There is no better approach to music than that. When I saw him doing a solo DJ set, at one point he was playing bursts of Philip Glass over an angular techno track, not even roughly in time, simply because, from the vaguely engaged look on his face, he enjoyed really the obtuse noise it made. Here, as in his DJ sets, there are no categorisations of taste and type, just whatever fits and has meaning in context, like where he describes dropping Charles Hayward’s (of post-prog outfit This Heat) “Speculative Fiction” into a dance tent set at the right point, somehow avoiding incongruity, and getting everyone bouncing along with the rest of it. Davis’ contributions to the book touch on so many transcendent obscurities, dropped in in such a naturalistic and uncontrived way, that you get a feel for the unbound and borderless ethos that informed the best of the early 70’s era and beyond.
#Mac davis music boks free#
It was life itself” Davis’ strength is in the incredible and, let’s face it, utterly surprising breadth and depth of the music that he immerses himself in from an early age, without seemingly thinking too deeply about it (or anything!) at all.įrom the outer edges of progressive rock in his youth, following the likes of Gentle Giant and Magma, and on into the realms of experimental modern composition, free jazz, developing a daedal insight into the relationships between all of the main protagonists of serious modern music over the last fifty years or so. While Kavus’ musical journey lurches wide-eyed from epiphany to epiphany, from Maiden to Voivod and eventually to Cardiacs “being shown a film of every dream in glorious technicolour… it was all things. When not documenting specific wars, or war in general, they usually took their title from a book, or more often than not a film, heavy handedly retelling the story while repeating the title over and over in lieu of a proper chorus” Whereas Davis seems, at least initially, a little stilted in his recollections, Kavus has a charming and scattershot knack with a narrative which drives his tale along at a belting pace, and a special talent for describing his formative influences: has there ever been a better description of a typical Iron maiden lyric than: “Steve Harris’ eagerness to cram in lists of historical facts meant his lyrics scanned in an awkward way, giving the songs a three legged feel. This of course would lead him away from the well-meaning but conventional ambitions of his parents to find obscurity in a succession of ill-fated, if musically adventurous bands until a haphazard blend of accident and acid drove him into the loving, if somewhat stingy, arms of his late heroes Dr Tim Smith of Cardiacs and Daevid Allen of Gong, and eventually into the orbit of Mr Interesting himself. The son of a Persian doctor and nurse, and born in Tehran, he seems estranged and adrift from the world around him during his first years in the UK until a mystical vision of The Stray Cats (“arch, deliberate and correct”) on Top Of The Pops in 1980 sent him on a lifelong quest for freak perfection, that psychedelic sweet spot, the endless Now. While Davis seems enmeshed in British culture to the point of camouflage, Kavus Torabi is a born outsider. In Steve Davis land it seems this is still true, no matter how abstract and avant-garde your aspirations.
His fame was born of the Thatcher era and all of his successes seem to bear out her philosophy, it just takes a little inspiration and effort and you can be who and what you want to be. Dominating snooker for over a decade, building modular synthesisers, promoting legendary Kobaïan band Magma’s comeback tour, becoming one of the most innovative and eclectic DJ’s on the scene all in a days work. In an egoless way, he seems to excel at everything he turns his hand to and doesn’t find this in any way remarkable.
Davis writes as a working class savant, in one sense inarticulate, or at least unconfident with his own writing, but someone with an uncanny ability to almost effortlessly pick up skills, influences and connections between the people and things that surround him. What makes the book work as well as it does are the distinctive voices of both of the protagonists.
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