Michael Bloom: "People started coming around to Zu House, especially musicians. I introduced Michael Beinhorn, at the time a 15 year old kid desperate to get his hands on a synthesizer (he soon bought a Micromoog from Joe Gallivan), and he in turn brought his friend Fred Maher, an aspiring drummer. Gomelsky found this bass player who'd been doing some work with an ethnic dance troupe, and who claimed to have been playing with Ornette Coleman; this was Bill Laswell. They started rehearsing in the Zu basement, trying to learn Art Bears tunes and evolving their concept of urban funk with mutant excrescences. When Daevid came back to start rehearsing, they became his New York Gong band, accompanying him not only at the Manifestival but on his 1979 American tour. Somewhere along the line, they started recording as Material, but they were New York Gong first. (For a while they were calling themselves Zu Band. They went through several guitar players; the guy who did most of the Gong activity was one Cliff Cultreri, subsequently an exec with Relativity Records, working with guitar 'heroes' from Joe Satriani to Adrian Legg.)"

"Tina Curran, also appeared on stage with New York Gong in costume as part of an ad hoc pixie auxiliary, several adults and children traipsing about in green outfits."

"New York Gong played a long set comprising most of the Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, introduced by the relevant Camembert Electrique material. I think the band was Allen, Smyth, Cutler, Laswell, Cultreri, and a saxophonist named George Bishop; maybe Beinhorn made some Moonweed noises too, and there might have been another drum kit for Maher. They were almost done when, at about 2 o'clock in the morning, the police showed up and insisted that it was time to shut up. ("Cops at the door," indeed!) The cops pulled the plug, and Gomelsky urged all the drummers to come out on stage for a climactic percussion jam on the rhythm of 'The Isle of Everywhere'.

"Oh yeah, I also remember Beinhorn telling me how much fun he had wandering around the neighborhood with Daevid to spray bright green Gong graffiti. Afterwards, Daevid made the 'n'existe pas'! album with Cutler (performing under the name Brian Damage) and Bishop, then came back in 1979 to tour America with New York Gong, by then composed of Laswell, Beinhorn, Maher and Cultreri. Part of his idea then was that the spirit of Gong should manifest in a multiplicity of bands all at once: New York Gong, Here and Now Gong, Pierre Moerlen's Gong, whatever Hillage wanted to do, the meditation circle in Mallorca, and anything that might be going on around him in Australia. Other than the Zu performance, however, this was the first appearance of Gong in America-- and the last with a band, until the Magick Brothers toured in 1993, or whenever it was."

Harry Williamson:
"It was very like Ken Kesey, The bus was Graffitti'd head to foot with slogans and filled with loads of musicians stumbling bleary - eyed into the snow. People would arrive at the gigs wearing conical knitted hats with bobbles on the top, all the right colours and funny curly toed shoes, out of the wood work, as it were. And suddenly here was Gong but it was nothing like the Gong they'd got to know, it was much more brash with trendy NY session musicians forming the backing band"

'Alien in New York' (CYZ 101) was recorded around this time - in Jamaica (where else?). Financed by the black American soap star and devote Gong fan from California, ?

Winter '79 - Winter '80 Daevid did Divided Alien Clockworks Band solo tour - with Elisabeth Middleton as support - using cut - up backing tapes from New York Gong album - released as 'Playbax '80' (Charly CR30218) with accompanying Video. It combined all the tricks Daevid had learned over the years and represents the peak of this musically experimental period - A willfully obscure but bizarrely brilliant masterpiece

The Astral Alien Years

In 1981 Daevid returned to his native Australia, and re-established old contacts with family and friends, finding more than the "blue eyed emptiness" that had prompted him to leave the country over two decades earlier. The immediate factors facing him when he arrived were the death of his father and the fact that money had completely dried up. Daevid started driving Taxis for a living and formed EX with David Tolley an old friend from Cadet Executive days. Began hanging out with Thom Kelly and the Melbourne Street Poets, performing in venues such as Cafe Jammin' and Metro Poetry Cafe.

'82 saw Daevid's brief return to England for a few poetry dates, as he got into the cab to catch the plane back home, Jean-Luc Young presented him with contracts that had to be urgently signed before he left, on his way to the airport Daevid read the contracts properly and realised he had just signed away everything to Jean-Luc and Charly Records! Returned to Mullumbimby and set up Studio in Banana shed. 1983 sees Daevid presenting an FM Radio show from Byron Bay- Radio Brainwave - 'The Death of Rock' (Shanghai HAI 201) is released from New York era - Other recordings from this period were included on 'Australian Years' (Voiceprint VP101LP) '91 which involves Bart Willoughby, Young singer and didj player with Australian Aboriginal Band NFA - He also appears on the 'C Drone' and The Invisible Opera CD.

Daevid adopted the name Ja-am and recorded 'The Seven Drones' (Voiceprint VP102CD) '90 - A series of ambient meditational pieces and discovers the wonders of rebirthing - Daevid spent 1985 in a kind of spiritual retreat doing Rebirthing then Mystery School Trainings The only musical venture at this time was jamming with the Peace Training Dreamtime Band which also involved one Mark Robson, it was a kind of precursor to The Invisible Opera Company of Tibet and Kangaroo Moon. Daevid enjoyed hanging out at 'Hakim's', an octagonal jamming space cum recording studio which was part of the Narada community somewhere in the Australian Rainforest near Mullumbimby where he lived. It was there he crossed paths with a young(ish) Gong fan by the name of Russell Hibbs. Hibbs had just shacked up in the Rainforest, growing his own veggies, doing a degree in Oriental Therapies and starting to write songs of his own. They made an immediate and deep connection, Daevid suggested that they should work together using his old tascams from Deya days which he had installed in the new Bananamoon Observatory - Before long they pulled in Evan Heaven - a cosmic bespangled busker, complete with flashing lights and a home-made guitar, and drummer Neil Cairney

Daevid's Discography