GORDON STRONG

Writer - Speaker - Magician

  " forget Zepplin, This is the Gig of the Year ! "

It happened! After the usual rock and roll nightmares…..the vanishing drummer, tense rehearsals, out of tune guitars...they got it on!  The Kozmik Boogie Band hit the spotlight at The Crystal Temple in St. Johns, Portland, Oregon. US.A. on the evening of March 28.

 

Shama on lead vocals temporarily abandoned her Buddhist chants to be the raunchiest white soul singer since Janis Joplin, Gordon duck-walked through some Chuck Berry riffs, John played very cool horn and the rhythm section of Marvella and Mike were as solid as a snow-covered Mount Hood.

 

60s rock was the promised repertoire and man, did this band deliver.  From ‘Glad all Over’ to ‘Midnight Hour’.  They were getting down and dirty in the aisles by the encore.

 

Between sets Gordon’s birthday bake was served up to a bunch of  grateful fans.  Later they would stagger into the night, with sweet memories of hot licks and cool cake.

 

 

 

Check out www.baladi.com  Drummer Mike Beach’s band – Brothers of the Baladi doing a U.K. tour in Summer 2008 

            

Moozik and Me

 

 

 

  first got my hands on a guitar (A Rosetti Lucky 7) in 1962. The moment was pre-Beatles so my heroes were Hank B. Marvin and Duane Eddy.  Along with about ten thousand other kids it was the sound of the electric guitar that thrilled me.  Ridiculously unloud by later standards, but a 15 watt amp. still did the business.

 

Everybody knew somebody who played something and for that reason bands (beat groups they were called then) flourished like the acne on the rhythm guitarist’s chin. The idea was to get your mates together, decide who was doing what musically and get it on. The whole thing was instant, a bit like teenage sex.

 

Of course the music sounded awful at first, and a lot of pro. acts did as well. It wasn’t until the mid-sixties that dynamics, balance even skill got sorted out.  Some good songs got written along the way too.

 

So where I was I in all this then, eh? Lead guitarist of The Syns and pretty much at the bottom of the heap. But five years later (with a blues band or two and a few folkie gigs in the interval) it all changed.  For me anyway. The drummer and the singer disappeared but I did keep in touch with the bass player.  We took psychedelic substances together in 1967 and that might have been the thin end of the wacky wedge.

 

I played at the first Glastonbury Festival (1971) with a band formed especially for the occasion. ‘Flash Gordon!’ someone suggested, and thus it was.  Check out the festival album, a rare and valuable item.  Then it was a brief ten minutes of fame with Hawkwind and the inevitable side step out of the limelight.

 

The lead guitarist of Flash Gordon was John Perry who found fame with The Only Ones (Another Girl Another Planet – recently the Vodafone T.V. ad.).  Many I knew from those times are now either daft, dead or druggy.  One or two became millionaires…

 

That’s the history, here’s the NOW.  I still play the guitar and write songs.  The rock world ain’t seen the end of Flash Gordon yet, and a big musical happening is just round the corner.

 

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