A MAGMIFICENT TALE
I have been a fan of the remarkable French progressive band Magma and its composer, drummer and ringmaster Christian Vander since the 70s. But how I came across this eclectic music is even stranger: I discovered it in a Cornish café next to a pitch and putt course!
The Golf Café in Falmouth was a large, ocean-facing breeze block cube with huge plate-glass windows on three sides.
It was set on a rise beside a crazy golf set-up and a nine-hole putting green.
Inside, half of the space was taken up with the café and the rest was a record store comprising thousands of LPs stuffed into plywood racks or metal stands. The pop and prog stuff was at the front with general titles spread down the main walkway of the record area leading to a cramped room at the back lit with spotlights and packed with jazz albums.
It was run by Derek, a grey-haired jazz buff who had a small counter in the main aisle and constantly played the most challenging music from a deck behind him, the whole unexpected area providing an extraordinary antithesis to the Formica-topped tables and bright seaside paraphernalia packing the adjoining café. For a time it was also a favourite pit-stop for local Mods on their two-stroke Vespas.
Anyway, when I pulled the cover of Magma’s Mëkanïk Dëstruktï`w Kömmandöh out of the rack I was struck by the stark gold symbol on the front and the bizarre text on the back and inside of this gold and brown gatefold sleeve. I asked to hear a track and was, as they say, blown away.
Did I say a track? Well, as any Magma fan knows, this was one long, sprawling operatic piece spread over two sides and was like nothing I’d heard before – a mix of jazz, soul, gospel, rock and choral music; a space opera sung in a made-up language in a style I later learned was called Zeuhl music. The nearest thing I could connect to it was Prokofiev’s cantata Alexander Nevsky and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. I’ve listened to Magma’s music ever since, even catching shows at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre in 1988 and 1989 organised by snooker master Steve Davis.
The late 60s/early 70s were an age when record company reps would still visit unique, out-of-the-way outlets like this, often providing more examples of off-kilter vinyl magic for those clients looking for something more challenging than the pop tunes of the day. For this bizarre bazaar was where I found music and labels both current and obscure offering jazz, classical, rock, prog, pop, folk, foreign, easy listening and humour, including such gems as the fledgling recordings of Simon and Garfunkel when they sounded like the Everly Brothers and were known as Tom and Jerry, an album including their 1957 single Hey, Schoolgirl.
It was where I first heard John Coltrane’s epic composition A Love Supreme and many of the great Vertigo acts of the day, such as the irreplaceable Gentle Giant, Nucleus, Ian Carr, Colosseum, Uriah Heep, Manfred Mann and Alex Harvey. I also found Peter Hammill through VdGG’s remarkable The Aerosol Grey Machine and Dave Stewart’s masterful threepiece Egg, which led me to the Canterbury scene, National Health and many other lesser-known but outstanding groups of musicians.
Sadly, this haven for a wealth of vinyl was demolished in the 80s to make way for a block of flats. But I owe its existence, and the diverse tastes of its owner, a huge debt in expanding my musical knowledge over successive decades. I wonder, have any of your readers experienced similarly unlikely introductions to previously unknown music that ends up staying with them for many years?
Brian Thomas