This well-recorded concert from March 1, 2022 at the Bath Forum finds the Van Der Graaf Generator trio in superb vocal and instrumental form, as they brave their way through more recent tunes and a few old warhorse classics.
They begin with two songs that conspire with new relativity. (As always, thank you, Einstein!) The short “Interference Patterns” gives way to the brilliant rant “Every Bloody Emperor,” a song with an eternal and always-modern human hubristic burn. Little wonder why Sex Pistols guy Johnny Rotten (aka John Joseph Lydon) loved the band. Then the band explodes into “A Louse Is Not a Home,” originally from Peter Hammill’s solo album, The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage, which was my entry into his fiery canon. And the years don’t miss a step, as the performance touches ancient Grecian drama. The resurrected and quite modern stylus still cuts through bloody vinyl grooves.
Next is “Masks” from the wonderful World Record from long ago.Hugh Banton plays with church organ sanctitude, and Guy Evans conjures the dark pulse of Hades’ River ride percussion perfection. Of course, there’s more: “Childhood’s Faith in Childhood’s End” is an epic oxymoron that simply rips through any time and space continuum, with a searing prog-rock carving knife. The first disc ends with the introspective “Go,” from Van Der Graaf Generator’s most recent Do Not Disturb album.
My friend Kilda Defnut said of The Bath Forum Concert: “Van Der Graaf Generator music is the amber Jurassic DNA stuff that’s always ready to be unleashed.” Then she added, “Sometimes, a resurrected Lazarus can still sing a pretty good rock ‘n’ roll tune.”
To the initiate, Van Der Graaf Generator and vocalist extraordinaire Peter Hammill’s solo albums emerged from the famous ’70s Charisma stable, along with Peter Gabriel-fronted Genesis, those “Fog on the Tyne” hitmakers Lindisfarne, String Driven Thing, and the sadly forgotten Audience. Now, Van Der Graaf and Hammill were, perhaps, a bit too extreme to find “I Can’t Dance” pop music fame, but their music could well serve as the perfect soundtrack to MacBeth‘s “double, double, toil and trouble” witch scene.
Granted there’s nary a “eye of newt” or “Root of hemlock digged I’ the dark” in their musical cauldron, but there’s just about everything else that big banged in the first moment of our universe—existence, anti-matter, a “killer at the bottom of the sea,” “still life” with “the toothless haggard features of Eternity,” a “Godbluff,” “lemmings,” an “Imperial Zeppelin,” Bernini’s St. Theresa, and of course, “Man Erg” with mentions of “killers, angels, all those dictators, saviors,” and “refugees.” This is maelstrom stuff with the occasional hurricane eye of low air melodic beauty – all aided by sax guy David Jackson, who (sadly!) is no longer in the fold.
Peter Hammill begins the brilliant prog epic “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” with the line, “Still waiting for my savior,” and “my fingers feel like seaweed – I’m so far out, I’m too far in,” to offer a “Red Shift” invite into the brilliance of the band’s Pawn Hearts album. Indeed, this music does “toil” in “double, double trouble” and yet it still manages to sing its anthemic “We need love, we need love” plea (and yeah, “we need love”) in an epic dramatic rock ‘n’ roll prog-rock apocalyptic (with a Charisma kinship to Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready”) vinyl final groove.
By the way, this Esoteric release arrives in a four-disc clamshell package, with the two-CD set, and a “a region-free High-Definition Blu-ray video with 5.1 Surround Sound and a NTSC/Region free of the stunning concert film.” Wow!
The second disc begins with another classic, “La Rossa,” and that’s followed by several recent tunes: the delightfully dissonant “Alfa Berlina,” which is another from Do Not Disturb. Trisector’s “Over the Hill” is laced with even more vocal drama and an eerie Hugh Baton organ vibe. Then the new tune triad is complete with “Room 1210,” again from their most recent release.
The final couplet (as sonnet dictum decrees!) then returns to the beginning glory of that ‘70s Charisma melodic magic. The before-mentioned “Man Erg” is simply euphoric, wonderfully chaotic and still, even after all the years, imbued with that “incautious laughter” of those “killers, angels, all those dictators, saviors” and “refugees.”
With its languid sunset memory, the gorgeous “House with No Door” then proves, while time does not heal, it certainly magnifies the colors in the grooves of beloved records that spin, forever a day, with the “double, double, toil and trouble” of truly profound and passionate progressive-rock music that will always manage a weird “wave” – because of course, “that’s the least we can do.”
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