Van Der Graff – Vital (Esoteric) – Haven’t pulled Vital off the shelf for years, almost forgotten just how how good it really is. Right now she or he or it (or maybe they) is trying to work out where the door is and I’ve just spent a brilliant hour or more (painting) with this cranked up to the max. Vital really is an album on the cusp of so many things, a real crossroads, a coming together, a collision, a culture clash somewhere down Wardour Street. Then again is it really that much of a collision? Are the elements actually at odds with each other? More a fluid reflection of where we were at time perhaps? Surely no collision here,  nothing at odds, everything going in the same direction, the right direction and every bit of praise you’ve ever heard directed at Van Der Graaf Generator is proved in this recording.

How to approach this? On the table lies blank paper, we only have blunt scissors, no time now for contrition and you Van Der Graaf devotes who know this live album intimately already are just going to want to know about production and packaging and and what’s different with this reissue that makes it different to the other ones and well that’s really not what we want to be concerned with here. You can get all that kind of thing elsewhere, surely the various online VdGG and Hammill groups will trainspot the hell out of it and tell you far more than we can. We’re more concerned that opening shot that is Ship Of Fools, now that really is vicious. That start is just so electric and then of all things to follow it, the bleak drama of Still Life and all that living, eating, sleeping, defecating, sinking further down and passing away the time, and none of it had any meaning but then they get into the body and the make believe of the song and that pinpoint drumming and Jaxon’s filthy sax. I want to write this for the people who don’t know, For the people who maybe have never ever heard of Van Der Graaf Generator let alone heard them, I want to scream and shout until you just go and get a slice or two of it, until it crashes all around you, or at least try (you’ve got to try, give is several tries, persevere it isn’t going to be easy, you will eventually be richly rewarded, you will eventually know why, you will eventually take the mirror away). 

This is lean, this is raw, this is, almost said this is vital but that would be way way too corny and there really is nothing corny about this live recording of Van Der Graaf, as they were then called, the Generator dropped for a while towards the end of the 70s. this live recording of Van Der Graaf at the very much missed Wardour Street Marquee (is it my wishful thinking or does the cheer sound like only a Marquee cheer could? Are my feet almost sticking to floor in here listening to this?). The bass sounds threatening, this is the so called prog rock band the punks, the real ones, the ones who properly got it, this is the prog band the punks all loved, this is the band Rotten adored, Hammill was the man up there on stage driving a tank with the Stranglers not long after. Wonder how many musicians were present on those two nights in January ’78? We know a Cardiac or two was, I imagine John Lydon was (for the record they hadn’t landed in my still school boy world quite yet), I imagine quite a few o their peers had sneaked in to see how it really was done. 

That violin that illuminates Last Frame is just glorious and that start of Plague of Lighthouse Keepers is just sssspine-chillingly goosebumping good, that magic, that chemistry, those wonderful wonderful thirty or so seconds before still waiting as they bring it all in, so far in, too far out and I can’t seriously write about it (I don’t want to have to force myself to think about it), surely Plague of Lighthouse Keepers is the best thing ever by anyone? Plague is Turner’s Fighting Temeraire, every second of it a walk on a tightrope, every second needed, nothing ever indulgent, one wrong note on that original studio recording and the whole thing would have fallen apart and somehow it never did and neither does it here, some of that violin is Lark Ascending. That original studio recording (and that visually brilliant Belgium TV performance that surely is the ultimate gateway in if you never have seen or heard the band). This live version or part version as a glorious portion of a medley, is just so so right, so so there, so in the moment, so of the time and as fresh now and yes, as vital now, as it has ever been, the whole album is… And then to follow it in the way they do!  Just yes!  

“Vital was the final release of the 1970s by Van der Graaf Generator, who by 1977 had abbreviated their name to Van der Graaf and featured a line-up of Peter Hammill (vocals, piano, guitars), Guy Evans (drums), Nic Potter (bass), and Graham Smith (violin) who added Charles Dickie (cello) to the band mid-way through the year. Following a long year of touring and recording the album The Quiet Zone / The Pleasure Dome, the band greeted 1978 with two concerts at the Marquee Club in London on the 15th and 16th January which were recorded. The concerts featured a guest appearance by former member David Jackson on saxophone and flute.  Vital was a brutal sonic assault and featured Van der Graaf at their most powerful and impassioned. The record proved to be their swansong of the 1970s, as by the time of the album’s release in July 1978, the band had broken up due to financial difficulties”.  

Financial difficulties! How many people owed them? Bowie, Lydon and a whole host more.  We’re all in this together he says. Kind of pleased I haven’t played this album to death, I have no idea why I haven’t? But I do have it here now to unwrap again (and again) and do it properly this time – we’ve matured disgracefully together, sometimes living for the moment, sometimes going with the glow (that should have said flow, but that typo for once works). and if there was to be an argument about which was their very best album then this live recording would surely have to heavily feature in that argument. This really really is vital, this really is something very very special from a band and a bunch of people who have constantly recorded very special things.

And now we need a closing statement, an end, but it never does end, it never does disappear into a darker night, Somebody help me, I’m falling, somebody help me close this review, I mean, just listen to that power, those filthy riffs, that knowing chemistry, that drumming! That voice, that raw voice! I am the one who’s trying to end this review, forget everything that I’ve said before and sit there all by yourself with it, there really are no words 8and those words are so good) and we can’t scan an index, we can’t see daylight, we better see daylight, where is the door? AH, clutching at the (astral) shadow of the door of a room and oh look, this really is vital, it really is one of the finest albums ever, not one of the finest live albums, just one of the finest albums ever, just one of rock music’s vital recordings, every single moment of it is vital, everything about it necessary, lean, practice, there, of the time, timeless, far more than just living for the moment, that manic attraction… (sw) 

Mail order details. The remastered double CD and vinyl are both released on March 29th 2024 via Cherry Red.

That gateway version mentioned up there