29 June 2004

Godstar

Psychic Tv were never that good. You could pick a handful of tracks from all the genres they dabbled in and you'd still have enough fingers free to poke in a small child's eye. But, sometimes, when they felt like it, they came up with the goods. Dreams Less Sweetwas a more or less consistently weird and wonderful and very musical album, full of dank echoes, beach boys harmonies, Santa Claus, dungeons, walkie-talkies, Gregorian chanting and tibetan thigh bone trumpets (I've always wondered: whose thighs?). Unclean was a great post-punk drone-a-thon and Godstar, Roman P and their freakadelic version of Good Vibrationswere all uneccessarily pop-tastic singles.

And remember, they invented Acid House. Maybe.

Well...their early acid house stuff like Jack the Tab, Superman and the Timothy Leary sampling Turn On,Tune in... showed the direction that Acid House should have gone in before it got adopted by all those soulboys in smiley t-shirts and bandanas shouting "Aciieeed!" at the top of their voices prior to launching themselves into mass amateur gurning competitions and Jane Fonda / Nazi inspired aerobic marching. (off the point but it's been bugging me for a while: why did everyone in the early days of Acid House face the front? i mean, there was never anything to see was there? always kinda reminded me of step aerobics. and how come they stopped playing Hi Ho Silver lining and careless Whisper at the end of the night?)

Anyway, listen immedeiately to Genese P Orridge's soothing voice on the Brian Jones tribute Godstar (readysteadygomix) courtesy (well, I haven't exactly asked...sorry!!) of The fine and friendly people at The Suburbs Are Killing Us and then maybe check out the Unclean 1999 remix-inspirathon from the people at Fopi Net which isn't exactly by Psychic Tv as such but which is a kinda tribute of sorts. If all this is too much then I recommend heading over to Tried and True Attention Getting Tactics where there's Doris Day's immortal indecisive sleazeathon Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps


1 comment:

Psychbloke said...

I was there when acid house hit Essex (obviously you still had to 'dress to impress' smart / casual though).

It buggered up that whole long established 'hang around the bar 'til the slowies' dynamic and got blokes onto the dancefloor, but obviously they couldn't dance FACING EACH OTHER and survive with their maculinity / noses intact - hence the mock adoration of the DJ - in our case, the immaculate 'Bob Peacock', who I think adapted to the challenges of acid house rather well......

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