I'd been working for nearly three months, taking home the princely sum of £14.00 per week. More than enough to let me buy the Caravan, Osibisa and Groundhogs albums I'd dreamt of when I was at school.

Posters advertising Kevin Ayers with Gong and Robert Wyatt had been posted round the part of central London where I worked for some time. Already a veteran of some four Ayers gigs I had no hesitation in deciding to go to this one. As I worked near the venue it wasn't worth my while to go home and get changed before the gig. However, there was no way I could turn up for something as groovy as an Ayers gig wearing the collar and tie I had to put on for my less than enlightened bosses. So it was I took my groovy purple striped rollneck jumper to work - I know roll neck jumpers were about as hip as Val Doonican even in 1971 but fashion was never my forte. Come five o' clock, I popped on my sweater to hide the incriminating tie and off I went.

I had a few minutes before the gig which I spent with the snoring alcoholics in Holborn Library and then I made my way down to the college. After walking round the halls of learning for some half an hour, someone relieved my confusion and pointed out where the band was due to play. There then followed a two hour wait. Bands were even more notoriously unpunctual in those days than they are now. It gave me plenty of time to acquaint myself with the DJ's appalling taste in music and to realise that despite the purple rollneck sweater (or because of it) I was tragically out of sartorial step with the crushed velvet Loons and tie-dyed tee shirts round me.

About ten o' clock Gong hit the stage. They looked a weird bunch and when the music started they seemed even weirder. Most of the songs later surfaced on 'Camembert Electrique' but it was all new to me. I was mesmerised though. Good as Didier Malherbe's sax playing was and Gilli Smyth's spooky vocalisings it was the ethereal spaciness of Daevid Allen's glissando guitar that entranced me. I didn't even know guitars could make such a wonderful noise.

After an hour a wobbly looking Kevin joined the band. Having been surprised at the last gig of his I had no idea what to expect of him tonight. The previous gig had been at a CND Rally at Alexandra Palace where Ayers had been billed to play with Bridget St. John. Instead of 'Jolie Madame' and 'The Oyster and the Flying Fish' he'd asked Ginger Johnson and his African drummers to join him on stage for a forty minute work-out of 'We Did It Again'.

In tuning up his guitar Ayers played the opening chords of 'Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes' (the single had just been released) but with typical Ayers perverseness that number didn't appear. Instead he kicked off with 'Clarence in Wonderland'. It was the first time I'd heard the reggae version and I was somewhat surprised as in those days reggae was firmly associated with skinhead bootboys.

After that he played 'Lady Rachel'. The structure of the song was not dissimilar to the orchestral version that appeared on 'Odd Ditties', Didier Malherbe's flute being reminiscent of the opening bars of that recording. A jam followed. Normally live jams make me want to head for the hills but this was good stuff. Again, Daevid Allen's guitar shone.

By the time of the last number Robert Wyatt had joined the band (largely on backing vocals if memory serves me correctly as Pip Pyle was the drummer) as had Lol Coxhill. The song appeared to be a slow chant with tinkling guitar. Gradually it built up, the familiar nagging bass line began to pound and I realised they were playing 'We Did It Again'. Ayers urged the audience to dance, but to little effect. As the rhythm became more insistent the crowd's coolness seemed to get to Kevin. He began to thump the stage with the microphone stand, the tension and emotion began to rise as he got more and more worked up. Daevid Allen, in contrast, seemed to be having a high old time, waggling a long percussive instrument in a suggestive manner from his...ahem....swimming trunk area.

The number built up and up until, in a frenzy of drunkeness and excitement, Ayers lurched too far forwards and fell off the stage. As he went he pulled his microphone stand with him. All the microphone cables were linked together so the whole front line came surging together and down on top of him. And so the song climaxed with the band smashing out the final chords whilst a shower of mike stands fell onto our prone hero somewhere at the foot of the stage. Only now did the audience leap to its feet with rapturous applause and calls for an encore.

Talk about playing before your audience and making them laugh and shout......

GRAHAM WESTON - THE PURPLE JUMPER