Van Der Graaf Generator: Real Time

It's an odd affair, perhaps it should have been a private function, but in the framework of art-as-commodity and audience-as-market, it's inevitable. So, as a live recording (which incidentally achieves the curiously muted high and swelling-ly bulbous lo-end of the Godbluff / World Record / Still Life studio trilogy -- the three VdGG records that get the greatest representation here) Real Time delivers what's expected, which may be the problem.

The performances are of the sort that typify VdGG and Hammill outings documented by "Room Temprature", "Vital" and others. Not focused on note-for-note replication, but striving after that which we might call the meta-text, those inflections and inferences which refuse to sit still or to succumb to notation and best spring to life in the moment of their invocation are, after all, the assumed reason for live performance. Even the few and far between wrong notes end up sounding right. But here, unlike Hammill's more intimately scaled and recent Veracious, the music less often twists towards the revelatory and many more times jumps for the surety of brute force, amid some already extremely bruising and bruised music. And make no mistake, the music is still the music. Comprised of elements of a canon of still difficult to match anguish and anger, threat and surrender, sundering and realization this particular replay does it all an honor. And even with the presence of the contemporary "Every Bloody Emperor" and "Nutter Alert" perhaps the real value of Real Time is not so much the thing itself as the gesture of marking an honorable and shared past.

Now the rest calls for first-person. I came to both the event and recording with great anticipation. In fact, it seemed so compelling that I had even made the arrangements to travel to London solely for this concert, an idea that while costing me a considerable sum never actually deposited me at the venue. So, no first hand accounts for this or other overtly nostalgic acts. But, despite or perhaps because of my admiration for these musicians in particular and their dedication and the quality of their work I found myself experiencing a sudden and oddly sang-froid disdain for this and like reenactments by many and other far less distinguished groups. Not to single out VdGG or to begrudge anyone their pleasure in such events, but it might be time to consign those things to memory that best belong to memory. Aside from the risk of over-familiarity, there is an unfortunate transformation taking place in the way once fringe or radical works are now understood. Within the boundaries of Real Time we are awash in a music born of discomfort and uncertainty, here playing out before an imminently adoring, settled in and -- judging by the images from the performances -- generally and comfortably overweight group of folks looking for, what exactly?

Track Listing
Disc One
1) The Undercover Man
2) Scorched Earth
3) Refugees
4) Every Bloody Emperor
5) Lemmings
6) (In the) Black Room
7) Nutter Alert
8) Darkness
Disc Two
1) Masks
2) Childlike Faith in Childhood's End
3) The Sleepwalkers
4) Man-Erg
5) Killer
6) Wondering

Added: April 1st 2007
Reviewer: Kerry Leimer
Score:
Related Link: Van Der Graaf Generator Website
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Language: english

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