the official website of the official Vasco da Gama Foundation - and that's official!
| SEPTEMBER 17th 1977 - Gama's debut performance at Spofforth Memorial Hall with Big Dog sharing the bill... both bands combine for a rousing version of the Turtles' Happy Together... former potato-salesman Joe Mills spotted dancing in the crowd to X Marks the Spot.... other gamatunes in the set include
In Bad Taste, Raising a Stink, Man on Stilts.... don't you wish you'd been there? |
|
An inedible amount of sewage has flown under the bridge since Gama called it a day but now the time is right for a comeback- the better element demand it, tomorrow's generation deserve it. Remember - if an old lady with a fishbone can cheat death then so can the most underrated Progressive Rock Band of the last 2000 years - it's time to throw off the shrouds - there's life in the old dog yet! - the time is NOW the time is
GAMA TIME ! ©The Vasco da Gama Foundation 1999. Founded 1977. Registered at the Post Office as superfluous and self indulgent |
You may never have heard of them - not many people have - but for the chosen few who witnessed this quintessential Wetherby-based Progressive Rock band in their prime, the memory will never fade. Make no mistake - Vasco da Gama could and should have been the biggest band in the World. Many people think they were rubbish - but how do they know? - they didn't buy the records or go to the concerts - nobody did!
At a time when the world was turning to the evils of disco music and wearing white trousers it was the men of Gama who stood alone in the face of adversity, bringing their music to a public who wouldn’t listen in the damp and musty halls in those parts of Yorkshire even now condemned as unfit and insanitary. These were difficult and testing times – they were the worst of times, blighted by boils and running sores, and yet still the public danced to the awful discotheque beat and the world writhed with the cramps of diahorreah and voided into sacks – but not the Gama men! They came through, feet firmly stuck in the mud of integrity, refusing to go with the flow and proudly carrying the banner for all they upheld to be good and decent. These were the worst of times….. these were the days of an inconsequential and shallow society in it’s disco flares and platform soles, which reacted with a hypocritical and damning outrage when the Gama riots started outside the gates of Clarence House, home of the oldest swinger in town.
The then incumbent Queen Mother (the nation's favourite Granny) was on holiday in Scotland at the time and nearly choked on a fishbone when given the news. Coincidence? I don't think so! The regal chokesmith, in case you were wondering, had to call out the rescue and emergency services from six counties! (this service is not generally available, so keep it under your hat)
And now the worm has turned and anything goes and still the world is rotten to the core with it’s false pop idols and other stinking vermin and where has it got you? Nobloodywhere! Give this lot a listen and ditch your sanitised garbage – who needs it! Nobloodyone, that’s who!
so what was their music like?
in the early days it was derivative Jethro
Tull, Wild Turkey, Van der Graaf and Nolan Sisters type stuff, with considerable latitude of choice being afforded the players in the matter of key, but they also wrote some of
their own material, mainly from the pencil of Dave Knight. By the end of 1977 their entire act consisted of home-grown dirges, chants and madrigals.