s a difference between life lessons and lectures, and indeed most songs are a (very large) snapshot of his honestly spoken world view,

While songs like ‘Ship of Fools’, ‘Still Life’ and ‘Pioneer Over C’, are full of aggressive, grinding, churning progressive rock, they are fitted out with piercing lyrics with many targets. The collective foolishness that plagues humanity, and the notion that immortality would come at an unaffordable cost, are but two.

Clearly, it’s never less than challenging at times. But for the band’s many fans, who expect a lot, this live gig went down a treat. ***1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)